A sidewalk sighting! It's time to celebrate and make plans

We can see the sidewalks again — a sure sign that real spring (as opposed to calendar spring) isn't far off. And hot on the heels of those early spring days will be summer.

While we Canadians are loathe to admit it, the four seasons are anything but equal in length. I figure if you slice and dice the calendar by seasons, the seasonal split works out something like this: 41 per cant winter (five months), 25 per cent summer (three months); 17 per cent spring (two months); 17 per cent fall (two months). This means that if you don't pay very close attention to the arrival of spring, you risk missing out on it altogether.

Spring tends to zip by in a flash and summer will be here before we know it (and before we're ready). There's no better time than right now to start thinking about what you'd like to do this summer. Get your kids involved as you make your summer wish list so that every family member has some input into the family's summer plans.

Don't feel like you have to break the budget to have fun. Make a list of local attractions you keep meaning to check out, but never get around to visiting, and then have fun playing tourist in your own town.

Plan a family reunion so that you can catch up with relatives that you don't see nearly often enough. While it sometimes seems that our families will be there forever, time passes, relatives scatter, and people who have meant the world to us grow older and pass away. It's important to take time to celebrate our families as they are right now. You can never get this year or this summer back once it's gone.

Planning tips:

• If you do decide to plan a family reunion, make your hotel, motel or campsite reservations early. The closer it gets to tourist season, the more difficult it becomes to book accommodations for large groups.
• Don't forget to consider the range and age of family members when you're planning your reunion. Sitting around while the grownups reminisce for hours on end about people they've never met isn't terribly exciting for your average ten-year-old (although they do enjoy hearing stories about the mischievous things their parents and grandparents did when they were kids). You might want to plan a side-trip to a local waterpark, or other attraction, so the kids can run off enough steam that they'll be ready to sit back and listen while the older generation takes them on a stroll down memory lane over dinner.

Now over to you. What's in your plans for the summer of 2008? Have your kids indicated what they'd like to do? How do their ideas of the perfect summer mesh with what you have in mind?

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• What a trip!