happiness

What were your favorite summer memories? (Summer mindfulness challenge)

like a record...I was being nostalgic with some friends at a cookout this weekend about all the things we used to love about summer as kids…the thing we can overlook now that we’re grownup and summer doesn’t mean one long, lazy vacation anymore.

The more we talked, the more I realized that trying to recapture some of these great summer feelings would be a great way to cultivate more mindfulness…something I’m always trying to do. So, I thought I’d list out the things we came up with, as a challenge to myself (and to you!) to try to stop and smell the roses a bit more.

For the rest of the summer, see how many of these great childhood feelings you can relive:

1. The feel of newly cut grass between your toes.
2. The rough, warm feeling of sidewalk under bare feet.
3. Making your tongue fun colors with popsicles.
4. Taking a nap in the sun. (With sunscreen on, of course, adult me has to point out!)
5. Jumping into a cold pool after running around in the heat.
6. Eating food outside (picnics, BBQs, etc.)
7. S’mores. (The real kind, made over a fire.)
8. Jumping up to meet the ice cream truck as soon as you hear the music.
9. Creating ridiculous sundaes with whatever you can find in the house.
10. Trying to eat an ice cream cone as it runs down the sides of the cone and makes your fingers sticky.
11. Dancing in the rain.
12. Running through the sprinkler.
13. Finding shapes in the clouds.
14. Ice cubes that melt in your drink after like a minute.
15. All-day made-up sports tournaments.
16. Sitting on the porch at dusk.
17. Reading all day long. (Yup, I was the dork that came up with this item!)
18. Hopscotch.
19. Trampolines and made-up trampoline games…trampoline basketball, trampoline Marco Polo, etc.
20. Everything to do with beaches!
21. (Especially getting buried in the sand.)
22. Going on “adventures” in the woods.
23. Flavored ice cubes. (Anyone else used to make Kool-Aid ice cubes? So good! Also good for homemade popsicles.)
24. The smell of a bonfire and edging your chair closer and closer until you’re almost too warm, but not quite.
25. The smell of sunscreen.
26. Watching insects do what insects do.
27. Water parks.
28. Homemade iced tea.
232. Watching thunderstorms roll in, running inside at the last minute to get out of them, then running back outside when they were done to splash in the puddles.
30. The smell of thunderstorms.
31. Feeling like you’re soaring into the sky on a swing (as long as it’s not so hot it sticks to your legs).
32. Biking everywhere.
33. Catching fireflies.
34. Staying outside till the last bit of sun finally leaves the sky and feeling like the days really are endless.

What other childhood memories of summer can you try to recapture?

 

~Heart,

Em

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photo credit:   lee

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4 Comments

  • Honestly I think you mention a lot of them that I use to do when I was younger. Biking everywhere was big. And we really enjoyed having a slip n slide. Those were the days and lets not forget going to grandma’s and her cooking pies and peach cobbler. One thing I haven’t seen in my neighborhood is the ice cream truck.

    • We haven’t really seen it either! Last summer, we heard it constantly, and this summer we’ve heard it maybe twice. Which is a shame, because I’d actually like to run out and meet it this year!

  • Putting the hose down the slide in the backyard…honestly what is better on a hot day than an instant waterslide. Although you had to wait for the metal to cool sometimes. It was great cause we had a real understanding of happiness rather than just chasing money!

    Alex

    • We did that too! We actually had a little inflatable pool, and we set it up so the “waterslide” landed in the pool! So much fun.

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