Resources For Finding Random Family Events...Or, How We Ended Up at a Pirate's Day Celebration.

Goldie, Alexa and our friend Camryn have the biggest smiles while awaiting the start of a Ghost Tour inside the supposedly haunted local building. The grins may have something to do with the blue slushies they were given to wash down the giant bag of Kettle Corn I begrudgingly shared with them.

If given the choice, I think that every single member of my family would opt to stay home in pajamas all day, every Sunday. Rain or shine. Summer or winter. Starting the day with CBS Sunday Morning for me, rolling right in to binge watching country music videos on CMT (yup), hitting up a couple obé live workouts, trying to pry the iPads out of my girls’ clenched fists…#adulting. But even thought it SEEMS like a good idea at the time, we all know that by 1pm I will be in a panic that we aren’t taking advantage of the day, Brian will be ready to move out simply due to listening to me rant about taking advantage of the day, and the girls will give in to whining incessantly- for snacks, for playdates, for more YouTube viewing time…

So we have become quite good and finding local activities to occupy our time- and besides just finding them- we have become good at actually motivating to get our butts in the car, open up Waze, and go do them. Our favorite website resources are Mommy Poppins CT, Westport Moms (which is part of the Local Moms Network that has sites for many towns in my area, should you be in this neck of the woods), Macaroni Kid and CT Bites which lists food-related events. I also love searching Instagram hashtags, and taking photos of the lawn signs advertising every random going-on in town and adding them as tasks in my Google calendar so they pop up on the days in which they take place to remind me.

This past Sunday, Brian casually mentioned that we should take the girls to Milford, CT- a town that is about 20 minutes away- for the town’s annual Pirate’s Day celebration. I thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. I was instructed to get changed, pack up some sunscreen and be in the car by 11:15 so we could pick up Alexa’s friend (as Alexa gets older, motivating her to do any random activity is significantly easier when we can rope in a friend to join!) and get to Milford in time for the arrival of “Captain Kidd” and his pirate crew on some old replica pirate ship. WTF has my life become?!

Anyway- we were right on time (the ship, however, was late and we were not feeling patient to wait around for it), picked up a treasure hunt map given out by some local volunteers, and began trolling the streets of Milford in search of loot. While we stood out as the only people in the entire town it seemed NOT dressed in pirate regalia, the girls quickly amassed a small collection of patches and tattoos so they could fit right in.

We had a blast. The event was quaint, well-organized, and a very smart way for the Milford Chamber of Commerce to encourage foot traffic into their downtown area boutiques (Westport, CT should take note- as I am sure many towns struggling to keep retail alive in the age of Amazon should!) Today the girls are still talking about it. cracking pirate jokes, and searching the floor of my car for any lollipops or treasure gems they collected that may have fallen.