My Mini Summer Staycation - Quarantine Style
This year because of the global pandemic, summer break looks a little different for us all. Since we probably won't be taking the kids on an extended overnight vacation we have had to get creative with our plans. Insert my mom and my mini summer staycation!
Well, she actually asked us if the kids could come over. It seemed like a great idea since we both have been limiting our contact with others. The kids are 10, 9, and 3. Loads of fun for my mama aka Mimii, right? Well her and the kids (most of the time) LOVED IT!
Today, I’m not really writing to tell you what the kids did, but I am writing to tell you about all the fun I had with the hubs while they were gone on our mini staycation / baecation quarantine style!
So lets set the scene...we are living in a city that's new to us, Raleigh, North Carolina. We moved right before the pandemic so we haven’t visited many places because of the pandemic. But we took some time last week to check off a few things on our get to know our new city list.
Before the week started the hubs and I talked about our goals for the week. Why may you ask? Because we both still had work obligations and we wanted to be intentional with our time.
The first major thing that we both wanted to do was get in some exercise. We walked almost 2+ miles every day. Whether it was around our neighborhood or at a few of the area parks. Now because we are in the south most of these days it was humid and HOT. So we did most of the walking early in the morning or late at night.
We did want to visit a few parks. This something we did a lot in our old city. We took the kids on numerous trails and visited lots of the local parks.
Our favorite park from last week was Old Reedy Creek Road Trailhead. The trail is located in the small neighboring town of Cary, NC.
The trail was BEAUTIFUL! There was a nice lake, lots of wildlife (which I love), and tons of shade (which still didn’t keep us from sweating)!
For indoor fun, we NETFLIXED AND CHILLED! No, we didn’t just limit ourselves to Netflix, but we binged tv shows and watched movies on probably all the streaming networks. I would say our favorite movie last week had to be the new Netflix release, The Old Guard.
I mean the movie had everything! Action within the first 5 minutes (which my husband loves), tons of girl power (hello Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne) and loaded with brown girl power in front of and behind the camera. The director was Gina Prince-Bythewood a black woman which was a big deal for a comic book themed movie. The Netflix movie, The Old Guard, was really good and this is coming from someone that's not a huge superhero comic book fan. Loved it!
Now no good week alone with your boo thang isn’t good enough without long conversations about future goals, hand-holding, and….
You guessed it GOOD FOOD!
Oh, we had an amazing mini cookout with just us! We even played cards. Now can someone tell him that playing spades with two people IS possible! Hubs outdid himself on the grill. The steaks were amazing.
We also visited a few restaurants (for takeout) that we hadn’t been to in a while for our favorites.
New yummy treats we tried were:
The Dairy Depot Icecream was greeeatttt!!!
Crumbl Cookie The cookies were HUMONGOUS.
All in all, we missed the kids a LOT. It’s crazy because we have been in the house them with virtually no outside visitors or being able to take them to many outside places because of the pandemic and we were ALL feeling like we could use a mini-vacation from each other, but we missed them like crazy.
I think I cried the first day...okay I did cry the first day.
The mini-vacation had multiple benefits:
The hubs and I got to reconnect again and explore the new city.
The kids got a break from us!
The kids also got to make memories with my mom.
My mom got to spend time with the kids making memories and filling her house with noise. I know she enjoyed the extra noise and extra activities.
Now that the kids are back it’s time to figure out how we will fill up the rest of our long summer days. This week me and the fam are making a Summer Bucket List. I will probably use Pinterest for inspiration, but mainly the list will be inspired by all of the people that make up the Dove family. And when we’re done, I’ll share it here with you.
Share with me in the comments what’s on your Summer Bucket List: The Quarantine Edition.