The summer of 2010 was crazy. I definitely worked too much and played too little. Instead of being refreshed, I was exhausted by the end of August. It actually took me the rest of the year to fully recuperate. That will not be happening again this year in regards to things that I have some degree of control over. Of course that does not mean that life will be all play and no work. Rather, I have noted where thing went wrong last year and I am adjusting accordingly. In fact, my family has dubbed Summer 2011 as “The Summer of Fun (with the people that we love).
When school ended last week, our family gathered in our planning spot (the bed in Reggie and my room) and we wrote down all of the things that we wanted to do over the summer. We’re not going on any major trips, since our travel budget was used up earlier this year with the cruise and the trip to Walt Disney World. That’s totally fine though, because there are so many fun (and free!) summer activities for kids in NYC.
After writing down the things that we wanted to do for the entire summer, we each picked two things that we really wanted to do in July. Here are our top eight:
1. Bob the Builder water park (Sean)
2. Cars 2 (Sean) – Reggie took them on Friday and the kids really enjoyed it while Reggie that it was “okay”.
3. Mini Golf (Michael)
4. Sushi Place (Michael)
5. Baseball game (Reggie)
6. Music Mixer exhibit at Sony Wonder Technology Lab (Reggie) – Admission is free, so everyone can go to this! (We did go to the Lab and it was fun. However, the Music Mixer exhibit was closed 🙁 .
7. Camping (me) – I have finally (I think!) talked my city guys into roughing it. (Although their “mandatory indoor bathrooms” insistence isn’t exactly roughing it!)
8. The World’s Largest Dinosaurs exhibit at American Museum of Natural History (all) – We had went to the museum a month ago to see the exhibit, but the there were no more tickets left. We had promised Sean that we would come back for it, so we need to make that happen. (We went. The kids enjoyed the dinosaur dig portion of this exhibit but it was The Brain exhibit that we all ended up talking about for days afterward!)
That was our starting off point. (I will be checking off the items as we complete them. ) We’re constantly adding and taking things off the list, but I’m confident that this summer is going to be a ton of fun! Have you planned any fun summer activities yet? Is there anything that we should add to our list?
P.S. If you need any ideas regarding family-friendly activities in NYC, be sure to check out my new weekly “7 Things to do in NYC” post over at FamilyFinds. (Many of my picks will be free or low-cost so that everyone can enjoy them!)