Other the past 6 months my family has been through a lot relatively speaking. We've left my wife's family to move closer to my family from the Northernmost US to pretty much the Southernmost US, about 16 hours apart give or take a few hours. My son misses his friends still, his cousins, and his favorite parks. We're still unpacking and trying to downsize into our smaller house and are now dealing with the Coronavirus and 2 small kids stuck indoors and throwing a Birthday party for my daughter this past weekend. However, we couldn't be happier.
Being Thankful for the Little Things
Every day my family wakes up healthy I am thankful. How often do we take our health for granted? I know I try and make it a conscious effort to appreciate being able to breathe through my nose, not having a headache, and being able to get-up and go do pretty much anything I want to do.
Even though I can hardly roll out of bed the next day, I'm still thankful I can go out and play sports with friends. I can now pretty much go fishing whenever I want by walking out into my backyard, and can see, hear, smell, touch, and feel all the wonderful things around me.
Becoming Minimalists
Now my wife and I aren't going crazy, but it's nice to live in a smaller house where you don't need as much stuff just so it doesn't feel empty. It's nice living in an area where the kids can play outside pretty much year-round now.
It also has the added bonus of cutting down on our expenses each month. I don't have to worry as much about getting laid off anymore as we're spending less money and therefore growing our savings and our retirement accounts faster.
We're also enjoying activities as a family more. We're trying to cut back on the amount of TV watching the kids do so we're playing outside more. We are limited some by trying to get things unpacked at the same time, but it's been nice taking the kids outside and just watching them play in the dirt when it's snowing and cold right now where we used to live.
Being Thankful for Family and Friends
Even though we're not able to spend as much time as we'd like with the grandparents right now, it's still nice to be able to call them on the phone or video conference them.
My youngest daughter just celebrated her 2nd Birthday recently and we were able to let Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents join in thanks to Facebook Messenger and Facetime. It was a lot of fun to be able to share all the laughs and giggles my daughter had eating her cake with no hands and opening presents.
Technology
It's amazing to be able to work safely in the comfort of my own home right now. Heck, I'd pretty much work from home all the time if I was allowed. No more people barging my office handing off work that's not my responsibility, wasting my time with the latest office rumors. It seems like the pointless meetings start to slow down as well with meetings through skype.
It's nice to be able to organize neighborhood events while maintaining social distancing through Facebook groups. It would be nice to be able to do that through some sort of Hive community, but alas we're not to that point yet.
I see many posts, mainly on Facebook, of people spreading doom or gloom and just saying that all this time stuck inside is driving them crazy. I've tried to make the most of being able to work from home and wish I had a little more time to just be "stuck inside". Overall, I'm just trying to stay optimistic and realize how lucky I've been through all of this.