Summer Traditions

Ahhh...Florida summers. It's quickly approaching and so is the heat. So, Rob and I decided to put up our cheapo blowup pool in the backyard this weekend. It always provides great fun during the summers, which is like March to November for us. It's a great way to cool off and relax with the kids. However, it does make me nervous because it's not very tall and the kids can lean over it and I would never want to risk any kind of accident, thus I MADE Rob put a 4 foot gate around the entire thing, complete with a lock to prevent any kind of curiosity. I'm definately happy with the result. He did a great job. The nicest part was that we already owned the gate (it was used as a seperate area for Riley, our dog before), so all we had to actually buy was a lock and a few more pannels for a gate.

On to traditions...

Besides the pool, we have a few things we like to do each summer that have become somewhat of a tradition. I always have a day when I clean off the porch, go through toys in our outside toy bin, clean out things and get the porch organized so that we can play outside. We're outside all the time, but today I found a shelf in the garage that works perfectly for stacking things on, so I moved it to the porch, dusted it off and now it serves a greater purpose. It's not the coolest-looking shelf cosmetically, but works great for now. I put our radio/CD player on the top (gotta jam out to music sometimes), a high shelf for bug spray and suntan lotion, a shelf for bubbles/wands and bubble toys, one shelf for large, outside garbage can bags, a shelf for sidewalk chalk, the paint is also on a high shelf (I've always kept it down low, but with Lincoln, it's a different story...did you see the post of how he painted his own hair?! Oh, that precious boy.). There's also some other art supplies in a bin, crayons, markers, etc. where the kids can use the easel paper and create whatever they want.

Some other things we usually do are getting out the slip and slide and eating popsicles. We usually buy the big cases at Walmart, but sometimes we do like making our own from paper cups and popsicle sticks. We also love water balloon fights (have lots of those and the kids do all the cleanup).

There's no gardening during the summer since you can't grow anything over the summer here (besides occational cherry tomatoes and sometimes peppers). I have some pumpkin plants that are doing quite well and blossoming, but it's only a matter of time to see if they make it. It would be great if we were able to grow our own pumpkins this year for the fall. We shall see. I did pull all the other plants this weekend with the exception of peppers, pumpkin, herbs, strawberries and tomatoes. The tomatoes caught "blight" this year which is an airborne fungus you can't do anything about, but they're still producing fruit so I keep watering them, hoping to get the most out of them before they go too. Lettuce is gone, carrots are gone, beans are gone, squash never stood a chance this year and cucumbers haven't grown enough to produce (?) and I always have luck with them. Weird.

We love going to the beach during the summers cause the water is actually warm enough to swim in. There's a boardwalk nearby where we go to the beach and we love walking around outside there, getting icecream cones and watching the dolphins and boats.

Please share with me some of your favorite family traditions during the summertime. I'd love to hear them!