Don't dump the bucket list - re-imagine it!

We are in the home stretch for 2020!  The air is getting a little crisper, the evenings are getting cooler and my calendar says we only have 17 Saturdays left until it's New Years Day 2021!  I'm ready to dive into Fall decorations and celebrations, and then Thanksgiving and then on to Christmas.   

When we started this year, I'm pretty sure most of us didn't have world-wide pandemic on our list of things to do in the year 2020.  Or start a fabulous face mask collection.  For my family, we had dreamed of my husband finally being free of Kidney Stones (almost checking that off the list!) my oldest daughter becoming a teenager (next month she gets to check that off), my son becoming more fluent with reading and spelling (work in progress), and I dreamed of potty training my youngest (another work in progress, but she's getting there!)  We definitely had some travel on our list - going to Lake Chelan ✔✔, and a trip to Disneyland & Legoland in Southern California that we had to postpone.  

Our California trip was originally scheduled for right after the parks initially closed down, so for now we have rescheduled it for December (don't tell the kids, it's a surprise!) - with the California parks not having an opening date just yet, we may have to add this to the 2021 bucket list.  We have some other things we're having to postpone - my daughter has a Shark Cage Diving certificate to redeem once that is available again, and starting to build our detached garage so we can add more living space to our home.  After the pandemic hit and we were stuck safe at home, we began to re-imagine our bucket list.  

This image shows what our bucket list started as.  As it became apparent we were going to have a lot more time at home to accomplish some other goals, we started working on re-imagining our bucket list.  

Here's some of what we came up with:

• My daughter finally had time to learn some cooking/baking basics.  With her Girl Scout troop, they prepared meals from all over the world.  They took their cooking journey through India, Mexico, Italy and Spain.  
• I had time to start a Sourdough Starter!  I am on my second starter, we named him Harold.  Sally was my first, but 'someone' managed to kill her in the microwave.  RIP Sally!  Thankfully Harold is still doing well and has proved to be very healthy.
• For my oldest's 13th birthday, I had a trip planned for her and I - a 2 night cruise from Vancouver Canada to Seattle.  Something short and sweet to celebrate her becoming a teenager.  Well that cruise was cancelled thanks to Covid, but I have rescheduled us for a 4 night cruise in April on her half birthday that goes from San Francisco up to Vancouver.  We are taking advantage of an awesome offer Holland America has right now to entice people to book their next cruise.  My daughter doesn't know the specifics of the trip, but I'm having fun planning our Mom/Daughter trip.
• We started making a list of some of the places we want to visit when it becomes possible again.  We spent some time taking virtual tours of these places so we can write down what we want to do, and places we want to go when we visit

Re-imaging your bucket list can be a fun task in and of itself!  The extra time we have had together as a family has really helped us make better priorities.  While we look forward to our trip to Disneyland once it has reopened, we want to try some new destinations as well.  Some people make one big life bucket list - something to accomplish before your time here on earth is over.  Others like to pick a few things for the current year - whatever you want your list to be, take some time to re-imagine it.  Just because COVID has derailed some of your plans doesn't mean it's time to dump that list!