#7 Take a Road Trip

Our family loves to travel.  I grew up taking multiple road trips with my parents each year, and I want our boys to have the same experience.  My parents always stressed that "getting there is half the fun".  So, my goal for this trip was to make it fun for the boys and, as a result, a relaxing experience for us.

I packed breakfast, lunch, and plenty of snacks.  Our favorite was this snack mix:

You can find the recipe HERE.

I also packed an activity basket for each of the boys.  Each basket had a coloring book, crayons, stickers, magnets, and a cookie sheet.  They also had one Magna doodle to share.

River loved the coloring book and the Magna-doodle.  Lennon was a fan of the poetry magnets.  He spent hours arranging all the words together, then laughing hysterically as I read his poems to him.

After having tried it, I am a fan of the activity baskets.  It kept the kids content and the parents sane.  We even had a few laughs.

#9 Summer Playlist

We have started working on our bucket list!!  My husband and I created a summer playlist together this morning and burned it to a CD.  Now we can listen to it ad nauseam on our way to the beach tomorrow.

After much internet searching, time spent listening to Spotify, searching iTunes, and riffling through our CD collection, we have settled on 22 songs for our playlist.  I picked half of the songs and my husband picked the other half (every other song on the list was chosen by him).  You will notice we have different tastes in music.

1. The Boys of Summer  ~Don Henley
2. Drive In Drive Out  ~Dave Matthews
3. Somewhere Over the Rainbow  ~Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
4. Hang 'em High  ~Van Halen
5. I Can See Clearly Now  ~Jimmy Cliff
6. Mama's Always on Stage  ~Arrested Development
7. Send Me On My Way  ~Rusted Root
8. Every Summer  ~Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes
9. Magic  ~The Cars
10. Loneliness is Overrated  ~Smokin' Dave and the Premo Dopes
11. Windfall  ~Son Volt
12. The Garden  ~Bobby McFerrin
13. Free Fallin'  ~Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
14. Discipline  ~Bobby McFerrin
15. Here Comes the Sun  ~The Beatles
16. Little Guitars Intro  ~Van Halen
17. Little Guitars  ~Van Halen
18. (Sittin' on the) Dock of the Bay  ~Otis Redding
19. Dirty Movies  ~Van Halen
20. I Will Wait  ~Mumford & Sons
21. Mean Street  ~Van Halen
22. Cosmic Thing  ~The B52's

Some of the songs were chosen for their obvious summer content.  Others, because they remind us of summer in one way or another.

If you are looking for ideas for your own playlist, check out The Ultimate Summer Playlist.  

What songs are/would be on your summer playlist?

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Our Family Bucket List.  I have created this blog in order to document and share our family's adventures as we complete seasonal bucket lists.

We have two sons, ages 6 and 2 (soon-to-be 3).  Our life is a full and often crazy-making adventure.  It's so easy to get lost in the jumble of school activities, doctor's appointments, temper tantrums, lost socks, potty-training, house-cleaning, broken appliances, car repairs, bad hair-cuts and family obligations that tend to make up family life.  In the midst of this, I can easily forget to live life to the fullest and make each moment count.  We also want to give our sons a variety of life experiences and childhood memories in the far-too-brief time we have to raise them.

With that in mind, we created a summer bucket list last year in order to make the most of our time together.   We enjoyed it so much, we are planning to make a bucket list for each season.    Since I am a teacher and our oldest is in school, summer starts for us around Memorial Day (when school lets out) and ends in the beginning of August.  Our goal is to complete the summer bucket list before school begins again.