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Home / Rotorua Daily Post

Covid 19 coronavirus: Rotorua's Chrisohoou family slow down and enjoy family time during lockdown

Kelly Makiha
By Kelly Makiha
Multimedia Journalist·Rotorua Daily Post·
11 Apr, 2020 10:00 PM3 mins to read

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Rotorua family enjoying lockdown

While the world is in crisis, there are some who are living the dream of just slowing down and being with family. Journalist Kelly Makiha talks to the Chrisohoou family who are finding their four walls with mum, dad and four kids a pleasure.

Rush, rush, busy, busy, get here, get there, drats we're late, quick eat, clean up, bed, sleep ... Let's do it all again tomorrow.

That's the life for many Rotorua families who are now being forced to slow down and spend time with each other.

And despite the obvious worry of finances, their businesses and the future for their staff, the forced lockdown isn't all bad for the Chrisohoou family.

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Alicia and Jacob and their four children, Lydia, 2, Kaia, 6, Tiana, 8, and Amara, 12, aren't used to sitting around the house.

Between running two businesses, school and extra activities including piano lessons, rugby and judo for all three older girls and netball and school sports academy on top of that for Amara, the Chrisohoous lead a busy life darting here and there.

"Every day after school is hectic with sports, feeding the kids in the car, sitting outside one sport waiting for it to finish to drive the kids to the next, food and playing gear all through the car, clean everything out and then get ready for tomorrow."

Suddenly the world feels like it has paused and life is very different.

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The Chrisohoous' businesses have all but stopped. The seven staff members they employ for their cleaning business are no longer working and their pet food business is only operating about half the time.

"When we first watched the news of the lockdown, I got really quite upset," Alicia said.

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"I was worried about the future of our country, our family and our business and our seven staff members."

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But instead of wallowing, they have decided to use the time to do the things they don't normally do.

Jacob said despite the stress of not knowing what the future held, they were enjoying being together.

"It's almost like a dream come true that we get to spend time with our family and not feel guilty we should be doing something else. It is just really, really nice. We are learning to appreciate the small things and realise what is important in life. Being present is just beautiful."

Jacob said he was personally enjoying just sitting with the kids, rolling around on the floor playing and laughing.

So far they had designed an obstacle course around their house which included jumping off the balcony and onto the trampoline and running around different set tasks around the yard.

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They had built a garden together and set mini-school projects based on different things they learned around the house - including worms, snails and burning wood.

Their church gatherings on Sundays were no longer happening so they were doing it themselves, even still dressing up and having the children play a piano item each.

Alicia and Jacob said they wanted to use this time to evaluate what was important in their lives with the hope of making changes when it was all over.

"We don't want to go back to that yuck, crazy busy again," Alicia said.

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

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