This summer was crazy short — nine weeks to be exact. I do love summer festivities (minus the sweltering melting that is inevitable), and so this year we set out to conquer summer with our very own Summer Bucket List. Since the local pools are slowly closing for the season one-by-one, I figure that I can declare summer over, even though we’ve left a few Bucket List items on the table (sorry, “host a lemonade stand,” “go berry picking,” and “make homemade ice cream”).
Before we run with open arms into piles of crunchy leaves, lattes dressed up in pumpkin spices, and the giddiness of sweater weather, I thought I’d recap the rest of our big Bucket List To-Do’s that I haven’t blogged about yet.
We harvested our odd little carrots from Cricket’s old class garden. Oh, and as a bonus to the Harvest Playdate, we hung out all morning with her sweet classmates. (Geez, that playground gets HOT in the summer sun!)
One summer in college, I was the baker at a YoungLife camp, where I learned how to make ice cream pies. It’s been YEARS since my last one, so I decided to pass down the family secret to the girls.
We toured all our friends’ cool neighborhood pools because when you spend 7 out of 7 days in the water, you need a change of scenery.
We adopted worms (for about a week until they “mysteriously” disappeared). Okay, so this WASN’T on our Bucket List, but it sure did happen.
E.V. conquered the big slide at our gym pool!
We usually do a lot of movie theater time with Papadon, but the girls weren’t too crazy about the summer’s big flix, so we watched movies at home with our grandpa.
By far the most loved Bucket List activity was a Girl’s-Only Spa Night, complete with robes, masks and massages (by Mom). They beg to do this all the time now!
My little adventurer wanted to learn how to rock climb, so she and I went to a Waffles ‘n Walls breakfast at our gym. She’s a natural!
We LOVED our Pre-K class (seriously, it was a special group of littles for sure), and we really wanted to see everyone over the summer. So we had an amazing pool date with everyone — including our teacher! Yay!
I’ve always wanted to visit Anderson’s Sunflower Farm, so it was a definite biggie on our list for me. Too bad it didn’t live up to my dreams (more a house with flowers than a full-on farm), but we got a few pics (minus Cricket being in an outfit of her own creation, haha!).
I really wanted to get involved with E.V.’s new school, and a friend asked me to collab on a GIANT mural for the lunchroom with her. The mural was 30′ long, and I depicted a fun “It’s a Small World”-type version of China and France for half of it.
Okay, okay. So going in for E.V.’s five-year check-up wasn’t on our list either, but we did go this summer. She’s healthy and happy, and Cricket is, too, considering she insisted on getting every test and measurement Emma Vance did!
And, lastly, over Labor Day, Ryan and I took the girls to the man-made stream by our City Hall to float tinfoil boats down river. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE Alpharetta?!?
Okay, now I’m officially ready for FALL!