Summer Plans

Summer is my favorite season and I just love living in the south as we get so many hot summer months down here. I thought I would share some of our summer plans and share links of those who have summer plans that have inspired me. We are planning on keeping things low key and simple, and most activities revolve around being at home.

1. Read. Both boys love being read to, listening to audio books or looking at picture books themselves and so we are going to be doing more of that this summer. We are currently working on reading Dr. Doolittle and recently finished reading The Little Prince. It takes us awhile to read through chapter books, but both those books have been a lot of fun to read out loud to the boys. We read a lot of picture books too - Bill Peet and Where's Waldo books being current favorites. I was inspired by Jennifer's plan to spend 2 hours a day 3 days a week reading - how fun!

2. Play at home. At the end of last summer I picked up a small kiddie pool for a ridiculously cheap price (somewhere in the 95% off range) and we have been enjoying the fun it has provided. The boys have been out in it almost daily. I picked up some water guns for them and given them smaller containers to use out there too and I don't think I could pay money for them to have more fun! Emily has a great list of frugal summer fun to do at home, complete with really cute pictures.

 

3. Head to the beach. We are 3 hours from the ocean which is a reasonable distance for a day trip and the boys are such a fun age for this! We have made it out there 2 or 3 times each summer for the last couple years, so hopefully we'll be able to do a couple trips this summer. 

4. Have grown up friends over a bit more often. For dinner or just desserts. And games. Always for games.  I would like to spend a bit more time investing in the lives of others and building friendships. And I dearly love the interaction between our friends and our boys.

5. Inspire the imagination. I love toys like this marble run where you can create to your hearts content - legos and building blocks are also favorites here as they all inspire creativity. On top of playing I want to encourage the imagination with experiences and letter writing. We made a recent trip to the Fire station and Judah talks about it all the time and uses facts he learned there in his imaginative play. I love that! 

The boys also sit with me and "write" a letter with me once a week - I hope to do this more frequently with them through the summer.

6. Go camping. Our recent planned camping trip got rained out and the boys are as excited as anything to go camping. Depending on Paul's work schedule we may do this a couple times this summer. We recently found all the camping supplies we could imagine needing at a yard sale for an excellent deal and so are all set and ready to go as soon as he gets some time off!