Happy Tuesday Everyone! I hope your week is going well.

As you may know, things here are taking off and we’re having a great first part of our summer vacation. In case you’ve missed the last couple of days, you can catch up here and here

OK! Onward…

Today, I’d like to tell you a story for just a minute (OK, it may be more like 5) anyway… I want to tell you about why we do the Summer of Fun lists.

  A Tale of a List  

I’ve shared how I wanted to find ways to connect with the boys and I mentioned needing to keep things free or nearly so. Welllll, there’s a little bit more to it than that.

Once upon a time a Summer of Fun List was born out of life getting crazy. Crazy doesn’t begin to describe how things can get around here. Unfortunately, crazy doesn’t always stop with everything that needs to be done or with running here and there; sometimes, crazy leaks into other areas, um, like into finances.  

♫*cue dramatic music*♫ (you heard it in your head, didn’t you?) 😉

Over the last few years, our family has been hit with some fairly devastating blows to our finances. I won’t whine or bore you with all the gory details, lets suffice it to say, the expenditure of a family vacation has not been in the realm of possibilities for several years now and possibly won’t be for a least a few more.

♫ *cue the tear jerking music*♫

Having said that, let me say this, I didn’t think it right to not have something for the kiddos to do. Sure, we would love to go on a family vacation (my dream is a trip to Scotland), but Mr. Right and I agreed that it was going to be quite some time before we could even begin to think about a ‘real’ vacation — hopefully it will be before our kids are grown and on their own 😉

So, we agreed we would need to find alternatives!

Viola!

The First Summer of Fun List was born.

♫*cue happy ending music*♫

The Moral of the Story

As I look back over the last several years, I can see the Summer of Fun lists have taught us:

♥ How to grow together as a family. I believe that’s in part due to God allowing the financial woes to be placed in our path so we could learn life doesn’t always require money for it to be meaningful.  I believe God gives us the the problems we are meant to have in order to grow us in the right areas of our faith.

♥ A better understanding of what it means to fully rely on God. It’s not been easy to say no to so many things we want to do; to say no to the things the kids want; to not know how we would afford any fun, and yet, through prayer and learning to be patient many wonderful things have come through these Summer of Fun lists.

♥ Summer vacations can be anything we want them to be. I’ve only started discovering this as we have done the lists. We get to decide what we do, when we do it, and how we want our summers to look. We don’t necessarily have to ‘go’ somewhere for it to be a vacation.

♥ Memories are created through interaction and connection, not through the amount of money we spend. Not being able to ‘go’ on vacation doesn’t mean we can’t create some pretty amazing memories. Some of my favorite memories didn’t cost a single penny

♥ Hard times are going to come, what we do with those times is up to us. Isn’t it amazing how something that feels like it’s going to blow your world apart can actually bring you to some of the most amazing moments of your life?

Not the End… Just the Beginning

I’m sure you noticed the lack of an activity today. We did one, but I wanted to share this with you. We’ll get back to the activities with the next post.

See you later,

                 ♥ Robyn