Dollar Date: Treasure Hunt

A little while ago, I took my kids with me to the dollar store to get them their well deserved bribery toy for going to the dentist. While we were there perusing the isles (and trying to help them narrow their choices down to one item) I saw a few things that I thought would make fun, cheap date activities!

So, after trying to explain to my children why mommy is allowed to get more than one toy, we headed home and the stuff I bought ended up getting tossed in a bag in my closet for future use.

Well, with John's next semester barely starting, life wasn't too crazy yet, and we were able to have an at-home date night last week using one of the things I picked up. Gemstone excavation kits!

As soon as the kids were in bed, we each pulled out a paper and had 10 to 15 minutes to create a pirate's treasure map.

We then took turns hiding the treasure and following each other's map to find it!

My map was pretty basic. I mostly just wanted to see if John could figure out what the different pictures represented in our house.

John's was a bit more creative with multiple options leading to different places in the house. With his help deciphering some of it, I made it to the end.

Once we found our "treasure" we dug it out to reveal these gems... a bit underwhelming, I know. Mine looked a little bit like the sorcerer's stone turned into candy corn and John thought his looked like a booger... Haha! But it was fun anyway! Lol.

As a side note, David was very disappointed that we were doing date night without him. His expectations of tagging along on date night means we should probably put more effort into having dates without our kids... Either that, or keep it up until he's 16 so we can double with him on all of his future dates. Wouldn't that be fun!...