For the most part I have to agree with him. There was the loss of so many lives, financial security, access to family and freedom and I could go on.
But today I am focusing on the good that came to my life during from 2020, primarily during the lockdown and the things for which I want to thank 2020.
At first, I was worried about all of the kids moving back into our house on March 19th, which happens to be my birthday. That was the first time that all of the kids were home from university in a long time and could celebrate my birthday with me, so that was one thing to be thankful for already. As the weeks went on, I began to recognize all of the unexpected gifts we received this year.
- I got to spend a couple of uninterrupted months with my hubby and adult children. When they started moving out, I never thought they would move back in again, but it was so nice to spend so much casual time hanging around and chatting, playing games, doing puzzles having heated political discussions lol. I will never have that opportunity again.

- I learned to hand-off jobs. I have had issues with increasing back pain so my hubby was very good at making sure the kids took on extra duties. The girls did the grocery shopping and they took turns cooking. I am less shy now at asking for help when I need it.

- I was lucky to see the relationships amongst the kids strengthening. I liked when they went off on their own or did things together. I think this time spend together has enhanced their ongoing relationships as independent siblings.

- I learned to enjoy having hubby work at home. I have to admit that I was almost in a full on panic as a result of never having any alone time during the lock down. I used to take my car out for a little spin every afternoon and play my radio loudly all by myself. When life resumed and the kids moved out, hubby was still home and continues to work at home. If made me nervous at first, as I like having the house to myself. But now I have become accustomed to having him here all day and I look forward to our joint coffee breaks, and meetings to plan what we will do for the rest of the day.
- I am thankful for the fact that I was able to be creative in coming up with places for everyone to have a quiet place to do their work. Our middle daughter Sydney moved her desk to the screened in porch and worked there until the weather became too hot. I am still sharing the mudroom with Lola as my workspace as hubby took over my office.

- We made fun out of nothing. On our oldest daughter’s birthday it was decided that we would do a room crawl. So each bedroom had to host a themed event with costumes and theme-inspired food and drink. Our daughter Sydney was the Carol from the Tiger King show on Netflix. We laughed ourself until were were silly doing this.


- We developed some new talents.


- Our kids were really good at getting online exercise classes going or evening, wind-down yoga classes. That was an absolute treat.

- Finally, we learned that doing puzzles in our house is not a good idea. It was really frustrating when we couldn’t find pieces to puzzles and started blaming each other. Then one day we were in the screen-in porch and watched Lola climb up on the banquette and eat a section of a puzzle. That was a useful lesson to learn.

If you sit down and think about it, I bet you will have a good list of things that you can thank the year 2020 for. It was not all bad but 2021 we are sure looking forward to you.
Always
Leslie

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