YES DAY 2020

Isaac has a friend from college with whom I am a casual social-media acquaintance. (You can read beautiful, faith-filled writings at her blog.) This weekend, I shamelessly plagiarized one of their family's fun traditions: YES DAY! We made some adaptations to suit our family and planned the BEST DAY EVER. (Yep, all the capital letters.)

A few rules:
1. Daddy has a budget in mind, and he'll let you know if we're getting close.
2. Everything goes back to normal at 6:30pm on Saturday. So, no animal acquisitions, no wall painting, and night-before-church baths and bedtimes still stand.
3. COVID restrictions remain in place, as well as a bit of family democracy when choices have to be made.

It would've been fun to do the whole day on a whim, and Isaac would've been 100% on board with that. But since we have a baby who naps and too many little ones to run to the grocery store repeatedly, we made a big list the day before of things they'd like to see happen. Then I took the master list and made a plan (YES to my type-A personality 😂)!

Can we have sugary cereal for breakfast? YES!

These were the four cereals requested . . . 

And this was the display at the grocery store. Like it was meant to be!

Can we have smoothies made with strawberry daiquiri mix? YES! (Last year, when we followed as many National Day celebrations as possible, we had strawberry daiquiris -- just the syrup and ice, obviously. The next week I used the leftover syrup in their smoothies, and Levi thought it was delicious.) 

Can Levi play games with his best buddy via Zoom? YES!

Can Owen take apart something mechanical (an old CD player) to see how it works? YES! (And he can use the Usborne science encyclopedia to figure out some of the resistors, too!)

Can Toby play Forbidden Island with his own made-up rules? YES!

Can Silas have a little extra time with the Scratch coding app? YES!

Can Tessa sleep really badly overnight, take a ridiculously short nap, and be fed a bunch of graham crackers just to keep her happy? YES! Oh . . . that's sad, actually . . . 

Please ignore my dirty floors . . . 

Can we go bowling?!?! YES!!

Can we have peanut butter and jelly pie? YES! (A remembered favorite from this year's Pi Day.)

Can we play Wii? YES! (Truthfully, this was a begrudging yes. We tried to push a splash pad, or a playground, or a lake, something outside and less ordinary, but they wouldn't be convinced.)

Can we play with the six-foot ball? YES!

Can we have ice cream sundaes with magic shell and sprinkles? YES!

Can Toby and Calvin eat cucumbers like apples? YES!

Can we have a pizza picnic while watching a movie? YES!

Can Toby have a mohawk in the bathtub? YES!

Can Calvin have the one thing he asked for all day: to eat ice cream in bed? YES! 😁 (He woke up at 4am and stumbled upstairs, asking where his vanilla went. This was a one-time event for sure.)

All day long, we reminded them, like a catechism: why are we doing YES DAY? Because God gives us good things! Even when we don't deserve them! Even when we bicker like the children we are and forget to be grateful and fuss because we think we want something different! As we've been telling the child who is afraid that eternity in heaven will be boring: you think this (bowling, ice cream, video games, pizza) is good? Just you wait.

2 Corinthians 1:20: For all of God's promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding YES! (NLT)