The Secret Ingredients of Perfect Summer Days

Summertime and the living is supposed to be easy. That's why my secret ingredient for a perfect summer day is simplicity: We sleep in, have breakfast on our screened porch, go hiking or biking on one of the wooded trails near our house, and pack a picnic lunch. In the afternoon the neighborhood pool offers a chance to cool off. Dinner's easy—hamburgers on the grill and corn on the cob from the local farmer's market. As the sun sets, we play a silly game we invented called alien eggball or we go to one of the three drive-in movie theaters that have survived in Kansas City, Missouri. No stress, no drama, just lots of fun.

In my poll of other Motherboard Moms and their perfect-summer-day dreams, I found that they, too, followed a keep-it-simple formula for summer fun. Here are some of their secret ingredients.