I’m going to be real honest here… as a “mompreneur” with two young ones, summer time is HARD. There’s no less pressure to do all the business things & not only maintain but grow. There’s no less housework to keep up with. And there’s a whole lot more time with the kiddos in the house. (And all that togetherness tends to lead to my two fighting a little more than usual.) It’s less structured time to work & a whole lot more distractions.
But you know what? This is the ONLY summer I’ll get with them at 3 & 5 years old. This is the ONLY chance I have at this much time with them at these ages. I don’t get a re-do on this summer. And as those last few days of school flew by, I honestly started to get a little nervous about how I was going to manage it all and still feel like I was a decent mom.
Because I do want to keep growing my business. I do need to log hours at my new part time job. I do need to make sure we have clean clothes to wear. And I do need to cherish this time with my girls.
Enter: The Holmes Family Summer Checklist
For the past few years on my birthday, I create a Yearly Bucket List of items big & small that I want to do over the next 365 days of my life. Things that “fill up my bucket” & remind me to stop hustling & make a point to just live in the moment. I took that idea & asked the girls to sit down with me to brainstorm ideas of what we wanted to do this summer. I loved how excited they got, and just the time spent creating the list was great, intentional time with them already! We clipped that bad boy to the fridge & there’s lots of celebrating when we get to check something off.
Here’s what made the list for 2019, and what we’ve crossed off so far:
- Pool – Done! LOTS of pool time so far this summer!
- Beach – Done! And we’re headed back for round 2 today!
- Sprinklers – Done!
- Movie Theater
- Picnic – Done!
- Make popsicles – Done! We used yogurt & LaCroix to make two different types.
- Peanut & Pumpkin put on a play
- Paint outside – Done! Got to enjoy some surprisingly mild weather early this summer & spent the morning watercoloring on the back patio!
- Sparklers
- Mail surprises to family
- TooDee’s house & Erin & Ben’s house – Done! Such a great trip!
- Community pool – Done!
- Splash pad – Done! Even got to enjoy this one with cousin Joseph!
- Breakfast in bed for mommy (believe it or not, this one wasn’t my idea!)
- Sleepovers (in the game room or in the living room)
- Make a bouquet of flowers – Done! It was so fun to go out into our backyard & cut a few flowers to arrange together, and they lasted a long time!
- Bake cookies – Done! Lots & lots of cookies have been made. This one is dangerous!
- Do a craft as a family
- Magic Milk – Done! Always a hit with the girls, and so so so simple to do!
- Bath for Dixie – Done!
- Children’s Museum – Done! Made the most of a rainy beach day & went to the Galveston Children’s Museum – it was a hit!
- Collect acorns (again – not my suggestion lol!)
- Build a fort – Done! Lots of forts have been made!
- Chalk people – Done! I traced the girls as they laid down at the end of our driveway, and then they colored them in to draw themselves! Peanut got really into this one!
- Make fruit salad – Done!
- Make our own pizzas – Done! Max & Peanut even made the dough from scratch!
- “Nail salon” day – Done!
- Back Pew – Done!
- Family workout
- Blueberry farm – Done! The girls loved picking them, and had a blast making homemade blueberry muffins to share with neighbors & family!
I’ve wanted to grab my “nice” camera for most of these, but realized that I’d rather just snap a quick photo/video on my phone & go right back to enjoying the moment rather than walking away from it to get my camera.
The photos might not be the best quality, but the memories are.
And that right there? That says maybe this little summer checklist of ours helped me manage work & motherhood better than I thought I would.
Looks like we still need to schedule the family workout!