Month: August 2018

On Saturday morning we had brunch with the Vandagriffs. It was fun to get together with them. I think the last time we got together for a meal was Abe’s birthday (not counting the times Abe and Morgan do weekday lunches together, of course).

After they left, I napped and Abe changed the water in our water storage tanks. He also overhauled the garage, much to my mom’s delight. By the end, he was totally exhausted because he had also done Insanity in the morning while I was at bikram yoga.

Then we headed over to the Harmons’ club house for Steve’s surprise birthday-pool party. Suzanne dropped the girls off at the party, and afterward when we were headed to the car, Mary said, “We had a pool party, and before that we had our sleepover…it was a great day!!”

The girls had so much fun at their sleepover. They did a scavenger hunt, got a letter from Gwendolyn, the fairy who lives at Tom and Suzanne’s house, saw a baby deer in the backyard, got a lot of presents, and had an all-around wonderful time. Lydia asked us if she could just go back to Baps’ house until the bad air in the valley disappears. (Our air has been exceptionally bad because of all the mountain fires.)

On Friday the kids had their swimming graduations with Aubrey. They have been looking forward to this all week because it meant free time in the pool, and afterward Aubrey gave them popsicles.

This is Lydia’s card to Aubrey. It says, “Dear Abry, I will really miss you. thank you for teeching me to swim good. I feel like a star. without you I would never ever have the talint to swim grate. xoxo”

That part about Lydia feeling like a star just melted me.

Here was Mary’s card:

It says, “dear aubrey, I miss you if you weren’t there i would not be able to swim. Love aubrey.”

So cute.

Then we headed home to change, eat lunch, and practice harp and piano. I taught Mary the third phrase of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and it almost killed both of us. The third phrase is EXACTLY THE SAME as the second phrase (which Mary already knew) with the exception of ONE NOTE. For some reason, she could not figure out how to play it. It took an hour, but we finally did it and she got it. By that point every time Mary played it wrong Lydia screamed in frustration from the living room. Lydia knows the song and could not understand why Mary could not figure this out, and she was almost out of her mind because she was dying to go to This is the Place and meet up with Suzanne for the beginning of their sleepover.

Anyway, Mary finally got it, and we got in the car an hour late to meet up with Suzanne at This is the Place. When we got there, the kids panned for gold and mined for gems. Clarissa loved eating the woodchips in the gem box. She had a great time doing her little dinosaur crawl all over, and it was so much easier to control the kids with Suzanne there. Normally I am chasing Ammon everywhere, but this time he actually spent time “panning for gold” –with his own Ammon modifications to the activity, of course. Most of his panning involved scooping up sand and running it to a different part of the stream to dump it out. He’d then pick up giant rocks and say “I found a golden!” All of the gold was a “golden” to Ammon.

Then I took Ammon and Clarissa home to beat rush hour traffic while Suzanne took Lydia and Mary to the ponies and hospital. Then she kept them for their first grandparent sleepover. The girls had the greatest time!! There were notes and presents from Gwendolyn and Mrs. Twinkleton (the fairies), a scavenger hunt, conversations with Google, deer and fawn watching in Tom and Suzanne’s back yard, and paper fairy dolls. The girls were elated.

Last night the girls built a fairy house and fairy trap with the Anabelle and Liberty. They filled the house with pixie dust (glitter) and play doh furniture.

This morning when Lydia opened the front door to go ask Anabelle and Liberty to play, she found this note on the front step:

It says, ” Dear Lydia and Marie

Thank you for the wonderfull house to rest in sorry but the trap did not work on me. The folding couch was awesome and the pixie dust was perfect oh and i loved the flying packpack! Love, Mrs. Twinkle.”

You should have seen Lydia and Mary’s excitement. They literally jumped up and down. I am pretty sure Lydia might have run in circles giggling. Mrs. Twinkle also gave them candy which they promptly ate. Lydia exclaimed that she couldn’t wait to show Anabelle and Liberty the note and so she ran out of the door to tell them all about it. They were gone, but when they came back later I whispered a quick thank you to Liberty, who I guessed was the real “Mrs. Twinkle.” She was so darling and smiled happily when I told her how joyful the girls were to discover the note.

Lydia wrote Mrs. Twinkle back quite promptly, and then posted the sticky note on a chair in the back yard:

It says, “Dear Mrs. Twincky, were gowing (going) to our gradparis (grandparents’) house A fairy lives there to do y (you) want to come? Please write back”

Doesn’t that melt your heart? Mine is quite a puddle.

Also, while Abe and I napped (Abe was feeling sick and stayed home from work today), Lydia built this out of our garden tomatoes and toothpicks:

Finally, after all of the fun play and creativity, Lydia had a hard time transitioning to the harp and we had a pretty horrible practice. She cried in her room for a while until Abe, Clarissa and I came to cheer her up. Abe took this picture:

She was a perfect angel for the rest of the night. (Also, Clarissa puked that bottle up an hour later. I’m so glad she didn’t puke on Lydia. That might have damaged the relationship a little bit…)

Today Clarissa got her eye duct cleared with a needle at the eye doctor. This happened to Lydia when Lydia was a baby, and Abe fainted when it happened. Lydia was looking forward to seeing Abe faint again and gleefully sang a song on the way to the doctor about how “Daddy is going to faint!”

…But Dr. Yeates had other plans. He asked us all to step out of the room while he did the procedure. Abe took Ammon, who was insane, to the waiting room with the girls, and I stood outside the door and listened to Clarissa’s agonized screams. I was grateful not to be in the room, because Clarissa did not see me as complicit in her trauma. The minute Dr. Yeates handed her back, she calmed down. He reported that something popped when he cleared her left eye.

After the procedure Clarissa had a nosebleed and bloody tears for the rest of the day. It was so sad. But she cheered right up and did not seem to be abnormally sad, so we are glad for that.

On Tuesday the girls played with play doh again–all day. We really got our money’s worth on that play doh.

This morning Clarissa, who became un-sleep-trained on our trips, woke us up at 3am. Abe is sick and this was especially hard for him. Thankfully, we had gone to bed really early so I actually felt perfectly fine. I hopped out of bed, did my clicklist grocery shopping, and went to my 6am bikram yoga class.

My mom covered the gap between when Abe left for work and when I got home. Thank you, Mom!! Then I got the kids ready and folded laundry while I tried to figure out how to make the most of this day. Summer is almost over and I want to enjoy my kids as much as possible, but they are all fairly sick with colds. I decided they hadn’t played with play doh in a while and I had a coupon for the craft store, so after Clarissa’s nap we did errands and I picked up play doh.

Ammon fell asleep in the car and transferred successfully to his bed, and this made it possible for me to cook dinner while Clarissa crawled around and the girls played play-doh happily for hours. They made so many creative things!

I had Abe take this picture. He forgot to get a close-up of their marvelous creations. I will try to remember to take a picture tomorrow of the surviving creatures.

I had fun making Jessica Seinfeld’s chicken parmesan, and then after dinner Abe and Mary practiced piano while Lydia and I practiced harp. It was honestly so fun.

After we put the kids down, Abe and I went to tour a home Carolyn Blosil is flipping. It is fun to see how people flip homes. We learned a lot.

Then we went to Menchie’s for frozen yogurt and came home to collapse. I have now been up for 19 hours and am ready for bed.

I just asked Abe what happened today. He said “The kids were crazy, I was tired, the park was fun (he took them to the park in the evening), church was very good, we love our ward, we’ll miss the Morans (some of our favorite neighbors moved last night. We are heartbroken.), dinner was great, the weather was awesome, and that was about it.”

Oh, and Abe and I had fun sitting outside in the evening air looking at our garden after all the kids were in bed. Also, I spent hours catching the blog up today. Ironically, with all the blog focus, we forgot to take any pictures today. Darn.

Today Abe dropped me off at Bikram Yoga while he and the kids went to visit his mom at Karin’s work. Apparently the kids jumped out and yelled surprise when she got out of her car and then bombarded her with hugs.

They couldn’t wait to show me the things she gave them when they picked me up from yoga. Unfortunately, I woke up this morning with a stiff neck and couldn’t actually turn my head to see what they were showing me, but I know that whatever it was, they were very excited.

Then we all drove up to Silver Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon for our annual tradition of meeting up with the Sorensons there. We just love their family so much. Rich gave me hope because he has had a stiff neck in the past and it went away within a week. I saw him turn his head this way and that, so I have hope full mobility is in my future.

We had a picnic and the kids had fun visiting together while the grown-ups chatted. Ammon, of course, kept wandering off on his own and getting lost every five minutes. I am so used to this by now that I basically don’t panic at all. That’s probably not ideal, but if I got worked up every time that boy decided to go on an adventure, I’d probably need medication.

Then we did our annual walk around the lake, expressed our deep and abiding love for their family, and drove back home.

By the time we got home, the kids were asleep or tired (all of the kids have colds), and so Abe and I took a nap after transferring everyone to beds and TV.

Abe REALLY deserved that sleep because he has been goinggoinggoing without any breaks for weeks. I don’t know the last time he got a good night’s sleep or a nap.

After our naps we got up, chatted with neighbors, and did some errands with the babies while the girls watched more fairy movies. Abe dropped a basket of our garden produce off for one of his friends, we delivered cookies to the family we minister to, and we did some grocery shopping.

Then we came home and ate dinner in the beautiful weather outside. It threatened to rain, but never did. To me, it was absolutely perfect weather and a perfect Saturday (minus the sickness of the kids and my immobile neck).

On Friday morning Mary was sick so I left her home while I took the other kids to swimming lessons. After lessons, we went to the store and got stuff to make cookies to bring to the evening barbecue for the Barnetts in Holladay.

During the baby’s nap, I planted the kids in front of the TV and abandoned them (with my mom responsibly in the house) to get my eyebrows waxed. I have been growing them out for months. I was a little disappointed because the waxer made them more thin than I wanted, but oh well.

Abe came home early because he was so tired at work he had ceased to function well. He took the shortest nap ever and then we drove to Holladay.

I’m glad I got to see Maria and Lauren! They are wonderful people and lovely friends.

On Thursday morning Abe and I went running at the track together. I ran a mile! I feel my body getting stronger and stronger, even though I still have my annoying groin pain and feet issues. I love feeling strong and energetic and when I jogged around the track, I imagined that I was chasing my strong, energetic self. It was quite motivating. Plus, I adore working out with Abe. It is so wonderful to have my mom with us for lots of reasons–one of them being that Abe and I can actually leave the house and work out in the early morning together!

In the afternoon I took the kids to the Orem Bounce House because I had a Groupon for it. It was our first time there and I did not like it at all. It felt dingy and gross, and I was so tired I was seeing stars. But the kids got a lot of energy out, and Clarissa had a grand time.

Then we came home and I made Swedish meatballs for dinner. I improvised and added red pepper and quinoa to them. It took me a longish time to make them, so they weren’t done before Abe had to take Mary to piano. But they did turn out yummy.