In today’s episode of Best of Both Worlds, Sara McCarty, head of Run Wild My Child, shares tactics for getting outdoors together. From toys that will make your backyard more fun to things you can do in the dark, this episode is all about the outdoors for people who don’t plan to do 2-week hiking trips.

In the Q&A we tackle a question of when to buy a Halloween costume for kids…in order to avoid Halloween regret.

Please give the episode a listen! Our Patreon community will be meeting up today at noon, eastern, to discuss all things meal planning. We’d love to have you join us. If you’re reading this after noon, no worries, the meet-up will be recorded.

My husband and I had a short summer-y date night last night. We went to a beer garden (see: Summer Fun List) that was also on the Schuylkill River, in Bridgeport. This was a low key, nice place, and the beer and food were good and the summer night was great until a huge wind kicked up around 8:00 p.m. Fortunately we had to leave to go get a kid at parkour shortly thereafter so it was all good.

We are still figuring out what to do on our days off next week. I am wary of going into the week without a plan as I suspect if we wake up on those days and ask the kids what they want to do the answer will be…nothing. And it’s hard to get 7 people organized for much (or at least 4-5 people…I tend not to force the oldest kids to go to anything though they are welcome to!). My husband and I may also have slightly different ideas of what we want to do…

I spent some time this week creating the Bach listening calendar for the rest of the summer (in my project of listening to all of Bach in a year). The folks who are following this calendar are in for a treat in August. After wading through all the cantatas we get to the longer vocal masterworks, and we also have some great instrumental stuff that happens in the last 100 of the BWVs (which match up with how I’m organizing all this…). Let’s just say we get the St. Matthew Passion and then the Goldberg Variations back to back.

Anyway, on to this week’s content! Over at Before Breakfast, I shared some tips from Anna Goldfarb’s Modern Friendship book, including “Look for context friends,” and “Make invitations specific.” The latter is truly life-changing advice. “Let’s get together!” sometime, said to a potential new friend, is really hard to make work. Better to start with an actual activity that can be accepted, rejected, or negotiated, but gives everyone something to work with. I also note that “You can pivot.” Just as with media training, you don’t have to answer the actual question that was asked!

At the Best of Both Worlds Patreon page, we’ve been discussing our 2024 goals (how are we doing now, at mid-year?), and how to survive family road trips.

At Vanderhacks (my Substack newsletter) we’ve been discussing tips to “Upgrade your packed lunches,” and the mantra that “This is when you get stronger,” that can help for motivation in difficult moments. The paywalled post was a “Golden Hours grab bag” of suggestions to make your evenings a lot more fun.

My weekly newsletter (“A week’s worth”) comes out Saturday mornings, and my monthly newsletter (“Just a Minute”) comes out next week at some point (generally near the first of the month). You can subscribe to both by clicking the appropriate boxes here.

Photo: Cheery food truck parked near the beer garden. It wasn’t open but I appreciated the color!