Category Archives: Family

Things You Do NOT Need to Feel Guilty About Right Now

  • Feeling depressed or anxious
  • Being tired
  • Missing the people you used to hang out with
  • Seeing the people you used to hang out with
  • Clinging to your family
  • Not being able to spend time with your family
  • Sending your kids to school
  • Not sending your kids to school
  • Having a cheap face mask
  • Having the most expensive face mask that exists
  • Not having a job
  • Wishing you didn’t have a job
  • Loving your job
  • Hating work-from-home
  • Loving remote work
  • Fearing the uncertainty of the future
  • Being sad about the world around us
  • Being angry about the world around us
  • Being closed off from the world around us
  • Eating at home
  • Eating out
  • Picking up food to eat somewhere else
  • Going for walks/runs/jogs
  • Cocooning at home
  • Not being able to concentrate on reading
  • Reading more books than ever because you have nothing else to do
  • Being unproductive
  • Being so productive people around you complain
  • Sleeping late
  • Not sleeping well
  • Doing whatever it is that you need to do to survive or even thrive

Things For Kids To Do While You Are In Quarantine (and they won’t even realize they are all educational!)

  • Invent a new board game
  • Use chalk art to turn your entire driveway (or front porch, or back deck, or garage floor) into a mural
  • Write letters to people you know
  • Make hand made cards to mail to strangers in nursing homes
  • Bake cookies
  • Plan a menu based on ingredients at home
  • Learn to cook
  • Watch animal videos (Cincinnati Zoo, Shedd Aquarium)
  • Make up fun songs
  • Read Shel Silverstein online and then write silly poems like he does
  • Create a dance routine to a favorite KidzBop song
  • Write a rap about the period table of elements, (or the Greek alphabet, or mutiplication tables)
  • Film your rap on TikTok or SnapChat or Facebook live
  • Plant a container garden
  • Do a multi-week experiment about what kind of music helps your container garden grow faster, (find a “scientific method” chart online to help with recording their hypothesis and testing it)
  • Detail the inside of the car
  • Video chat grandma
  • Teach grandma how to use her video chat first
  • Read big books together (Harry Potter, Narnia, Animal Farm, Moby Dick, Alice in Wonderland)
  • Do YouTube videos for family meditation
  • Do online exercise videos from LesMills or your local YMCA
  • Measure all the things
  • Design charts to show the measurements
  • Create a stop-action film with Legos or play dough or stuffed animals (or, if you really enjoy Bob’s Burgers, with a pound of raw hamburger)
  • Write a movie script, design sets with items on hand, film it, post it online
  • Let them find Pinterest activities they can do with common household items
  • Build the Best. Fort. Ever.
  • Draw their own comic books
  • Make salt dough and play with it
  • Memorize something (Scripture verses, your favorite monologue from a movie, the preamble to the Constitution, all 50 states in alphabetical order)
  • Hide Easter eggs around the house
  • Do old fashioned calisthenics
  • Organize toys (NOT YOU… let them do it and then be okay with how they do it)
  • Create a time capsule to open in 10 years
  • Bury it in the back yard
  • Hide a “treasure” and then make a treasure map for others to find it
  • Use paper plates or construction paper to make giant Scrabble letters and play word games
  • Help change the oil in the car
  • Learn how to change a flat tire
  • Do easy science projects like eggs in various liquids, or testing air pollution, or the effect of germs on bread (all on Pinterest plus a million more)

Things I Am Thankful For

  • My family
  • My friends who are like family
  • Adorable grandbabies
  • My new condo
  • Sunsets
  • Ocean waves
  • Vacations
  • Ice cream
  • Sparkly swimming pools
  • Whitening toothpaste
  • Fall colors
  • Holidays
  • Clean diagnoses
  • Safe transportation
  • Clean water
  • Opportunities
  • Mentors
  • The smell of new books
  • The smell of old books
  • Bonfires
  • The susurrus of wind through trees
  • The Boundary Waters
  • Beaches
  • Laundry in my home
  • YouTube tutorials

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Things I Would Rather Be Doing (Assuming the Weather Was Nice Enough for Weather Dependent Activities)

  • Reading a good book
  • Visiting family
  • Watching Survivor
  • Sitting around a campfire
  • Making s’mores
  • Eating s’mores
  • Walking in the sunshine along the river
  • Wilderness camping
  • Writing & editing a novel
  • Binge-watching home shows like Flip or Flop, Love It or List It, Desert Flippers
  • Getting a pedicure
  • Getting a massage
  • Decorating a Christmas tree
  • Planning parties
  • Eating stuffed crust pizza