COVID-19 has brought about both good and bad times for people across the world. There have been lives lost, incomes lost, and of course the loss of social interaction. But there are also many positives if we only choose to put the focus on them. Families are now eating more meals together around the dinner table as they are no longer running from activity to activity. Friends and siblings are organizing Zoom social hours to all reconnect…even those from far distances who never regularly got together before the pandemic, but now they are. People are also becoming more creative, finding ways to entertain themselves and their families. There have been dancers performing in parking lots. People coming together via social media to make music. Drive-by parades for birthdays and nursing homes.
On a local level, one of the things that I discovered on the internet was the Jeff and Stacy Osborn family who with their three daughters, Brandi, Brittney, and Brooklyn, took the family meal one step further. To ease the boredom of quarantine, they held a theme night. Everyone had to come to dinner dressed in their best Yeehaw Country attire.
When I saw it, I thought how fun, but ugggg, it’s so much work, and besides, we don’t have any supplies around the house that would work for any kind of theme night. So I just kept on scrolling. The Osborn’s didn’t stop with just one theme night, they held several. One night they all came dressed as their dad who they claim refused to participate in the dress ups, so they came to dinner dressed up like him in his work attire – a black shirt and khaki pants. One night they dressed like Brandi, all of them with their hair up in space buns. My personal favorite, however, was jail birds, also known as prisoners to the Coronavirus.
It must have been meant to be, because the more I saw how much fun they were having, the more I wanted to make those own kinds of memories with my family. Then, as I prepared to go to the grocery store one night to stock up for as many days as possible, Jaclynn asked me, “Mom, can we have a theme meal?” She had seen others posting on Instagram and Tik Tok. My youngest, Mollie, quickly chimed in, “Yeah, can we? Please?” How could I say “no” to that. And of course, I’m really a big kid at heart so I was all in. I quickly volunteered to take the first night. I announced that the next evening, Thursday, would be an indoor picnic. Did I mention that whoever picked the theme was also responsible for planning and preparing the meal? Bonus for me!
My menu was not “picnic basket” themed, but instead a little more picnic modern. I made burger sliders and french fries with Apple Snicker salad for a side. Hey, it was my theme so I could do it however I wanted…no rules, right?! I put down a picnic table cloth on the living room floor complete with paper plates, a dispenser of lemonade, a blanket for seats for everyone. Being the first night, and a pretty simple theme, I wasn’t sure how everyone would come to dinner looking. Dave wore jeans and a T-shirt – not real creative but hey, that’s what he would really wear. The girls and I all had on sunglasses and sported either shorts or swimming suit cover-ups…and of course the scent of sun tan lotion was in the air. As an added bonus, there was movie entertainment – kind of a little mini drive-in, but the movie was on my laptop…and there was no car to sit in. To everyone’s surprise, the movie was not produced in Hollywood. Instead, our family was the star. Yep, you guessed it – HOME MOVIES. It featured each of the girls in their beginning dance days. We watched them learn how to ride their bikes. We laughed as we watched short clips of helium voices. A solo performance of “You are my Sunshine” by three-year-old Jaclynn made us ooh and ahhh. Sports clips made us realize just how much practice and experience pays off. From littles to teenagers….time has gone so fast. It was so fun to watch our memories. Before we knew it, we had spent three hours at our picnic.
Friday night was Mollie’s night. She wanted to have a Fiesta. I thought to myself, “How in the world are we going to dress for the occasion,” but oh my, you should have seen the creativity. Jaclynn made a poncho for our dog out of felt and green, red, and white tissue paper. Hannah made a sombrero using a lamp shade and tissue paper. Mollie found a teeny tiny sombrero that I brought back from our honeymoon in Cancun many moons ago. Each of us were dressed the part and ready for the night. Before the meal was served, she had planned a little pre-dinner entertainment. It was a beautiful day outside so we all headed out to the back yard where she had set up a game of frisbee golf, only instead of frisbees, we used flour tortillas. The “holes” were the seat of a chair, the top of a bucket, the mailbox on our house, and several other creative ideas. It was hilarious. I had the worst score, but my tortilla was the only one left in full capacity at the end of the game. Now how did that happen? Now that we had all worked up an appetite, we ate at the table with all the fixings placed on bright red, yellow, and green dishes. Her meal plan – tacos in a bag and Jarritos soda. Spotify provided fun background music. When the meal was finished, Mollie had a few more games in store for us. I served as the judge while Hannah and Jaclynn partnered up against Dave and Mollie in a tortilla catching contest. They threw flour tortillas back and forth across the room, their partner trying to catch them on top of the head with a paper plate. Some of them weren’t as talented as others, and as would be expected from young siblings, they didn’t hold back from telling each other how horrible they were. But it was all in good fun. The night concluded with a spontaneous game of glow-in-the-dark balloon volleyball. A blanket served as the net and instead of hitting the balloon over with your hand, we used fly swatters. Let me just tell you, it is waaaaay harder than it looks. Poor Mollie and Jaclynn who went first and we teased them how uncoordinated they were. Well, we had to eat our words.
Saturday was Hannah’s theme night, and in the spirit of the season, we had a Prom. Once again, other than Hannah who had three prom dresses hanging in her closet (none of which fit her sisters) I wondered what in the world we would all wear. As we dug to the back of my closest…success. Hanging there was my sister’s bridesmaid dress she wore for my and Dave’s wedding. I had it from a wedding fashion show we did year ago here in Eagle Grove as part of Ladies Night Out. Mollie tried it on…and it fit good enough to wear for our dinner. The bridesmaid dress led to the girls wanting to see my wedding dress in real life. I have never opened it since I had it cleaned, but I figured unusual times call for unusual decisions…so we opened the dress. The girls could hardly believe their eyes. They laughed, of course, because it is far from today’s style of gowns. Both Hannah and Jaclynn tried it on with Mollie standing next to them in the bridesmaid dress. It was too big on both of them of course, but it made this mama’s heart skip a beat. Wasn’t it just yesterday that they were little and in diapers, sitting on my lap while I rocked and sang to them?! Although Jaclynn wanted to wear it for dinner….well, let’s just say she’s not the neatest eater, so I quickly put it back away. But never fear, we found a gem, for her to wear too. Out of my cedar chest we pulled MY senior prom dress. Comparing it next to Hannah who was now wearing her gorgeous senior prom dress from last year was quite amusing, and quite different. Did I really wear that to prom? Believe it or not, I felt like a million bucks in that dress. My how times have changed. Of course Dave and I found some fancy clothes to wear as well – me in my sparkling dress I wore for my niece’s wedding, and Dave, well, he didn’t wear a suit and tie. Instead he wore his “Sunday” shirt and tie…it was a T-shirt full of holes, so he called it his “Holy” shirt, decked out with the skinniest, funniest little tie he could find from his wardrobe several decades ago.
Now that we were dressed, we needed a meal. Remember, we said whoever picked the theme also cooked the meal? Well Hannah said for Prom you go out for supper. Since the restaurants were of course closed, we decided instead to call for curb side delivery. Everybody got exactly what they wanted even though we had to go to six different restaurants…four in Eagle Grove and two in Clarion. It would have been fun to go in and sit down and eat in our “fancy” clothes, but then again, had it not been for the quarantine we would most likely never have been having this adventure in the first place. Not only was everyone happy they got the food of their choice, but we were happy to support our local economy.
When the meal was over we skipped right to the After Prom. We tried to catch money off a spinning ceiling fan. We flipped whipped cream from our wrists into our mouths – the girls couldn’t believe that their father and I were the two going for the win. They totally thought they were going to school us on this trick, but they were wrong. In fact, it was a battle of will between Dave and I, each of us catching four in a row. In the end, Dave was victorious…in that game. We also had a Fruit Roll Up eating contest; played blindfolded dodge ball with toilet paper rolls; and a cup stacking race. At the end of all the games, the one with the fewest points had to walk the dog in their “Prom” attire. Poor Jaclynn and Mollie – they were so embarrassed. Did I mention it was perfect timing that when they got half way down the sidewalk the neighbors came walking out?
Sunday night found Dave and Jaclynn teaming up to host “Sunday Switch,” based on the movie Freaky Friday. If you’ve never seen this classic movie, it stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter. While having a disagreement, they eat a fortune cookie…and they switch bodies. In the Demory household there was no earthquake, but a drawing from a shaking bowl determined who we would be portraying for the night. The fun began as Jaclynn announced that spaghetti was on the table (instead of Chinese because that was on the table for Prom). As we gathered, we knew immediately whose name Dave had drawn. Dressed in rolled up camo pants and a white T-shirt that made it known he was a “Golden Star” immediately had us all laughing…but when the dance routine began, we were almost in tears. Jaclynn enjoyed the opportunity to portray her little sister, and we all knew she had drawn Mollie’s name when she came walking down the stairs and proceeded to “trip” at the bottom. As she jumped up and said “I am not okay,” we all looked at Mollie, who was beginning to blush. Mollie is a good sport as we all tease her that she is a little clumsy and can trip on a piece of string on the carpet. Fortunately for Mollie, she got the chance for “payback” as she portrayed Jaclynn. As I mentioned above, Jaclynn is not the neatest eater in the family AND she has a little bad luck with food you could say – she’s dropped a full plate of spaghetti three times. We bought a steam cleaner years ago so it’s all good 😀 As Mollie began to eat her spaghetti…with a big tablespoon because that was the rules for everyone since we didn’t have chop sticks, she was extreme with the mess she made, wiping her hands all over her shirt. When Hannah came to the dinner table, she sat down in my spot. It was funny to watch her telling the girls to be nice to each other and starting some of the “motherly” type conversations I’ve been known to start like “How was everyone’s day today?” But don’t think I got off without a little teasing as well. Taped to her shirt were little notes that said “bad shoulder,” and “Other bad shoulder.” Yes, I’ve had one shoulder surgery and complications with the other. Any chance she got in the conversation she would say, “Oh, my shoulder.” Okay, so I’ve maybe said that a time or hundred. That left me to portray Dave. Sitting at the head of the table in my “Holy” T-shirt and my Grinch lounging pants, I just enjoyed watching everyone laughing and having a good time.
Quarantine hasn’t always been easy, but I believe that these four nights will be ones we all remember and talk about. Who knows, maybe my girls will do it with their own families some day. Or maybe they won’t have to wait that long. I think it’s something easy we can do again, even if we are out of quarantine. Half the fun was being creative to use the things we already had at home to bring out the theme. The other half of the fun was that we did it together as a family.
Thank you Osborn’s for your inspiration. Not only did you create memories for your family, but you created memories for ours as well. For all of you reading this, maybe it will inspire you to make memories of your own as well.
