As I mentioned the other day, I recently did a full 2-week quarantine so that I can spend time with my family. It’s not easy to do a full quarantine, but it’s worth it to see my family. I know I have to do this to make sure that I’m not sick and I don’t get anyone sick. If I wasn’t taking these precautious and someone got sick, I would never forgive myself. So doing the full quarantine is a small sacrifice to make in order to feel good about seeing people who I do not live with. I can’t wait until I don’t have to think about this before seeing my family (or being able to see my friends), but I just remind myself that this is will end eventually and it is what we have to do in order to have our future.
Just like my other recent visits with my family, this was just going to be for the day. It’s not that long of a drive (only about 90 minutes each way) and it’s just easier to be there for the day than it is to pack up everything that I would need to spend the night. Plus, if I was staying overnight, it would only get me a few more hours as I would be going home the next day. So doing a day trip is just easier for me. I’m sure my parents would love it if I stayed longer, but they understand why I don’t.
This time, we were going to be hanging out at the rental house my parents were staying at because they had the dog with them! I hadn’t seen Tucker since the baby shower, so I was so happy to see him. He can’t be inside my brother and sister-in-law’s house because they have a cat. So to let him hang out with all of us, we had to be where my parents were staying. But that also worked for another reason.
I take a lot of pride in finding awesome gifts for people, and I was starting to think of things I wanted to get for Rory. And something that kept coming up in random searches that I was doing was busy boards. A busy board is basically a collection of things that babies and toddlers like to play with such as light switches, doorknobs, wheels, different types of locks, and stuff like that. And while there were some really nice looking ones that I knew I couldn’t make, in general, they didn’t look too fancy and it seemed like something I could do. Or at least something my dad and I could do together.
So I talked to my dad a month or so about this idea. The original idea was to make this for Rory’s first birthday. So we weren’t in a rush for anything. We both said we would just look around to see what we could find that would be good things to put on a busy board. We didn’t think we would need to buy a ton of stuff. Most things could be random things we had as extras from other projects. And then a week or two before I was going to see my family, my dad and I started talking more about the type of board and holder we would use for this. We wanted to maybe work on it when we saw each other, but we had no idea how to actually make it stand up and be safe. We looked at a few different ideas online like artist easels and other pre-built things, but we ended that call not knowing what to do. I promised my dad I would do more research.
But the next day, my dad texted me to stop the search. I guess he got inspired because he went to the hardware store, bought some wood, and built this.
And it actually can flip and be used the other direction so it doesn’t have as much of an angle! This is way better than anything my dad and I were looking at online. I was shocked that he was able to build this and do it so quickly! And he said that he would have it painted before they were in Santa Barbara so we could work on adding the gadgets together.
We were going to have a few hours before my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over after I arrived; so when I got there my dad and I immediately got to work. We had a bunch of tools to drill holes and get everything in there safely. And we had figured out that we might give Rory his present early (instead of driving it back and forth) so we were extra motivated to get it done before they arrived! We had a little bit of planning to do so we could figure out what should go where, but that ended up being pretty quick. And we made an awesome team with getting everything installed. My dad did most of the hard work and I did the prep work (like getting the correct screws and washers ready). It still took us a few hours, but we got it done! And I am so proud of how it looks!
My dad and I have done a lot of projects together. It’s something we like to do and we are good at it. Our go-to ultimate project for a long time has been a screen door we built years ago. It came from a box with instructions, but we did have to do some customizations. But this busy board was completely from scratch. Honestly, I think it’s the greatest thing we have made and I still can’t believe how it looks. I’m so proud of it and this easily beats the screen door!
Rory is still a little too young for this, but he was fascinated by it. We let him try to play with it, and he was so interested in what things were. He just didn’t know how to do them just yet.
This photo is also the first time he sat up unassisted, so I guess the busy board motivated him to do that! And I know that as he gets a little older, he’ll love it even more. He’ll play with the different things that spin and move. And I hope it will keep him busy for a while so my brother and sister-in-law can get other work done and know that he is entertained! And in the future, my niece will hopefully enjoy playing with it too! I can’t wait to see him really enjoying it, but the few moments that he was playing with it while I was there was enough to make me feel so good about what we made.
Besides letting Rory play with the busy board, we had family dinner that night (the cookies I made were for dessert). We also spent some time hanging outside because the weather wasn’t too bad. And when we were outside, Tucker seemed to want to be a part of the conversation too.
After dinner, my brother and sister-in-law needed to go home to put Rory to bed. And I started to get my stuff together so I could drive home. I was able to spend almost 8 hours with my family, which really was awesome. Of course, more time would be better, but just those 8 hours revived me a bit. It had been so long since I had a hangout like that and I needed it.
And fortunately, I won’t have to wait too long before my next family hangout. Usually, my family does a big Thanksgiving with my extended family. But this year, that just isn’t possible. Between travel and trying to keep people safe and healthy, we just can’t get together like we normally do. So my immediate family is going to do our own little Thanksgiving. And because house rentals and other things are more expensive during the holiday, we are doing Thanksgiving a few weeks early (this was actually the original plan for the extended family Thanksgiving too). So I am only about 6 weeks away from seeing everyone again. That does mean that I am about 4 weeks away from another quarantine, but like always, it will be worth it. And I can’t wait until I get to see everyone and get to spend a few days with the family!
