We have been counting down the moments and here we are – officially the last day of school for me and my peeps!
No more lunches, no more having to race to school at the crack of 8AM.
We are envisioning our amazing, carefree, summer of long sunny days and warm summer nights.
Let’s get real. Somewhere around mid-August we start to panic, thinking about all the things we wanted to do and haven’t done. Day trips, a reading challenge, Playland, waterslides, hiking and enjoying nature, meeting up with friends…
Suddenly, you find yourself staying in your pajamas until 10 every day, spending way too much time surfing random Instagram of other people doing fun family stuff, or going down a Pinterest rabbit hole while you search “fun free summer activities”, meanwhile your kids set themselves up with packaged food for breakfast, playing video games all morning until it erupts in a huge fight and/or meltdown mid-afternoon.
The solution to enjoying being unscheduled all summer, is to set out just a few guardrails to keep yourself on track. Yep – a schedule.
If you want to hit a few key fun “summer bucket list” activities, look at your calendar and pick the days out. Be flexible, of course. But chances are your calendar isn’t as free as it seems, and you might not be able to fit it all in.
Make sure to go out once a day and set a time for it. Get in your dentist appointments, your doctor appointments and your haircuts. And when you’re not scheduled, whether it’s to the park, the library, or something even more ambitious, make an appointment for yourself so that you don’t end up scrambling with zoned-out cranky, hungry children .
Speaking of hungry, while you don’t have to pack a lunch, you will have to plan meals and snack prep. Otherwise, it will be 2PM and you’ll be surrounded by a bunch of granola bar wrappers and some sugared up kids! So by setting out your mealtimes, you can avoid falling into the whoa we’re hungry and zoned the heck out.
So we can throw away the back-to-back schedule, but set a few moments in your day to touch point, the last benefit is that it won’t be so hard to settle back in come September!
-Jen
#ThatSurreyMom
@jenxrobbins