My family and I are ticking off quite a few items on our summer bucket list, and it's incredible how the list has really made this summer unfold differently than our normally busy, scheduled summers. I'm loving the "unplanned-ness" of our days and spending time doing activities that focus on good old fashioned, local, natural, spontaneous fun. And in that spirit, late last week I put the call out to nearby friends to meet at the beach for a dinner picnic. It's a week of bir

My husband and kids & I sat around the table for lunch on a rainy June day and talked about what we wanted to do this summer when the skies finally turned blue and the days were long. Before that, during a quick mommy getaway, I had had an aha! moment realizing it was time for our little family to start having more simple, local adventures and natural world discoveries this summer, not scheduled skills camps. When I was growing up, we didn’t go to daycamp or bike camp or ev