5 ways to make the most of your summer nancy ray.jpg

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Show Notes:

It is the middle of summer. I know you know this, but sometimes it's good to hear a reminder of where you are, so you can reset your thinking and really make sure you're on the right track. Now, summer of 2020 is a weird time for all of us. There wasn't even a definitive end of the school year, and then we morphed from this weird quarantine stage into summer. And it felt like this weird continuation of the life, this new, crazy life we've all been living.

So today it's simply going to be like a quick glance at your compass in the middle of 2020 to make sure that, hey, you're on the right track—you're living the life you want to be living!

Here are five ways for you to make the most of the summer of 2020.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!

1. Make a summer bucket list that fits your season of life.

I know it might sound cliche, make a summer bucket list, everybody's doing that, but really it's a great fun thing just to have on your fridge to keep you on track and make sure you're doing the things that you want to do. But here's the key is you need to make a bucket list that fits your season of life. And that starts with asking yourself, what season are you in? Are you engaged to be married? Do you have little kids like me? Do you have older kids? Are you an empty nester? Because the activities that you do during summer should be a reflection of the season that you're in.

Now, when you make your bucket list, I want you to include some of the things that you love to do every single summer just to make it feel like summer. Even though this is weird in 2020, you can still channel that wonderful sunshine summer energy just by doing things that you've always done. A few things on my list are just to constantly be eating peaches, because, duh, peaches have the best fruit ever, go blueberry picking with the family, which we've already done, make a nice big blueberry cobbler, schedule several days at the lake, to go out on our boat, enjoy the lake, make homemade ice cream at least once the summer, I feel like nothing tastes better in the summer than homemade ice cream, and scheduling some pool afternoons.

Now for me, I think pool time is like really stressful, especially if I go by myself because I have three small children who cannot swim yet. So hashtag stress level is like so high for me. So I'm going to schedule some time at the pool, but that also requires a lot of planning because I need one adult for every child. And we might not go to the pool nearly as much as if you have kids that can all swim and are a little bit older. So again, just tweak your summer bucket list to reflect the season of life that you're in. Now, as you're making this bucket list, I want you to do something else that's fun. Ask your kids, if you have kids, to make their own summer bucket lists and listen to what they want to do.

Try to include some of the things that they want to do into the family bucket list, because I think you might be surprised at some of their expectations of things they'd really like to do this summer. And finally, try one thing that's new. You want to definitely make up your list full of things that make you feel like summer, familiar things that you do every single summer. 2020 is for sure the time to try something new, right? All of us are picking up new hobbies or, I don't know, finally doing a big clean out of our house or a house project we've always wanted to do. It's time to try something new, so just include one thing on there that's new and different.

2. Read a good book, or several, if you're an avid reader, but at least one for sure.

Now, I love reading a good fiction book in the summer for some reason. I mean, I read mostly nonfictions. I think it's just the way that I'm wired. But in the summertime, I really just love to get swept away in a novel. And if you're part of the Nancy Ray Book Club, this summer reading The Nightingale, and I'm really excited about it because my friend, who's a crazy avid reader, it's like her favorite book of all time. I'm really excited to read that one. I also love reading historical biographies. John Adams is a perfect example. It's a massive book, but it's so good.

And any historical biographies, they just get you in the patriotic spirit, especially if you read it in July around Independence Day. It's so fun just to learn about the history of our country. And this summer in particular, I'm choosing to read I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. Just with everything going on in our nation, I think this is a wonderful way to make the most of this summer, in particular, to listen and learn from black authors, especially on the topic of racism and bias and all the things we've been hearing about, even if it makes you a little bit uncomfortable or wouldn't be your first choice.

I think it's really an important and great way to make the most of this summer, in particular, to continue to listen and learn.

3. Print out a daily schedule just to loosely follow each day.

Now, summer is not about having a schedule. I feel like the school year is definitely more for routine. Summer is the time to kind of out that routine and have fun. But I found that if I don't have any kind of schedule to go by, it can start to feel crazy, especially with three little kids. I'm like, I need something to ground me. Kids love schedules. Kids really thrive on consistency and expectation and schedules. But here's the deal, adults love schedules, too.

I really love a good schedule. And I think it's so great and important to plan for vacations and plan for adventure days and plan for those days where you go off the schedule, plan for the days where the kids miss all their naps and sleep when they can in the car or on the boat or whatever you're doing. But I think as a rhythm to make you feel like you're making the most of the summer, it's good to have a daily schedule to loosely follow every day, because all of us thrive on routine. So they keep us grounded on the days that we don't have special activities planned. I'm going to print one out and follow it every day. I have one for our babysitters.

I think it's just really good to do just to kind of keep our feet planted and also just allow our home to be that place that's consistent, allow our home to be the place where we know we're going to get good sleep, we're going to get good food, we're going to be taking care of ourselves, we're going to be taking care of each other. And I think that's really important, not just for the kids, but for the grownups too.

4. Make Friday night a fun family night.

Now, I am going to be real. I'm stealing this from a dear friend of ours, and they used to be our neighbors. We went on a picnic with them recently and she just told me things they've been doing in quarantine has just continued through the summer where every Friday night they have picked a different theme for their family. And they have two little girls and, oh my goodness, their girls love it.

Here are a couple of examples she was kind of sharing with me. And I was like, this is so fun. Why not? Why not create something that you can look forward to every single Friday? So a couple of things that they've done as a family, of course, movie and pizza night. They've done a dance party night where they got... I think they got a disco ball or maybe just made a playlist where literally they just had all kinds of dancing.

Another night they called color night and they had, I think, colorful chalk, and they did face painting, and they did hair chalk and colored the girl's hair. And they dressed up in really bright, colorful clothes, and they did painting. Like anything that they could think of to incorporate color, they made it a color night. One night they camped out in the living room, and it was mom, dad, both the girls, all of them slept inside their tent that they set up inside their living room, which I thought was amazing. You can also do this. I had another friend and their family and they set up a tent in the backyard and dad and the kids went camping out in the backyard, but mom stayed inside, which kind of sounds really fun and great to me.

A couple other ideas, a scavenger hunt night, a game night where you do all kinds of board games, a water night, do water balloons, a baby pool, splash, whatever, hose fight, sprinklers, just bathing suits. Just kind of go crazy. Maybe eat everything outside. Do watermelon. Reading night, sharing your favorite books and just reading to each other. And also, I heard you'd have the kids write a book about the day that they were born or another fun event in their life, and just kind of focus it on reading and writing and the value of books in our life. You could do a cooking night. Pretend like you're on a cooking show. A music night where you all sing together, get out the real instruments. Maybe have each person perform.

I know my kids love to perform. So those are just some ideas. You don't have to do all of them by any means. There's not even that many weeks left in our summer, but just even to have four weeks in a row where Friday night is this family fun night. It'll be amazing. Can you imagine how much fun it would be to make memories like that as your family? All right.

5. Choose a home project to knock out or maybe a few smaller projects.

It's not too late to do the thing that you've been wanting to do all of quarantine or all of the summer. Maybe you've already knocked out a good few projects and you want to keep the momentum going. This is the time to do it. We're not fully back to the normal running around kind of life and look at that as an opportunity to get something done.

So here are a couple things that we've done.

Organizing our family photos has been something that I did in like a big chunk about five years ago. I like tackled all the printed photos. But I will say, after you have three babies close together, I've gotten behind on the digital side, and that has been really my summer project is to catch up on baby books, to catch up on family yearbooks, and to make sure that all the digital photos are edited and caught up in an order. And if you need a resource for this, I am here to help you. I have taught so many people how to do this, and you can head here to get some resources on that.
Another idea is a patio makeover. I mean, that's one thing that we have just recently endeavored to do. Our patio is not that glamorous, and we're hoping one day to save up enough money to do a screened-in porch edition. We're not there yet. We have a lot of other things that are more important to take care of first, but I was like, hey, why don't we just go ahead and make our patio a nice place to enjoy, even though it's not a screened-in porch? And so that's been a big summer project for us. We're in the middle of finding the right furniture, but we got a rug. We hung some string lights. It's the little things that you can do to really improve just the enjoyment of your home.
And finally, I did a virtual yard sale. I cleaned up my closet. I made it exactly how I want it. Again, three babies, three years, lots of different wardrobe changes, a new body. It was time. And so I cleaned out my whole closet and then I did a virtual yard sale and I sold the things that I could and I'm going to donate the rest. And it just feels really good to have that reset.

So that is it. Those are my five ways that you can make the most of the summer of 2020: to make a summer bucket list, to read a really good book, to loosely follow a schedule each day, to make Friday night a fun family night, and to choose a project to knock out.

Listen, I realized I just threw out five things where you can make the most of your summer. And you might be thinking, "That's all well and good, Nancy, but summer's almost over. Why are you giving me all these great ideas now?" Well, let me just say, I totally understand. My intent was not to make you do all five things, but maybe to choose one of the ways to make the most of the rest of your summer. And you can always pocket these ideas for next summer.

All in all, I just want you to finish strong, make the most of it, because it's going to be over before we know it.

Work and Play Cornerstore:

This is where I bring you a book I'm loving and a thing I'm loving. I'll get a small commission from anything bought through these links, which I always appreciate, because that helps me continue to bring this podcast you every week. Plus, I was just thinking about it, I love a solid recommendation from a friend, which is a big reason why I do this. So stay tuned to the Work and Play Cornerstore featured at the end of every episode.

Today, I'll be adding the biography of John Adams, as well as Sun Bum, our favorite sunscreen face stick to the Cornerstore.

So I mentioned John Adams earlier. I probably read that book about 10 years ago, and I want to give a disclaimer. It has a whopping 751 pages. It took me an entire summer to read it, and the writing was I feel like way smarter than my brain is used to, so it was like a challenge to kind of get through it. But once I got into the groove of it, it was so good and so fascinating. I was really glad that I pushed through.

And the Sun Bum face stick, it just works really well on the kids. It's perfect thing just to put all over your face, put over the kids' faces. My eyes always burn whenever I put normal sunscreen on my face, and this face stick is really gentle and it works really well. Just keep it in your bag and not in direct sunlight Because one time I left it in direct sunlight for a day and it melts everywhere. So just a heads up from a friend.

Kelly Elmore said,