Several weeks before the coronavirus cancellations started, I learned I had won tickets to Brickfest. It’s a traveling convention of LEGOS. James is just getting excited about LEGOS, and finally has the patience to build some small thing with them. So it was exciting. We danced around the living room. Then we got practical.

I started a saving envelope for the event. It’s out of town, so I budgeted for gas. I budgeted more for purchases. If you’ve ever been to any of these events, you know there will be new or rare items your child will covet. I wrote my estimates for the two categories on the envelope. About once a week, I would pull the $1 bills from my wallet, and put them in the envelope. James even started putting in some small change on his own.

I still fretted about putting enough away. Saving doesn’t come easy when you are poor, and even when it gets a little better, you’re tempted to spend on what you’ve lacked. Sometimes, there were weeks I had no spare money.

Then the coronavirus hit, and events started getting postponed or canceled. Nothing canceled in order by date. I began dreading looking at my email. Then it came. Brickfest has been postponed. Until October.

What? October? I thought about it, and decided the convention centers were thinking ahead, and moving things to weekends they had available. James was briefly disappointed when he learned of the postponement, and that was sad.

But we still have Brickfest to look forward to, and now we have more time to save up for it. Meanwhile, while we are stuck at home, we can build some of those LEGO projects together. All good things. Stay safe. Find things to do at home, and hopefully plan some fun things for much, much later.