10 Things That Are Working Well for Me This Summer

I love summer! The warm weather, the long days, and the more open schedule just thrills me and I’ve been soaking up this season.

AND, summer can be pretty wild when you change overnight from a pretty scheduled routine to more go-with-the-flow.

We have two family reunions this summer, but mostly we’re staying at home (which is our preference – summer in Utah is so glorious that we love to be home to enjoy it and travel at other times of the year).

That means that our daily life IS our summer and I want to make the most of it in a way that feels laidback and relaxed, but also fun and non-boring.

Here are some of the things that are working well for me this summer:

10 Things That Are Working This Summer

• Reading at the pool during swim team practice. At the beginning of summer, when I knew I’d be sitting by the pool multiple mornings a week while the girls did swim team, I realized it’d be very easy for me to spend the entire time on my phone every day. I didn’t want that – I wanted to read instead! So I committed that I wouldn’t bring my phone out to the pool with me and I’d always bring a book instead. It’s been so great to have that dedicated reading time each morning – I love it so much.
• Lunch together. I wrote a whole post about this but one of the best things we’ve done this summer is have lunch together every day out on the back patio. I love it so much! It’s a great time together, it means everyone actually eats lunch, it’s a nice hard stop for work from me, and then everything is cleaned up and done instead of lunch stretching out over hours and hours between six people.
• Branching out from my normal jeans all day every day wardrobe. For as long as I can remember, I’ve worn jeans pretty much every day. In the blazing Arizona summers, in Las Vegas’s blazing summers and in Texas’ blazing summers (have I . . . lived a lot of places with blazing summers? I guess I have!). After all this time, this summer felt like the time to try some new things and it’s been so fun to wear more jumpsuits, skirts, and dresses.
• Summer camps for Ella. We haven’t been much into summer camps in the past, but with Ella NOT doing swim team this year (plus being our most social child by a landslide), we thought she’d have a good time doing a few summer camps. She did an illustration camp the first week of summer and then she’s doing three weeks of pickle ball camp throughout the summer, which she has LOVED (I bought her these cute bike shorts for playing in and the other girls loved them so much I ended up buying each of them a pair – at under $7 each, it wasn’t hard to say yes!).
• Not having a nanny. Last year, the first thing on my list of things that were working for the summer was having a nanny five days a week, which is a huge indicator of how things change from year to year. This year, as we headed into summer, I thought it might be easier for me to NOT have a nanny this summer (for the first time in years, minus 2020) and so far this has proved to be true. I usually work in the morning for a few hours until lunch but it’s nice to have more flexibility if we want to do something in the morning or our schedule gets changed up a bit, plus I feel like my girls play better together and entertain themselves more without a nanny, rather than all vying for her attention or bickering about whose game they were going to play.
• Letting the shoe situation go. Last year, the thing I let go was worrying about my hair. If it got wet? It got wet. It was so freeing! This year, I just decided to stop worrying about the pile of shoes by the front door. I’ve decided to see it as a sign of the fun of a childhood summer rather than a mess and it’s working – I actually feel a little thrill of delight when I see them all tossed together in the entryway. (And then every few days, I have all the girls take their shoes back to their rooms to get things back to a zero baseline).
• The BEST summer sandals. I’ve talked about these so much over the last month but I can’t get enough of them! I’m wearing them almost every day and they dress up and down so well, are super comfortable and just look so good. After the last few summers trying to find a great everyday sandal, I couldn’t be happier with these.
• Getting outdoors more. This year, one of my biggest summer goals was to be outside more and it’s been so fun to focus on. As much as possible, I ride one of our electric scooters or my bike on nearby errands, we’re eating outside more, and I’m loving reading, playing games, or doing puzzles on the back porch. After our loooooong winter this year, it feels SO GOOD to soak up the sunshine.
• A favorite tee shirt. I’m loving this $12 ribbed tee shirt. I have it in three colors and it goes with everything – jeans, skirts, shorts, linen pants. Plus, I know from wearing and washing my long-sleeve version of it dozens of times over the winter that it holds up incredibly well.
• Saying yes as often as I can. This was one of my dad’s parenting philosophies and I think about it all the time, especially in the summer (particularly because my natural inclination is NOT to say yes). If the girls want to play a game? I try to say yes. Read another chapter aloud? Yes. Bike down to a new bakery? Yes. It’s fun for my girls and it’s just as fun for me to be more of a “yes” mom.

What’s working for you this summer? I’d love to hear!

if you liked this post about surviving summer, you might also like these other posts:

• 20+ Fun Ways to Make Summer Feel Special
• 20 Fun Summer Activities for Kids to Do at Home
• 8 Books to Read When It’s Too Hot to Go Outside