The year was 2020… the month was March (like it almost is now)… The world came to a screeching halt with a global pandemic, and pretty much everyone was stuck in their homes for the foreseeable future… While we all quarantined and tried to stay alive and well, we were also going a little stir crazy! I started texting my mom one of those days while my hubby and I worked from home, and the kid was doing school from home. We began talking about what we would put on our #Quarantime Bucket List to make the most out of a weird, tough, rough, and totally unprecedented situation. We challenged each other to come up with what eventually were the top 19 things we did during COVID-19.
My mom called her list the “19 Things to Do While Homebound.” She and her wife included things like having a movie and popcorn night in their own living room, having a wine and cheese date in their home library, completing a virtual 5k on the treadmill, hosting a two-person game day at the dining room table, and making new dinner and dessert recipes together. My favorite thing was that my mom sketched out the layout of their house and turned it into a fun map. Since they couldn’t travel elsewhere (they normally were on the road or in the air constantly for work and pleasure), they went all out pretending their own home was a huge adventure to be explored together.
Grand Bob, my grandpa through my mom’s wife, adopted a Japanese beetle, named it Hope, and Grand Mary sent videos to the family of him talking to it and guiding it along the kitchen table 🙂 He’s a marine vet and the gentlest soul you’ll ever meet. I love so much that he found joy during quarantine with a beetle he made family. Only Grand Bob!
Our list consisted of the following: 1) Date night in the dining room, 2) Spring cleaning, 3) Yard work and landscaping, 4) Family walks around our neighborhood, 5) Using gifts from Christmas we had not yet used like our Mickey waffle maker, 6) Movie night in the basement, 7) Reading and writing sessions as a family, 8) Installing our Ring doorbells finally, 9) Having hot cocoa nights, 10) Mommy-and-daughter makeovers, 11) Family game nights, 12) Cooking new recipes, 13) Trying out grocery delivery for the first time, 14) Working and doing school work on the front porch together when the weather was nice, 15) Having arts and crafts nights, 16) Getting a rescue kitty, 17) Ordering new furniture – and then building it ourselves!, 18) Buying a business, and 19) Starting a non-profit.
