We have a few - camping has become a tradition every since our older kids were babies. We have to have a camping trip at least once a summer.

We enjoy going on picnics and taking long drives on the back roads. We've done that for years and years.

We also love to go and look at the night sky. If the bugs weren't so bad at night, I'd love to sleep under the stars and make that a family tradition. Where we live its impossible.

We have to go to the Bridge drive-in for ice cream at least once a month. Its in Winnipeg, but even living out here, once its opened, will be making a trip just to go there.

And we always have to go to the zoo at least once during the summer.

How about you, any family traditions you practise during the summer months?

Funny you mention this. Just the other day, Ryan said she would be glad when it warms up and we all sit outside on the front porch in the evenings. I'd never realized it meant so much to her. Just us parents and her and the dogs sitting outside, maybe reading, maybe tossing a ball. Just enjoying the hummingbirds and feeling the peace in the air, knowing we are together and safe and happy.

Summer camping is a tradition of ours too CJ, we camp wknds all summer but we take a big week long trip in August every year. Years ago it was just a cheap way to vacation and see new places, but it turned into a real tradition for us and camping is a passion of the entire family's now. Pat, I know what you mean when you say you don't realize how much, seemingly small things, mean to our children. It made me feel so good awhile back when, as we sat around a particularily nice campfire, telling stories, my now grown daughter (who still takes time off to go camping with us) said she looks forward to a time when she would bring her own children to sit in the glow of grandma's campfire and hear the old stories. It did in fact make me cry, I'm such a wimp!
Anyway I always try to tell the stories I was told as a child, as well as my own, and a few borrowed ones with thoughtful endings too. When I run out it doesn't matter, they want to hear the same old stories all over again!
Geez, now I feel like sitting around a campfire! lol ~Chelle~
I bet we all have more traditions than we realize too