• School is finishing up, the weather is nice, and that can only mean one thing. Summer vacation! I don’t know about you but I absolutely love when my kids are home from school for summer. I think I am more excited than they are, and more excited now that I am an adult than when I was a kid in school myself. Each year at the beginning of summer (okay sometimes much sooner) I make our summer bucket list. This is basically just our list of things we want to do as a family, places we want to go, movies we want to see, books we want to read, and things we want to accomplish.

    We have everyone contribute to our list as well. Once we have made a list that all of us are excited about and that has at least one activity for each member of our family, we type it out in a cute font and frame it. Then we hang it in our kitchen so we can cross off things as we go.

    To give you and idea here are some highlights from our 2013 Summer Bucket List:

    Go camping

    Teaching our eldest (six year old) to ride a two wheeler bike

    Fly kites

    Go fishing

    Go hiking

    Go to Chuck E. Cheese

    Play at a new park

    See Monsters University

    Buy ice cream from the ice cream truck

    Take a road trip

    Have a bake sale/lemonade stand

    Paint our master bathroom

    Take a nature walk

    Go swimming

    As you can see, not everything on our list is huge, or costs a ton of money. Some things can be accomplished in a few hours, while others will require more planning. The key is to get it on your calendar.

    The secret to making a successful bucket list is making sure that all your kids have some say in what you put on it. Chuck E. Cheese for example, not my favorite place to be, but all of my kids are over the moon to get that scheduled. And bigger than that is to just set aside some time for some family activities that you may not be able to do during the school year.