I've told you about how I was brought up by a single Mom, and how she was frugal but made it fun, and seem like we were millionaires! So today I thought I would tell you a story from my childhood.

When I was around 3 1/2 years old we moved to Spokane, Washington. We moved into a row of duplexes, and found other single Mom's, and budget wise Mom's. One of those Mom's became my Mom's best friend and my babysitter! Betty was great, we would share meals at her house, most days you would see kids running back and forth with notes to "The Mom's" about who's house we were having dinner at, and who was bringing what. Of course they could have used the phone, but what fun is that, the kids would rather play messenger than have their Mom's figuring it out over the phone.

Betty also invented the "clean the house" game! All the kids in the neighborhood would congregate at her house to play the game. Betty would put different chores on pieces of paper in a big bowl, but there were also pieces that said, Watch t.v. for 15 minutes, put a puzzle piece in the puzzle, get a cookie or snack, and some other fun things. she was a genius, she had all of her kids, and most of the kids in the neighborhood cleaning her house for her! And what was great was all of us kids were having a ball too!

My Mom loved having her as a friend. Betty bought a YMCA membership and would take all of us kids down there to swim. She would tell my Mom to send me with a towel, shampoo, p.j.'s and 50 cents for ice cream at McDonalds after swimming. She said I would be clean and ready for bed when we got home. My Mom and another Mom did the carnivals, circus, fairs, and parades as Betty didn't like doing that kind of stuff because of crowds. We never went to anything like that without free tickets and such.

When it came to eating out the Mom's had it in the bag! There was a restaurant that offered kids under 12 eat free on Wednesday nights, so we took them up on it! It was fun because we felt so special because we were eating out at a restaurant, and really it was cheaper then making dinner at home! We also took advantage of 99 cent papa joe burgers at Zips, and cheap nights at Taco Time.

One summer we hit the mother load two times at two different places. One day we went to the bread outlet store and found 10 cent loaves of raisin bread, the had apparently forgot to put the corn syrup in, well it tasted just as good without it, so the Mom's cleaned them out of raisin bread and stored it in every empty freeze they could find. The next thing was a little store that had a sign up saying Cheese 5 cents! So my Mom and I went in to check it out, and there stood Betty, with a cart full of these little cheese wedges and one in her mouth! The first thing my Mom said was "Is there any left?" So needless to say that summer we went to a free day camp that the Mom's found out about, with our peanut butter sandwiches on raisin bread, along with a wedge of cheese!

These Mom's, along with my Mom, were so creative and fun that we had a ball growing up frugal. I personally am going to start thinking like "The Mom's", I remember how much fun it was and I know it will be even more fun now!