When I submitted our Sunday “fights” idea to Real Simple the woman who emailed me asked how I came up with the idea.  I told her that the idea came out of our Sanders Summer Camps.  For many years now, as summer approaches, my husband and I talk about what our kids need and what we should focus on as a family during the summer months.  Most of the kids in our area attend multiple summer camps and so we affectionately call our summer at home, “Sanders Summer Camp.”  Usually it involves lots of swimming, biking and playing, with one or two things in the schedule that we are trying to focus on.  As the years have gone by it has developed into having a summer theme.  When I came up with the idea for the Sunday “fights,” the theme for the summer was Risk and Whimsy.  This theme was thought of after reading Love Does by Bob Goff.

This book was very inspiring to us and we wanted to bring these ideas into our family.  During the summer we created a family risk book and our goal was to reach 50 risks taken as a family.  Our reward was a trip to Six Flags.  We hosted Campfire/Talent Show nights where we could take risks by performing for our friends, we let the kids drive the car (this counted as a risk for everyone in the car!), we jumped off rocks into rivers and rode giant roller coasters.  We also had the whimsy part that included things like our Sunday “fights”, ice blocking and picnicking on the roof.

The Risk and Whimsy summer was so much fun that many of these ideas have now become traditions.  It also launched us into having a more focused theme for our summer camp.  Next time I will share what our theme has been for this summer.  Needless to say, we never accomplish everything we set out to do in the summer, but having a theme and being intentional has helped us to move toward our family goals and create many memorable moments together.