Make your kids birthday more exciting insteading of buying toys they don't use

How many times for your kids birthday have you bought your kids the present they have been begging for, only to find out that two days later, they don't play with it any longer? It ends up sitting in the play room with everything else and they may pull it out every once in a while, but they never get the money out of it that you spent. When our oldest turned seven and the other three were turning six, we decided we had to come up with another solution that would make everybody more happy. We started giving them three options for their birthday.

Each year, their three options are as follows:

1. A present
2. A day trip to somewhere that they would like to go as a family
3. A birthday party with their friends at the location of their choice

In the two years that we have been giving our four kids these options, no one has opted for the present. We have done one birthday party and the rest of the time we have done trips.

Yesterday we celebrated our nine year olds birthday, by traveling to Luray Caverns in VA for the day. I had not been to the caverns since I was a child and it was a wonderful experience. They have a new system where everyone gets a head set for the tour. The great part is that as you walk the tour with the guide, they tell you as you reach certain points on the tour what number to type in to hear about what you are looking at that very moment. The best part is that they kids type in a different number than the adults and they hear a kid friendly version to make it fun and understandable for them. Our kids also loved that they got to type the number in themselves and control their own headset. While you are there, they also have a car museum and a garden maze. We went through both of these and the kids had a blast doing everything. Because of where we live, we did go down the night before and stay in a hotel, to reduce the driving time the next day. Our son also got to choose where we ate our meals for the day within reason.

In the previous years, our one son chose to take a day trip to NY two years in a row. We road the Amtrak train into the city, because of his love of trains. While in the city, one year we went to the Central Park Zoo and to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for lunch and explored Times Square including the Toys R Us store. The second year we went to the Brooklyn Zoo and back to Bubba Gump and Times Square visiting the M&M store.

Our daughter has chosen to go to Medieval Times near Washington DC for the last two years for her birthday. They have a great option on their website when you go on to buy tickets that you can buy a birthday package for the kids that includes cake and a picture of the entire family.

Her twin brother chose Medieval Times for his sixth birthday and then last year chose to go to Sahara Sam's in NJ. If you aren't familiar with Sahara Sam's , it is a great day trip with kids. It is a large indoor water park with pools and many slides as well as a restaurant and arcade. We took the entire family, including the grandparents and everyone had a blast.

In an environment where there is only so much money available, our kids have found these trips to be very rewarding. It becomes very difficult to take all four of them on these day trips throughout the year and buy them nice presents for their birthdays. This has given us a way to make sure that they are seeing  and experiencing new and exciting things and enjoying their birthdays to the fullest. We are currently planning the trips with our children for the three birthdays we have coming up in March and May. We will keep you posted where our next adventures take us.