A Year of Adventure
With shoulder season upon us, that time of year when the weather goes from sun to rain, but the snow isn’t quite here yet, we spend a little more time indoors. During that time I like to work on two things; planning for the upcoming year and making memory books of our adventures from the previous year. I’m a big believer that if you look at pictures from years past regularly, those memories will stay.
As I started looking at the upcoming summer on the calendar, mapping out options for our getaways, I was reminded of the first year I gifted my kids “A Year of Adventure”. In 2014 I was getting restless with the feeling that everyone was trying to focus on a bigger house or a better car. I wanted my kids to know that life isn’t the possessions you have, but the memories. Some of my strongest family memories were driving for days to be in the middle of nowhere, trying to build a house out of river rock, a yearly summer getaway for the family.
Looking down on acres of undeveloped land, a yearly summer destination for our family
With a focus on budget and getting my kids excited about outdoor adventure, I built out a calendar with an adventure for each month. The first year was the hardest because I didn’t really know what would resonate well with them. So we had a trip to the snow, where we stayed in a cabin by a ski resort even though we never made it to the slopes , our first camping trip , and a fall getaway as some of the multi-day adventures on the list. Then I sprinkled in some day activities like a short hike, geocaching, and one of my favorites, the no-rules day. This also allowed me to distribute the cost of gifts over the year!
For the kids the best part of the first years calendar was the scavenger hunt they had to do to get to the final puzzle. Since scavenger hunts are one of my frequent tools they immediately cheered when they got the first clue. The calendar itself was of course more nebulous as really it’s paper with words and young kids have a hard time understanding future activities. So having the first activity be something more exciting for them was important.
Now my kids, even at the age of eight, contribute to our thought process of decisions on how much we spend on adventure versus gifts. Over the years they’ve really appreciated the ongoing memories which often come up at the dinner table. Now we talk about options and incorporating the budget decisions in as well so they learn trade offs and financial impacts over time too.
