For Goodness Sake, Keep the Kids Entertained!!

Today, it was me and the monkeys. No plan, no direction. Where we live, we have a really nice playground and pool, and of course the beach just 6 houses down the drive, but it's just too darned hot to do any of that during the day. Around now (6:00pm) is good outside time. It's probably cooled down to a more tolerable 102 at this point ... and without the sun beating down on us, it's actually quite pleasant.

So, the question was, what to do with the day?

There are a lot of indoor play areas around here. Perhaps we're not the only weenies on the island. And all these wondrous venues of flailling monkey entertainment are open for everyone, provided, of course, that you have the required wad of green in your pocket (well ... I guess it's more like a wad of pink and blue ... I think there may be a bill that is green, but I don't remember. I haven't seen the higher monetary denominations. I'm still working out the whole money thing, anyway ... there are the new Dinars and the old Dinars, so there are 2 different bills for BD1, BD5, BD10 and so on, plus the Saudi money is also in circulation here and is altogether different ... makes me crazy, along with the people behind me in line at the grocery store tapping their feet while I'm lining up bills and coins on the counter).

Early last week I took the kids to a place called Bizzi Bees. It's basically a big house that has different rooms ... one for crafts, which is basically painting and Play-Doh, one with a Lego table, one will puzzles and books and one that is set up like a play grocery store. It's new and someone told us they had seen something about it, so we decided to go check it out one afternoon.

It was roughly $11-ish EACH for the kids to paint, play with Play-Doh, and sit at a Lego table for a couple of hours. I thought that was a bit steep. I also thought that we might spend more time at home with our own Play-Doh and Legos. Therefore, today, we skipped Bizzi Bees and sought out something different and hopefully less painful to my wallet.

We started out at one of the dozen malls around here at a place where the kids pick a piece of pottery and paint it. It was a great time and we have some BEAUtiful pieces of original art to proudly display. It was about $24.

Then we went to Toys R Us to scope out the scene since Connor's birthday is coming up and I need some idea what he wants. They also have a play area in the back of the store, complete with a ball pit, a big bouncy thing and a big climby thing. We stayed there about an hour before Kayleigh needed to go to the bathroom and they lost interest in the bouncing and climbing once they were reunited with the actual toy store part of the deal. To get into the play area and play for that hour cost $22-ish for the both of them.

I suppose if we want to go out and do things during the summer, these are the kinds of prices to expect for air conditioned entertainment. That's probably a huge reason people go home as soon as the kids get out of school. Believe me, I'll be joining the July exodus next year with the rest of the smart (and thrifty) moms.

We haven't tried the movies yet. We may look at doing that this coming week. I need Safari Stop and Jumpin' Jacks!!