Bye Bye TV

We cancelled our dish mid November. It was a tad difficult for all of us at first. Nate and I aren't big TV heads by any stretch of the imagination, but we found we did like it to unwind at night after the kids were in bed. The kids were another story. The reasons we got rid of the dish include:

1. Kids were addicted and would watch it 3-4 hours a day if we let them and when we didn't, they threw tantrums.
2. $$$, Nate's pay cut meant we wanted to weed out unnecessary stuff from our lives. TV made the cut
3. Kids were not able to be creative when it was turned off because they were dependant on it for entertainment.

The things we found out from having it gone over a month are:

1. We go literally DAYS without the TV running at all now(channels 2,3,4,5,7,9,11 and 13 are BORING) less electricity going means lower bills all around:0)
2. The kids are reading, playing mind boggling games and learning at a really rapid rate that otherwise wasn't happening.
3. The kids are way more creative, inventive and fight 10X less.
4. Nate and I's marriage has benefited in several areas ie; intimacy(not watching TV at night) and our own reading has benefited, which benefits the kids because they see it as completely normal for adults to sit around reading on a rainy day instead of watching TV.
5. An unexpected surprise: our house is actually CLEANER because the kids aren't as lazy and seem to be cleaning up after themselves more??? Never would have guessed this one.

My disclaimer is that we do still have a TV and have no intentions to get rid of it, but we have no dish and the kids don't watch basic channels so the only TV time that really happens is the occasional movie, which has become a rainy day or maybe once a week treat. We actually watched A Christmas Carol the other day to wrap up our reading since we read the book this month for Christmas and the kids really enjoyed seeing the movie after reading the book, but it was such a treat that they all sat perfectly intent and watched it(where normally a book/movie, I would have to try to keep them still to watch it because they were too used to watching Spongebob all day). Its been a great thing for our family though and I don't foresee us restarting dish.