Living the Lutz Life: Hollywood Casino and a Date with a Princess

This is a new weekend feature for 2013, giving you a peek into our day-to-day life and serving as a digital journal for me and my family. Take time to savor these precious days and don't forget to take LOTS of pictures!

Last Friday, my husband and I took a trip over to the new Hollywood Casino in Columbus, Ohio for our first daylong date of the new year. (One of my 25 Goals for 2013.) Let me start out by saying that for us, gambling means seeing how long we can make $20 last playing penny slot machines! We are fully aware that we are not "in it to win it". It is merely a form of entertainment...much like going to the movies or a concert. It is a blast for us to see just how long we can hang onto our money!

Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the brand spanking new casino, only 75 minutes from home, and found out that they were giving away $10 in free slot play with their players' card. Ummm....free money?? Heck yeah, sign us up! We got the hang of this "free slot play" deal when we went to Las Vegas a couple years ago. How it works is that you must play the $10 they give you on the slots--you cannot cash out and keep the money. However, anything you win on the free slot promo money (any. little. thing.) is yours to keep. For real! :)

As you can see in the bottom picture above, at one point I was up $84. Sure, I could have walked away with all that cash...but it was only an hour into our trip and it wasn't my $10 to begin with! Want to know how long it took me to lose the free slot play money that the Hollywood Casino gave me? Almost 3 hours! Ha ha ha! My hubby, on the other hand, went through his in about 15 minutes and then played on approximately $15 for the remainder of the time we were there. $15 for 2 people and 3 hours of fun is pretty good, don't you think? It's cheaper than a movie at the theater--that's for sure!

Our two-year-old, Charlotte, got some special attention from Mommy and Daddy on Saturday morning. Both kids stayed with my parents on Friday afternoon and evening while we were in Columbus, but Jackson also spent the night. He and two of his cousins had a great time at Grammy and PaPa's sleepover. In the meantime, Bill and I took advantage of Saturday morning to take Charlotte out shopping. First, we stopped for Timbits at Tim Hortons, then onto look for new shoes. Our attempts to buy "princess shoes" turned up fruitless, but she did wind up with a new Cinderella shirt. Lesson learned--parenting one child at a time is sooo much easier!

We finished up our "W" unit and learning about water this week. Jackson was learning the words, "Jesus gives my spirit living water to drink." Some of the highlights of the week included an art project where the kids used paintbrushes to brush crushed up Tub Tints (colored tablets for the bath) on their umbrella shapes and then used a spray bottle to add water for the "rain". The end result was a really neat design that appeared when the droplets of water hit the dry, colored powder.

The second fun activity we did this week was with the concept of dissolving. We used jars of lukewarm water and into each jar put a different item from the kitchen. Jackson stirred them up to see which ones would dissolve or "disappear" as he called it. He determined that the sugar and salt would dissolve, but not the chocolate chips, popcorn kernels, cereal, or raisins. I'm thinking if the cereal and chocolate chips were left in the water long enough, though, they would probably dissolve eventually.

Have you ever been to a casino? Do you play the penny slots or are you more of a blackjack or roulette kind of person? Maybe going to a casino would bore you silly. Tell me about it in the comments below!