Family Vacation

Over the past 5+ months I've tried very hard not to think about what we "would" have been doing on a certain day if it weren't for COVID-19. That's been easier to do sometimes than others. For example around Easter it was hard to avoid all thoughts that we had planned to be in Chicago with the Benners. The past few days it's popped into my brain now and then that we thought we'd be in Canada right now. I had planned five vacations for 2020, and Paul planned to join us for two of those. Three of the five were cancelled, but the kids and I were able to spend 6 days with Aunt Janet on Long Island. The last vacation I had planned prior to the pandemic is scheduled to start a little over five weeks from now. If it happens, it will be Paul's first vacation this year. After finally receiving refunds for our hotel reservations for the August vacation, I decided to start looking into the October trip. I realize that things could change over the next five weeks. I'm hoping and praying that if there is a change between now and then it will be that more things reopen not that more sites are closed again. I had 27 sites in our itinerary for that trip. Seven of those are still closed - one science museum in Ohio, four national parks in Ohio, and two manufacturing plants in Kentucky are not offering tours right now due to COVID-19 (Toyota and the American Printing House for the Blind). I couldn't determine if the Salt Works company in Kentucky is currently giving tours or not. Many of the sites have adjusted the days/times they are open. This might make it impossible for us to visit the Kentucky Horse Park as the day we are scheduled to be there is a day they are currently closed each week. The specific dates for this trip were picked because of a special event at the National Museum of the US Air Force. The museum has reopened, but all their special events have been postponed to 2021. Many sites are not offering everything that they usually do. For most enough of the site is operational for me to think it is still worth a visit. The one I'm not sure about is the Shaker Village in Kentucky. I will see more detailed information closer to the time we plan to visit there before making a decision.  At the moment it seems if I can reschedule when we go to the Kentucky Horse Park we could visit 19 of the 27 attractions I had originally planned for this trip. I'll wait until closer to our trip to see if I want to try and cancel or modify any of our hotel reservations. Nadia was shocked when I said there was still a chance we might go on that trip. I feel like I've been saying this constantly this year but "time will tell." 

Paul loves peanut M&Ms but for years has avoided eating any brown ones because he said they were more chocolatey than the other colors. I never agreed with that theory. It came up when we were at Aunt Janet's earlier this month, and Nadia said she thought he was right. We did an experiment with her (giving her M&M's while she was blindfolded and she was to say "brown" or "not brown."). She didn't do well. A couple of days ago we repeated the experiment with Paul. He failed miserably. We laughed a lot. I wonder if he'll start eating brown peanut M&M's now that he knows they don't taste differently? I'm glad that Paul is going to join us for our trip to Six Flags America tomorrow. We haven't gone on any outings with him since March 8 when we went to the PA Military Museum. Even though we're planning to leave the house at 7:00am, he's still planning to go into work tomorrow morning. Considering he has a two hour round trip commute, I wonder how much sleep he's going to get tonight? I couldn't keep up with his schedule that is for certain.