I'll do a really bad robot dance for $150 if you want to pretend this is Chuck E. Cheese.

The chicklets turned four at the beginning of April and we celebrated with a dinosaur-themed party at our apartment with a bunch of good friends.  I'm not much one to spoil my kids, generally, but it's really hard not to get them a ton of presents and throw big party.  I find myself thinking, "but there are two of them and they have to share a birthday..."  In the end, though, I know that I really want to do those things for me, not for them.  I want to buy them lots of things because I usually don't.  I want to throw a big party because most of our fun is just the three of us.  But, seriously, they were turning FOUR.  Would the girls (and the guests, for that matter) really have that much more fun if I spent $200 for bad pizza and jerky animatronic entertainment at Chuck E. Cheese rather than spending less than $50 for surprisingly delicious Costco pizza and cupcakes at our place?  $150 cheaper and far more interaction between people.  Granted, there was no giant dancing mouse, but I'm pretty sure that would've resulted in at least one terrified child anyway.

One of my birthday gifts to the girlies is a membership to the Minnesota Children's Museum.  I contacted their membership coordinator and finagled a modified membership.  Many museums, zoos, etc., provide family memberships for married couples with children or two cohabitating adults with children, but I've never seen any membership specifically for a single-parent household.  Since I usually bring a second adult with me but don't feel that a museum membership is justification for asking someone to move in with us, I asked if I could get a family membership without naming the second adult.  I figured it was worth a shot.  The membership coordinator contacted me yesterday and she's going to make it happen!  We're going to try to go this weekend to see the dinosaurs (this is R and K's current obsession).  This birthday present is going to get us out of the house and keep us entertained all year, so I have no doubt that it's worth it.

I also got some great deals on some new Leapster games for R and K by using Diapers.com's price-matching service and the referral credits I haven't needed to use for diapers/pull-ups (yay!).  After all was said and done, I ended up with $50 worth of games for $6.  Bargain shopping WIN!!  I've been using this site since the girls were teensy.  I've always been able to get good deals but, honestly, my favorite thing was that I didn't have to carry cases of diapers up to my third floor apartment when I was also juggling a pair of squirmers and umpteen million other things.  The UPS guy got to haul them up the stairs for me.  Some days, I probably would've rather he carried the kids and I took the diapers, but c'est la vie...

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I forgot to post the best birthday present ever!  My mom and I made dino-hoodies for the girls and they turned out awesome!