The Best Things in Life are Free

Saturday evening we packed in the lawn chairs, blankets and snacks and headed to an old fort at the mouth of the Thames River in New London to take in the annual fireworks show. The girls were giddy with excitement, my youngest playing superhero in the grass while my oldest was turning cartwheels as we whiled away the daylight for the night time show. Typical to New England summer evenings, it started to get cold, we threw of the sweatshirts and got under the stadium blankets just before the light show started, and it was, in a word, blissful. Thousands of families surrounded us, picnicking, playing and relaxing. Decompression was contagious.

Sunday we repacked the chairs and snacks and headed to the beach. Fiona collected every shell she could find then built a sand castle for her princess dolls. Skylar ran back and forth to the water gathering funky seaweed in between sandy cartwheels. My wife and I sat back and read and relaxed, but we also got down in the sand and reconnected with our inner sand architects.

It got me thinking: why do we tend to overlook the most inexpensive and easiest things to afford us necessary downtime as a family?

We recently piled into the van one Saturday to take in the circus. Nearly $80 in admission fees and $75 worth of snacks and souvenirs left us, well, underwhelmed.

On its opening weekend, we took in Cars. $30 later (matinees are cheaper!) and $15 worth of snacks, and we had a nice time...sitting in the dark, watching a show and not interacting with one another.

The minor hassle of toting lawn chairs, blankets and home-packed snacks to a local park for a free fireworks show and we left relaxed, happy, excited, full of talk and with a lasting family memory.

Truly rich family experiences don't have to be an expensive undertaking. Typically those moments and experiences require only an investment of time and creativity.