We’ve tried our best to celebrate the highs! We had our own Cinco de Mayo party with decorations and a pinata! We celebrated Nanas birthday with quarantine decor, toilet paper earrings and the coolest toilet paper roll cake ever (it’s a 2020 thing). The girls made Mothers Day really great with a big fancy breakfast, letting me sleep in and not making me do any chores all day! And I had the most amazing 41st birthday in quarantine! The girls gave me an at home spa experience and then we had my favorite dinner from Bella Green in the driveway with Nana and the Frenchs! Then that was topped off with the most amazing surprise birthday parade that Taryn organized as so many people I love from life, work, church and DPAC paraded by my house in their cars dancing and honking just totally showering me with love! Absolutely amazing! Plus y’all Sa got me a bathtub pillow and Taryn got me a squatty potty! Dreams do come true!
Since the girls missed their very last Field Day, we had our own Kikuchi Quarantine Field Day at home! And since Riley’s favorite part is getting a new T-shirt, I had some made to make it official! We had a fun afternoon competing in all different events which cumulated in a big family water balloon fight and an unfortunate video for me! Riley has been totally obsessed with Dude Perfect videos during quarantine so Keagan wanted to make our very own Dude Perfect video. She had me spin the wheel of unfortunate and I landed on the ice bucket challenge! Good times letting my 11 year olds dump a large bucket of ice water over my head in the name of memory making! My favorite part of Field Day was actually a week before the day when Keagan got to fulfill a big goal. She has wanted to sing the national anthem in public for a long time and was thrilled months ago before corona when Coach Fox asked her to sing at the opening ceremonies for Field Day. So Coach Fox had me record her singing with the cutest little flag waiver Riley by her side to send out to the whole school with encouragement to do their own field day at home! Corona can’t stop us!
We have slowly started to see and hang out with friends. Our people is what we missed most in quarantine! All of the hanging out until very recently was outside and still trying to social distance. We met Mrs Heather and Calli in the Klein parking lot at first and then the church parking lot quite a bit where the girls have played, done sidewalk chalk, made videos, had water ballon fights and giggled while Mrs Heather and I chat. We have used the fire pit there a ton and made countless smores and even roasted hot dogs on Memorial Day after a swim in their neighborhood pool because no one is ever there. We have hung out in the Frenchs driveway for some great times including Hudson’s going away party and been swimming at the Coasta’s and the Whitney’s multiple times for tons of fun!
Some of our ups and downs came from our two trips to the beach with the Whitney’s! The first time we went it was beyond exciting because it was the very first thing we did with other people outside of quarantine! It felt amazing to be out of the house and despite the crazy wind and higher waves then usual we had such an incredible time! That trip, the friends and the ocean were so good for our souls! The following weeks trip started out great again but ended in total disaster! Apparently it was crab larvae season and a bunch of tiny little transparent crabs with big red eyes and painful pinchers made it into all of the kids swimsuits except for Riley’s (huge blessing!) When Keagan stripped down in the back of Rhonda the Honda (our mini van) I found 25-30 crabs about the size of a pencil eraser crawling all over her! The poor girl was thoroughly traumatized and we haven’t been back to the beach since. But I’m determined to go several more times this summer!
We talk to the Fosters multiple times a day and miss them like crazy! And we have had several more family quarantine dates with the Frenchs. We did a vanilla ice cream taste test, played bean boozled, a name that fast food chicken nugget night and a dress up as a family member night! I dressed as Mrs Taryn with Disney Lularoe, a shaker cup, pony tail, flip flops and Minnie ears. Keagan dressed as Kellie with jeans, one of Kellies actual t-shirts, shades, Birkenstock’s, a cross body purse, and a high and tight bun. And Riley dressed up like Nana in one of Nana’s night gowns, with a curler in her hair and holding a pillow! It was all hilarious but I think Reagan won when she dressed up like Riley! She wore a T-shirt underneath a flower dress, red converse, a drool bib and a white bow in her hair! So fun! We also did a night where you had to make up a song about Corona Virus and Keagan changed the lyrics to “I’m a Believer” to things like “I wanna see your face! Where are you?” And “I just want to chat but we have to be 6 feet away!” It was great! Yesterday Reagan came over so her and the girls could power wash the driveway but it didn’t work out. But the girls still earned some money by cleaning up the backyard which was still quite the task and then last night after dinner they celebrated their matching converse.
What a blessing it has been that I have still been getting paid despite not working because schools are closed! But I did go into work one day to print end of the year awards and help organize the gifts each 5th grader received. That was one sad and eerie day to be in the school. One day the girls and I drove around to 15 co-workers houses to gift the awesome super hero teacher yard signs that all Mahaffey staff got and amazon gift cards! It was super fun to see people! And the sweet Mrs Hatley came to visit on the front walk one day because she misses all her students so much!
Before we started hanging out with people again and especially all our friends with pools, we were all super jealous of whoever had one! Keagan kept lamenting that all her friends had one and that’s how they were surviving quarantine. So she used her own money to buy the biggest blow up pool she could find for her and her sister! I was super proud of her and we had some really fun afternoons in it in the backyard! We just put it away yesterday and it definitely killed all the grass and made it stink under the tarp but it was so worth it!
DPAC was another thing that we desperately missed in quarantine and we are all SO thrilled to be back! We went to the theater one day to film the girls submission for the Mahaffey virtual talent show which was them singing and dancing to the song “Born to Be Brave.” Then back again for Keagan to work on her duet of “When Your Feet Dont Touch the Ground” for a quarantine project. But recently we went back to put our show Shrek Jr back together to perform a modified, simpler version of it in a parking lot next week! We started with small 8 person rehearsals and then worked up to the whole cast doing rehearsals while really trying to social distance. All the kids have loved being back and working on something they were worried Corona had stolen from them! But they are still going to get their chances to shine next week and if the smiles from the last two weeks are any indication, they will love it! Keagan told me last week that she would live at DPAC if she could! And Riley has worn her Shrek shirt for 75% of the days in quarantine for heavens sake! Thankfully Mrs Shea recently gave us a back up!
Oh and there is so much more, but too much to document. We have gone on tons of walks and even a few hikes. The girls built a really cool fort that they played in for days. We finished the craziest school year ever, we’ve done tons of science experiments, we painted on the driveway and made homemade soap. We’ve played PictionAIRy, card games and pretend. We’ve done Come Follow Me and taken the sacrament at home. We’ve done challenges that Keagan came up with, we have been ridiculously silly and had some awesome family movie nights where the girls turned the house into a full theater. Riley has made us watch WAY too many Dude Perfect videos and Keagan has done WAY too many Tik Tok dances eventhough she doesn’t even have a Tik Tok! We had a fashion show one night, a stay on the wrapping paper on the floor challenge and we’ve cleaned and organized including toilets and the garage! We have tried new recipes, taken Crumbl cookies to friends and cleaned the kitchen 4,378 times. We had delicious deep dish pizza the Chicago Ginns sent us from Chicago, took flowers to Pakka’s grave and have been in some birthday parades of our own. We’ve cooked and cooked, cleaned and cleaned, attended firesides over zoom and Keagan semi redecorated her room. We were part of a fun senior graduation parade and we cheered the awesome Mrs Taryn on in a virtual 5K. Keagan did tons of chores to buy her own Vans shoes which she is in love with and we hunted a huge strawberry moon last night!
We have done all of that and I’m sure a bunch more which I’ve already forgotten. So I definitely think we have not wasted this time but instead we are trying to rise to the occasion and do the best we can. We have had good quality time together, made good memories and had hard conversations that needed to be had. We have washed our hands, worn masks and checked our own hearts and prejudices. We’ve barely gone into stores and restaurants, we’ve prayed a ton, we’ve declared boldly that Black Lives Matter and we have even reached out to people in our lives and neighborhood to let them know we love them and support them. We will continue to do all of this and come up with more crazy ideas I’m sure to fill this roller coaster of a year! Ya know I’ve always been a little scared of roller coasters but have loved to ride them anyway. So that sounds about right for 2020. The best part is we are riding it together!
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