Have you ever gone to a fair and bypassed tickets and bands for yourself? Have you ever said just one for the kids please, I’ll just try a bite of what they get? Of course, you have. We all have. But after this weekend I’m going to do that a little less often.

It all started at the sweetest place on earth. I was in line getting ready for my Milton Hershey make your own chocolate bar experience with the kids. I was only planning on the kiddos making a chocolate bar, after all, what do I need with a $25 custom candy bar, who needs all those calories? When I got to the front of the line I tried to do just that, but the people at Hershey weren’t having it. Every person in the candy making room gets a bar, or they pay for one, whether they take it or not, so there I was, dilemma time, skip the candy bar altogether, let the kids make it alone and don’t be a part of the process, or bite the bullet and pony up the candy money? Of course, I paid up.

My husband and I weren’t thrilled that we were forced to plunk down $50 extra bucks for candy. We went into the experience like eye-rolling teenagers at a Chuckie Cheese, but after just a few sweet minutes we got really into the groove. We picked our bars, and our mix-ins (milk chocolate with toffee in case you were wondering). Then bounded over to the candy line as we watched our bars roll down the line. The kids shouted, “look, mom, it’s your bar!” They were so excited to announce when each of our bars was getting toppings and moving down the chocolate coating machine.

Then we made our sweet custom wrappers with our names on them, and by then my husband and I were all in. I covered my wrapper in flowers and kisses, and my husband went with his college colors. By the time our bars were wrapped and stored in their keepsake tin, we were all bundles of joy. Making our own bars turned out to be an amazing experience. There was no magic in it and the process was nothing more than 45 minutes of making a custom candy bar, but it was just a blast. It was fun to share in it together. Even my husband said, “That was awesome.”

In the end, we had the kids take a picture of us with our candy bars, a flip from the usual.

I realized I miss out on a lot of experiences bypassing the ticket for myself. In the last few years, I’ve done it more often. I let them go down the water slides by themselves, I let them ride kiddie rides solo. They don’t complain but I bet it will be more fun together. I’m going to try whenever possible to buy the ticket and be a part of the experience. I’ve been on a lot of rides and done a lot of activities and it is definitely sweeter together.

Presented by The Dance Academy