Simple days

Summer, a time for us to be able to stop holding our breath and enjoy the sunshine. A time to go on adventures, have lazy days, go to the beach and enjoy our beautiful surroundings. A time to reset.

I used to get super excited in the summer and write down a big bucket list with the boys of all the stuff we want to do. I had heaps of adventures planned with lots of walking, beach times and fun. Most of the days I planned were jam packed with outings and visits.

Then I realised that the boys were shattered and I was also shattered by all the planning that I had done rushing from place to place. I was effectively doing it to tick off our bucket list so that one day I could say we had done everything on our list and it was too much. Although I was trying to create memories for our boys, I was probably creating exhausting days going here and there with the boys just feeling tired.

I decided to stop. To not pack in our days, to let the boys just rest. When I started to do this it was a relief, I guess I didn’t really want to be cramming in too much into each day either, I wanted to take things slow.

I still planned something everyday but loosely less structured so if things didn’t go the way it was supposed to that was ok. I also only planned in one thing everyday so that we could take our time doing just that one thing such as going to the beach or going to the park, whatever it was there was then no hurry to have to leave that place if we didn’t want to.

I planned going out everyday as not only is it beneficial for the children, it is beneficial for me. I feel like a caged animal if I am in everyday, I can’t stand it so I had to factor this in if I am to stay sane. However I understand that my children enjoy downtime at home to play with their toys, make up games and so on. So as long as I want out at some point then when we were home I could cope with it. A good compromise.

Since this realisation I have kept it up daily. Even if my children are not with me I still make sure that I do not factor in more than one thing everyday. I also understand that my boys still want time at home and I honour that. If I am finding it hard I factor in time to go out myself.

So with summer here I am going to do the same, yes we will go on adventures, we will still have beach days and so on but we will plan that one thing loosely and just do that. It nice and refreshing to do it this way for us, no rushing which I love.