The One Surprising Thing I Did To Truly Enjoy Summer 2025

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Every year since becoming a parent, I’ve approached summer like a camp counselor on a mission.

I planned and plotted, making deranged bucket lists, which included everything from checking out every single park in the city to hitting each street fair and squeezing in road trips like we were racing the clock. I also work full-time, exercise semi-regularly and am a little obsessed with keeping the house nice and tidy.

I was essentially trying to squeeze all four seasons of fun into one epic summer, fueled by iced coffee and an irrational fear of wasting three months.

To be fair, I’m not alone in my summer aspirations. According to Provision Living, a senior living community, 95 percent of Americans have bucket lists for travel, health and summer fun. These stats are comforting and alarming to me. Clearly, I’m not the only one with a bucket list obsession. But it’s also alarming because we might be collectively losing it a little (or quite a lot) by the time the school year begins in the fall.

Still, in some ways, the lists have paid off.

My kids love my summer bucket lists, or at least they used to. I have photo evidence: strawberry picking (check!), long hikes (check!), eating ice cream at new spots (check!) and hosting a lemonade stand (check!).

The picture from the lemonade stand shows two adorable little girls with a homemade “lemonade” sign, smiling as they serve neighbors. You’d never guess that they argued the entire time about who would get to pour the lemonade, how they should spend the proceeds and who would clean everything up when they disbanded this business (spoiler alert: it was me).

This year, as my children are 13 and 16, I plan to level up the bucket list. I keep seeing social media suggestions about how to really soak up these last summers with my kids before they leave me forever. Some inspiring mothers have even written tales about how much they cry on a daily basis because their kids are growing up. I, on the other hand, will sometimes calculate how many more meals I have to cook before they finally launch and make their own meals. But that’s another story.

My list included learning a new hobby, camping in the backyard, having a no-phone day and pulling an all-nighter watching movies. It was Pinterest-worthy, thoughtful and age-appropriate.

But when I glanced at my newly minted bucket list, I only felt dread. Dread that this would be another stressful summer of 4 a.m. wake-ups, so I’d have time to put in an entire day of work before my precious teens woke at noon to check off another item. Dread that I’ve been frantically sending work emails again from the entrails of a water park. The fear that my daily calendar pop-up would finally land me in the loony bin.

If you look closely at those summer bucket list photos, you can zoom in to see me clenching my jaw, stressed about getting it all done to make those beautiful memories.

More realistically, I had become a manager, project manager, chauffeur and chef for kids who would rather sit in their rooms on their phones. To be honest, I’m really tired. I’m a little over pushing my reluctant teens to make memories. I’m sick of putting pressure on myself to fill the blank calendar spaces and I’m fed up with kids who argue their way through every carefully planned excursion.

This year, I’m giving up the summer bucket list so I can actually enjoy the summer. I’m not spending hours researching the perfect You Pick lavender farm. I’m giving up the color-coded checklist.

Does this mean we’ll be sitting in our pajamas daily, bored out of our minds? Hopefully not. Perhaps the teens will think of something fun to do. Maybe we’ll run out for a midnight ice cream. Maybe we won’t. And that will be okay, too.

We put so much emphasis on making summer magical that we forget there’s magic in ordinary days. This summer will just be a season rather than a performance. And I’m really looking forward to it.