Happy Thursday everyone! I struggle a LOT with sharing personal things on my blog, and I get overwhelmed because there is so much that I want to do! This is something that is near and dear to my heart though, so I wanted to share it and encourage you all to think about it. What is it? Spending time with your family, and loving your family, deliberately. Not just day to day stuff, but making it a POINT to let them know how much they mean to you.
Those who know me know that I am extremely particular about how I spend my time, and I make it a point to prioritize and schedule things. Is it over the top and weird OCD? Maybe. I don’t think so, but I know that some do. I recently came across something on The Happy Family Movement blog that struck me. It’s kind of funny because it’s something I’ve been doing for a few years, but have never really thought of it in the terms that they use. The Happy Family Movement is a website and blog that gives parents ideas and ways to play with their children, and take joy in their families. I really love the idea and the manifesto, although I can’t keep up with it like I would like to. I did read something on the blog recently though that I’ve been thinking about!
When I read this, I was fascinated. Their ideas were different than ours, and I mentally made a note to add things to our list based on what I saw, but what made me smile is that this is something we have been doing for years. :) We have never called it the Summer Bucket List, but the Summer Wish List.
Now let me say in advance, that people make fun of me for this. I get accused of being a control freak, and OCD because I plan these things well in advance. It’s cool, I can take it. I plan our entire camping summer in May, and send out our schedule to family and friends so they can join us. I really caught hell for that this year, because my brother thought that camping should be spontaneous. He is just now learning what it means to have a family with children though, and that things need to be planned or they don’t happen! I have discovered that if I don’t make a list, and don’t make plans, then life continues, and the summer FLIES by, and we miss it! Especially with my business, weekends go VERY quickly, so these things need to be carefully planned out, weekends deliberately spent with family.
I haven’t saved our Summer Wish Lists each year, because it’s a digital list that gets updated every year in about March or April, but here is the list for this year:
- Camping
- Winter Park
- Rockies Game
- Dillon date night
- Arapahoe County Fair
- Taste of Colorado
- Elitches? (or Water World?)
- Water World
- Get ice cream from the ice cream truck
- Make s’mores (a given with camping)
- Renaissance Festival?
- QC & Lightning Bugs
- Picnic!
- Southlands Concerts – Fridays
- City Park Concerts – Sundays
- Kool Koncert August 12th
- Diana Krall August 6th
- Kaskade August 1st
- Jason Mraz September 24th
Forgive the format of the list, this is how my lists usually look – question marks, little notes, dates, things to think about, abbreviations… in short, a little glimpse into my brain.
A quick sidenote – Diana Krall is sold out and was gone before I could get tickets. Someone had mentioned they might be able to help me get some tickets, if you can help I would love you forever and ever. I will make you brownies. Or cookies. Or buy you a pizza and beer. Love, me. ;)
Another quick sidenote – yes, I know how ADD my music tastes are, believe me when I say you have no idea. ;)
I’m very pleased that we have completed most of these already. The fair is something that I love love love doing, and it won’t be until the end of July. We might not do Elitches AND Water World, but I know we will do one. The Renaissance Festival might wait until next year, that is one of those things that makes it onto the list every year, but we go about once every three years. We are HUGE music fans and outdoor concerts are one of our favorite things during the summer, you can probably tell that. ;)
One of the things that I was able to cross off the list was an outdoor concert this summer – we saw Tunisia on Friday night! And wow, what an amazing band. Tom, who is particularly critical of live music because of his background, was blown away. All I had was my little point and shoot with me, and don’t judge, I love lens flare and the sun was setting behind the tent – SWOON! ;) Oh and Selina’s hair? LOVE! We need to schedule a session girlfriend! ;)
Kaden LOVES live music and is an avid dancer, which is kind of funny because he will never admit it. But get him in front of a live band and once he starts dancing, you can’t get him off of the dance floor. Which was turning out to be a problem on Friday because it was SO HOT and we wanted him to cool off for a little bit.
This was a free concert at a shopping center near our home, there are a TON of them all over the state! There were things for the kids to do, we had a pizza for dinner and relaxed to listen to the music.
The list above is important to me, and has been every year. I never thought of it as significant, but now I’m seeing these bucket lists everywhere and I’m intrigued. I guess my planning isn’t looking too weird anymore, right?
We have things that we want to do in the summer. I ask Tom and Kaden every year what they want to do in the summer before we lose that gorgeous weather, and they help me make the list. If we didn’t have a list, would we still do some of these things? Probably. But not as many. It wouldn’t be as deliberate, which is a problem with your own business that involves weddings on the weekends. Even if you DON’T have anything going on Saturdays and Sundays, making the plan, knowing what you want, will help you get it.
So what do YOU want with the summer? June is almost over. You have about two months left, give or take, depending on your family’s school schedule. What is your plan, what do you want to do, what do you not want to forget?
