You know that beach scene in Jaws where the sheriff is watching the water, terrified that the Great White is lurking just beyond the swimmers? I now watch that scene and worry less about the shark and more about how close the beachgoers are to each other.

How about that party scene in You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan finds out that Tom Hanks is actually the “Fox” in Fox Books, the huge, impersonal chain store that is threatening to destroy her sweet, little Shop Around the Corner? I watched it with our daughter Brooklyn the other night and found myself cringing, and thinking, There are far too many guests in that small apartment, and NO ONE IS WEARING a MASK!

Gathering around a board game with our siblings and friends in 2020 isn’t happening. And as a result, even after five months of Covid precautions, I’m still in withdrawal. To ease my symptoms, I had to become proactive. I purchased something I never thought I would, an outdoor projector. My reasoning was that the $280 it cost is far cheaper than therapy.

For friends and family movie nights, we “divide” the yard with an imaginary line, one side for us, one side for one other family. (No more than the current limit of 10 people total.)  We ask that they bring their own chairs, snacks and drinks. After years of teaching our kids to share, we have reversed our stance when it comes to movie-night snacks. Our mantra these days is “No, kids, sharing is not caring, at least for the foreseeable future.”

If someone needs to use the bathroom, they wear a mask inside and we ask them close the lid before flushing. We remove the cloth towels and replace them with paper towels for hand drying.

As the days get shorter, we can start the movies earlier and earlier, maybe even do a short movie for the younger kids first, then direct them to sleeping bags so that we can watch something a smidge more sophisticated than The Aristocats or The Muppet Movie. When the weather starts to cool down, we are determined to bundle up if necessary to continue the fun through September.

Remember the days when your mom and dad popped popcorn, made Koolaid, and packed the family into the Woody station wagon and headed to the drive-in movies? Matt and I both do (minus the Woody)! I remember Mom tucking my baby brother Thomas into a cozy Moses basket once we got parked. We had custom mattresses that fit into the bed of the super-cab Ford truck where my big sister and I could sleep for the ride home. (It was a gentler, carefree, way more dangerous time.) Believe it or not, I’m told that because of Covid, drive-ins are now becoming a thing again!

Do your kids miss sleepovers? So did ours, So, we came up with a solution for nine-year-old, Benson, who missed his cousin Ian. We instigated our family’s first, socially distanced, backyard sleepover. He and Ian slept in socially distanced, separate tents. We left the rain fly off the tents so they could see each other and talk. Both boys loved it — got little sleep, but loved it.

My plan was to serve the boys breakfast outside the next morning, but hotdogs over the fire pit sounded amazing to the nine-year-olds, so hotdogs it was. If you are wondering, breakfast hotdogs are just as disgusting as they sound, but to the boys, we were, for at least a moment in time, super parents.

I’d love to hear your creative ideas for having fun while staying safe!