We don’t do graduation gifts or anything like that for our kids but when our youngest graduated from preschool it felt like a big milestone not only for Rhett but for our whole family. The preschool days are behind us (cue a million different emotions!) and we wanted to celebrate with something unique and extra special. A big family Yes Day fit the bill!
How to Plan a Yes Day
When we pitched a Yes Day to the boys they were all about it! The whole concept of a Yes Day when Mom and Dad would say “yes” to their favorite treats, extra special kid activities, fast food, video games, etc. blew their minds!
When we first had the idea to do a Yes Day, I asked you guys to weigh in and share your experiences with planning a Yes Day for your kids. I took your advice and morphed bits and pieces into planning a day that would work well for our family. We spent the evening before our Yes Day talking the day through with our boys and brainstorming ideas in a number of categories. Our Yes Day categories looked like this:
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Dessert
- Home Activities
- Paid Activities
- Free Activities
- Mom and Dad Surprises (Ryan and I didn’t tell them about this category but had a few ideas we talked about ahead of time that we included in our Yes Day plan as pop-up surprises for the boys.)
Brainstorming ideas ahead of time worked really well for our family because we were able to come up with a Yes Day itinerary everyone agreed on that made sense logistically. It also served to get everyone super psyched before the day! Additionally, the boys’ requests in two of the categories (breakfast and dessert) required a grocery store run and since we didn’t want to spend any time on our Yes Day at the grocery store, we made a trip to Publix the night before so the boys could pick out a few of their Yes Day treats. They LOVED this and thought filling our grocery cart with food we usually say “no” to was really fun!
Yes Day Rules
We had a few rules and parameters for our Yes Day that Ryan and I explained to the boys before we started brainstorming our plans. A few more rules also popped up during Yes Day planning as they began thinking of ideas and making requests. (You may be able to guess which Yes Day rules were added because of our kids’ requests. Ha!)
Our Yes Day rules:
- No double dipping: Once you’ve requested one thing and we’ve done it, you cannot ask for it again.
- No requesting pets, money or additional Yes Days (Yep, this one was added because of the boys.)
- Two paid activities: We were willing to say “yes” to two fun kid activities that required us to buy tickets or pay for our family to participate. We also clarified that if the boys picked one really big paid activity (like going to Carowinds, our local amusement park), that would negate another paid activity.
- Unlimited free activities: Think flashlight frog hunts, blanket fort building, fishing, board games, bon-fires, cookie baking, etc.
- Activities must be within a 60-minute drive of our home
- Mom and Dad get ultimate veto power
- Kids must work together to agree on Yes Day choices
Of course rules like “no requesting anything dangerous or destructive” are also a good idea but our kids didn’t push the boundaries on this so we didn’t feel the need to discuss it ahead of time.
Our Yes Day from Start to Finish
And now for our Yes Day!!! Our Yes Day began just after 6 a.m. when our two oldest boys were awake and acting like it was Christmas morning!
If you want to quickly flip through our Yes Day on Instagram, I saved everything I shared to a highlight you may find here: Yes Day!
Yes Day Breakfast
Chase and Ryder were buzzing with excitement and channeled their energy into helping me make the special cinnamon rolls we made on Christmas morning for breakfast (one of their requests!) while we waited for Rhett to wake up.
Just like we did on Christmas, we poured heavy cream over a can of cinnamon rolls before baking. This time we also sprinkled a little brown sugar and a few pats of butter on top of the rolls before baking as well and the end result was next-level delicious. We baked them for about 7 minutes longer than the canned directions and then added the icing on top. SO GOOD!!! We’ll 1,000% make them this way again!
The boys also dug into a “fun cereal” aka Lucky Charms for breakfast once Rhett was up while we waited for the cinnamon rolls to bake.
The kids’ first “Yes Day” request came in the middle of breakfast when they asked if they could play Ninja Turtles, aka the ’90s Super Nintendo video game Ryan’s mom was smart enough to save from his childhood.
Video games at 7:15 a.m.!? YES!!!
Yes Day Activity One
Our first out-of-the-house Yes Day activity took us about 45 minutes from home to a place called Activate. The boys were dying to try out this place after Ryan showed them videos of it a while back. It’s essentially a giant interactive gaming place with multiple rooms where you work together to complete various challenges.
Our reservation time had us arriving just after 9 a.m. which was perfect because we had the place to ourselves for a full 40 minutes before anyone else arrived. We booked the 90-minute time slot (the longest available) and easily could’ve kept going because it was SO FUN.
When I say this place was a hit, I mean it! Ryan and I truly had just as much fun as the boys and would happily go back anytime!
A quick note for anyone considering Activate with their kids: I’d say this place is best for kids 7 and up but Rhett (5.5 years old) still held his own and had a blast.
Yes Day Lunch
After our time at Activate, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the boys requested Happy Meals from McDonald’s for Yes Day lunch.
This worked well because we stopped by McDonald’s en route to our second Yes Day activity and the boys were able to eat and recharge on the go.
Yes Day Activity Two
Our second Yes Day activity took us to Slick City, an indoor slide park that recently opened in the area. The boys have been dying to go and on Yes Day we made it happen!
When we arrived, Ryan and I weren’t sure they would last very long (there weren’t that many slides) but we spent almost two hours at Slick City!
They had a blast on the slides (even Rhett who is small for his age could do everything) and did some of the faster slides on repeat. Lines for the slides went fast which helped a lot!
Our big kids also spent a ton of time on the basketball courts inside Slick City and loved the super-springy floor!
This spot is also where Ryan and I dropped our first “Mom and Dad surprise” and let the boys get Icees. Whenever we go to trampoline parks, the boys always ask for Icees and we always say no so we had a feeling they’d ask for them when they spotted them at Slick City. About 90 minutes into our time at Slick City, Chase eyed an Icee and looked at us with a sly little grin on his face when he asked for one. He had a feeling our answer would be “yes” — it was Yes Day after all — and it was!
Eventually we left Slick City and headed home… but not before our second Mom and Dad surprise!
Yes Day Mom and Dad Surprise
We knew we wanted to let the kids get a little special something during their Yes Day and came up with the idea to do a Goodwill treasure hunt!
We first began doing Goodwill treasure hunts last summer when the boys would accumulate a certain number of points after completing several weeks’ worth of summer chores. They would earn a small budget ($5) to spend at Goodwill ($5 goes SO FAR at our local Goodwill) but half the fun of a Goodwill treasure hunt it not knowing what sort of gems you’ll find when you walk through the doors. The boys LOVED this last summer and we knew they’d flip for it again on Yes Day. Something about the combination of getting to pick out something cool with the surprise factor of never know what cool stuff will be on the shelves of the toy section at Goodwill is magic to them!
They each left with a surprise of their choice: A tennis racket for Chase ($1.99), an air craft carrier toy with airplanes for Ryder ($1.99) and a light-up crane truck for Rhett ($2.99).
The boys are also super into using reverse Google image search to look up the value of their Goodwill finds once we bring them home and get the biggest kick out of finding out something that originally cost $80 they got for only $2! (And yes, we have a killer Goodwill near our house with seriously low prices. I’ve been to others and I don’t know why ours is magic but it is!)
Yes Day Home Activities
Once we were home, the boys were in the mood for some downtime and played with their Goodwill finds for while before requesting a little iPad time, something that’s usually reserved for school work or travel only.
Yes Day Free Activity
One idea the boys jumped at during our Yes Day brainstorming session the night before was flashlight frog hunting but when the weather looked like heavy rain in the evening we pivoted and did some catch-and-release turtle and frog hunting in the late afternoon instead. (Most of our Yes Day was rainy and dreary which we thankfully knew ahead of time, hence why a lot of our Yes Day fun took place indoors.)
Since it was a little chilly and sunshine was limited, most creatures weren’t out so the boys didn’t catch much beyond tadpoles. They still had fun though because any time they spend outside tromping around in their rainboots is time well spent.
Yes Day Dinner
Dinner on our Yes Day was quite the smorgasbord!
The boys all requested different meals for dinner which we normally would’ve vetoed but the places they all wanted dinner from for Yes Day were all very close together (we’re talking share-a-parking-lot close) so we placed online orders while we were out and about and picked everything up on our way home. This looked like Chick-fil-A for Rhett, Five Guys for Ryder (and me and Ryan), and Domino’s pizza for Chase (and a slice or two for me and Ryan as well).
Yes Day Fort Building, Dessert and Family Sleepover
The conclusion of our Yes Day took place at our favorite place: Home! The boys jumped at the idea of a Dad Fort when we were brainstorming our home activities so Ryan built them quite the epic blanket fort after dinner. They had a blast playing as Ryan and I got everything set up for a big family sleepover.
Before it was time to snuggle in for the night, we dug into desserts selected by the boys from Publix the night before: A strawberry Carvel ice cream cake (solid choice!), Trolli popsicles (blehhh but they loved them) and a cookie cake with extra icing. They ended up wanting the save the cookie cake (there’s only so much dessert one kid can eat) but still loved the novelty of having so many fun treats at their disposal.
After dessert, it was time for our sleepover! We’ve mastered the art of family sleepovers in our bedroom. Ryan and I sleep in our bed and the boys sleep on our camping mats on the floor. It works well and we all love it!
Before the boys snuggled under their blankets on their camping mats, they crawled into bed with me and Ryan for family movie night which was the perfect end to our family’s very first Yes Day!
If you’re at all on the fence about planning a Yes Day for your kids, all I can say is that our entire family absolutely loved it. It was also a much smoother experience than I expected. I half anticipated the boys disagreeing on activities or meals more than they did but I think getting ahead of this and saying they had to work together to make their Yes Day decisions (and making a gameplan the night before) helped a lot. Plus, it should also be said that we have three boys who thankfully like a lot of the same stuff so that admittedly helped as well.
I had a few people on Instagram say they do Yes Days for individual kids on their birthdays which I thought was such a fun idea, especially if you have a larger age gap between children or kids with very different interests. Another idea I absolutely loved was swapping the Yes Day concept for a This or That Day where you give the kids two choices to choose between all day long (like doughnuts or cinnamon rolls for breakfast, etc.). This is initially the direction I was leaning in when we were planning our Yes Day but as we began brainstorming with our kids, it morphed into the Yes Day detailed above. If this is on your radar, I hope that however you plan your Yes Day, that it ends up being the BEST time for you and your family!
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