This year we were, like everybody else, taken by surprise by quarantine. After a few months of it, we decided that we needed a way to get away from reality and have a little fun. First we started reading Harry Potter. Then we started watching Harry Potter.
Then we decided to become Harry Potter.
Chad made wooden wands for all four of us that let us pretend to be wizards at Hogwarts! It was a great way to get away from the difficult times in the real world and to pretend to be super cool wizards.
Then, as quarantine kept going, we decided that it might be fun to something like this for others. So we reached out to our friends, neighbors, and family members to see who might want some wands.
After the first one or two we thought that it might be even more fun to add in a real-life letter from Hogwarts and, of course, from Olivander himself.
We sent the wands and letters to several different families, including our siblings with children (and some that didn't have children...), our friends in Las Vegas, the kids' friends, and our friends from college who now live in South Carolina. And everyone that we sent them to told us how much they loved them.
One friend said, "My kids lost their minds last night over those wonderful wands and they've been playing with them all day today."
We had a conversation as a family about how we need to do whatever we can to help other people when they’re struggling. This year we couldn’t go visit people or give them hugs. But we could send them little packages of love in the mail. The packages only contained a little fantasy. But sometimes that’s exactly what we need to make it through a difficult situation.
