Riley’s love language is physical touch and quality time. I can cuddle with that girl and be silly with her for a little bit and her love bucket is full to the top, and so is mine quite frankly. But Keagan is a little bit more challenging. Her love language is gifts, words of affirmation and quality time. I am normally pretty good about words of affirmation but being a financially just getting by single mom, I often struggle with the gifts. She doesn’t at all need expensive gifts but little tokens and things mean a lot to her. She also loves my complete undivided attention and I can often be distracted by, you know, life. I multi task too much and focus on planning ahead way too often when she is all but begging for my attention. I am so guilty of that and always regret it.
Last weekend I felt Keagan feeling a little disconnected. She is scared about her upcoming trip to Hawaii, (the unknown and something that has been talked about for so long can be scary,) she is definitely having a growth spurt because she is hungry all the time and she has been a little tired from all our summer fun. So this week I tried really hard to naturally create moments with her where her bucket would be filled.
On Monday and Wednesday we cooked together. Yes I do cook sometimes, shocking I know. On Tuesday after she got thru another dental appointment and kept her title of never having a cavity, I took her to Dairy Queen for ice cream while Riley was at the French’s being loved by Reagan. I ohhed and awed over her current iPad game of choice and that she has finally figured out how to blow a bubble with her gum (by the way that is SO gross! I HATE gum, but she loves it.) We laughed at her cutting a watermelon for the first time and then marveled that she loves eating the white part of it. We had a late night waffle date together, remember I said she is always hungry lately? And we had a really special experience on Wednesday night when she came to Young Womens with me. We were in the Family History library and I was showing her all her ancestors in her family tree and sharing pictures and stories of them. Then we did some searching as her family tree is sparse on her dads, dad side, and we found information and immigration records on her great, great grandfather Kazuji Kikuchi and his wife Yasu Ito. She was SO excited! Plus we did our usual teasing and cuddling throughout the week so my love bucket is overflowing, and I’m just praying hers is too!
This week we also had a ton of fun! Some of the darling Young Women in my Ward hosted a craft camp to raise money for one of them to do a humanitarian EFY trip to Peru. Maddie Ivey, Rachel Carey and Clair Hudson were so sweet and fun! It was each morning for two hours and to make it even better Avery and another cute girl Lily Mayer made up the small class. They made marbled bowls, a face mask and sugar scrub, a wreath, a necklace and bracelet, bath bombs and their flowered initials. Keags and Rys loved it and that ends our summer camps this year.
Also this week, we finally did something I have wanted to do for years! The Lakes treated us to almost 5 hours of fun at the Rob Flemming Aquatic Park. It is a miniature water park with just two water slides, a play structure, a lazy river and pools. We really had a fantastic time! And we totally wore ourselves out too! We are really thankful for our friendship with the Lakes and how easy and fun it is to spend time together!
I really wish my sweet girls could just peer into my heart and see how they own every last piece of it! But until that is possible I will try REALLY hard to not be so distracted by life and just keep covering their faces with kisses, having the best conversations about the most random things and creating memories together. I know we did a lot of that this week! Occasionally I do something right, but mostly they are just easy to love!
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