It feels like, this year more than any other year I can remember, is all about taking those lemons and doing your best to make lemonade. Sidenote: I don’t know where this “When life gives you lemons…” thing came from. I think lemons are awesome. If life gave me lemons, I’d say “THANK you, I really appreciate these delicious lemons. I use them in everything.”
But I digress. Point is, we’ve had lots of lousy cards dealt to us, so I feel like just about every day is a new challenge to find the best way to field those challenges and, for the sake of our kids, make something positive out of it.
This is seldom easy, and it is often impossible. But if the contents of the last 224 days of this blog have communicated anything, I hope it’s that it’s important for families to try to find the positive spots where they can and establish as many happy moments as possible in this grimmest of times.
So with that in mind, we got a super cold snap and a bunch of snow a few days ago. In October. This in the general sense is kind of a bummer. We were having a really nice fall, and suddenly winter just jumped right in. The temperature topped out around 15 degrees for a couple of days, the kids had some nasty colds, and we were pretty much cooped up inside. (Not that this is anything new in the age of COVID and quarantine.)
But silver lining? Sledding! Nothing like wooshing down a hill on a strip of plastic to cure those not-quite-winter blues. There’s a nice sledding hill near Grandma and Pop Pop’s house, so we headed over there with the kids in the late afternoon.
Turns out, it was a perfect day for sledding. It had warmed up (near 50 degrees), but there was still snow, so the sledding conditions were great AND we didn’t have to freeze our behinds off. It was awesome, and the kids were in heaven.
After sledding, we packed things up and headed over to Grandma and Pop Pop’s for some pizza. The kids regaled them of tales of the sledding hill, and we watched a movie together. It was a great impromptu evening and the kind of thing that brings big smiles to the kids’ faces.
Yup, we live in difficult and just plain weird times. There are plenty of times I’m super stressed and staving off anxiety, just trying to keep it together one day to the next. But there are always moments of joy between the darkness and strife. I don’t really think you have to look that hard to find them, actually. You just have to be open to them.
Sledding. Whether you have kids or not, I suggest giving it a try.
