It's the 4th July 2020 and the government has announced that as of today, more businesses are allowed to open and we're allowed to have more contact with other people (one other family is allowed to visit our house now), but there is still a way to go to get back to normal. Today we celebrated our newfound freedoms by having a 'Lockdown Easing' day, in which we have written a 'bucket list' of things we wanted to do once lockdown was finished and attempted to work through it today.
Since it seems that the restrictions are going to be lifted very gradually and it may still be many, many months before we can really say that lockdown is over, we have decided to have a rest from the daily lockdown blog - this will be the last lockdown post. We will, however, attempt to keep up to date with what we're up to and post on this blog, but on a less frequent basis.
 |
| Watching a Youtube video together |
|
|
|
 |
| One
of the things we had on our bucket list was to make food using
ingredients that were hard to get hold of during lockdown. Here, we are
making some lamb koftas for our lunch (it became hard to get meat during
the first part of lockdown) |
|
|
 |
| Finally,
the playgrounds have reopened! Of course, this was one of the first
things on our bucket list - the playground they have been gazing
at out of the loft window for so long! |
 |
| Navigating the adventure playground |
 |
| They've had lots of practice for this on the many logs we have found on our walks |
 |
| Enjoying the swing |
 |
| They have given the play equipment a makeover, so it felt brand new |
 |
| Trying out the climbing wall |
 |
| Weeeee! |
 |
| We
had a tasty lunch of lamb koftas, with naan breads (using yeast, which
has been extremely difficult to get hold of during lockdown) |
 |
| Daddy's yummy lunch - with mango chutney, tzatziki, fried onions and salad |
 |
| Another
place on our bucket list that has been closed during lockdown has now
reopened: Orange Elephant Ice Cream Parlour! We've been driving past
their orange elephant many times, but it has always been closed. Now
they have reopened (albeit, only a drive thru) |
 |
| They only had 9 flavours on offer this time, but fortunately the ones they wanted were on list |
 |
| Tasty honeycomb |
 |
| Another
place to visit on our bucket list was some amusements as they have all
been closed during lockdown; we headed to Paignton Pier |
 |
| We had a go at the grabbers - they liked the look of the alien from Shaun the Sheep (they saw the movie at the cinema) |
 |
| 2p machines |
 |
| Many signs of the Coronavirus effect remain |
 |
| Blowing the balls away with a blower gun |
 |
| Rolling a coin to aim for a slot |
 |
| Putting the balls into the hole as fast as possible |
 |
| Choosing their prizes; Tahlia had a mini My Little Pony and Ptolemy chose some Avengers superhero badges |
 |
| We
decided to make the most of the playgrounds being open and head to the
excellent Paignton one; the Council hadn't yet taken the closed signs
down, but the playground was pretty busy |
 |
| Riding on the swinging snake |
 |
| Climbing the space net - spot Tahlia - she was complaining that everyone at the top was blocking her route upwards |
 |
| Jory's favourite - he's missed these a lot |
 |
| Boo! |
 |
| Jory goes for the top |
 |
| The
final bucket list item we ticked off today was visiting McDonalds. Jory
is obsessed with McDonalds (although he doesn't actually eat the food
very well) and has been upset about it being closed during lockdown.
Although the restaurant itself wasn't yet open, we could still buy food
at the drive thru, although we had to join the queue, which went all around the car park before finally reaching the drive thru. |
 |
| Evidence we made it |
 |
| Opening their Happy Meal boxes |
 |
| Ptolemy was looking for his toy - he didn't realise it was in the small box |
 |
| Jory tried his hamburger, then ate some of the roll and discarded the rest |
 |
| We celebrated the fact that flour is now widely available with our mocha and vanilla LOCKDOWN easing cake (we were originally going to write 'lockdown freedom' on it, but we thought that was far too generous!) |
We had other things on our bucket list that we were unable to do today, such as visiting a museum (our local museums remained closed today) and seeing friends in their home (people are still too concerned about the virus and prefer to wait).
It's been long, but we've made the most of the 103 days at home and the kids have on the whole enjoyed the time. We're grateful to have been given a few of our freedoms back, but we are still restricted in many ways and the lockdown unfortunately seems far from over.
Thanks to everyone for reading our daily lockdown blog and for your lovely comments.
