I can’t be the only parent who dreads doing all those fun summer activities, right? I mean, theoretically, family summer activities are incredibly life-giving and memory-making and fun-inducing.
But in reality?
I have three kids 6- and under. Doing anything means an excessive amount of planning and packing and lost naps and dirt and sun and tears and somuchsand. SO. MUCH. SAND.
featuring JJ Cole Collections 5′ x 5′ Outdoor Mat
Summer activities can be fun for the whole family but they are never relaxing for the whole family. In fact, they are often just the opposite.
Still, despite my general grumpiness about this motherhood role I signed up for three times over, the O’Rourke family has actually ventured out quite a bit this season, and school only just ended two weeks ago. We’ve road tripped, crossed provinces, stayed in a cottage, visited two beaches, checked out new local parks, waded in a lake, and explored in a science museum. We have va-cationed and stay-cationed.
And it has legitimately been wonderful. Even with the exhausted children and the temper tantrums and the whining and ohmygoodnessallthesand.
featuring JJ Cole Collections 5′ x 5′ Outdoor Mat
We have sat on a porch in the morning sun with a coffee in hand listening to the happy shrieks of our beautiful children playing at a playground only a few feet away. We have walked barefoot in the grass. We have played board games late into the night. We made sangria.
We decided as a family to choose love and warmth and sunshine and togetherness.
It has been a good summer. And it isn’t even close to being over yet.
We’ve tried to spend as little money as possible this summer while still maximizing our adventure, and I think we have discovered that it is possible. Here are our tried and true tips for your summer of savings and fun:
Tips for Saving Money while Maximizing Summer Adventure
- If travelling, try to share a trip with family and split the costs of accommodations.
- Make your own meals, even when away from home.
- Chose free or cheap and natural attractions to fill your day. Consider checking out a beach or going on a hike.
- Swap stay/vacations with non-local friends. Take some time to explore each other’s community while visiting. Plan a week or even a long weekend with them visiting you, then go visit them! Use this as an opportunity to explore your own community anew.
- Consider family passes for attractions or museums, especially if they will get your family into different experiences for an extended period of time. Also, pay close attention to what that family pass includes. We bought a pass to our local science centre last summer which gave my husband and I access for a full year, along with four kids. When we recently went with six kids and four adults, the pass covered the older four children, the younger two were free due to their age, and that only left my sister and her husband to pay their own admission. We also were able to use the pass to get into science centres all across Canada, which came in handy last summer when we went to Toronto.
- Instead of just going to a local park, vow to discover a park in your city that you didn’t know existed. If you don’t know where to start, try Google. It brought up some great results in Halifax.
- Pack a lunch and have a picnic.
- Two words: Board games, especially when the kids go to bed. (And I don’t mean Monopoly. Current favourites include Pandemic, The Sheriff of Nottingham, and Codewords).
Unfortunately, there are costs to travelling with kids. Even the car seats, which tend to fade into normal every day life until you realize your six-year-old should really be moved to a booster… And BOOM. There’s an expense.
featuring Recaro Performance Booster High Back Belt Positioning Booster Car Seat Knight
And can you go to a beach nowadays without a fancy sun and sand blocking tent? (I mean, they’re everywhere on beaches now! I do not remember that being a thing when I was a kid.) Or is a couple towels and dollar store beach toys good enough? (Yes!)
featuring JJ Cole Collections 5′ x 5′ Outdoor Mat
And then of course there’s that dread of finding somewhere for the self-feeding baby to eat when he is still too young to sit in an adult chair at mealtimes. This might not seem like a major anxiety, but it is. When choosing a place to eat in Charlottetown this summer, we decided on a chain restaurant that we could go to anywhere because we knew it would have kid’s meals and high chairs, despite our desire to try something a little more unique and local. And for some reason “where are the babies going to sit?” is always a huge concern when my family gets all together since my sister and I both have under-twolings. It means having not one toddler chair but two, which we unfortunately didn’t have when they were here last weekend. (Come back, Amy and Dave! I have more seating for them now!)
featuring guzzie + Guss Banquet High Chair
The trick to these kind of expenses are to seek on the best deals and buy during the sales, not when you need them. Currently, until TODAY in fact, Best Buy Canada has an awesome sale on called The Baby Event. You can get car seats and strollers and change tables and dressers and cribs and monitors and baby carriers and swings and play yards. If you have or are going to have a baby in your life, you should probably check it out today so you can save a ton of cash.
Also, any Mama with a baby under 2 should apply to be part of Best Buy’s Baby Sampler Club to get free products mailed to you in return for honest reviews.
Recently Best Buy solved some of my most pressing on-the-go child equipment needs by sending me a Recaro Performance Booster High Back Belt Positioning Booster Car Seat Knight for Cameron, a JJ Cole Collections 5′ x 5′ Outdoor Mat perfect for the beach or picnics, a guzzie + Guss Perch Hanging High-Chair, that clips on to the side of tables for Logan, and a gorgeous guzzie + Guss Banquet High Chair to have at home, making it much easier to have guests with little ones. We are loving the products and are so grateful for the opportunity it has given us as a family to actually enjoy going on adventures this summer.
This post was inspired and sponsored by Best Buy Canada, The Baby Event, and The Baby Sampler’s Club. They were gracious to send me the above products to use as well as payment for this post. The stories and experiences above are all personal experience and are not purchased.
