Things to do this summer that won't cost you too much $

What’s on your list of things to do this summer with the kids? I know a lot of kids go to camps during the summer, but what about the days the kids aren’t at camp?

I found some fun things for you to do with your kids that are either free or priced pretty reasonable.

If your kids like to bowl, you can register them for two free games of bowling a day. Yes, a day. This is part of the Kids Bowl Free Program. Bowling centers around the country participate in this.   Locally Dunedin Lanes, Twedt’s Bowling Center, Liberty Lanes and Ten Pin Lanes participate.  You register online and print out tickets each week. I have registered my girls the past two years for this and they love it. The only thing you have to pay for are the bowling shoes, but if you have them than it is totally free. The website to register is Kids Bowl Free.

How about taking the little ones to the movies? We love to go during the summer and watch the movies on the big screen. Regal Cinema’s Largo Mall 8 and Park Place Stadium 16 offer movies for kids during the summer for $1. You can’t beat the price. There are some really good movies this summer. Dolphin Tale, Kung Fu Panda 2, Chimpanzee, Rango, Arthur Christmas and Smurfs to name a few. The movies are G and PG rated and are offered on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 10am starting June 12^th. To find out the movie dates and times at the theatre nearest you log
                                                      onto Regal Movies.

If you have teenage children, make sure you register them for the two free months of a gym membership at LifeStyle Family Fitness. Teens ages 12-17 can workout for free this summer starting now to August 15. I have friends that had their kids do this last year and they had a blast! You can register at Lifestyle Family Fitness.

Your kids can also go to a Tampa Bay Rays game for free over the summer if you have them read. The Rays Sponsor a reading program called Reading with the Rays. It starts on June 10^th. You need to go to your local library to get a score card to write down all the books your child reads during the summer. If they complete 24 hours of reading, they can get a free ticket to a Rays game. Both of my girls enjoy reading and love going to the Rays games, so this is extra incentive to read over    the summer.

If your kids like the water, the beach is a great place to take them. We are so fortunate that we live so close to the beautiful water. Take advantage of the beach over the summer. Check out your city’s recreation department too this summer. Most of the cities in Pinellas have aquatic centers with water parks and pools. The price to go for a few hours is usually a few dollars per child. 

I love having my kids out of school during the summer, but I have to find activities to keep them busy or they get bored. I hope some of these ideas help you this summer.

Moms Should Make Fitness Important

As a mom of two little girls, I know firsthand that staying fit can sometimes be hard. It’s not that we don’t want to look good and be healthy, but we have a lot of demands pulling us in all directions. Sometimes, we end up at the bottom of our to-do list. After doing everything for everyone else, we run out of time for ourselves.

I actually preach the importance of exercise weekly as a leader of Weight Watchers. But how can we fit exercise, or what I like to call “activity,” it into our busy schedules?

When my kids were younger, I liked to take them on walks. I would push them in their stroller or wagon around the neighborhood. This made them happy, and I felt like I was getting in a good workout. As they got older and could ride their bikes, we started going to the parks. We like to go to Lake Seminole Park, which has a shaded trail for those hot days. I will fast-walk and my girls ride their bikes. We also like going to the Millennium Park. There is a beautiful boardwalk that you can walk and a tower that you can climb. My girls enjoy going to the top of the tower and looking at the water.

Sometimes I want a good cardio workout, so I go to the Seminole Recreation Center’s gym. If you are a resident of the city of Seminole, it is free and a great place to workout. I like to use the bike, treadmill and elliptical machine, but there are also free weights. A lot of people don’t realize that we have this beautiful facility. If you haven’t already checked to see if your city has a gym, you should check into it. If it isn’t free, usually it’s available at a pretty reasonable rate.

One of my favorite gadgets is my pedometer. Not only do I love it, but my kids love it. We try and see who can get in the most steps. Health and fitness researchers recommend that the average person should get 10,000 steps (roughly 5 miles) in a day. The pedometer helps count the steps and helps me make sure I am reaching that goal. I found I will take the longer way to do something just to get in more steps. For instance, I will park further away at the store, just to rack up the steps. My kids will use my pedometer and think that they are helping me get in steps if they run around the house or wear it while playing tennis. It’s pretty funny, because they actually will move more on the court while wearing the pedometer because they are trying to get the counter to go up. The pedometer makes fitness like a game.

My best advice is to make yourself and your health a priority. If you don’t make it happen, no one else will. The bottom line is we need to be healthy not only for ourselves, but for our kids. We are their role models; if we aren’t fit and healthy, how can we expect them to be? And we need to take care of ourselves so we can be around to take care of them.