Pencils, Pigtails and Prayer: Ready or Not, Here I Come!

Summer break looms a glorious 7 days away. I know that all of us are not fortunate enough to get "summer break" like teachers do, but most parents I know are still pretty happy about it. Gone is helping with/checking homework. Gone are making lunches. Gone is worrying if today is spirit day or do you have enough money on your account or did I sign the field trip form or hurry up before I get stuck behind a school bus on the way to work. So, while teachers and kids may sigh the deepest, let us all take a deep, cleansing, collective SIGH OF RELIEF. Summer is here.

And while summer may not officially start until June 21, we all know that when school is out, it is summer (heck, some of ya'll start on Memorial Day, which is alright with me). Are you ready? Oh sure, I know many of you mommas have your kids signed up for 16 different camps. But are you ready for summer? Have you stopped and thought about what you want to do this summer? What do you want your summer to be?

Summer is a time to slow down. Life moves a little slower. Whether it's the heat or having less on the to-do list, I don't know. All the sudden, you don't have 8,000 things to do at night. How are you going to take advantage of that? Slow down right now and ponder that thought.

Years ago I started doing bucket lists for summer (then fall, then winter). OK, go ahead and joke about my list making again. The reason I started a bucket list though, was not to check things off a list. I REPEAT, it was NOT to check things off a list. I would hear something or see something and think "Oh! We should do that." And then, at the end of the summer, I would think, "Oh man, we forgot to....(fill in the blank)." So I made a board on Pinterest of summer bucket list ideas so I wouldn't forget what I wanted to try or do. And then, that kind of got me thinking...what did I really want to do? What makes summer special to me? It might not be what you think...

Catching fireflies. Stargazing. Reading outside on our swing. Making homemade ice cream. Going to the beach. Having a water balloon fight. Eating watermelon. Running through the sprinkler.

You know what's really funny about that list? All of the things on it are things I did when I was a kid. Those are my memories of summer. And guess what? I still want to do them. I want my kids to do them. What will your kid's memories be? Don't let them fool you into thinking they want to be on electronics all day. They might think they do, but they don't. They will love to do something with you, and I find the more simple it gets, the more they love it. By the way, these things aren't just for your kids to do. You do it too. They'll love it and so will you.

Many things on my bucket list are repeats from last year, because we want to do it again. Some have become traditions. Some are new things. And some are things we never did last year. Because the bucket list, is not meant to be a checklist. So if you don't get to something, you don't get to something. This is not a to-do list. This is not a source of stress. It's an idea generator. It's a reminder. A reminder to slow down with the season. Be a kid again. Don't be so structured. Relax a little. Allow yourself to make some memories.

Here are some of my favorite memories from last summer!