A Pandemic-Approved Fun Night

It’s hard to believe that we are starting Week 7 of being at home. It feels like this is all we have ever known by now. I can’t even remember what life was like before face-masks while grocery shopping and fighting the urge to hug my friends and family when I see them from a social distance… *sigh*

Like many of you, we have had to find new ways to make being home and away from our friends interesting and fun. It’s been… a challenge. But the other night, we had one of our most fun pandemic-approved adventures yet so I thought I’d share.

My niece and nephew had been in town with us for a few days and the kids were all getting tired of being at the house, so Chris and I decided a little change of scenery was in order.

We loaded the kids up in my mini-van and hit up the Chick-fil-a drive thru, which I’m pretty sure we can all agree has been a little slice of heaven during this chaos. On particularly boring afternoons, a milkshake run to CFA has saved the day. And on nights when I have no energy left to cook, CFA drive thru has been my go-to.

Once we had food in hand, we drove over to a community park in our neighborhood that had recently opened. You still couldn’t use the playground or splash pad, but it was wide open green fields to run around it and, most importantly, it wasn’t our own backyard!

We put a blanket down in the back of my van and ate our dinner picnic-style.

We even had a little visitor who was extremely interested in our blueberries…

After dinner, the kids played tag in the open areas for a while. I think our greatest accomplishment that night was somehow keeping all four kids out of the volleyball sandpit that was close to where we had parked. Thank goodness no one seemed interested in that! What a mess that would have been!

We brought sidewalk chalk, too, and we decorated the sidewalks where walkers, runners, and bike-riders passed by.

After about an hour, the kids were getting bored and restless, so we loaded up and piled back into the van again.

On our way home, we stopped for ice cream, which was a huge hit! As if getting out of the house wasn’t excitement enough! Ha! We were living it up! 🙂

By the time we got home, it was close to bedtime and the kids were happy and tired. What I loved about this adventure was that before this lockdown, I doubt any of that would have been that special to them – or to me. Or maybe it would have been, but I probably wouldn’t have even considered it as the “main event” of our day. But during this time, our pace has shifted and small things have become big things in the most magical way.

After all this craziness ends, I hope we keep that small things mentality in our family because it certainly makes some special memories.