Keeping Up With The Joneses

I love the Jones family! I have never met them, and they are now deceased, but they founded The Jones Center for Families in Springdale, AR. This place is an amazing facility that is dedicated to bringing the NW Arkansas community affordable recreation and wellness.

Here are a few stats from their website:
The Jones Center serves 1.5 million users a year.
On average, 10,000 people skate in our ice arena each month.
Around 6,000 users splash in our pools every month.
About 1,100 children celebrate their birthdays at the Jones Center every year.
Over 1,800 Health & Wellness classes are held every year.
Over 100,000 guests utilize our computer center and 45,000 participate in our educational enrichment opportunity classes every year.

Inside the Jones Center is a full size ice arena, lap pool, children's pool with water slides, meeting rooms, auditorium, computer center, and open gym. They hold many activities for kids during school breaks and on weekends.For example, they had a full schedule of things planned for spring break for Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. Yesterday, I was there twice! I took Owen from 10 - 1, and he played laser tag, then he participated in The Amazing Race scavenger hunt with a team of other kids. It was very well-organized, taught geography, and there were several college students who acted as their leaders and guides through the process. It was so fun! Then, last night I returned with both Hudson and Owen to watch Dale K, who was a hypnotist who did a comedy show. It was so funny! He had adults on stage mooing like cows and thinking a belt was a snake.

The best part about the Jones Center -- it's all free. Yes, free. All the time. The only charge is $2.00 for ice skate rental, and a $2.00 fee if you want to use their infant childcare facility while you are there. It would only cost me $2.00 to have Arden in care there for up to four hours (not that I'd leave her that long) while I did activities with the older kids. When Owen and I were there, we didn't spend a cent. Also, they passed out free snacks at a snack table at noon. I'm talking full, 16 oz bottles of real fruit juice and full size granola bars and cookies.

Did I mention that you can reserve an area for birthday parties and use their pool for the party? Oh yea . . . that's free too!

I can't wait to take the boys swimming in the indoor pool and enjoy the water slides. Now, this is my kind of entertainment!