Chuck E Cheese

Chuck E Cheese. Most parents say it with dread. A groan in their voice, a roll of the eyes. We say it with glee. We love Chuck E Cheese (in moderation)! It's an enclosed environment. They are occupied with games and therefore stay out of trouble. And everyone is worn out in the end. We love it! Plus, we like playing the games too!

It's a popular jaunt for birthday parties the last couple years so I've developed a little bit of a method to the madness. 1) I have a couple games that I can quickly amass several hundred tickets from. This means we generally experience CEC with about 400 tickets. 2) I use coupons. We don't generally buy food there because we are there for a birthday party. But we'll buy a drink and I'll use several coupons for free tokens with a purchase. 3) When we check out and use our tickets, I allow each child 1-2 picks and then get a voucher for the rest. That way we just build up our stash of tickets for something good instead of some junk I have to throw away at the earliest opportunity.

We finally saved up 2400 tickets tonight and got the one thing we've been waiting to get..

A CEC pinata, pre-filled with tickets (which I will be trying to snag out of there if possible) and candy. Sweet! The boys are so excited to have friends over to do a pinata!