197 - The Summer Plan
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Show Notes:
Summer is here—and after a long school year of hard work, it’s time to kick up our feet and play! Today’s episode is going to be fun and two-fold. First, we’ll talk about the practical: how to plan your summer well. Then, we’ll dive into part two and talk about the actual summer plan and what kind of mindset can help you have a summer filled with both rest and play!
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
Today's episode is gonna be fun and it's gonna be twofold. Okay? The first part is gonna be how to plan your summer well, which is the practical side, and then the second part is gonna be the summer plan, which is like the mindset side. So I'm excited to get to it. But before we do a couple of updates.
First of all, I hope you enjoyed May is for Mamas. I had some of the most special guests on that month and it was so great. If you missed any episodes, you should totally go back and listen to every single one. Listen, in case you missed it, it's June. I'm so thrilled. It's June, school Is out, which means new routines and plans and daily life with all four kids here at home, but also it means less driving back and forth and I'm just so excited to be home with my kids. Hey, if you're new around here, it also means that this is the last month that you get to hear from me before I take a whole month off in the month of July. I always like to take off January and July just to reset to spend time with my family and get new ideas for the podcast.
So here's a couple things you need to know. The next three episodes are gonna be fun. First, there's this one, a fun summer episode. Then you're gonna get a back-to-back episode, part one and part two with my husband to celebrate our 15th year anniversary. And then the very end of June is gonna be my 200th episode, which is so crazy and it's gonna be fun and a little bit different.
Also, wanted to update you on the book club. It's kind of getting a little refreshed. So I have a Facebook group you can join that has been very dormant for several years. I don't really like, I don't really like Facebook. I'm not really on Facebook, but I will say it's a great group format. So we're just gonna kind of revive that.
If you wanna talk about the summer reading, which is gonna be drum roll, the Wing Feather Saga. I'm so excited. So many of my friends have recommended this. I'm very into children's fiction these days. We've read through Narnia, we've, my husband and I have read through Harry Potter. We read Narnia with the kids. Harry Potter was just me and my husband, not for the kids yet, and I just love this whole genre. It is so fun to just get lost in another story in another world. And Wing Feather Saga comes so highly recommended by one of the most amazing people, and I feel like he's like the Michelangelo of our time. I'm totally getting on a tangent right now, but Andrew Peterson wrote it so great.
So that's gonna be the book club focus for this month, and you can find out more about that at nancyray.com/bookclub. You are listening to Work and Play with Nancy Ray, episode 197. Much of our daily lives can be divided into two categories, work and play. Simply put, that is where our life and our legacy take place.
This is a podcast all about learning to work and play well, which leads to a healthy soul and a fulfilling life. Let's dive in.
Okay, the first part of this episode is gonna be all about planning for your summer. If you have not sat down and planned out your summer yet, this is gonna be a quick overview of how you can do that efficiently, effectively, and also make it kind of fun.
So the first thing that I do is I plan my months out, like big picture, the big stuff. Then I plan my weekly rhythms, then I plan my loose daily routine, and then I kind of plan for my projects or activities or spontaneous things I would like to do. Let's jump into each of those in a little more detail.
Number one, planning your months. This is the big stuff. I get out my calendar, my actual, whether you have like an actual planner, which is what I use, or a wall calendar. Here's my advice. Get a pen and some really great highlighters and write down everything, everything you have scheduled, any kind of trips on your books, any appointments, anything that you can think of. You write it down, you block it off, you write down any commitments that you've already made. Also, I like to go ahead and take a peek at the school calendar for the upcoming year. Write in the first day of school, write in the open houses, because you know those schools already have those things written down in their calendars.
You can just usually find 'em on the website. That way you already know when summer is gonna start coming to a close so you can really plan it from start to finish. Then I get my Mildliners, which I'm slightly obsessed with. They're these highlighters that are the most beautiful colors. They have like a fat tip, pen tip, what am I trying to say, at one end and then like a thin one at the other end and they double as a highlighter or a pen, like a marker. They're great. Highly recommend. I will try to leave those in the show notes and add them to my Corner Store as well because I just am such a fan.
This is another tangent, but I lost my bag of Mildliners for like three weeks and I just went to Sam's Club and bought a giant bulk thing of them. I did not know that they sold them there and it made my day. I got all of them back and I'm so excited to use them all summer. So as you're planning out your months, write in everything on paper, but then go back with your highlighter or your Mildliner or whatever you use and make it colorful, like color code the trips, color code the weekly things that you're gonna do every week. It just makes you feel a little bit more excited and bright and cheerful about summer.
That's my tip for you. Okay. Number two, once you have all of those big trips marked off in your monthly planner. Look at your weekly rhythms that you want and go ahead and write down every single week the things that you want to do. For instance, Sabbath is really important for our family. You guys have heard us talk about this.
We're not gonna be home every weekend to observe Sabbath in the way that we would like to, but on the weekends we're home. I'm gonna go ahead and write that into my calendar. Also, we're probably gonna have one or two pool day events, pool trips a week. We don't have a pool, we don't have a neighborhood pool, but we have a gym membership and it is a whole lot of work for me to get four little kids ready to go to the pool.
So I'm gonna just go ahead and say I'm not, I'm not gonna be a family that takes my kids to the pool every day. That's not happening, but maybe once or twice a week maybe. But I'm just gonna say maybe like Wednesdays are our pool days and we'll try it that way for a little while and I can change it if I need to.
And then choosing a date, like say Fridays or something like that for play dates or also writing in like home days, like every Monday is gonna be a home day is just how it's gonna be. Whatever that looks like for you, you go ahead and think about that weekly rhythm that you want. Once you kind of have thought that through, try it out for a few weeks, write it down for just a few weeks and then you can always adjust and change as you need to. Thirdly, after your big monthly plan, after your weekly rhythms, I want you to just write out what a great summer day would look like for you with structure with your kids.
But I want you to keep in mind, not just your kids and their schedule, but you, what would it look like for you? I'm already getting excited about the fact that I'm gonna maintain a pretty solid morning routine during the summer before my kids wake up because I'm gonna be with those little rascals all day and I know that I'm just gonna need some time for myself. And so I plan to wake up before them, have my quiet time and my coffee, do a workout/maybe get some work done and then do my workout later.
I'm trying to figure that out, but I'm gonna have like an hour is my plan before they wake up every morning. Then we're gonna be outside first thing before it gets too stinkin’ hot and we're gonna have snack lunch, and then I have this little plan for rest time or quiet time in the afternoon.
I want it to be really exciting and fun for my kids. And Sally Clarkson talks about how she used to have a little quiet time basket for each child and each child would have a special place in the house where they would observe their little quiet time in the afternoon. And when it gets so hot and the North Carolina sun, I want my kids to get excited about their quiet time because it's gonna happen pretty much every day.
Like after lunch when the baby goes down for his nap, I want all my kids to just kind of take a break, have some quiet time in the house and allow me to get some things done. So I'm excited to hopefully like make that fun for them.
And then chores, every day we're gonna just knock out a few chores so they don't, they're not totally lazy. Watch a show, eat dinner, you know, have dinner as a family, and then kind of just go through a more loose, loosely held bedtime routine. We might, you know, go outside for more late evening walks or hang out with the neighbors a little bit later or read more books a little bit later, you know, later bedtimes. All of that is totally fine, but just following this loose daily routine is really helpful, I think. Not just for the kids, but for me to have moments in my day, in the morning, in the afternoon where there's like this quiet, peaceful time that I can look forward to. And also be really energized to do fun things with the kids while they're around and making, making them lunch or making them snacks or you know, loading them up to go to the pool, whatever it is. I know that those things are kind of set in my schedule and I have them to look forward to.
Okay, we got the monthly, we got the weekly, we got the daily, now let's just talk about all of those projects and activities that you like, don't know how to squeeze into those things that you just outlined. So that includes like the day that you wanna take or two to clean out the garage, the day you wanna take to go to a museum or the zoo. Or maybe you want to plan a day trip to the beach or a birthday party event or a baby shower. Any activity that you are wanting to do as a family or by yourself or with your friends that's gonna be like an all day thing or an all afternoon thing.
You need to plan for these things and this is what gets me, this is to me the hardest part. So I think that it is important to make sure that you zoom out and don't over plan your summer to allow for these things. And I am gonna aim to tackle one of these things a week.
So whether that is a house project, like cleaning out the garage or planning for my best friend's baby shower, I want the planning and the focus to kind of alternate every other week. One being a house project and then one being an event, if that makes sense.
I'm gonna just go ahead and say, I don't know how this is gonna work, but this is my plan and I think it's a good one. It might change to like maybe doing like two projects a month versus like every other week. Or maybe it'll change month to month because some of our months we have a lot of travel and other ones we don't. And so I think that I'm just gonna go back to the monthly overview and say, okay, if it's, if we don't have travel going on that week, then maybe that's good for like one project to focus on.
Bottom line is make a list of those things. Make a list of the projects or activities that you want to do this summer. And I'm gonna try to limit my list to eight because there's what roughly 10 weeks of summer and I feel like eight projects or activities that are like pretty demanding of me. It's, it's pretty solid. That gives me like two weeks off with no project or activity I'm aiming for. So that's my plan for those kind of not random, not spontaneous because they're, they're planned, they're activities, but they're things that just are kind of outside of the normal daily, weekly, monthly schedule that we also want to be part of our summer.
Okay, that was all about planning your summer, but now let's talk about the summer plan. You might be thinking Nancy, what in the world are you talking about? What's the difference? Well, the summer plan is not so much your calendar of events or your rhythms or routines, it's more of the mindset of summer. Like what's the game plan here?
And I want you to think about all of the beautiful things that you just love about summer. Like I love laying on my back and feeling the sun on my skin. I love getting a good book and eating a popsicle and just sitting in the yard while my kids play around me. And I read. I love these little things about summer that are very simple, but they just make you excited. And here's the thing, the summer plan is all about making summer fun. Not just for the kids but for me and for you, the mom who's listening to this.
So I want you to just pause while you're listening to this podcast because I mean you could go write it down later if you have some time to journal or write this down, that's great. But really you don't need to, you can do this while you're listening to this podcast. Think about your favorite things about summer, what makes you feel good in summer, what's your favorite thing to eat in summer? What's your favorite thing to wear or to smell like? What to you encompasses the feeling of summer? And I want you to think about that.
And then I want you to embrace that as your summer plan. Like my summer plan is gonna be to wear this favorite summer outfit and paint my nails this favorite color and keep my hair nice and short because I like that. And make sure that I also am having fun and reading good books and you know, laying in the sunshine or hanging out like with friends,
I don't know, whatever it is that makes you so happy in the summertime, that's the summer plan. Making sure that that plays into this. Like what is your summer playlist? You know, let's have that playing in the background. This is not just for the kids, this is for you mama. I want you to feel like you are gonna love summer.
And so I have created some summer rules for me and I'm just gonna share those with you. I still feel like I'm gonna add to these, this is not my final list, but this is a good start and this is where I want you to kind of maybe make your own summer plan for yourself. And these are some summer rules that I've written for myself.
You can also write some for your whole family. I've seen a lot of people write some summer rules, which is a fun idea, but I'm talking about you. What do you want out of your summer? So for me, I want to make a plan, but I wanna hold it loosely. I wanna make things fun, but I also wanna really focus on keeping them simple.
Remembering that kids are way more easily pleased than we think. We don't have to bend over backwards for them to be super happy. I want to really focus on taking care of my body by working out and eating enough healthy food and not just getting by with like leftover snacks from the pool bag. I want to implement an amazing quiet time for our whole family so that our kids learn to be by themselves and to be quiet and to enjoy that feeling.
I personally, I wanna start packing for all of the trips that we're taking at least three days ahead of time with printed packing lists all ready to go. I do not want to be a last-minute packer this summer cuz that equals stress to me. And I want to plan time for planning every single week. And then I could just loop back right around to the first thing I said,which is making a plan but holding it loosely.
That is a simple summer game plan for me. I feel like I want to add to this list. I wanna keep adding to it too. I wanna think about the things that matter to me that will make it a good summer for me and make sure that I am doing those things.
So a couple of ideas for the whole family that I've been writing out is popsicles are free game. You get unlimited popsicles, I'm just gonna keep them totally restocked all the time in our house. You don't need to ask mom for permission, eat as many popsicles as you want. I don't care. Another one, the kids get to choose dinner one time a week. They all get to huddle up and choose what do they want for dinner and then I will make whatever that is for them.
Pizza at the pool as much as possible. Anytime we get an opportunity to have pizza by the pool as a family, we just should say yes to that. It's one of our favorite things to do as a family.
Bedtimes are, let's say, not super strict. Like okay, lights out is not super strict, but you can get in the bed and stay as long as you want, as long as you're reading, it's fine. I'm not gonna tell you to go to sleep, but you have to be like in the bed quietly. Reading I think is gonna be our new bedtime policy.
And for our family, it's still important to set apart the Sabbath. Even in all of this travel and relaxation. And our schedule is not quite as routine as it is during the school year. I still want our kids to remember the Sabbath as different, which will, which will be interesting. I'll be interested to see how that goes. And that's it. I want you to keep thinking what's the summer plan for you? What is it that's gonna make this summer so joyful and so good to allow you to really walk with the Lord, to enjoy it and to rest and relax and have fun.
This is all about really incorporating play into our lives because man, we have done a lot of hard work over the school year. So now it is time to kick up our feet and play. Okay, let's talk about the Corner Store. It is where I share a book I'm loving and maybe a few things that I'm loving. You can always go to nancyray.com/cornerstore and it will take you directly to my Amazon affiliate store so you can see everything I've ever recommended here on the podcast or on Instagram.
Today I'm gonna be adding the Wing Feather Saga series. It's a four-part book series children's fiction, but I've heard such good things by Andrew Peterson for our summer reading, along with my favorite cheap sunglasses for summer, my favorite sun bum face stick. And I'm gonna add those mildliners, my favorite highlighters and markers that I'm obsessed with. Thank you so much for listening to episode 197 of work and play with Nancy Ray.
Everything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at Nancy Ray dot com slash podcast slash 197. And you can find me at nancyray.com or follow me @nancyray on Instagram. John Lubbock said rest is not idleness. And to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water or watching the clouds float across the sky is hardly a waste of time.
Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you.
