2011 Family Fun List

A couple weeks ago we had the idea to make a list of fun things we could do as a family.

We have realized that a lot of our family time wasn't filled with a lot of quality, and we want to fix that!

We want to be intentional with our time together, making memories & building strong bonds together.  Not just for the summer, but year round.

I wanted to share our list with everyone.  I have it typed up & printed out, with boxes next to each one to put a sticker for every time we do that activity.  Some of these we have already done this year, but we won't count it if it was before the list was made.  A lot of these activities can be done more than once, and some will probably only happen once.  But regardless, we are trying to make sure to do them all!

Within two weeks of making this list, we had done 4 things on it!  Some of the stories of how they happened are really cool...

Like going to a Jethawks game, for instance.  The Jethawks are our local minor league baseball team.  Sean went to a game with Dathan & my dad when he was 10 months old.  Nolan has never been to a game, and we have never gone as a family.  So this was something we thought would be fun to do.  Just a couple days after making our list (we hadn't shared it with anyone yet) our friends at church came up to us and said they were given 7 tickets to the Jethawks game that weekend & couldn't go, so they wanted to know if we wanted the tickets.  Sure!  So... we were able to mark something off our list, for free, & invite a couple other friends to join us.  What a blessing!  Here are the boys with the mascot, KaBoom!  They weren't too sure of him...

Apollo park is a really fun park just outside of town.  There's a big man made lake (that you can fish in), a huge walking trail, and several different playgrounds.  We took a Sunday off of church and just spent it as a family.  It was so wonderful.  We slept in, then spent several hours at Apollo Park.  It was HOT.  But we had a blast, and got to check off another fun outing from our list.

Later that same evening, after naps, we went to our friends to go swimming.  Nolan wore a Puddle Jumper for the first time and LOVED it.  He is fearless in the water and this allowed me to be relieved of a little stress while swimming with him.  He did so good and was so brave- he even jumped off the diving board!  He did so well I got on Amazon the next day and ordered him one!  Sean, of course, stuck to the shallow end but even he was getting brave & jumping in from the side.

And the last thing we have checked off our list (for now) is getting Fro-Yo (frozen yogurt) on the Blvd.  This picture isn't of us actually eating the yogurt (oops... I guess we'll have to go back! ha!) but it's from the evening that we did eat it.  The Blvd has been having a farmer's market every Thursday, and we decided to stop by.  We hadn't eaten dinner & the boys kept asking to eat ice cream.  I said we aren't going to buy dinner AND ice cream.  Then I realized it was summer & you only live once, so lets have ice cream FOR dinner.  Problem solved!  So we went and got our fro-yo with the toppings we wanted and we were four happy Stephens! :)

Can't wait to share all the fun memories we make, inspired by our list! :)