Summer Bucket List...Check!

It's taken a lot of hard work, a few messes, some sweat, and yes, some tears, but we've gotten a good start on our Summer Bucket List, crossing off summer fun one day at a time and getting a pretty good tan while we're at it.  I've always been a fan of tackling to-do lists, but I can get used to this kind of work!  Every morning, Cruz and I spend a few minutes by our Bucket List poster board, planning our day and adding 'notes' and revisions where needed.  I look forward to making this an annual tradition at our house and seeing how our list changes year to year.

In more pictures and fewer words, here's our very colorful progress report...
  
(linking up with Paper Mama...)

We've spent afternoons with bubbles...

...and filled the driveway with sidewalk chalk waiting for daddy to get home from work.

We moved our taco night to the back deck, and dressed up our favorite go-to meal with fresh pico de gallo from our own backyard.

Cruz tried his very first ice cream cone...

...and his very first piece of watermelon...

...and surprisingly, knew just what to do with both!

We packed the car full of movie night essentials---blankets and pillows, picnic baskets filled with movie candy and snacks, solo cups for wine and sippy cups for Cruz---and headed to 'Movies Under the Moon,' a summertime family event hosted by our community's main street.  Friday night they were featuring 'How to Train Your Dragon,' so the lawn of the band shell was filled with a sea of little people in pajamas.  There is popcorn and fresh apple pie for sale, an acoustic guitar club that plays beforehand, and has small town Iowa written all over it!  

Cruz did wonderful sandwiched between the two of us, but we brought him home halfway through because he was having a hard time falling asleep!  He kept rolling from side to side half asleep, then would sit up really fast as if he was afraid he'd miss something!  The poor baby just needed his bed!  

Saturday morning we headed back to Main Street for a morning of Farmer's Market, breakfast burritos grilled street-side, and sidewalk sales.  We let Cruz run free down his favorite street in town, playing peekaboo behind clothes racks and stopping to 'stomp' on every sewer cover in sight.  In his backwards cap and chambray shorts, we looked pretty smooth walking up and down the street, and made sure people noticed him with his frequent waves and 'hi's.'  We like to call him 'the mayor.'

 

 

 

We bought a rosemary plant for our garden, stopped for a strawberry smoothie at our new Thai restaurant, and had a ball browsing the quaint little shops of our sweet city.  

How's that for progress!?  It's been hot here this week, and we're itching to get to the pool again soon.  We bought a pool pass this year and I think Cruz would drag us there every day if he had a choice.  He LOVES the water and feels pretty fearless trudging through the baby pool at The Falls.  While this makes his mama proud, gone are the days of pulling up a beach chair and basking in the sun with a drink and the latest copy of US Weekly! 

Looking forward to popsicles and parades, ferris wheels and funnel cakes this weekend!  I'm taking Cruz back to the Butler County Fair, one of the highlights of my summer when I was a little girl, and hoping to catch some of Cedar Falls' annual Sturgis Falls celebration this weekend.