Canoeing on Lake Merritt in Oakland, July 2010

Sure is hard to believe it was three years ago that I drove my kids nuts! During the summer of 2010, I took my kids on some surprise day trips through the summer because I knew they were getting older and we wouldn’t always have the opportunity to do some of these things together. Now that Matthew has graduated and is working full time, I am thankful we took the time to spend together on these trips.

So this upcoming summer will be the first time that Kelsey and I will spend the whole summer together, just the two of us. Now it is not that we haven’t spent the whole school together, because we have. But during the school year, there are schedules to keep and definitely things that need to be done. For summer though, my youngest child would probably prefer to stay home just about every day, reading, or creating, or hanging out (literally!) in a tree in our backyard. She is definitely my homebody child.

To combat the homebody syndrome and to help her spend some fun time with a few of her friends, I decided we needed to come up with a plan. We sat down the other day and wrote down some ideas of day trips to go on this summer. Here is the list we came up with:

1. Tubing/rafting in Yosemite http://www.yosemitepark.com/rafting.aspx

2. Exploratorium http://www.exploratorium.edu/

3. Bowling

4. Rafting by Knight's Ferry http://raftadventure.com/

5. Jelly Belly Factory http://www.jellybelly.com/visit_jelly_belly/california_factory_tours.aspx

6. Cable Car Museum and ride Cable Cars http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/

7. Slumber Party

The fun part about this list is for each day trip, she gets to invite one of her friends along each time. I think this will be fun way for us to spend our summer and I am looking forward to sharing our adventures with you!

What plans do you have for your summer? I would love to hear about them!