Park Challenge & Family Treasure Box

Today is finally the last day of school for my son. School is FINALLY out! According, to Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of social media, we are the very last ones to get out for the summer.  THE VERY LAST ONES!!!

Now I'm not one of those mother who plans out every minute of our summer.  Not that there is anything wrong with planning.  It's just not how we roll around here in summer.  I love not being ruled by the calendar or clock and being able to do whatever we want.  (Not that we don't have any set plans, we have some things we do every summer like VBS, summer reading at the library, baseball and vacation.)

But I don't want to just do nothing.  Because nothing leads to fighting and fighting leads to a crazy mom!  So along with sprinkler time, afternoon movies, summer reading and other play, I thought it would be fun to try something new this summer.

Park Challenge:
So we got out the map and drew a 30 mile circle around our house, noting where all the park would be.  I came up with 12 parks. We are going to see how many, we can visit this summer before we go on vacation in the middle of July (to Idaho, YAY!!!).

We are park people anyways and spend a lot of time there in the fall and spring but summer adds a bit of a challenge here in Texas since all park going has to be done in morning, preferably early morning. But we are going to give it a try.  It might mean getting ourselves together a bit earlier in the morning and going, but I think it will be worth it.

Sorry it's a little blurry but paint
was involved, so pictures came second

Family Treasure Box:
In preparation for our park challenge, the kids made a treasure box to store treasures they find at the park (and anywhere else we go this summer).  We grabbed an old shoe box and I let them choose how to decorate it. They choose paint.  This was a great project because they had to work together since we only have one treasure box for the whole family.
We already have some treasures to go in it, since we collected shells last Saturday at one of our regular park. We call it the lake park because well it has a lake.  Our other regular park, we call the duck park cuz you guessed it, it has a stream with ducks.  We are super creative with our naming around here.


So if you need plans to Jazz up your summer, you can join us on our park challenge. Or come up with a challenge of your own, like how many different places can you eat ice cream this summer.  {Ok, I'm kind of wishing I had thought of that challenge before I told the kids about the park challenge but I'm sure the park challenge is healthier for us and cheaper!}

If you decide to do any challenge, leave me a comment and let me know.  Follow Coffee With Us 3 on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our challenge. {Follow buttons on the very top of the sidebar} I will also update here on the blog when we are all done.

Happy Summer Everyone!

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