School's Out

Quite suddenly, school is out.  In the midst of Retreat details over the last couple of weeks, I guess I sort of lost track of the fact that school was going to be out right after the May Retreat was over.

Usually we've had pretty solid plans for June once school gets out (I did day-camps for the kids and all their friends for a couple years, we've had lists of fun activities and learning adventures drawn up, we've had swimming lessons, etc.).  Then we go to Ashton Idaho to spend time on the farm with all the Looslis and enjoy the wonderful small-town festivities for the 4th of July there before heading up to Bear Lake for my family reunion that starts around the 6th.  Then the kids and I stay on through July at Bear Lake with Shawni and Saydi and their kids plus whoever else can fit extra Bear Lake time in their schedule.

But this year, school got out before we made June plans and Jared and Ashton will be in DC for the 4th of July for the wonderful cousin-fest that Jared's sister Michelle does for all her nieces and nephews in the vicinity of 12 years old (and a few sibling chaperones - Jared and his brother Brian get to go this year).  So we're trying to figure out the 4th of July plans for this year for the rest of us and working on how to make the most of June.

I had these big plans in the back of my head that maybe this would be the summer that we'd drive across the country to see all the church history sites and visit all our family on the East Coast (this trip is on our family vision board and we've all talked about it for years).  The kids are at such perfect ages and Jared's work schedule is very flexible which is rare.  But finances are tight and with the DC tickets already bought for Jared and Ashton and my family reunion happening soon after the 4th, the drive across the country thing just isn't going to work out this year.

Anyway, we did some brainstorming this morning and came up with some fun ideas for making June wonderful and we'll probably extend a lot of this into July when we'll be at Bear Lake.  Here are our basic weekly and daily plans and we brainstormed a long list of exciting activities to go with the daily themes.  We all got excited.  This will be a wonderful summer!

General Weekly Schedule

• Make-it Monday (arts and crafts, make up a play, build stuff with legos and k'nex, etc)
• Take-a-Trip Tuesday (field trip - everything from walking to the pioneer museum downtown to biking to a fun water park nearby to taking the train to SLC to go to museums there)
• Wet Wednesday or Wacky Wednesday (swimming, sprinklers, or something crazy and fun)
• Thinking Thursday (read-a-thons, science experiments, do fun math, play thinking games, look up stuff from our "wondering list" on youtube)
• Friend Friday (get together with friends - schedule play dates)

Daily:

• physical activity (biking, walking downtown, running, playing sports at the park a block away)
• reading (30 minutes each day)
• write in journal
• practicing a skill (piano, basketball, etc)
• 15-minute cleaning of one area of the house
• make dinner (each child has a day to plan the dinner menu and actually make it with my help - they're so excited about this)

Big trips:
St George to visit friends and Zion National Park
Arches National Park (never been there with the kids)

Bryce Canyon (went a couple years ago and the kids keep begging to go back)
Camping (as part of some of the above)


Someday we'll make it across the country - maybe - but as we brainstormed all the day-trips and weekend trips and daily activities we can do around here, we realized we've got scores of awesome things to do right in our own backyard.