We love short, impromptu weekend trips just as much as we love our exotic travels. And, we find any excuse to take them! 🙂 Back in January, I had a wedding familiarization trip down in Santa Cruz, at Chaminade Resort & Spa, and since it fell on a long weekend, it was only appropriate that I took my family along.
The girls, by now, have learned to live the good life when they accompany me to any and all of my work events/trips. They love prancing around the suite and devouring the complimentary snacks that gets delivered. They also know that pool time is a given, even on cold, chilly January days…
Yes, I realize they get pretty spoiled in this aspect, but we do try our best to keep them grounded. They know about my job and the perks that come along with it, and understand that a lot of these special treatments are not “the norm”. We’re also trying to teach them the concept of money, and what it means to save vs. spend, as well as spending money appropriately. So far, we can see that Brianne has a much better grasp on the concept of saving than Bridgette does, but we’re thankful that there are no signs of entitlement from either of them. They don’t really nag us to buy things, nor do they get upset when we refuse the things that they want to buy. One of the many mottos around our house is: You get what you get and you don’t get upset! 🙂
While in Santa Cruz, Mimi and I spent President’s Day with the girls on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. It was amazingly warm for January, allowing the girls to have a lot of beach time.
The girls get a small allowance whenever we go on trips, usually between $10-$20 each so that they can learn how to manage their own money. It also helps to minimize their desire to take everything home with them. For this trip, they spent some of their money on arcade games and ice cream. When we passed by a face painting station, Bridgette (very predictably) and Brianne were excited to spend their money there…only to find out that what they had left was not enough for both of them to get the design that they wanted.
After realizing that they only had enough for one simple butterfly face painting, they asked the face painter if they could each get half a butterfly on their face. Being that it was a super quiet day on the boardwalk, the very nice face painter took their $5 and painted a full butterfly on each of their cheeks!
That evening, we went to Shadowbrook Restaurant for dinner, where the girls got to ride on the cable car and I got to have my favorite mud pie!
