Summer Bucket List 2013

A little list of fun things we hope to do this summer:

• Have a picnic at a park
• Story time at the library
• Go to a parade
• Splash Pad
• Detroit Zoo (maybe Toledo Zoo, too?)
• Camping at the Pinery
• Go to a local beach
• Hit up the farmers market
• Go to a new park
• Attend the Big Rig Gig
• Ride the trains at Starr Jaycee Park
• See fireworks (or at least play with sparklers)
• Take a walk (sans stroller) on a local trail
• Feed the ducks at the park (without Ellis freaking out!)
• Make homemade ice cream

I have a ton of fun at-home activities in mind too.  There are just way too many to mention here, but I got many of the ideas from Camp Mom.  It's a great resource that Nicole found that has over 80 activities related to water, nature, and arts and crafts.  There is even a section on sensory play and different basic skills that kids could practice and how to do it in a fun way (cutting, mixing, etc.)  I'm hoping to incorporate some fun activities with a few structured activities here and there to keep some sanity in our day and not make it a huge free for all.  They made such progress during there speech classes with the structured activities that I don't want them to digress.  At the same time, I'm also going to be realistic and realize that just because I have a plan doesn't mean we are going to follow it.   It'll be more of a loose plan of options we could explore during the week.  

Most of you know that I use Project Life as my way to scrapbook our weekly events around here. While I plan to keep that up over the summer, I also know that last summer we did so much that some weeks I had so many pictures, I took up 2 weeks worth of page protectors to record it all.  This year I saw a really cute post from Becky Higgins showing how someone used Project Life to record their Summer Bucket List.  Basically, they took Instagram pictures of each of their bucket list items and put it on a 3x4 card and slipped it in a page protector.  This person did a full layout of this (up to 22 pictures depending on the page protectors you use) to highlight their list, which I thought was a really cute way of doing it.  My only problem with this is that I have such a hard time taking only 1 picture of any particular event.  Especially with 2 kids, how could I limit each activity to only 1 picture?  So, I decided to use this basic idea and broaden it a bit.  What I am going to do is use this cherry mini-album, and use this to record our summer bucket list.  I'd really like to get a new core kit to use for this, but I should probably take a step back and just use what I have so far, right?  We'll see.  I still have another week before I'm going to start using it =).  I might just use some blank 3x4 grid cards that I already have and make my own 3x4 cards out of cardstock I have.  Since there are 20 page protectors, I could have anywhere from 20-40 activities in this book, depending on how picture-happy I get with each activity.  I'm pretty excited to use this as a way to document our summer fun, so perhaps I will show some of it once I get started with it.  

Anyone else have any fun ideas they plan to do this summer?  I'd love to add more fun to our list!!