Nanny to Mommy

With over 2 million LEGO bricks under one roof, LEGOLAND Discovery Center Atlanta is a LEGO lover's dream! Come share our world of color, creativity and family entertainment.

Bring your mateys and race your own pirate ship on our aquatic table at NEW Pirate Adventure Island! Come ride Merlin's Apprentice and Kingdom Quest! Don't forget to check out local Atlanta landmarks in our MINILAND and learn new building tricks in our Model Builder Academy. Don't forget to check out one of our five 4D movies, including NEW The LEGO Movie 4D: A New Adventure! It's the ultimate place for LEGO fans young and old!

My daughter just graduated Kindergarten and I have been stressing this summer making sure she doesn't forget anything she learns last year. The thing is, I don't want her to stress about it. I still want her to have fun and enjoy her summer break. I was recently sent this fun game from PlaSmart called Catch and Learn. It's "the educational game where you fish for answers".

This past week we were at Target and decided to randomly go camping. I know it's crazy. But we had been thinking about buying camping equipment for a while. Target had some great deals that day and so we thought we would have a spontaneous camping trip. We had trouble finding a place to camp at first because we were adamant about camping that day, but as luck would have it we had to wait until the next day and decided to go camping and hiking at Cloudland Canyon State Park. We had been hiking there before and figured it would be cooler at night since it was in the mountains, plus the fact that there was no rain in the forecast won us over.

So here is what we discovered were our family's camping essentials:

This is a sponsored conversation for SheSpeaks on behalf of Prudential. All opinions are my own.

The number one thing I have noticed about becoming a parent - kids aren't cheap. Even before we started to plan our family, we considered the expenses. Would I be able to stay home? Would we have to pay for day care? How much debt did we need to pay off? Then they are babies and they need a lot of stuff! Diapers, bottles, blankets, cribs, pacifiers, and the list is a mile long. When they get a little older you think that the expenses will slow down, but you have to pay for school, extracurricular activities, and shoes every month because they just keep growing.

Financial Planning for a Family

Even if your child is like mine and goes to public school, there are expenses every week that you need to pay for. What about when they get older - a safe car, cell phone, college, weddings... I am all for making my children get a job and help with their own finances, but there is only so much that a minimum job can pay for.