Summer Days, a manifesto and journals

August! As a child, I remember waiting for August to arrive with baited breath. August meant a whole month off school. A month of lazy days, filled with sun and laughter. Long bike rides, building dens, climbing trees and splashing in the paddling pool.

This year, with a child that has been in school for the first time, August with absolutely no school is once again the month we’ve been waiting for. A month of long, lazy days, all five of us together. We’ve so many plans for this month, the calendar is pretty much full to busting, but I’m sure we’ll sneak in some lazy time in the garden too!

We love to make a family bucket list for the summer, coming up with fun ideas that we want to fill our days with – from little things like bbqs to bigger things like festivals. We all make our own list of ideas and then together work out a family summer manifesto. This years includes picking our own fruit, sleeping out in the garden, making lemonade and holidaying with the kid’s cousins.

Also this summer, I’ve set us all up with our own journals to record what we get up to. We’re going bullet journal style, and are also using it to track the books we’ve read {the kids have a page in there to mark off how many books they’ve read for their summer reading challenge}, bucket lists, our idea of a perfect summer day, as well as recording days out and things we’ve done. I’m hoping by the end of the summer they’ll be chock full of the most wonderful memories of our summer.