Let the summer vacation countdown begin...

Woohoo! The weekend has arrived!!! After a day off of school and what not yesterday to get the little one settled in, I am ready for a day to just chill and relax. That being said, I am so excited for summer vacation to begin. I love just being able to sleep in until hubby has to go to work then spend the day ticking things off at our leisure. It stays light until about 10 pm here so our days are long and lazy!! I know many of you are officially out of school now-we still have 3 long weeks to go-so in an effort to keep my sanity and dream of those long lazy summer days I put together some summer fun ideas to share with you all!!

So, besides school coming to an end and getting to just laze around another exciting bonus for us this summer is we get to go visit family in Florida for a little while and I get to see my brother, sister in law, nephew, and meet my niece! I have seen most of them in about 3 years, and I've never met my niece so it will prove to be a super exciting summer. The kiddo also has a girlfriend from Florida coming up to visit us! See, it just keeps getting better and more exciting the more I type!!!

I've been working on a summer bucket list for us so we have some fun goals and things we can look forward to accomplishing before going back to school. Here it is:

Summer Bucket List 2013

01 Climb Grouse Grind	23 Visit a Botanical Garden
02 Take silly pictures at the Top of the grind	24 Visit Kit’s Beach
03 See the eye of the Wind	25 Visit 2nd Beach pool
04 Check out the Peak of the Grind	26 Hike Pacific Spirit Park
05 Zip Line	27 Read 5 book’s-All from Different Genre’s
06 Go to the Aquarium	28 Make Popsicle's
07 See & Explore a lighthouse	29 Go Kayaking
08 Hike 4 Out of Town Trails	30 Have dinner on a Patio
09 Have a Park Picnic	31 Take walks @ Sunset
10 Have a Beach Picnic	32 Explore Stanley Park
11 Collect Sea Shells	33 Do Yoga Outside
12 Explore a Cemetery	34 Get a Picture with Every Relative you Visit
13 Find a Tombstone from 155-1600’s & Write a Story About that Person	35 Create Poem Art From an Old Book
14 Build a SandCastle	36 Have a Movie Marathon
15 Make a picture in the Sand with colored Bubbles	37 Create & Prepare one Unique Recipe
16 Learn a new Card Game	38 Play Frisbee
17 Teach Someone a New Card Game	39 Fly a Kite
18 Learn to Stand-Up PaddleBoard	40 Have a Sundae Bar
19 Play with Sparklers	41 Watch a Sunrise on the Atlantic
20 Watch Fireworks	42 Watch a Sunset on the Pacific
21 Make S’More’s	43 Make a Summer 2013 T-Shirt
22 Visit 3 Museums	44 Spend one Entire day outside

I have no idea how to make it printable. I tried several different tutorials but google docs was not liking how I made this so I just copied & pasted it. 

So, our summer vacation doesn't start for 3 weeks. I am making this list now though so we can sock away some money for the expensive things (such as ziplining), but also so when the 29th comes and my overly active teen is looking at me with giant owl eyes saying "what do we do now" I have a game plan!

Some of these things are very specific to us and our area, the vacation we will be taking, etc. I did try to make them fairly generic though. The Grouse Grind is a path, with "stairs" almost that goes up the side of Grouse Mountain. You start at the bottom of the trail & make your way up to the peak. It's a fabulous climb, most people can do it in 30 minutes, the one time I did it before the rain last year I did it in an hour & 5 minutes. It's really tough. But, the top is gorgeous! I am looking forward to taking the kiddo and doing the whole peak experience with the eye of the wind (a big wind turbine), seeing the grizzly's, the lumberjack show, and just exploring the top of the mountain as I've never been to the top of a mountain!! I added links to our local places we will be going, but you can google those thing in your area, they are quite easy to find.

I do have some other bucket list ideas to link you all to:

(FYI the Img Credit will link you to where I found the original image through my search, none of these are my idea. The last one if someone knows who that belongs to I'd love to link directly do them, but it was an image only found on pinterest. So, if someone knows who the original blogger is let me know!)

Img Credit

Img Credit

I used this last year when we moved & it was a life saver! With all the unpacking and stuff it still allowed us to have a great time, yet get things done!

Img Credit

Here are links to lists of suggestions for creating your own summer bucket list: 

101 Fun Things for Teens to do this Summer

50 Ideas For Your Summer Bucket List

30 Fun things to do with your kids

100 Free Things to do with Your Kids this Summer

If you still want more ideas come follow my Summer boards on Pinterest here: 

Summer

Summer Fun

Summer Vacation 2013 

So, those should give you some good ideas. Now here is a little printable I created so you can make your own bucket list. It's pretty basic, it did have a border when I created it but that isn't showing up in google drive. *sniff, sniff* But, it will allow you to at least print something & start brain storming with your kids what you all want to do this summer!!!