Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Family Fun List 2016

It is time for my annual look back at how we did on our fun list last year, and look ahead to what fun things we say we're going to do this year. Last year's post has some of the history of this tradition, if you're curious. (Short version: I suggested the idea a few years ago and we all liked it so we've made it a tradition.)

Last year wasn't a very good year for our list. I think that is because we spent a lot of weekends working on house things, in support of our remodeling project. I should post some pictures of that sometime- basically, we expanded our living room by connecting our house to our garage, and we added on a new office. We also moved Petunia to our old office/guest room and turned Petunia's old room (the smallest in the house) into a guest room/music room.

So, that was a lot of work. There was a lot of boxing and unboxing, and we did the interior painting ourselves. We are still not done- our garage is a mess, and we haven't painted the skirting boards in the hallway. But my office is set up (finally! I just finished putting things in place last week) and things are mostly sorted into their final locations, even if their storage there is not yet optimal.

Anyway, we were busy, and didn't have as much family fun as we'd have liked.

Here's the list from last year:

  1. Go buy a doughnut at a doughnut shop (Petunia) DONE
  2. Got to a candy shop and buy candy (Pumpkin) DONE (This was done on our Labor Day visit to Old Town)
  3. Go on an Amtrak or Coaster train (Mr. Snarky) NOT DONE
  4. Go to an art museum (me) DONE (We visited the Timkin Museum in Balboa Park- perfect size for little kids!)
  5. Have a beach day with friends (Petunia) DONE (We did this more than once, in fact.)
  6. Make a LEGO town in the living room (Pumpkin) DONE (It was done before I posted the list last year!)
  7. Go to the Safari Park and see the tigers (Mr. Snarky) DONE (Their new habitat is cool, and we were lucky enough to see one up close.)
  8. Explore a new neighborhood (me) DONE (I'm calling our after-Christmas visit to the Living Coast Discovery Center and the Chula Vista Third Avenue Village area an exploration.)
  9. Visit the old mission in Mission Valley (Petunia- with some prompting from Mr. Snarky) DONE (The kids liked it)
  10. Walk around our neighborhood and look at holiday decorations (Pumpkin- to be done either at Halloween or Christmas time) DONE (at Christmas time)
  11. Visit the Friendship Park at the border (Mr. Snarky) NOT DONE - turns out, you need to do this in not-rainy season because the access road floods.
  12. Ride a surrey bike (me- I'm telling you, it will be on the list for as long as everyone else lets me put it there)  NOT DONE. Boo. We just didn't get to it.
Here is a picture of Pumpkin taking a picture of a turtle during our visit to the Living Coast Discovery Center:



She got the camera for Christmas and loves taking pictures. She takes some surprisingly great ones of Petunia.

And here are the plans for this year. You'll notice a lot of repeats, but also a few new ones:

  1. Make a LEGO city in our living room (Petunia)
  2. Walk around the neighborhood looking at Christmas decorations (Pumpkin)
  3. Visit the Friendship Park at the border (Mr. Snarky)
  4. Ride a surrey bike (me)
  5. Get ice cream from an ice cream truck (Petunia)
  6. Go climbing at Solid Rock (Pumpkin)
  7. Go on a real train ride (Mr. Snarky)
  8. Go out to brunch (me)
  9. Go the train restaurant (Petunia- this is The Station, in South Park)
  10. Have a picnic at a park (Pumpkin)
  11. Go get a doughnut at a dougnut shop that isn't Krispy Kreme (Mr. Snarky wants us to try some new doughnuts, apparently)
  12. Visit a botanical garden (me)
Bonus: Go to Boomers 

I allowed the bonus to avoid a meltdown when Pumpkin remembered she wanted to do that, but didn't want to drop any of her other items. We all agreed on the bonus.

Here's to a fun 2016!

2 comments:

  1. This is a good tradition. It's so easy to get caught up in the routine and let opportunities slide, and this is a nice way to minimize that.

    We just took a train ride--I'll be writing a post about it soonish, which based on my posting for the past year means hopefully sometime this month. We're fans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! That was why I started it, and it has been successful so far. It will be interesting to see how it fares as the kids get older.

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