10.31.2007
Each year we save the change we find around the house to pay for one or two of our museum memberships. This year the time between a full change jar and our membership expiration fell a few months apart. The girls were begging me for a trip to our favorite children's museum but we wanted them to learn the value of saving and waiting. When I thought we were getting close we dumped out the jar, sorted and counted. We were still 20 dollars short. Ughh. Annie did pretty well at counting and making piles of quarters and dimes. She left the nickles and pennies to me. Maddie just wanted to steal all the money.
After a few weeks I figured we had to be close and I really needed a museum trip. So we headed off to the bank so the big machine could do all the counting for us.
The girls carried in their big jars a change, handed them over to the teller and waited. We were 13 dollars short, I kicked in the rest because I really never learned that whole lesson about saving. 
The membership is $88 so I had the teller give us 8 tens and 8 singles. Annie has been working on counting by tens and Maddie on ones so it was perfect. No one even had more money than the other. We did a practice run counting out our bills and headed to the museum. 
We headed up to the counter, each girl with 8 bills in her hand and they counted. Thanks goes to the very patient visitor services staff and the kind mom waiting behind us who understood the value of what we were doing. We had such a wonderful visit and now when we go to the museum the girls will know that they saved and paid for it. I was so proud of them for tackling the real world of money but even more they were both so proud of themselves.
What are you all saving your change for?
I think the bank staff thought I was a bit nutty taking pictures of them turning in the change. I didn't think saying that they were for the blog would change the whole nutty thing.
