When the coronavirus lockdown began, we, like many of you, found ourselves cooped up in the house with nowhere to go, no one else to talk to, and probably most significantly, nothing to look forward to.

All of our best-laid plans were gone. Spring break was cancelled–I felt awful having to tell the kids that we weren’t going to see Nana and Granddad at LEGOLAND at the end of the month after all.

Cabin fever set in pretty quickly after that. To say I was stressed would be an understatement. I had taken on a new contract that involved writing quick copy responding to the coronavirus in addition to my regular work. But now the kids were home 24/7 and I was cooking nearly every meal. My first grader had to transition to distance learning, and the 3 year old didn’t understand why I couldn’t be her exclusive, personal playmate.

And did I mention we were living in what was meant to be a temporary situation in a 2-bedroom apartment? 😬

I needed a plan.

Problem was, I’m not one of those people–the kind that get up early, post a meal plan for the week, and follow an hourly schedule each day. I’m a I-know-what-needs-to-get-done-and-I’ll-do-it-when-I-feel-like-it-so-stop-asking kind of person. And that’s much harder to google.

However, I did know that time blocking was much closer to my M.O. That’s where you carve out blocks of the day for certain types of activities. There’s a lot more play in the system and room for going at one’s own pace.

But the “fun” really began when my son found some first-person point of view (POV) videos of Disney rides on YouTube. One night, after dinner, we sat on the bed and watched them, pretending we were on the rides. We had so much fun, we decided to do it again the next night. But this time we were going to up our game–we were going to pretend like we were going to go to a specific park within Disney World for the next few days.

My son made MagicBands and we decorated the room with every Hollywood Studios related toy we could find. I made some “blue milk” like they have in Star Wars land.

We looked forward to each evening and had fun prepping for our virtual visits during the day. We didn’t want the fun to end.

So I told my son to draw up a “fun” calendar. Each day, we’d have a theme and do activities related to that theme.

My main goal was just for us to have something fun to look forward to each day. I wanted to create positive memories, so that whenever we looked back at this time, we’d remember it as a joyful time despite the constraints.

I don’t know how long this will last, but I hope you, too, will be inspired to make the days meaningful and memorable for your family.