Our Summer Bucket List

My favorite scene in Frozen is when Olaf sings about summer. Oh, to be a snowman in the middle of summer—now that’s a gig I could get used to (as long as I had Elsa’s magic snow cloud hovering around me, of course). Truth be told, I’m absolutely dreading the summer since the south is about to turn into an outdoor sauna. I won’t bore you by complaining about it more, but today’s problem is the fact that my oldest child and I are complete opposites—Julia could seriously stay outside for hours. HOURS. Going outside is her favorite thing in the entire world, and she wants to be there all the time. Her face turns into the color of a ripe little cherry tomato from playing so hard, and she’ll be practically falling over because she’s so tired, but she’ll still beg to stay outside longer. Toddlers are weird.

Since school’s out (and that means so are most of the other programs for little ones), I need to find some entertaining things for us to do this summer. One can only blow bubbles outside for so long before one (*ahem* me) gets completely bored. While this summer bucket list is primarily for my toddler, I threw a few things on it for myself and for the four of us—she can’t have all the fun!

For Julia (2 years old)

+ Make snow cones
+ Make homemade ice cream
+ Create an indoor fort
+ Run through the sprinklers
+ Make homemade cards and mail them to family
+ Go get frozen yogurt one afternoon
+ Make edible finger paint
+ Have a tea party
+ Make a Fruit Loop necklace
+ Play outside with frozen paint
+ Stay up late one night to watch the fireflies
+ Make sidewalk chalk paint
+ Play with erupting sidewalk chalk paint
+ Make scented puff paint
+ Impromptu afternoon tub time with rainbow shaving cream paint
+ Rock painting party
+ Fly a kite
+ Build a sandcastle
+ Visit a museum
+ Give her a box she can sit in, some washable markers, and let her go to town
+ Make homemade lemonade
+ Trip to the zoo (or in our case, PetsMart)
+ Make a “zoo” at home (idea from the comments below)
+ Bake cookies and take them to the neighbors
+ Go to the splash-pad park
+ Go on a treasure hunt

For the Whole Family/Grownups:

+ Go geocashing
+ Go on a date night
+ Go on a papa/Julia date
+ Go to the beach
+ Go through my stack of unread magazines
+ See a Braves game
+ Make pizza on the grill
+ Go on a picnic
+ Finish Madilyn’s (my) bump date book
+ Walk around the neighborhood
+ Find a new walking trail
+ Finish our bathroom reno
+ Decorate “new” bathroom (!!!)
+ Blog about “new” bathroom (and new pantry and new closet)

Not too shabby, right? And we can actually cross a couple of things off that summer bucket list since we just got back from the beach! Of course things like coloring, blowing bubbles, and trips to the library are just normal give-ins, so they didn’t make the list.

What’s on your bucket list for this summer?