I know I’ve been away forever. Things got a little hectic this summer with weddings and family activities. I have completed ten weddings and have three more still to come to finish off the season. Nap times have been used solely to edit pictures. But now that we’re winding down, I decided it would be fun to start blogging again. To begin, I thought I would tell you about my fondness of things that are free. For those of you who know me pretty well, I’m sure you’re aware that I am addicted to great bargains–that’s why about 90% of Brayden’s toys and clothes come from garage sales. CHEAP garage sales.

Last year, I babysat almost full time for two kids (which I terribly miss), and James taught math. Two incomes allowed for me to have a little more freedom in buying my very cheap things. Now that I’m not babysitting anymore, and really can’t find anyone who would want me to for this school year since I will have a newborn halfway into the school months, we are finding ourselves having to be much more careful about our spending. SOOO, I wanted to tell you about all of the FREE activities that Brayden and I have enjoyed lately.

It took me a long time to research things online, but after looking near and far–and high and low–I came up with a list of many activities in the area which Brayden and I enjoy galavanting to on different days. We don’t hang out at home for full days (EVER), and usually we do at least one activity every morning. The first thing I did was go to each of the area library websites and wrote down when they had their storytimes (for his age). Some of them overlapped, so some weeks we go to one library and the next week we might go to another one. Sometimes we go to three story times a week. He LOVES going–but the one thing that gets him to sit down and listen and participate is to make sure that he has a baggie full of some type of snack during the entire story time. It’s not my favorite habit to have gotten into, but at least I found something to keep the energetic child still. We love the ones that have books, songs, rhymes and then an easy craft afterwards.

Since we’ve been visiting libraries so often, I have found that there are many, many things they have available that Brayden now adores. We get a plethora of books out and he’s gotten to REALLY love reading. Also, they offer many DVDS, CDs and our new favorite–books on CD. He loves listening to books while we drive. I love that he’s really soaking things up now too. . . when I ask him questions about what we just read, he can answer them and his answers actually make sense. Each library around us is so unique, so going to different ones all the time really keeps things interesting. Even the ones 15-20 minutes away are worth going to. 🙂

Speaking of story times–Barnes and Noble also offers story times at different locations at least once a week. What I like about these ones (although they aren’t as good as the ones offered at the library), is that he can play with the train table before and after. AND, the ZOO and Museum of Play also have story times every so often–you just have to check their calendars. The one at the zoo is fun because they always have an animal of some sort with them.

Brayden’s favorite thing though, is open gym times (he refers to these as “gym play”). The church on the campus of where we went to school has a wonderful one–HUGE gym with tons of balls and ride on toys. Also, different community centers in the area have open gym play once a week–again, this took lots and lots of research since I had to go to each community center website one at a time, but it’s been worth it. He loves just running around and playing with all the balls. He’s a sporty one, that child of mine.

My favorite thing so far has been the “toy library”. One of my friends told me about this library in the city (safety in numbers!) where it’s just a huge room full of toys that you can borrow just like a library book. James and I have gone together (with Brayden, since it’s a fun place for him too) a few times. It’s easier if there’s more than one person, since sometimes we have rather large toys to try to carry out. You’re allowed to take out nine things at a time–and you can renew them twice (three weeks each). It’s been great to bring home new toys and to keep things rotating. The room is really really messy, but there is some organization to it, so it’s not too hard to find certain types of things. Sure, we have to really wipe everything down with antibacterial wipes when we get home, and sure sometimes it’s hard to find all the pieces to stuff when it’s time to return them, but boy is it great to borrow toys for FREE instead of going out and buying a toy that he will just get sick of in a few weeks anyways. We’ve gotten out so many fun things–a big puppet theater with sea life puppets, a big set of dinosaurs, puzzles, all kinds of games, stuff for playdoh, outside toys, etc. Here are a few pics of some things we got the last time we went (the focus seemed to have been building sets/blocks)–totally not on purpose!



So, now you know about all of the free things that we have been enjoying. It wasn’t the easiest thing finding out about all of them. . . but once I learned that so many things were out there that we don’t have to pay for, we are certainly taking advantage of them!