Despite #shelteringinplace with #covid19, life continues on. Where we live in the Deep South, spring is here! Flowers are blooming, everything is green and beautiful, people are starting their vegetable gardens. It gives one hope just to look out and see the sun shining and the greenery!
I find this time of year, the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost, to be one of my favorite times of year. It is hopeful and encouraging and feels like new beginnings. Being home has provided time and space for thought, and that has been helpful. It is a great time for new commitments, new ideas and thoughts, and for really discerning the essential.
If you are looking for joyous outward ways to celebrate Eastertide, here are some of my ideas rounded up, great for life with children: 50 Ways to Celebrate Eastertide. We usually celebrate this by hiking a lot and even camping during Eastertide, which won’t be happening this year. We have all been exercising inside daily and walking, which has helped stave off some feelings of confinement. We are fortunate as I know some countries you need an essential worker’s pass to be out of the house and an assigned shopping day.
Schoolwork is online for our high school senior for her outside classes; our freshman is in a four day a week program that went smoothly to completely live online classes, and our little fourth grader is still homeschooling with me. We started a writing/grammar block, and I will be posting some pictures on The Parenting Passageway’s Facebook page and Instagram account so you can follow along!
Other than that, work continues online for my husband and we are so very grateful, my school begins again on April 22nd online, and hopefully I will be able to see some patients via telehealth in May. We have been busy cooking and baking, growing microgreens in the kitchen, doing puzzles, playing board and card games, studying, painting, reading, taking walks, and checking on our horses (considered an essential activity because we own them and have to provide food). There have been little neighborhood activities like a “bear hunt” for the smaller children to find on walks, drives for food for our local food bank and for healthcare workers to provide meals at the hospital, a cute Easter bunny who went around to houses so children could have a visit from 10 feet away, and I hear a Kona ice truck will swing through here in the next few weeks. Lots to be thankful for!
This Eastertide may be like no other, the future may be uncertain for many of us economically and otherwise, but I am finding the gratitude in this time before the world opens up again.
A little note from my corner of the world,
Carrie
