Family Fun List 2019

I clicked back through my old Family Fun List posts (starting with last year's post) and discovered this is the sixth year we've written a Family Fun List: We started in 2013, when my kids were 5 and 3! I wrote in that first post that I hoped the kids would add more to the list as the got older. That has certainly come true! The list is now divided up with each family member getting three entries, with a bonus entry going to whoever had the fewest of the previous year's picks honored. And the kids are more attached to this tradition than I am.

We wrote this year's list in our rented beach house in Waihi Beach. Before I share it, here's how we did last year:

• Go to a trampoline place with a foam pit (Petunia) - DONE, courtesy of a party for the grade winners at our school jogathon. Pumpkin was the 6th grade girl who ran the most laps, so she got to go to the party, which was at a trampoline place. We paid for Petunia to go to, and crossed this one off the list!
• Art, Cuddles, and Doughnuts Day (Pumpkin... here's hoping we get a rainy weekend day!) - DONE. In fact, I like one of the things I drew so much I want to scan it in and make it a t-shirt in my Etsy shop. We spent an afternoon eating doughnuts, doing art, and cuddling, but that seemed to be enough.
• Got to a movie in a theater (Mr. Snarky... this is a big deal because neither Pumpkin nor I are big movie goers) - DONE. We saw the Grinch in December.
• Beach day (Me... actually, I'm hoping for several, but this will ensure I plan at least one good one!) - DONE. Obviously, with our recent vacation we had several beach days, but the one I counted for the list was the trip to Torrey Pines State Beach we took with a group of Pumpkin's day care friends in July.
• Family sewing day (Petunia... I do not own a sewing machine, so I guess we'll all be hand-stitching) - NOT DONE. Oops. And I had some mending I could have done....
• Go to [a local indoor rock climbing place] (Pumpkin) - NOT DONE. Oops. 
• Go to [a water park near my parent's house] (Mr. Snarky) - DONE. We did this one in August, when we picked the kids up from a week with my parents. However, the Arizona kids were already back in school, so our first choice water park wasn't open when we were there. We substituted another option - the indoor wave pool at Tempe's Kiwanis park. The kids loved it.
• Try a new restaurant (Me) - DONE. We tried out Waypoint Public in North Park. It was good, but I liked one of the other places we tried, the Little Italy Food Hall, better. The Food Hall is a food court with several vendors, though, and different family members ordered from different stalls, so I'm not sure it would really count.
• Have a picnic at a park (Petunia) - DONE
• Walk around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights (Pumpkin) - DONE
• Hike at least 400 ft of elevation (Mr. Snarky... someone learned his lesson about not being specific, I guess.) - DONE. We counted our hike over the head at Waihi Beach to Orokawa Bay. 
• Go to a special event at Balboa Park (Me... there are lots to choose from, but the current front runner is either the Diwali festival or the international food festival. Or maybe we'll get to both!) - DONE. We went to Balboa Park Summer Nights.
• Bonus: Go to a kids' museum: DONE. We made several visits to the kids' favorite museum in Arizona: The Mesa i.d.e.a museum.

And here's the list for 2019:

• Go to the San Diego kids' art museum. (Petunia. She was not pleased to find out we have one and she's never been!)
• Go to [a local indoor rock climbing place]. (Pumpkin, and we SWEAR we're going to do it this year.)
• Visit the slot canyon in San Diego country. (Mr. Snarky. He was not pleased to find out we have one and he's never been!)
• Go to a special event at Balboa Park. (Me. I love having the nudge to go and appreciate one of the truly great things about San Diego!)
• Have an outdoor ball sports day. (Petunia. This may have been influenced by the fact that we'd been playing some beach cricket and she loved it.)
• Go mini-golfing (Pumpkin. She thinks that we won't do it unless it is on this list, and she's probably right.)
• Go to a musical. (Mr. Snarky)
• Go get ice cream at a non-chain shop. (Me. I love ice cream.)
• Hold a no-braces party with at least one friend and all the food forbidden when wearing braces. (Petunia. She is really looking forward to getting her braces off! But this was poor choice strategy - we would have thrown her this party even if it wasn't on this list.)
• Walk around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights. (Pumpkin)
• Go on a boat-based animal viewing excursion. (Mr. Snarky. Apparently he has several options in mind.)
• Try a new restaurant in San Diego. (Me.)
• Bonus: Go to Rita's Italian Ice (Consensus choice from the kids, who both had one item on last year's list that we didn't do. And they right: the Rita's is not close to us, so I wouldn't take them there without this list.)

I'm looking forward to a lot of fun in 2019!