How will YOU spend YOUR summer?

It’s almost officially summer – June 21st is the official start in 2014. However, since my kids have been out of school for a few weeks now we are fully into vacation mode.

Based upon experience from summers past, even though we are much more laid back in the summertime, it’s still important to take some time and think about what is important and how we want to spend the time. Otherwise, before you know it, school is about to start and you didn’t get to anything you really wanted to do! (not that we’ve ever been there . . .)

Take some time to plan now and spend your summer the way YOU want to!

Here is how we go about it:

First, I try hard to make it fun – this shouldn’t be a stressful or boring activity, it should be something the family looks forward to each year!

Next, I include everyone. Every family member gets a say – what we do is allow each family member to pick the top two things they want to do this summer. That gives us eight activities (or about one a week for our short 8-week summer vacation). It’s a reasonable amount, everyone gets to enjoy what they most want to do, and we are ensured to have eight fun memories.

Finally, we write them down – this is KEY – if we don’t write it down, most of the time, it doesn’t happen. Once I have the list of “must-do’s” I take the calendar out and tentatively plan out some dates – they aren’t set in stone, but it helps to spread things out and also not end up trying to cram it all into the week before school starts.

This year I used a simple peel and stick whiteboard and stuck it up in our laundry room – a great place to remind me of the list, and we can all look at it when we need ideas for something fun to do:

What’s on our list? Here is the plan for my family: