This past week here in Western Washington has been GORGEOUS! And I don’t just mean a “nice” few days, we are talking birds singing, sun shining, gentle breeze a blowing, topping out at 80, crisp clear perfectly blue skies, snow-capped mountains in the background, BEAUTIFUL kind of days!! These are the days that I live for here!! These are the days that all Washingtonians live for, the reason we endure 300 days of rain for ( I MIGHT be exaggerating on that a teeny tiny bit!).
Now that we are getting closer to summer break, my kids are already starting to make some plans for their school-less days!! My daughter is super excited for an Auntie Sissy date! I promised her that we would get together, just she and I, with my younger sister for a girl’s date day and she has not stopped asking me when we are going to do that! My son is super excited for days at the lake or beach, and Martial Arts Summer Camp. They are both excited to hit the Oregon coast for our annual family vacation and of course for Family Camping trips (they are DEFINITELY more excited for this than me).
One of the blogs that I really enjoy reading, Sunny Side Up, has a great summer tradition that they do each year. They make out a list at the beginning of each summer of all the things they hope to accomplish and as they do them, they check them off! I am seriously thinking of doing this with our family, I think it will be a lot of fun!! Here is a sample of Erin’s Summer Schedule from Sunny Side Up’s blog from last year.
Some of the things are super simple and others are more challenging - like I would struggle with making sock puppets and putting on a puppet show! But I know we will be going to the library tons, doing tons of play dates, park dates, and eating LOTS of popsicles! I LOVE the simplicity behind it too, nothing too fancy - just good ol summer fun!!!
I did want to share one idea with you all that our church does each summer, we call it Life in the Park and we pick a day each week (this summer we are doing Wednesdays) and then we pick a local (within a 30 mile radius or so) park and meet up there each week! SO each Wednesday during the summer at 11 am we are meeting at a different park in the area for at least a couple of hours. We pack lunches and us mommies (sometimes dads, grandmas, whoever) spread out all our blankets and spend a few hours each week talking and hanging out while the kids are running around having a blast. We try to mix up the parks too so that we have water areas to play at, hiking areas if you want to hike and just good ole’ fashion playground equipment. It is one of my favorite things about summer! You can totally do this too with your church group, your MOPS group, your preschool group, your neighborhood friends – whatever! Go for it!
Summer doesn’t officially kick off for us here until almost the end of June, school is out June 21st, so still a month to go…but the weather today definitely has me getting me excited!!
This is the view from my front yard - looking up from the grass into the tree in my yard. Such a gorgeous day!! See what I mean- makes the rainy days totally worth it!!!!
Another favorite summer activity for my kiddos are dinner picnics at the park! And I love it too because I make it as easy on myself as possible! There is an AWESOME park near us that has a couple different playgrounds, hiking, fishing pond, ball fields, (there used to be a petting zoo), a huge flower garden you can tour, just a beautiful place to go (and it is totally FREE), and VERY close by that park is a Little Caesars! SO we swing in and get a hot and ready pizza for $5.99, I bring some apples or grapes or whatever fruit is handy and some water bottles and we have a very cheap, very easy, very FUN dinner picnic at the park! I keep a large blanket in the back of my car just for the purpose of picnics or whatever other emergency might crop up and I don’t even bother with paper plates (this is SO NOT LIKE ME- OCD, TYPE A personality momma! and I think that is one reason why my kids love it so much!).
We just had our first dinner picnic at the park last weekend and it was PERFECT!!
So what are some of your summer traditions? What are you most looking forward to? Other than sleeping in? And no homework? And the sun?
~JESS
