Frugal Fun - Family Room Fort

How did the title roll of your mind's tongue?  After I typed it, I asked B to read it and tell me what was unique about it.  "It's not rhyming; that's words that end with the same sound," he said.  "These words begin with the same sound.  I know this!  What. Is. It. Called?!  It was even covered in Life of Fred, Mom."  Well, that was good enough for me, that he recognized what I had done and I reminded him it's alliteration.  Nows he mumbling, "Alliteration, alliteration, alliteration," while he sketches in his book so he'll get the term down.  OK, English lesson over, now onto my post...

B is growing up just like I did - raised by parents who do not buy him a lot of things nor take him out frequently to "fun" places with admission prices.  And as happens over and over again since I became a parent, I finally understand what I put my parents through and see things from their perspective, now my perspective.  We don't try to keep up with the Jones because we can't.  The hubs make a modest salary and I do not work outside of the home because we're homeschooling.  We have to be very selective with our dollars and no child gives a rat's ass about that.  LOL  But what we do give B, and what my parents gave my brother and me, is time, attention, memories.  We get creative with what we have and we have so much fun.

One weekend last month, the weather was not good for playing outside and B wanted to, "...go somewhere, do something..."  A movie, a bounce house, laser tag, an amusement park were all things on his list.  *sigh*  The hubs took B to the living room in the front of the house to talk, watch the birds and wrestle.  I decided to get busy in the family room in the back of the house.  By saying "front of the house" and "back of the house", I make our house sound like it's either large or a restaurant.  But our house is actually small, cozy, full of love and there is only 5' 8" of hallway from the living room to the family room.  However, the hubs was able to keep B distracted enough to not pay attention to what I was doing.  It must have been the weekend either before or after the latest Die Hard movie opened in theaters, because B was going on and on about wanting to go see it and cable stations was running marathons of the previous 4 Die Hard movies.  B can take some violent movies but not others, and we weren't going to spend precious movie dollars on this movie and have to get up and leave.  At home we can just turn the channel or stop the Netflix DVD if something is too much for him.

So what I did was build a fort in our family room.  As you can see, it took up almost the entirety of our little family room (I was on the computer desk, taking this pic) and there's Beyoncé, on the far right, reigning over the kitchen.  We popped popcorn (the old-fashioned way - on the stove, in one of our pots, with kernels bought in a bag at the store), watched the 1st 3 Die Hard movies (with breaks for more talks, laughs and wrestling), the hubs made cheeseburgers for dinner, I made Shamrock Shakes and we had to rebuild the fort at least a half dozen times because the cats kept jumping onto the top, which then pulled the chairs over onto us.  For that reason, we scrapped our sleepover plans in the fort and had a sleepover in our bedroom, instead.  When tucking B in that night, he declared, "This was the best. Saturday. EVER."  Memories.  And they didn't cost us a dime.  :oD

Review of Big Apple Circus at Dulles Town Center, Loudoun County, Virginia

We went to The Big Apple Circus yesterday and had a blast!*  The tent is intimate - seats less than 1,800 - so every seat is close to the action.  One act performs at a time and there weren't any lasers or fireworks or props all lit up light like Christmas trees.  That is very important to me, the mom of a child who gets sensory overload pretty easily.  The crew is very efficient when changing the ring for acts.  In fact, you may not even notice them at all because you are looking up at a solo trapeze act or laughing at the clowns' high jinx in the stands.

The theme of this, their 35th, season is LEGENDARIUM: A JOUNEY INTO CIRCUS PAST.  We enjoyed classic acts from when circuses began - horses, trapeze, clowns, contortions and acrobats.  Things I hadn't seen before were a slack wire, tangoing jugglers or were they juggling tangoers and trick bikes to bring us back to the present.  Each act was wonderful.  There's no magic, no slight of hand, no trickery.  It's athletes and performers who awed, amazed and entertained us with their strength, skills and talents.

Our seats were front row, center!  We were so close to the action, it was hard to not reach out and touch the beautiful horses as they went by or feel the costume of the female acrobat in Quinterion as she strutted on the ledge in front of us.  So close, in fact, that when those horses got up to a nice trot, they kicked up some floor shavings onto us.  It was a 3-D show!  LOL  Don't worry, the staff was diligent about keeping the floor shaving clean of any animal droppings, so we stayed clean, too.