A New Year: A New Beginning

What an exciting new year with so many different possibilities. We will be embarking on a few new journeys over this new year. Closing out 2020 is both encouraging and a little sad too. While 2020 will definitely be remembered as the Quarantine year, it also came with trying out and learning so many new adventures along the way. Even though we were more separated than ever, we found ways to connect with others and overcome the hardships. Now it’s time to look forward to 2021.

Key Take Aways from 2020

During 2020, we learned a lot about being a family as well as keeping connections alive virtually. Not only did we spend much more time playing, learning, and bonding together, but we became experts with Zoom, Google Meets, and FaceTime. We found creative ways to stay connected as our immediate family but also with our extended family too! Plus the many Zoom and Meet playdates that we were able to attend with our friends. Quarantine might have kept us away from each other physically, but we found ways to connect.

Our kids learned the joys of keeping their own schedules! This is something most children had never needed to do prior to remote learning at home. Children now relied on the clock more than ever! They needed to know which meet to log into and when as well as how. In the beginning, this required a lot of parent support, but as we move into 2021, our children are pretty independent with following their own schedule!

But most importantly, we learned that we could survive this pandemic together! While we had a lot of new things to learn and new normals to adapt to, we did it. We found ways to make our new normal work for our family and became stronger because of it.

We All Became More Creative

Creativity and independence has abounded. Not only have our children needed to find new and creative ways to fill their time with the limited playdates and extracurricular activities, but they have needed to be more independent than ever. Not only have toys and art supplies been used again, but they have invented new ways to use what they have. Plus they have found inventive ways to work together with what they have. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my kids create a race car track for cleaning up toys before, but what a way to clean.

Organizing and cleaning are at an all time high for us. We have finally moved out of baby stage and have finally been able to purge most of these items making room for other things. But with the extra family time, we have been able to teach our children how to purge things that they no longer need and organize what they have. Additionally, we placed a focus on the kid keeping their rooms clean. Plus, we have had more time to teach our children some essential chores so they can help out too. Who doesn’t love when your children can wash and dry their own laundry or take ownership of organizing one part of the house?

And finally, our creativity grew in school too! We couldn’t rely on the old ways to do things anymore. We had to find new ways to connect with our teachers and peers. Turning in assignments and completing projects required a new lens. Throughout the school year, we needed to extend the remote learning so our children didn’t fall behind and problem solve their remote learning spaces as well. And boy did our kids step up to the plate and bring their creativity with them.

New Way to Shop

Grocery store pickup and online shopping have really increased. It has been so nice to place an order through the app, drive up and go. Or even have groceries delivered to your door. All the local stores have really stepped up their creativity too!

However, I do miss being able to go into the stores to look for sales and pick out my own produce. Amazon has been a life saver with purchasing anything we could need outside of the store pickups, but also with sending gifts and sharing with others. While we couldn’t meet in person, we could celebrate together over zoom.

Looking Forward to 2021

With all these new skills, we look forward to embracing 2021. We know that we will be remote learning for most, if not the rest, of the school year. However, once warmer weather returns, we look forward to reconnecting with many of our friends. As the vaccine rolls out, we look forward to returning to our extracurriculars, especially sports for the boys, and school. Our littlest looks forward to beginning preschool, hopefully in a classroom.

We are looking forward to taking the family on a vacation again! Some much needed time away from home and exploring our world around us. We can’t wait until we can jump in our camper and go! There are so many beautiful sites to see and places to visit. Hopefully we can get some much needed use out of our new camper and enjoying our surroundings. Check our our camping itineraries and ideas.

And of course, we look forward to being able to go places together as a family. We love little trips to the library, dining at a restaurant, playing sports together, and exploring new family adventures. It will be nice to take the kids shopping and get some new shoes and clothes because they have all grown. We are so excited for things to reopen and people to be able to connect physically this year!

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Comment below and share your new skills from 2020 and what you are looking forward to in 2021. What did you miss doing the most this year?

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Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.