Friday, August 3, 2007

Summer Must-Do's

Growing up, we always had summers off from school. At the risk of dating myself, those were the days when we left the house after breakfast, knowing we had to be home by the time the streetlights were on. Wherever we were for lunch was where we ate lunch. If someone misbehaved, whatever parent was available corrected them. We spent whole days at the neighborhood pool, baking ourselves to a lovely brown. We stayed up late because it was light out still, at 9 pm. Dinners were simple things, with lots of fresh veggies. And how we had fun!
I tried to recreate some of those memories with our own children when they were small. I was reminiscing with my dd the other day, about all of the things we normally do in the summer. Since she's 12 now, she's not really into most of them any more, but they've made some great memories. I thought I would share some of our fav things to do in the summer:
1. Catch fireflies in a cleaned out mayonnaise jar with holes punched in the lid.
2. Camp in the backyard.
3. Roast marshmallows and hot dogs for dinner.
4. Swim all day at the city pool.
5. Spend Saturday at the movies. All day. One movie after another.
6. Spend a morning at the library. Have a cone from the ice cream shop for lunch. Spend the afternoon on the living room floor, on your stomach, sipping a soda and reading the books you checked out in the morning.
7. Have a bike race. (Let your kids win!)
8. Find a creek. Dangle your feet in it while breathing deeply and watching for tadpoles.
9. While you're at the creek, look for milkweed, then find some caterpillars on it. Take them home, put them in a jar with the milkweed and wait for them to turn into butterflys.
10. Last but not least, wait for the hottest day of summer, play hooky from work, crank the air conditioning, order pizza, pop popcorn, and pop in a christmas dvd to watch. (Some of our favs: Home Alone, The Grinch, Charlie Brown) Don't even think about the fact that there are only 144 more shopping days until Christmas.
If you do all of these things before fall arrives, I gaurantee you will start fall refreshed and ready to face the usual rush of new activities. If you don't have time to accomplish them all, I highly recommend number 10- it was always my favorite!

2 comments:

kevbayer said...

My favorite summertime activity?
Hiding inside a darkened airconditioned house to avoid the 95 degrees, 95% humidity outside.
Standing directly over the vent or a fan on high is optional :-)

Val said...

A La number ten on my list? I prefer to pretend to do something while hiding inside, hence the movies.
The first time we got a window air conditioner, we hung blankets over all the doorways except the living room, where the air conditioner was, piled up pillows and blankets on the floor, and just sort of camped there until fall.
One of the reasons I love Northern Illinois: cool nights year round. By the end of the month, I'll be able to have my morning hot tea or coffee on the back porch, with a sweater and a quilt tucked around me....Heaven!