Four Lessons Learned from Summer ’22

My first big lesson-learned from this summer is that we would have been way better off with some sort of schedule. My husband and I both work from home and we had family to help with any child care needs, so this was the first summer we didn’t send our kids to summer camp full time. Both kids had sports camps (baseball, football x2, soccer) so it really wasn’t feasible to have them at a summer camp all day every day when we would be spending a lot of time picking them up for sports camps and then returning them.  

Instead, we decided to keep them at home and then have them go to grandma’s house here and there if my husband and I couldn’t get them to their camps during the day. Oftentimes my husband and I were on morning meetings and this meant the kids would get up at whatever time they wanted and watch TV until my husband or I got a break and could get them to get some sort of breakfast.  

I usually had to wake my daughter up at 10am or she’d definitely keep sleeping. Then she didn’t want breakfast right after waking up, so my son would eat and then my daughter would finally feel like eating closer to noon. Noon!!  

What a mess our schedules were. With such late breakfasts, lunchtime was closer to 2pm and then suddenly it felt like dinner was upon us and no one was hungry. Not only that, but there was waaaay too much TV watching this summer (and by this, I mean kids You Tube channels, of course). This has been a hot summer so going outside was rare. We did manage to get them to a local waterpark a few times when my husband had a work break. 

If I had it to do over (which is why I’m writing this warning for myself for 2023), I would have some sort of schedule planned. I would most likely set a 10am alarm for my daughter. Then I would plan for them to have breakfast and then stay off the TV for a while. I would enforce some screen time limits and then allow them to choose when they used up that time throughout the day. I would also take them to the library more so we could add in additional reading. I would also have liked to get some activities for them to do during the day when it was too hot to go outside. Next year! 

Another lesson I learned from this summer was to plan meals better. My kids lived off of far too much cereal and random snacks for lunch (hello Mac and Cheese cups from Costco). As I described before, there was sometimes 2 hours between when my son would get up and when I’d wake up my daughter. Usually my son would make himself a bowl of cereal or a frozen waffle. My daughter always ended up with cereal. When they visited grandma’s house, they got a little variety with oatmeal and pancakes, but they still had too much cereal for my liking. 

Then lunch was hit or miss because they were hungry at different times. It usually ended up being a sandwich or mac and cheese cup. Near the end of the summer, I found some chicken bites from Costco (tasted almost like Chick Fil A) that they loved and those were very easy to make. Not bad, but there wasn’t much variety.  

Next summer, I’d like to make some batch meals like a casserole or taco meat at the beginning of the week and then have something they can warm up every day. Also, I still have a deep desire to revamp our breakfast menus. I’ve wanted to do this for a couple years. I’m hopeful that I can add in oatmeal and maybe some egg cups in muffin tins. Hopefully I can try some new recipes this winter and then we’ll have a better menu when summer rolls around.  

Another lesson from this summer was to make a plan for a week long (or more) vacation. This year, for the first time, we planned a big Spring Break vacation. We visited Arizona and then Disneyland/Hollywood Studios. This was an amazing trip. I think taking that trip may have caused me to be a little nonchalant about planning something during the summer. 

Now that summer is coming to a close, I’m really sad we didn’t take advantage of the kids being out of school and take a big family vacation. It’s so hard during the school year to take the kids out of school to go anywhere and I’m disappointed that we didn’t take the chance to go somewhere. 

Next summer we need to plan a big family vacation. When I was a kid, my family took a two week long family vacation every summer. On these vacations we saw Mt Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, Roswell, the Mall of America, the Great Lakes, Disneyland, Zion, Bryce Canyon, the Red Woods, Hawaii, and so many other neat places. My kids are getting older and although we’ve taken family vacations here and there, now is the time to start a traditional vacation every summer. 

Finally, my last big reminder for next year is that we need to make camping reservations WAY IN ADVANCE! This year was the first time we’ve really tried to make reservations. Usually we go places that have been first come, first serve, but since the pandemic they’ve all switched online reservations. 

This made it very difficult to grab a camping spot at the last minute, which is usually how we decide to go camping. Deciding to go camping usually goes like this for us: 

Monday: I don’t think we’re doing anything this weekend. Hmm. That’s interesting. 

Tuesday: Oh look, we still have this weekend free. Are we forgetting something? 

Wednesday: Hey, maybe we could go camping. How’s the weather look? Let’s think about it. 

Thursday: OMG hurry up and get ready, we are going camping and we need to get up there and claim a spot NOW. 

Friday: Somehow we did and we are camping. 

Next summer I am hoping we can just pick a few weekends, make the reservations, and then we have to plan our time around those weekends.  

Hopefully next summer, I will remember to return to this post and my future self will thank me for making this list and the summer of 2023 will be even more amazing. 

Do you have any tips or reminders that you hope to remember next summer? I’d love to hear them in the comments below!