FlickrAs we grow, learn and develop alongside our family members, time can slip away faster than we can keep a hold on it. It affects us all, and over time we can lose years that upon first inspection seemed to fly by while we were unaware.
It’s for this very same reason that we have a duty to ourselves to remember the good times, but more importantly to manufacture the good times. Memory is a dead concept when we have nothing of import to remember. Life hurries, things decay, and we’ll all be old before we have chance to think about it. This needn’t be depressing, so long as we fill our lives with joy and wonder while we are lucky enough to be here with the family we love so much.
This summer is a perfect opportunity to craft the memories you’ll remember for a lifetime with your family. It might be the last summer that your children are here before they depart for their formative college years. It might be the summer where your children return home after college, and figure out what they’d like to do with the rest of their lives. Or, it might just be a summer where your children are growing up, and about to enter their first years of schooling altogether.
As a close, tightly knit family unit, every minute you spend together is a minute well spent. Here’s how you can bring some of the familial magic and inflate it during this upcoming summer.
Bring The Magic Home
Home is where to heart is. Spending part of this summer at home with your family will be enjoyed much more during this heatwave-laden summer if you implement:
FlickrGarden Upgrades
Now might be the time to upgrade the niceties of your garden space finally. This might include a seating area, developing an outdoor fireplace as a hub for conversation, or simply spending the summer gardening with your youngest child. This is the season where our gardens come to life, so it’s important we make the most of it.
Upgrading your garden will make it a more favorable place to host, unwind and spend hours conversing with your family. In a civilized instance, this might look like implementing new garden furniture that allows you to eat your meals outdoors under the shade of a parasol, or to have a stable platform to host a BBQ meal. In it’s most fun interpretation, this could be purchasing a SaluSpa Lay Z Spa Miami portable hot tub to unwind and cool off with your family and friends, in a way that requires much less maintenance and upfront cost than a static hot tub fixture.
Explore Your Local Geography
Making the most of your summer is in part achieved by making the most of the area that surrounds you. Over the years, it’s easy to fall into forgetting the little pleasures of your local community, and seeing what it offers. Go out of your way to explore nature trails, eat at restaurants you wouldn’t usually do, and travel to the far end of town to visit the shopping centers you never attend. This can lend you a new and insightful view of your town, and give your summer that invigorated feeling that doesn’t require you to stray far from your doorstep.
Rekindle The Adventures From Childhood
In the same vein as re-exploring the town you live in, why not revisit places that you used to enjoy with your kids if they’ve returned home for the summer? Visiting the places that were instrumental in their childhood will help them experience an old wave of nostalgia and positive emotion, and it can be a great way of recollecting and remembering the years gone past. This might be as simple as visiting the lake you used to fish at with your son or daughter, or visiting the local stadium of the sports team your child used to love.
Take The Magic Abroad
Sometimes, you might not feel like spending the summer at home is warranted. Sometimes, you need to go large and book a vacation that will echo through the years of your family history. You might like to:
Go Somewhere New
Taking your family somewhere new is a sure fire way to create a memorable summer. Many families keep holiday destinations close to their hearts and are hesitant to venture elsewhere. Once a country, resort or beach captures your heart, it can be difficult to veer away from it. However, the world is a large place, and there are many such places that might just capture your heart in the same way, and lend you that traveling perspective that will help your family grow together positively.
Why not change this summer up completely? Memories are best made when you have a new stimulus to remember. If your family is usually used to lounging around on a beach, why not try a snow holiday, skiing or snowboarding? It might seem completely out of your comfort zone, but why not try it? There’s nothing to lose, and you might enjoy yourself. When you come to recall the holiday, instead of ‘Hey, remember that time we went to our vacation spot?’ could turn into ‘Hey, remember the time we went completely left-field and experienced that adventure together? It all depends on your attitude going in. Of course, your money is yours to spend, and unwinding time is often coveted all year round. But sometimes, an adventuring spirit is all you need.
Permanent Vacation Homes
If your chosen destination pulls so strongly as to warrant you visiting with your family once more, first of all, congratulations! Not many people find such a magnetic place that their family can repeatedly enjoy so that it becomes a home from home. Why not try and procure a letting agreement for a holiday home there? If you can, get a mortgage on it and purchase it outright.
Owning a vacation home has a plethora of benefits. These are not only limited to having a static and dependable place to stay, but that matters too. What matters is that you have a place you can upgrade over time, potentially purchase land around, and become part of the local community in a much more grounded way than you could have if you didn’t live in the area.
This house can serve as a home that your children can safely visit when it comes to them taking their first vacations abroad. It can also serve as a retirement home for when it comes to selling your original home. By then, you’ll be so embedded in the local culture that moving there will feel like returning home, rather than moving home.
Visit Your Child
If your child is now living in a different city, pursuing the career of their dreams and proceeding successfully, why not visit them? Living in a hotel room for a couple of weeks can be a great way to break up the flow of your daily life, and let your child take the reigns for a change. This way you can comfortably explore a city with them and have them show you the results of their efforts. They’ll no doubt be immensely proud to have you and show you around their new life in the city.
Celebrate The Magic Made
The title of this article stipulates that this is to be your most memorable year. How will you remember it perfectly if you don’t take the time to effectively store your memories? Thankfully, in our modern technologically advanced age, we can all take photographs and videos with stunning detail at a moment’s notice.
But how do you best preserve and present these memories to those you wish to display them to, including your future self? Here’s how:
Get A PhotoBook Made
Getting a professional photo book made of your journeys through the summer can help preserve the original photographs, but also give you a beautiful and ‘official’ bound book to view them in. This can be stored and passed down through your family and pondered over for generations to come. Adding to your family heirlooms in this way can make you feel like you’ve paid the memories the respect they deserve.
Get An Heirloom Crafted
If you’re feeling creative, why not make a testiment to the summer you experienced with your family, that is never to be forgotten thanks to how beautiful it was? A simple plaque might seem too much, but a form of substantial carving that depicts a moment in the time spent with your family can serve as a physical, tangible reminder of the reasons that you started the family in the first place.
Life moves fast, if you don’t pay the attention it deserves to yourself and your family, you could miss it. Be sure to enact a number of these solutions, if not all, to craft a summer that you’d be proud to tell tales of for some time to come. Your children will no doubt remember all about it when it comes to providing their children with the same experiences.
