Routine and Bucket Lists

I function best with routine.  It makes me feel in control, orderly, organized.  My little boys function best with routine.  (Their new bedtime routine is working swimmingly.) Even-my husband works best when plans are well-laid.  Basically, what I’m saying here is – we’re a bunch of Type A personalities here in the Garcia house.

However, I’m trying to teach myself to allow our routine to fall by the side occasionally.  Let’s be honest – a missed nap won’t kill anyone and if the house isn’t spotless upon falling into bed the walls won’t tell anyone that I’m a failure as a housewife.  I still crave the structure, but I also know that the unexpected brings my family such joy when it arrives on our doorstep.

Recently many of our mornings have been spent at the local YMCA.  I have been getting in a workout and the boys have been playing in the daycare room.  More importantly though, is that I’ve allowed the kiddos to enjoy time at the climbing wall and the skate rink too. Their eyes light up when they see me load toys in the car for Tot Skate or when I check them out of the daycare with climbing passes in my hand for Tot Climb. 
Yes – these things make John rush a little to eat lunch before getting on the bus for school.  And our little extras always mean that Nathan will fall asleep in the car before we get home to eat lunch, thus resulting in some funky dining consisting of lunch(?) at 2:30 and dinner at 6. But the boys are loving them and I can handle a day or two a week without lunch right at 11 and nap at 11:30. 

All this got me thinking about the upcoming spring and summer.  We always have such big dreams about the activities we’ll do as a family, the places we’ll go, the things we’ll see.  Yet, at the end of each summer I lament that we “didn’t do anything we wanted to do this summer.”  Part of this is because my Type A personality family functions with such routine that we forget to enjoy those warm months.  I mean…Saturday mornings are for running errands and Saturday afternoons are naps and yard work and Sunday morning we go to mass and by the time we have breakfast it’s too close to nap time to go do anything fun and….  Well – you get the drift! 

So we’ve worked on a bucket list for the summer.  Some of the items are simple activities we can do at home and some are day trips that we’ve always wanted to take.

I’m excited to see what this summer brings. It will be great to have a visual way of tracking what we’ve accomplished and what our summer has entailed.