No Brainer Budget Cuts Part I: Costco vs. Chuck E. Cheese

I want to revise one of my lessons before lying. The one about neverevereverever lying simply for the sake of entertaining or inspiring your reader. I still stand firmly by my stance that you should neverevereverever lie to provide a model for proper human behavior, lest you be struck by lightning, but I now concede that every so often people need to be lied to for the sake of a good laugh (especially when things are seriously so frightening with the energy shortage and the economy crisis). Mary Tong does it all the time and I quite like it. (There is no way she could be that afraid of giant snails). Sorry for outing you, Mary, but you are a big fat liar and you know it.

On that note, here's a story for your reading pleasure:

If there's one thing I'm good at, besides dyslexic map reading and losing important papers on the kitchen counter, it's killing several birds with one stone.

So recently my husband and I sat down and had a chat about this crazy economy. He/we decided to cut a few extraneous expenditures.

"What can we absolutely do without?" he asked me. " . . . books . . . maybe?"

He was treading softly, but I could totally see the big stick behind his back.

"NOPE," I said firmly, (but lovingly).

"How about Jamba Juice?"

"Uh, uh," I shook my head.

"Hmmmm . . . okay, well do you really need that $1,000 you won for being your own 1,000th hitter."

"You're not seriously going to renege on my promises, are you?" I pouted. "How will I ever trust myself again?"

After hours of number-crunching we compromised. Rather than cutting (such a negative word) we would re-construct a few key areas of our lives. (That's where my stone throwing skills will come into play).

So the two areas of our life that are now under re-construction are: 1. Our kids. 2. Our Marriage.

The kids cost a lot of money. Especially around birthday season, which is right now for us since 3/4 of our kids were conceived on Valentines Day, (the one day a year I get flowers and chocolate). (Don't do the math, it doesn't add up. I get chocolate on New Years too).

I'm happy to share that I have discovered the perfect place to host a super fun fall birthday party for absolutely FREE!

Costco.

Stop laughing and lend me your ear, friends.

Costco is a gold mine of untapped party potential! Two words: Free. Samples.

We hosted our twins birthday party at Costco last week and they stuffed themselves silly with sausage links, French onion soup and crunchy shrimp. And for dessert . . . mango cheesecake, cream puffs and mochi ice cream. The cheesecake lady even snapped a photo for us when we stuck a candle in one of her samples and sang Happy Birthday.

(Sample people are soooo nice!)

You won't be short on entertainment at Costco either, especially in the fall because Christmas hits the shelves by September. This week they had a drum set and a keyboard on display, and some of our twin's friends were surprisingly musically inclined. If you're lucky Guitar Hero will be set up in electronics, and you can drag the gamer massage chair over from households. (That alone provided 90 minutes of entertainment while we snuck off to do our grocery shopping, our Christmas shopping, our 72-hour kit shopping and get our tires rotated! Four birds, ladies!)

Plus, where else can 16 ten yr. olds watch Iron Man on 32 big screen T.V.s. and play computer games at the same time?

It's a no brainer!

Well, I'm off to rotate our 72 hour kits and wrap the Christmas presents, but tomorrow I promise I'll share my secret to how we have re-constructed our marriage budget to save a buck (for more books and Jamba Juice).