Things to keep your kids busy during the summer - kid perspective

(Shayna will share her blog post in writing that I will re-type. This is also how "mommy" keeps Shayna busy during the summer. LOL! My edits will be in parentheses.)

Hi, my name is Shayna. I wanna talk about how to keep your kid bizzy in the summer. (Because of COVID-19 and the Safer at home order)

This is how my mom keeps me bizzy (during the summer, while my mom is teleworking. Usually, Shayna hangs out with Grandpa during the summers but luckily, I'm teleworking so we can give Grandpa a break). I have to read for 1 hour, then 1 hour of IXL (free online computer lessons courtesy of Mililani Mauka Elementary School). She let's me play after (mostly video games, watch Disney channel, Disney+, play games on my phone, and play with my toys).

(If I had my way,) I wish I could read for 20 min and play Animal Crossing (New Horizons on my Nintendo Switch), maybe some clay art. Also staying up late (and waking up late).

For those parents who don't know how to keep your kids bizzy, (here are some tips):

at least read books, play outside if you have a yard but check on them once in a while (to make sure they are safe), play with water, water balloons with their siblings, play chase master on Animal Crossing on their Nintendo Switch. There s lots of things you can let your kids do.

Love, Shayna

(For the summer, I decided to have Shayna read the Harry Potter series. After each book, we get to watch the DVD. We had lots of breaks so, it took a while but Shayna finished book 1 and we watched the first DVD. Shayna enjoyed both and is looking forward to reading book 2 and watching the next DVD. Starting this new venture, I also had Shayna help with cooking dinners and with meal preps. Unfortunately, I am not too good at documenting. I'm more the type to be engaged in the moment and often times, don't take photos or journal. Will need to work on that. Also, Shayna helps with brainstorming product ideas, crafting projects with me, sorting supplies and hoping to inspire good work ethics. Because we are blessed to spend so much time together, we have been talking about lots of things - dreaming big by describing our dream homes, dream cars to what she thinks she will be like when she grows up. We talk about politics, religion, Black Lives Matter, how my childhood was like to everything in between. I try as much possible to be honest with my answers and try to be sensitive to her age. She's very intuitive and can read between the lines like a pro. The only thing I wish we would do more is go outside and be more physical - unfortunately, we were not like that pre-COVID, so it's been hard to start. Hope you enjoyed this post!)

So.... now what?

Ok, so....the fire is lit but now what?

To start, I tinkered into looking for a work from home job. Something I could do at night when my family goes to sleep. I like to type and sometimes, I'm good at finding typos/grammatical errors so proofreading or transcribing sounded pretty intriguing. LOL - sounded fun in all the Pinterest posts on "Work from home" jobs but it was far from fun.

First job site that I tried was for a proofreading work-at-home job. I signed up, took the test and as soon as I submitted the test, I got an email saying, thank you for trying but they only hire about 1 in 300 who pass the test. Oh boy! NEXT! If you want the challenge, apply at Proofreadingservices.com.

I tried a transcription work-at-home site, Go Transcript (https://gotranscript.com/) and got through a multiple choice test and then a "transcribing" test where you transcribe a short audio. A 2-minute audio took me about 1 hour to transcribe. It was a lot of rewinding and fast forwarding. Also, some googling because I couldn't understand the accent of the lady on the recording. Oh boy. The typing was fun but it was super hard. Long story short, I didn't pass the transcribing test and didn't get a position. But it was an experience that I'm glad I tried. If you want to take a stab, you should try for the experience. Let me know if you get offered a position. LOL!

I applied at one more site, Transcribe Me. This one seemed different because there is "class" you take before you take a test. It's like they invest in you a little bit more, however it was a 3 hour class and test and I never got around to it. If you have the time, give it a try and let me know how you like it. https://www.transcribeme.com/

I needed a break so I started looking at starting a blog or website. I started thinking about restarting my old side business, Puppy Love and Flowers. Started designing a web page just for fun because it was so much better than transcribing an accented audio. The idea of using my old TGIS Flowers' floral photos to make my site pretty popped in my head. I started looking at old photos and I got hooked. A trial web site turned into a full site full of photos and pretty pages. I couldn't stop. I stayed up for hours after my full time job to finish this website that I started for fun. It was so enjoyable that after 20+ hours, I felt like it was perfect.

And then I pressed "publish". What was I thinking?? I didn't have a plan of how or what I was going to do. For a moment, I thought, just try the free site and see where it would go but then i thought, if I don't put 100%, after a month or so, it would just be an empty shell taking space in a World Wide Web. The fire was burning strong.... and I ended up buying my own domain and posted on social media that I'm starting Puppy Love and Flowers back up and to stay tuned, in hopes to get me going until this business becomes successful. A part of me thinks I'm crazy to start a business during COVID-19. But in the end, I'm choosing to believe that I'm brave to take the leap in a world full of uncertainties and have the grit to keep going until I become successful.

So, I guess my "now what", is being a small business owner. Just a teaser of some print on demand products in my Etsy store. Graphics courtesy of Minimole Studio, Graphic Adventure and The Happy Graphics. Stay tuned as I revamp my handcrafted goodies in storage and create some new ones.

The Awakening

All my life, my mind was always working.... thinking of fun things to do, finding ways to help out others, absorbing life lessons, making memories, learning about myself, finding the joys in the simplest things to day dreaming of what my future life would be like. I was quiet but was always tinkering in stuff.

Then life happened. I was able to fulfill some of my dreams as I grew up and learned to be a pretty decent human being. But I got stuck in the mundane tasks of being an adult. The day dreams didn't stop but I did. I got stuck in the "just thinking" and "one day" phase but lost the drive to achieve my thoughts and dreams.

As 2019 came to a close, I told everyone that 2020 is going to be the year. 2020 just sounded so cool to me. I felt that 2020 was going to be a year of better things, a year full of blessings and new changes for my work and family life. Even with the first whispers of COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the year, I didn't see it coming.

Around March, it was getting closer to home and COVID-19 shook the lives of our island state. Hawaii is a special place and we usually don't get caught up in the craziness that happens around the world but we were not spared when it came to COVID-19. At first, I thought we would be devastated as Hawaii is an international travel hub, but the government did a pretty good job keeping our numbers of positive cases and death toll to a minimum with the stay at home order. The residents of Hawaii did a fantastic job at staying home, even if that meant no income. The essential workers braved the unknown as we were all exempt from the stay at home order. Regardless of our stats, COVID-19 shook our economy and the way we interact with people - our families, our coworkers and friends, in an unimaginable way. I feel like I'm a pretty positive person but for a moment, I did get caught up in the negativity, especially when whispers of paycuts and furloughs for State workers started to be a reality for me and my family. Add the Black Lives Matter movement to the mix and I started to join the bandwagon that 2020 will be the worst year in the history of mankind.

I started to panic. Never in my life, did I ever feel like I have NO control. Gloom started to set in. I was overwhelmed to the point that I didn't see it coming and at my breaking point, I felt broken. Broken in a way that I never felt before. For weeks, I couldn't figure it out and was blaming a situation rather than looking for clarity. I let the dark in. A friend told me,"be like bamboo, bend but do not break". I cried my heart out because I needed to let myself go to that place to have the strength to come back. I was numb, sad, mad, lost and unclear. For a moment, I forgot my purpose in life.

Then the calm came and my mind starting thinking. It was like riding a bike and the wheels just started going. It's a crappy situation that many of us are in, some worse than others, but then I remembered.... I still have control over my life because I am alive. I may not be 100% healthy but I am alive. I am able. I am awakened.

I always felt that I, solely, have the power to lead my life in a way that when I die, I would look back and be proud of the choices I've made for myself and my family, be proud of the person I have grown to be and to see my sacrifices as helping those that I love versus what I have lost. I truly believe when there is darkness, there is also light; when there is heartbreak, there is also love; good can triumph bad; life has choices and you could choose to find good in every bad moment or let that moment consume your soul until it becomes lost; and that sometimes you have to take 10 steps backwards to leap 100 steps forward. It's not easy and my life is far from perfect, but knowing that I have the power to choose happiness, to choose to do the right thing in a bad situation, to choose a path that I would proudly walk in, to find the good in every bad situation and to accept my mistakes and faults as learning lessons rather than regret. It's just a matter of if you want to live life happy or unhappy.

It's all about the mindset. It's exhilarating to feel alive, especially in a time with so much despair and pain, to be awakened in such a way that you see hope rather than doom. 2020 may not be the great year that I envisioned last year but it will definitely be a year full of blessings, a year full of change for all of us and a year that WE all are awakened.