Being a stay at home mom is challenging, I find lots of free entertainment to do each and every day, but what gets me is eating lunch out. With 3 kids, I try to get us out of the house 2-3 times a week. Otherwise they just get stir crazy in and around the house. At least the area we live in has lots of entertainment available. And free is even better.
But today after a visit to the doctor and a $25 co-pay, we went to the Nature Center here. It's very education entertainment for the kids. And the one "teacher" there is awesome. I usually take my oldest there for nature classes. Today was just a visiting day, where we were going to walk around one of the trails, stop in the nature center to see the animals and color a few pictures, etc. Miss Staci brought a snake out for the kids to touch and learn about. She is excellent with the kids! It was an awesome morning.
Then...the kids needed lunch. Instead of driving the 25 mins home to get lunch there, my friend wanted to eat out. Chick-fila. UGH. $14.36 for all 4 of us to eat. I don't even like chickfila. They're extremely expensive. So, total spending for the day was $39.36. That's way too much! I guess I will be packing the kids lunch and just putting it in a cooler in the van just in case. Tomorrow is another free entertainment, we're going to the rec center. $1 per child is almost free for 2 hours of fun! So, total spend amount for tomorrow will be $3 and I'll be packing a lunch! Lesson learned!

ON another note, we received our power bill for this month. $235.87. Yowsa! It's up $20 on the month. It's to be expected though with the temps here in NC in triple digits for almost 20 days straight!
I'm going to try and keep the air set around 80 from now on.

Another end to another day! Oh to see the sun rise again!