Frugal Family Fun Day

Today, there was no school, as it's conference week. Today also marked the start of the local movie theater's Children's Film Festival. Dove has always sponsored it through a Michigan based movie theater chain, and it's always 1 movie a week for 6 weeks, kids get in free, adults get in cheap.

The movies are usually movies that are either just about to be released on video, or have already been released on video within a few weeks. The movies each run Fri-Thur, but only run during the day- which makes going to them with the kids a challenge.

On the weekend, the theater is packed with families, but during the week, they're dead- except the kids are at school, so it doesn't matter. Today's movie was Igor, which we hadn't seen (not that that says much- the only one featured this year that we have seen is Hotel For Dogs).

It was going to start at 11:25, so we took Nick into work and dropped him off, before heading to the theater. It cost me $2.50 total for 4 tickets- $2.50 for me, free for each of the kids.

Snack wise, I grabbed a combo- 1 large soda, and 1 large popcorn, for $9.00 (ouch- I could have made that much popcorn at home for $1). The theater provides small bags for free to dump popcorn into for the kids- I grabbed 6 of these. 3 for popcorn, and 3 for the vending machine candy.

They each got to season their popcorn up, then we headed to the gumball type machines, where they each got 3 quarters to get their own candy. For all of $13.75, we got soda, candy, popcorn, and the tickets to the movie.

On the way home, after running a few errands, I stopped at McDonalds, and got them each a cheese burger. They also had cookies 3/$1, so I ordered 3- they accidentally handed us 2 3 packs, so we wound up with 6 cookies. I got out of that for just over $5.

Before leaving the theater, I'd refilled the soda, so the kids drank that while they ate, and I had a free water in the car.

All in all, not bad :)