Summer Bucket List

A few years ago, a friend of mine posted a picture of her family's bucket list for the summer. I loved the idea and swore I would do it... eventually. Then this last year, Kade started school and I realized that our summers are going to be, really the only time we get to do a lot of fun stuff. We are really really boring during the school year and I didn't want our summer to come and go without any fun. After all, we only have 18 summer vacations with our kids. Fewer if you aren't counting until they start school. So Aaron and I committed to make summer as fun as we can. (Without going into debt.) When we set out to make our bucket list, we first thought of all the things we had planned already. From there we added in things that we would like to do, followed by things we already had supplies/equipment for. We created our list. It's long. But it's a list we feel is totally manageable.

We have items as simple as "read". We also have some bigger items such as "Go to Six Flags." (Kade got a free ticket for reading a certain amount of minutes during the school year.)

 We also keep adding stuff. Kade, just yesterday said he wanted to add "Make a bird feeder" to the list. So we did.

 The list is long and can be overwhelming but we keep the days simple. We don't stress ourselves out over it. A lot of our items even happen by accident, like going to the park. We have decided to do at least one fun thing per day. But Kade won't let us check something off of the list unless we do it as a family. (Sometimes sans Dad but we can't control his job.)

 We are essentially forcing ourselves to have fun and we don't hate it. We will definitely be doing our bucket list every summer. The items will change, I'm sure, but we'll still make the most out of our summers without getting a feeling a being too busy. We have done a lot of relaxing and a lot of just hanging out, but we've also had a lot of fun. Hopefully this answers some questions for those that have asked. If you have questions about it, just ask. I didn't invent the idea but I can answer questions based on how we've done it. :) Happy list making.