What are your times to treasure this summer?

With this being Victoria Day weekend in Canada, and next weekend being Memorial Day for the US, it feels like the unofficial start to summer is upon us.

Now, while my children are still near to my husband and I (so near I can holler up the stairs to reach them), I want to squeeze every precious moment out of our time. So, as the chief social director of this family, I've been thinking about how I want us to spend our time. Obviously, my grown kids will have their own ideas. But if I get my way, here are some of the times I want to treasure this summer:

     1.  Start up our long walks again. Summer Saturday mornings are perfect for us to walk either down to the beach or up to the market and coffee house.

     2.  Dinner of fish and chips on the beach. There's a walk-up window for Ivar's (fish and chips place) down at the beach. At least once each summer we go "out" for dinner. We take our fish and chips over to the shoreline and sit on one of the logs just feet from the lapping waves, while we dine al fresco.

     3.  Saturday evenings around the campfire making s'mores. A little more difficult to do as a family, now that my son is busy most Saturday evenings. But maybe he'll squeeze us into his busy calendar once or twice. In any case, we build a fire, roast hot dogs and make s'mores. Then we wait, and listen to the birds' last song, and look for bats. Some years are bat-ier than others. They're interesting to watch fly around.

                                                                                          
     4.  Have some friends over for an evening of games and dinner.

     5.  Make ice cream and sorbet at home. And for my daughters -- make slurpies at home! That got a +1 from both of them. Just an FYI, every summer on July 11 (7-11), the store 7-11 gives away free, small slurpies. Just keep that in the back of your mind. I usually check online near to that date, to see if the promotion is a "go" again this year.

     6.  Visit the lavender festival in July. This may be a girls-only excursion. I could be hard-pressed to interest the men in the family to go traipse through fields of lavender. But it's been on my list for several summers, and I couldn't get away. Sometimes the girls just gotta have fun, right?

     7.  There's an annual art festival in the downtown area of my town. We've missed it the last 3 years, due to scheduled dance performances of my daughters. But this year, the performances have been moved up one week! Woohoo! A fun Sunday afternoon for the family (not that the dance performances weren't fun -- back peddling, back peddling -- but we get to attend both activities. Whew, saved that one!).

     8.  Which brings me to this, lately our Sunday afternoons have been filled with yard and housework. For this summer, I'd like us to have more time for recreation and relaxation on Sunday afternoons. A nap on the chaise on a lazy Sunday afternoon, or a good book in the shade of the plum tree, or just a long lunch on the grass, will all fit the bill.

     9.  Some cheap backyard fun is also planned. We'll have our croquet tourney, play horse shoes, throw the frisbee, and get out the small ping pong table.

     10.  And finally, a family vacation. And yay! The whole family will be going. We're driving down the coast to California for a week. The 5 of us, stuffed into our small-ish sedan -- this should be interesting! It's a good two days drive to So. Cal. Are we there yet?

You'll notice, this isn't a list of projects to accomplish. There will be time for those, too. These are togetherness, "ya love me don'tcha?"  times to make memories to hold for my rocking chair days.

Do you have any times to treasure on your list for this summer? Please share.