The week before summer started, I was in charge of the Activity portion of family home evening. I'd been trying to decide what to do with the kids all summer and it occurred to me that they might like to have a bit of a say in how they spent their time as well, or that maybe they had some things they were hoping to get to do that I didn't even know about. We sat down together as a family and I had them shout out any ideas that came to their heads and I wrote them down.
I took that list and made this big poster. Each person is a different color, and then there is a color for things we'll do together as a family. For example our whole family is going to go to Bear Lake on a trip, so that's a family item on the bucket list, but only Lincoln wants to catch a fish, so his personal bucket list is dark blue.
We're a month into summer now and this has been so fun! They kids are way more into it than I thought they'd be, and it's been a nice resource for me to go to when we don't have anything specific going on during the day. And most importantly, we've created some great memories. Here are a few of the things we've done so far:
Hike Stewart Falls
We kicked off our bucket list with a bang on Memorial Day by hiking Stewart Falls, I already did a post about this, so I won't say much here. But I love this picture.
Look at Constellations / Sleep on the Trampoline
When I was a teenager, I used to sleep outside on the trampoline by myself most summer nights, and look at the constellations. I lived in a small farming town, so there was very little light pollution. I'd sit out there with my star chart for hours and hours watching the sky rotating over my head. I decided this summer it was time that I shared that little piece of myself with my kids who were old enough. Lincoln was definitely the most interested in the stars. And our house definitely has more light pollution than the house I grew up in. But we did find the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Leo, Draco, Cassiopeia and a few others using Lincoln's star chart.
The kids wanted to try their hand at sleeping on the trampoline. They did pretty well too. Adelia came in at midnight. Linc at 4am, Ollie at 5am. Ivan was the champion and stayed out until 7:20am.
Spend a Day at the Reservoir/ Kayaking/ Fishing
Aaron's nephew Luke turned 8, and we celebrated with family by spending the day at the reservoir kayaking and fishing and playing in the sand. It was the maiden voyage for the kayaks we got for Christmas and they did not disappoint. I foresee hours and hours of time spent kayaking. Lincoln and Ivan even tried fishing from the kayaks. We could hardly get the boys off the water to come have dinner and cupcakes.
It was Cal's first experience at the reservoir and he loved it! It was so happy crawling around in the sand and through the puddles left by other people who dug holes in the beach before us. He wasn't afraid of the water either, and crawled in a couple times, but always stopped when he got a couple inches in.
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| Lincoln |
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| Ivan |
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| Audrey, Sam, and Aaron |
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| Cal |
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| Eli, Ollie, and Asher |
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| Krystal, Cal, and Ruby |
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| Rue was in her element: sand, water, and sunshine |
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| Cal's thinking about going in. |
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| Happy muddy baby |
All the kids used different words for it, but essentially they all wanted to spend time creating art. Lucky for us, the Springville Art Museum has open studio days on Thursday, with an art project in mind and all the supplies provided. This week when we went the project was about geometric shapes. The idea was to think of something organic, and then try to recreate it to be geometric. Their example was a campfire and a tent that they'd created out of triangles, squares, rectangles, diamonds, etc. We had fun with this. Adelia's picture was of sunny days and hills, Ivan did a monster truck, Lincoln made a rocket flying out in space, I did a garden, and Ollie made a beautiful triangle. Some of our cousins came with us also, and the little kids had a good time drawing emoji's on the chalk board.
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| Ollie's, Lincoln's, and Krystal's pictures |
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| Malia, Ruby, and Ollie |
Completely out of the blue, or maybe out of the pink, Adelia put on her list that she wanted to dye her hair pink. Hmmm..... I thought, why not? It's just hair. We tried to do Kool Aide first, but Del's hair is too dark, and it didn't take. Then I thought I'd buy a wash out dye from the grocery store, but when I was looking at them, Adelia's hair was also too dark for the wash out kind without bleaching it first. I didn't want to bleach her hair and then have the dye wash out and her just have bleached hair. So it was "go big or go home" my life motto. I bought permanent dye, we bleached a few pieces of hair and then dyed them pink. The pictures actually make it look a lot more pink that it really is. And it's faded a lot too. Currently the 5 streaks that we did are a subtle bubble-gum pink, and I like it a lot.
Open the Reptile Zoo
Lincoln and his cousin Zac have been working on a reptile zoo. Zac has two lizards and a box turtle and a pretty impressive nature collection. Lincoln made a website to advertise the zoo, and a bunch of items to sell in the gift shop. The other day they set up all these things in Aaron's mom's front yard, and as kids from the neighborhood came buy they taught them about the reptiles and nature collection, sold souvenirs, had a drawing contest, and ate popcicles. :) One of these days in July, they will open it again on our front lawn.
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| Zac, Ivan, and Lincoln and their Reptile Zoo. |
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| Lincoln and the Box Turtle |
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