First, we worked to gather our immediate family members--even gathering immediate family members is a challenge during a pandemic since that may involve travel.
Next, I found a venue that appealed to the birthday boy that could accommodate the immediate family members plus a couple more. We booked a boat ride in advance.
After that, I planned a picnic that was healthy and matched socially distanced guidelines--I bought small striped lunch bags, matching containers, cold packs, individual packages of hand sanitizers, and napkins. For lunch, I researched good lunches for boat rides and decided on making a pasta salad, turkey-ham-cheese-veggie roll-ups (cheese/veggie-roll-ups for vegetarians), nuts, chocolate, chips, and water.
After a few family pictures and a nice lunch, we'll travel north to the harbor--a harbor that has some family history significance, and we'll hopefully have a nice boat ride and get to view a beautiful sunset as well.
The pandemic is challenging our creative sides--we have to think anew about almost everything we do these days. This is time consuming, but worth it when it comes to celebrating those you love.