In march of 2020 a global pandemic hit the world. The pandemic forced many people to quarantine in their homes. This led me to spend more time with my family as my family and I quarantined together. This led me to the realization spending time on leisurely activities with loved ones was key to family bonding. 

For a bit of context I have a large family which consists of three siblings and two parents and of course me. All of my family members lead busy lives now and before the pandemic as they all have work,school and extracurricular activities. This means that it was rare before the pandemic for everyone to be home at and giving time and when we were that time was spent individually on things like homework for instance. 

This changed as the pandemic hit however as school and work where shortened and extracurriculars were cancelled altogether this led my family to have more time and be stuck at home. The next logical step was to find ways to fill that time my family discovered movies,board games and cooking. 

One activity my family participated in was cooking before the pandemic. It was common for one person in my family to cook dinner, usually my mom or dad while this is still relatively true today my family found the joys of making pizza together. For example, one day during the pandemic my family got together and decided to make pizzas so we all helped prepare the dough. After we let it sit we cut vegetables such as onions and peppers. We made our pizzas a little after that the dough tasted chewy but not too soft and the rest of the pizza tasted rich. This was yet another example of family bonding. 

Another thing the pandemic forced our family to do more of was bonding by watching movies. During the pandemic watching movies was one thing that kept me excited during the boringness of the pandemic. Watching movies together was not a completely new concept to our family as we occasionally watch movies on friday nights and I usually watch movies with my dad in the evenings on other days of the week but the pandemic led our family to watch more movies first it was easier to watch movies during a pandemic as during the fourth quarter of the last school year school typically ended around noon for me and my siblings an as it was fully asynchronous we could watch family movies and day of the week without having to worry about the usual constraints of watching not watching movies on a school night.  The effect of this is my family grew closer together as we had a shared memory. 

My third and final example is my family playing board games much like the first two examples hte pandemic led my family to have time on their hands which led my family to try a new activity. But my family did bond from this and we found a new shared activity that my family specifically me and my brothers enjoy. 

Now as february 2021 is coming to a close as I write this my family has been implementing these ideas such as personal pizzas being a regular on meal rotation and we watch more movies and play more board games. My family has grown closer together because of these activities and that reinforces my original point: spending time on leisurely activities with loved ones was key to family bonding.