Fun Fact: I love summer. Like, LOVE summer. When I was younger, summer meant moving back home to the country after 8 months in the city. It meant working at my beloved job as a lifeguard at an outdoor pool. It meant hiking, biking, family reunions, bridge jumping, seeing old friends, and so much more. The rest of the year felt black and white compared to the technicolor excitement of summer time. I basically lived for summertime, every other season felt like hibernating and was viewed by its distance and relation to summer (are you picking up the undertones of my seasonal depression? haha).
It's no surprise that after becoming a mother I was thrilled to share my love of summer with my children. And after hearing the catch phrase, "There are only 18 summers of childhood," my excitement turned almost manic. ONLY 18 SUMMERS?! I knew I needed to savor each and every precious summer, which is why I started making "Summer Passports" for my kids.
The first version I painstakingly plotted out 60 pages worth of activities. Crafts we should do. Parks we should visit. Treats we should make. All written out by hand in small notebooks I had found at Michaels. When an activity was completed, the kids put a sticker on that page, drew any pictures they saw fit, and I jotted down a few lines of whatever they had to say about the activity. Needless to say, we barely completed half of the passport, but dang they looked cute.
The next summer I made some adjustments. I realized there were little things we did many times throughout the summer that didn't quite merit an entry but were still worth documenting. Thus the tally pages were born. And instead of planning out every page ahead of time, I filled in the journal after completing things. These ones were a lot more open ended, but with this way we managed to fill every page with something we had done.
And then there was a break. I had my 4th baby. I worked as a Pool Supervisor one summer. I was so, so burnt out after a year of babysitting. Summer Passports just didn't happen but I still did my best to savor summer with my kids.
Then came the spring of 2023. My husband and I separated. My kids and I moved in with my parents and I was pregnant with baby number 5. In an effort to mend our broken hearts and prove that there was still much to look forward to, I tried to make Summer Passports again. Except it was nearly impossible to find the pocket sized notebooks I had used previously. So I made them with full sized paper in a duotang. They were fun, but there's just something about the playfulness of having a small notebook similar to a passport. And I couldn't stop thinking about it...
