There is no shortage of things to be thankful for. I will most definitely be thankful when the coronavirus threat is gone. It seems like all of my conversations include one of the phrases: “I am so ready for all of this be over”, “When we get back to normal”, “I am sick of all of this mess”, or some similar phrase. Despite how tired I am of all the mess, I have learned so many things during this pandemic. Learning to stay away from people is the hardest lesson. I love being with family, hanging out with friends, or even talking to random strangers in the store. All of that has changed and I am ready to get it back. Despite these changes, we continue to grasp at small pieces of normalcy.
“Bye for Now”
A friend of ours recently made a huge life change and was moving over 1,000 miles away. Lucky for us, she didn’t leave until after the restaurants were able to open again. We fell into an accidental tradition of getting together at Mexican food restaurants! HA! It was never a plan, it just happened, and we were able to keep with tradition for the last get together before she left. Mandi, we will miss our salsa lunches and we will definitely plan to catch up soon.
Friday Night Football
Sports were cancelled due to quarantine. This was devastating. When the students were able to go back to school and sports were able to resume, we were excited. Never in a million years would we have thought to treasure the simple things we had before covid. There were hoards of things we took for granted. One of them was Friday Night Lights and all the fun that goes along with it. Remember all of the things you took for granted on Friday nights? Hugging friends and family, standing in line at the concession stand to grab nachos while visiting with everyone around you, squeezing around people in the stands to talk to everyone, watching the sun set as the Friday Night Lights come up, yelling for the kids, listening to the band, trying to catch the flying t-shirts after every score, hearing the cheerleaders, and never having to wear a mask!!
Thursday Night Football
Don’t forget about Thursday night, Junior varsity, football. Always with a mask. It was a warm beautiful night in Harmony watching football. I know, I know. Football season is supposed to be cold. Personally, I like it warmer so I don’t have to haul in all the blankets, coats, hats, and gloves. These boys play with so much heart and it is impossible to sit still in the stands.
Baseball Fun
I wasn’t able to make it to as many baseball games as I would like but I hope to be there for more next year. Obviously you can see that I was wearing a mask, but I took it off quickly for this picture. This handsome nephew of mine is an excellent baseball player and I always look forward to seeing him play. Covid has affected the whole system because he plays on a select team.
AirBNB Vacation
We hated to miss going on vacation so we chose to take a short, secluded vacation that was close to home. Packing for a couple of days looked like we were moving! It was such a blast to get out of the house. We stayed in an adorable cabin on a lake in Van, TX. The dogs swam, rolled in the dirt, and relaxed in the shade. Even when the dogs were on the porch letting their hair dry, they couldn’t stop staring at the lake and the ducks.
Auggie was intrigued with the squirmy and slimy animals that Kym kept pulling in!
We had a fantastic vacation filled with fishing, reading, relaxing, and grilling. It wasn’t the beach vacation we had planned but it gave us the opportunity to get away from home. I have always heard that you should build a life you don’t need a vacation from and I can honestly say that I have accomplished that. With that being said, I still want to go on vacation even though I don’t need to go. I love going on vacations, no matter how small, because I love exploring new places and seeing new things. I urge you to take as many vacations as you can because you will never get this time back.
Travel Now
We all had our life plan when we were young, right? You know what I am talking about? As a child, I thought I would grow up and work at a company for 25 years, retire with all the money I would ever need, and travel around the world in all of my free time. Ummmmm, I was way off. How about you? I grew up to learn that it is rare to work at a company for your entire working career. And imagine how disappointed I was to learn that when you retire, you may not have enough money to live on, much less to travel on. That was such a plan killer so I had to adapt.
That’s what we do – adapt. Instead of expecting to work and retire from a company, I adapted to enjoy working for multiple companies. Instead of travelling after retirement, I have decided to travel now. That plan takes some sacrifices but they are worth it. We eat at home instead of eating out, we rarely buy new clothes, and we constantly try to reduce our bills any way we can (more on this in a future post). None of these items net a large amount of money but a little here and little there helps to grow our vacation fund.
We also sacrifice while we are on vacation. We stay in reasonably priced accommodations and try to reduce our food bill by eating at the hotel or AirBNB with food from the grocery store instead of take out. This does not mean that we miss out, because we do eat at local restaurants while on vacation, we just don’t eat at restaurants for every meal. We would rather travel with these small sacrifices instead of missing the opportunity to travel altogether.
Fill Your Memory Bank
I hope that you can adapt to changes that life throws your way and travel as much possible. Always save money but don’t lose memories trying fill your bank. Your memories and joy will last longer than any dollar you can put in the bank.
