Dumpster Diving to San Diego

A little break from the cold can be much appreciated when you live in the north.  Last winter I was planning well in advance by looking up warm destinations and checking my aeroplan points to see where we could go.  We opted to book a trip down to San Diego with the main goal of taking the boys to Legoland since they are obsessed with LEGO. 

But I wanted my kids to work for this trip.  To earn it.  So we told the boys that we paid for the plane tickets to get us to Legoland, but that they had to save up enough money to pay for our hotels for the eight nights.  Our boys had collected cans/bottles the summer before and earned some cash, so we told them they had to scavenge from spring to fall to earn enough. 

And did they ever scavenge.

Garbage day in Faro is on Thursdays and our dump is a scavenger's delight.  Every Thursday or Friday, Matt would take the boys to the dump to look for cans.  We had to buy them these grabbers though so that they wouldn't be digging through the trash with their hands since they seem to have no grossness limit. 

There are garbage cans around the golf course in Faro and they went to them once a week to look for cans.

Every dumpster at every campground we camped at this summer was looked in a few times a day for cans.  They even got brave enough and started asking other people camping in the campground for their cans and bottles and people happily gave them over to the boys.

We did family walks in the ditches along the highways fillings bags with cans.

Some neighbours saw the boys in action and were extremely generous and would call the boys over to give them their recycling.

The cans and bottles really added up.  Every time we had enough for a full truck load, the boys would load them up and off we would go to our recycling center in Faro.  The boys stashed their money away in a peanut butter container.

It has added up to enough to cover our hotels for the entire eight nights.  That total is over $1500.  It has taught our boys an awful lot about saving, working hard, and goals.  We leave for San Diego in three days and we are really proud of their accomplishment.

Hunter would now like to start saving can money to buy an X-Wing Star Fighter that he can fly around in.  Yeah.  He might be saving for the next 50 years.  Cavan says he would now like to save up to buy a chocolate bar.  HA!   I am thinking another hot vacation partially paid for in cash sounds just right.