You could do it that way...

If you've read previous blog posts, you know my opinion of "Camp Spongebob," I mean, "Nickelodeon Universe." But, the full story about our eventful weekend starts a couple nights earlier with a conversation we were having after the kids were in bed. Of course, it was about saving money.

...If you find a coupon for $1 off something you would get anyway (and one of the kids doesn't walk off with it before you have a chance to use it), you've just saved a dollar, right? So, where is that dollar? It should still be in the budget somewhere, right? Now think of all the little things we do to save money, like doing all our own haircuts - mom gave 3 kids haircuts this week, that just saved us like $30+. Put that with the coupon and we should have at least 31 extra dollars in the budget at the end of the month we could put toward a new roof or something, but of course it never works that way. It seems to always just disappear.

So, anyway, what did we win? - I'm getting to that... For a while we'd been talking about taking a weekday after Labor Day and doing something that would normally be crowded in the summer but shouldn't be after schools have started. We considered a museum, or Como, or perhaps Camp Spongebob. It only made the list because we were offered some "Mystery Tickets". Most of these tickets were 6 points, enough for one big, scary ride or 2 nice, friendly kiddy rides. But every once in a rare while these tickets can have more than that. We had some once before but had let them expire. This time we went for it. We figured we had enough for everyone to pick at least one thing each they wanted to do and others could join them. Of course, I'm not a big fan of Nickelodeon Universe, but at least it wouldn't cost anything. We haven't spent money on anything there since Sponge Bob took it over and weren't going to start now.

So, the kids are getting up and you'd think they'd be excited and grateful about the privilege of going to an amusement park full of characters they barely know that they've only been able to see from the Lego race tracks. But, they were very pokey with morning chores, to the point that their mom blurts out "if you guys aren't done in 10 minutes, dad's going to work". 12 minutes later, chores are still not done and mom is sitting on the stairs in tears because she now has to spend the day with grumpy children and without a plan for the day. After a parental huddle, we take advantage of the wording "dad's going to work" and not "no amusement park". Dad leaves for work and the kids get going on some extra cleaning. About lunch time, Dad comes back, sees a cleaner house, and off we go with some much more grateful children.

So, finally, we get there and it doesn't take long to realize we didn't check the calendar quite close enough. Of course, its the first day of Eid-Ul-Fitr (when Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan), and it seemed like every Muslim family in the Twin Cities was there. But, here we are, and we're going to have fun, so there - even if we have to wait 4 cycles for a turn on Dumbo Blue's Clues.

We were debating how long to stay, and decided to stand in line for a couple more. While getting on the Big Rigs, the attendant came back to say, "can I see that ticket again, I think you won something." She took it and came back a moment later and declared "You just won an Annual Pass! I'll call for a manager and they'll be here to talk with you when you're done with the ride."

So, we rode around wondering how much we could get for it, but as soon as it was done the seven of us were escorted through the mass of Muslim families to the back room of Guest Services and learned we had to pick someone in our family to put on this $250 pass. Isaac was the lucky one, figuring either parent could take the oldest kids back sometime. Thinking back, Lydia might have been a good choice because she's of a height that she needs a free chaperone on a number of rides. I think we stood in line for one more ride to celebrate.

So, here we are, with an annual pass for one of the Twin Cities' largest centers of worldly entertainment, and what do we do? - go back the next day, because we didn't have any plans and the rest of our mystery tickets would only be good for a couple more weeks (weeks expected to be pretty busy). Fortunately, Saturday ended up being a lot less crowded then the first day of Eid-Ul-Fitr. And ...what do we get with the next mystery ticket? - a hundred points! So, we all got our fill of rides in, with 16 points left over to give away to a grateful father and daughter walking in as we left.

Even though we had a good time, my opinion of Camp Spongebob hasn't changed. We've still never spent a dime there (except for lunch at McD's off the dollar menu, which is actually $1.20 at MoA), and hopefully never will (if you get any Mystery Tickets within the next year you won't use, send them our way). Because if we do ever buy tickets for siblings to go on rides, we'd no longer be saving money. Which brings me back to my first point - when is that $250 we 'saved' going to show up in the budget?