Life has been BUSY lately. I’m not entirely sure why – but I know it has to do with the end of the school year, a change in our routine due to my husband’s work schedule, and preparing for him to travel a bit for work in the coming weeks. We also have summer soccer two nights a week and birthday parties and family coming to town, etc. However…we’ve had gorgeous weather, we’ve already been to the beach once (it was cold but the girls didn’t care!), and my summer reading is at an all-time high. So life is good!!!

Since our girls are at amazing ages right now (no one naps anymore so our weekends are pretty free), we have a lot of fun plans for the summer. Here are a few of our family plans/goals/ideas:

1) Go on a few weekend camping trips. We were supposed to go over the long weekend but with work travel, that got postponed a bit. We have most of the equipment though and we are so excited to give this a go this year!

2) Discover 3 new beaches. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we live 10 minutes away from the Atlantic ocean. You can see the beach from our deck. I think we went maybe (MAYBE) 5 times last summer. This summer, I want to do a few beach road trips and discover some of the additional beautiful coastline this province has to offer.

3) Tone down the competition between siblings. I re-skimmed Siblings without Rivalry a few weeks ago because the rivalry between our girls is UNBELIEVABLE. We’re talking fighting over who gets to open the front door when we get home, fighting over who washes their hands first before dinner, fighting over who gets out of the bath first, etc. etc. etc. I am continually telling them that life is *not* a race to be first. To be fair, my husband and I are both competitive people but I don’t think we really introduce that a lot into our everyday activities so I’m not sure where this is coming from but I want everyone to feel validated for doing things PERIOD and not doing it first or fastest.

4) Help the girls with their summer reading club. Our library, like many, hosts a kid’s summer reading club (they also just started hosting an ADULT reading club with prizes so of COURSE I signed up for that :D). Molly set a goal of reading 50 books this summer. We’re going to make our way through a few chapter books and audiobooks and she’ll read a lot on her own too. We have plans to do at least a few French books a week since she’s come so far in Immersion and we want to keep that up over the summer. Lucy is starting to “read” a bit on her own so I want to get her a few books to encourage that even more. I’ll share some books on our list next week!!

5) Prepare to transition to part-time work in September. I am so looking forward to what will be our new normal in September: I’ll be working 3 days a week and Lucy will be starting preschool 2 days a week. I just need to sort out a few of the logistics but the position is already all settled. So excited for some extra time with my girls.

6) Have 2 date nights with Brian. We really need to make this more of a priority and we both agreed to do so after having an amazing weekend away for our anniversary

7) Participate in the Wizarding World Book Club. Talk about Harry Potter all summer long on Twitter and Pottermore? SIGN ME UP. Today is the day it’s launching!!!

8) Go to the farmer’s market, the museum of natural history, and some summer festivals. Because there’s no reason not to! The kids love this kind of thing these days.

9) Run my next 10K race in under an hour. I used to be able to do this, but I haven’t broken an hour since having the girls. I really need to train harder this summer in order to succeed at this in September.

10) Complete 30 days of yoga. I take an amazing yoga class with my wonderful teacher every Monday September-June but she doesn’t teach at the same location in the summer months so I often let it go a bit. Not this year!!!

What are your plans for the summer? Linking up with Steph and Sara for their final seasonal goals!