What We've Missed by Staying Home

I know, I know - don't focus on the negative but, since this is my blog and it is partly for the sake of memories I also wanted to record what we missed (that was one long sentence!)

1) We missed our last day of Co-op.  It's the day we work towards where the kids get to finish up projects, do their last class work and celebrate with a Pizza Party.  We were all disappointed for sure!

2) We missed our Presentation Night with Co-Op.  This is always such a fun night where the students work is displayed and they get to do presentations.  Nate had been working all semester in his Sign Language class on a song so he was sad they couldn't share that with the crowd.

3) We missed Nate's tonsil surgery!  Really, he wasn't sad!  It will get rescheduled eventually but I'm not rushing it at this point.

4) We missed the last week of AWANA and Awards night.  The boys finished their books and are looking forward to still receiving their awards.

5) We missed the AWANA fair.  I thought the boys would be more disappointed by this one but they really weren't.  It's fun, but they have one more year to both participate (hopefully!)

6) Nate missed TKD belt testing.  Even though he knows it will happen eventually, he was disappointed to have scheduled messed up. He has a goal to test for his black belt by a certain point and this has messed that goal up!

7) We missed a planned get away with my mom to a hotel for a few days.  This was a BIG disappointment but there are plans to do this eventually.

8) We missed a family vacation to Great Wolf Lodge.  Again, super sad but we will do this eventually.

9) We missed Flag Football.  This was our last thing cancelled.  It was supposed to start April 26th and got postponed with hopes it would start June 14th but it also finally got cancelled due to all the restrictions for sports.  This was probably the biggest disappointment for the boys since they had been planning on playing since about October of 2019.

10) We missed out on field trips with both the Co-Op and our Field Trip group.  Plus our Year End Party was cancelled with our on-line school.  The Party was the biggest disappointment - we look forward to that every year!

Now, last week I posted about What we learned by staying home and I missed something! (My brother Kel reminded me of this!).  We also learned how fun ZOOM calls are!!  My brothers, mom, and I meet every week to catch up and it's just fantastic! 

I think it's important to look at what we gave up to stay home/stay safe even though we haven't minded being home.  I'm thankful that my kids didn't miss "big" events but rather will still get to experience many of the things they missed in the future.  It was a good life lesson (I guess!) for them to understand that sometimes plans change and that's ok!

What We've Learned by Staying Home

Now that the "Stay at home order" is being lifted in our state, I thought I'd take a moment and look back at what we learned by staying home.

1) We learned that we are home bodies.  Honestly, my boys have always been homebodies and Darryl really is too but I have always love to go, go, GO!  Well, I actually found that I enjoyed not having the busy schedule we had for so long.

2) We enjoyed playing games together . . .for a time.  When the lock down first happened, the games came out.  We played old favorites and new ones too!  I taught the boys how to play Dutch Blitz and they taught me Throw, Throw Burrito.  Plus they got games for Easter that we played too.  Now, after about 3 weeks, the games stopped.  HA!  But it was fun to play alot of games for awhile.

3)  We learned that we ate out a lot more then we thought.  Eating out had become a crutch.  It was easy to just grab something quick on those busy nights.  Talk about going cold turkey!  We went from eating out at various times probably 3-4 times a week to eating 3 meals a day at home, 7 days a week!  BUT, we found that we liked that AND when we finally broke our stance on eating out, the food tasted SOOOO good AND we found that the treat was super nice.  We stuck by that - we only allow eating out 1 time a week and it is now considered a treat.

4) We learned that we liked having Apple Crisp every Friday night :-)  This happened by accident.  I had bags of apples given to me so I made applesauce and Apple Crisp.  Well, I continued to have an over abundance of apples for the school lunches we picked up so, it became a tradition to make Apple Crisp on Friday to enjoy through the weekend.  Darryl said it would know if it was Friday if there was Apple Crisp on the stove LOL

5) We found new foods we liked.  We found these Bolthouse Farms Mocha Cappuccino's by chance - we picked up food from a local food truck one week and these were in the box.  They are SOOO good!  Darryl and I have enjoyed them in the afternoon while sitting in my swing.

6) We learned our animals adore us!  Dash loves it when we are home.  He hates it when we leave so he has been in doggy heaven with us here all the time!  Harley is also a cat who loves people so he has enjoyed having us around too even though he pretends he is annoyed at times!!

7) We learned that Amazon is amazing.  I mean, we kind of knew that before but I have used Amazon to order everything from Super Glue to finish up a project to clothes!  Things I never would have ordered before because I could just run to the store.  We also learned how spoiled we were by "next day delivery" when Amazon orders started taking a week or more to ship!  HA!

8) We learned to take time to enjoy the outdoors.  Now, we didn't get all crazy and take hikes or anything like that but I have found that by taking even just 20 minutes to sit outside and read in my swing, it makes the day so much better.  Sometimes the weather doesn't allow for it - snow, rain, or super hot - but when it does, I make it a priority every day!

9) We learned that we can make things fun.  That one time a week we "treat" to eating out is very simply going through 2-3 drive-thrus so everyone can get what they want and then parking in a shady spot and eating in our vehicle.  We laugh a lot while eating that meal.  Or we take off on a drive to explore something just for fun.

Now, truth be told, we are still "staying home" for the most part for now.  Yes, we are very slowly allowing a few things like Tae Kwon Do but we just plan to wait it out and see what happens as more people are out and about.