There has always been a charm to summer in Springfield for me. The trill of nighttime crickets and fireflies blinking through tall grasses. The hot blanket of an Ozarks afternoon, rolling over me as I leave an air-conditioned building. The clear nights standing in line for frozen custard or pineapple whip.
These are ordinary pleasures of this time of year. But modern parenting has a way of making ordinary feel insufficient.
I send a “things to do” email every Sunday night to tons of moms in the Springfield, Mo. area. It’s full of free, often outdoorsy ideas that always match the season we’re in.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the pressure parents feel to make summer magical with expensive vacations or enrichment camps. Since then, a working mother of three children described to me the harried exhaustion of managing piecemeal summer childcare and disrupted routines. For many families, summer isn’t slow at all. It’s a marathon parents sweat their way through.
During my working years, I remember feeling like seasons would slip through my fingers. For adults, the good parts of summer rarely happen by accident. They happen because one or both parents take a moment to make a plan.
Enter, my summer bucket list. It’s not expensive, and it’s not fancy, but it’s full of everyday delights that require a bit of dreaming with a pencil in hand.
My Ordinary Summer Bucket List
What do I mean by ordinary? I mean not full of tourism attractions. Most of life doesn’t include big, expensive outings. It includes mini excursions that are only 15 minutes from home and cost less than most admission tickets.
Tourism attractions are great for once or twice a year, but they don’t a summer make.
I will be sharing my summer bucket list with all of you, but not all at once in one big unattainable dump of ideas. Instead, I’ll be sharing one per week, as I experience them. My list will be a guiding star for my summer, and I hope you make one of your own. My list will include categories like these:
Outdoor-centered experiences
My bucket list, of course, includes trips to my favorite spots by the water: local pools, Moonshine Beach, Stockton Lake beaches, rivers and swimming holes. You can use my Swimming Guide for Springfield Families to pick out a few spots for your bucket list!
Summer is also a fantastic time to explore shaded trails, such as the Galloway Creek Greenway Trail with a trailhead at Sequiota Park. I’ll be exploring more shaded trails this summer, and putting them in my newsletter every now and then.
Town-centered experiences
There are some things that are best experienced in summer: batting cages, mini-golf, and ice cream at dusk come to mind. I have a list of local patios, coffee shops, dessert places, and recreation-oriented businesses that I’d love to try this summer. This week, my son and I picked a sunny day to try out Buttermilk, a little ice cream shop on East Cherry Street, not far from Pickwick. I had never tasted buttermilk ice cream before, and now it’s all I want in my life: rich and creamy with a slight tang that feels old-fashioned and indulgent. The cherry on top was wine red, and the chocolate sauce drizzled over the whipped cream looked housemade.
Bonus: The patio faces the new Tie & Timber Pizza Kitchen building, where a stunning mural by local artist Meg Wagler gives you something to look at while you savor a quickly melting sundae.
Visits like these certainly make the bucket list!
Home-centered experiences
Some of my favorite childhood memories of summer took place at home, making blueberry pancakes from the Krusteaz box after sleeping until the sun was high in the sky, or playing games on the family PC before heading out to the public pool.
For my son Leo, I have a lot of home-centered ideas for this summer. Some are plans for the kitchen, like making homemade ice cream with freshly picked fruit folded in, or mixing up fresh salsa from vegetables in my own garden.
Family-centered, intentional summer plans
Think cousins sleepover night, with board games and homemade goodies. Or a grandparents day out, where your kids spend one-on-one time with grandpa or grandma doing things the elders love to do, which in my parents’ case is planting new flowers in their gardens in the hot summer sun. My cousin’s family loves to organize a fish fry, where all the grandkids and cousins head to the lake for a memorable night of fried food.
What’s on your bucket list? I’d love to hear your family’s traditions, or new places you’d love to visit. Drop your thoughts in the comments, or send me a note at brittany@dearspringfieldmama.com.
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