Month: September 2019

On Saturday we took some of the neighbors to Build-A-Bear with us to celebrate Mary’s birthday.

All of the kids had a great time! And we had so much fun watching them. Clarissa had fun snuggling with her new dog at nap time.

Mary turned seven this day!! We started with the breakfast she picked out. She LOVES bacon, so we made sure to include that. She was so cute and excited all day.

At school she gave out cookies for her birthday and was so happy when I picked her up. She loves being celebrated, and wow does this girl deserve it. She has been such an angel around the house and has the sweetest, most darling voice and way of expressing herself. We are so, so lucky to have her in our family.

After school we went to the park until we met up with Abe at Maria Bonita’s for dinner.

I am back blogging so I don’t remember what else we did this day, but I know at some point she opened presents. What I do know is we all love Mary. She is a huge blessing to all of us. We love you, sweet girl!!

This morning I was up by 5 because Ammon fell out of bed and started crying. I put him back and lay in bed awake until 6, at which point I biked on our new bike. I love it so much! You can do go-pro tours with trainers on trails around the world. This past week I did trails in New Zealand and Norway and then also did a spin class. This morning I did a PCH trail by San Francisco, and it was so beautiful. It’s so fun to start the day with these trips!

Then I cleaned the basement, made the kids’ lunches, cleaned the kitchen, took the kids to school, cleaned the car, cleaned every remaining room in the house, vacuumed, scrubbed toilets, folded and put away two loads of laundry, read more in Sapiens, picked up Lydia, grocery shopped, cooked buddha bowls for dinner, sat with Lydia for over an hour at the harp, ate dinner with the family, cleaned the kitchen, bathed the kids, folded more laundry, and now I’m blogging. At some point I am going to start working on the podcast I plan to start soon. The equipment arrived two days ago! I am so excited.

I had planned to check out a new church Sunday, but my neighbor Stephanie texted me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk during church, and so we did. And we ended up talking for over four hours about church issues we both have and then so many other things. I love meaningful conversations with a friend, especially someone so thoughtful and wise as Stephanie. I was so impressed with her intelligence. It really gave me hope for the world and, frankly, Orem. I can live in Orem when there are people like Stephanie around the corner.

I also let the kids make scary gingerbread houses from Trader Joe’s in the afternoon with Eli.

Abe mostly worked all day either at church or on Qualtrics and personal stuff. He was up until 2am journaling. I don’t know how he does it.

During FHE he found a black widow on our stairs. We were really scared it had bitten Clarissa because minutes earlier Clarissa had screamed on that exact stair and fallen off of it. So we monitored her but she seemed perfectly fine. The girls were scared, though. Lydia woke up through the night terrified she was going to get bitten. Thankfully we all made it through the night alive!

On Saturday we drove to Idaho for Paul and Kiva’s wedding. It was on her farm, and it was a perfectly beautiful evening for a wedding. Paul and Kiva are absolutely darling and it was so sweet to watch them get married.

Afterward the kids loved swinging on these macrame swings in her yard. We also got pictures of Abe with his team. His team loves each other, and almost everyone drove up for the wedding.

Most of Abe’s team! Abe, Paul, Jake, Max, Trace, and David.

I started out strong on the treadmill and did errands with Clarissa while the kids were in school, but during her nap I just climbed into bed and hardly moved until it was time to pick the kids up from school. To be fair, it is that time of month and I just feel so tired.

Also, Clarissa is really hard right now. There is no break unless I am in a physically different building from her. When I’m home she’s either awake and very strong-willed, or in her room for nap time wailing because she doesn’t want to nap. Right now she’s crying at the door because she doesn’t want to sleep. It feels like the only break happens once she falls asleep, and even then it’s no guarantee she will sleep through the night.

But…she is adorable. And when I got her from her nap, I discovered this:

Also, Abe had a terrific day at work today! I was in shock because he came home raving about how much he loves his job, how he could do it forever, and what a high he’s on right now. This was music to my ears!!

This morning I woke up and told Lily that I was scared and sad.  My faith, my job, my fatigue (with recent travel) and the overall demands of life had just been wearing me out and I just felt like I could barely face the day, let alone life.

Of course, Lily was sweet, loving and affirming. I had a good prayer and read in Ephesians which helped prepare me spiritually for the day and then I took the kids to school and met Lily at her physical therapist so she could take over with the kids so I could go to work.

At work, I started out a bit weary, but as the day went on, I got some wind in my sails.  I connected with a colleague I really care about who is leaving, and made major headway on a presentation I’m preparing for a bank.  I also got some good news from one of my reps and we closed a small deal.  Also, I played spikeball with my team (great team-building) and before that even stole some time for weights. I also had a lighter than normal schedule so the day just didn’t feel that hard. I also made 25 prospecting calls. Things seem to be going better at work, and on a great trajectory.  Only two more weeks in a difficult Q3, but my team has been trending in a good direction, and next quarter my team is smaller, and I’ll have a pod lead, and our pipeline is very very good. There is a lot I can be excited about as I power through this last difficult 2.5 weeks.

Today I know that Lily went to the library, worked out on our new Nordic Track Exercise bike (which we love).

After work, I went to the appointment at Mary’s eye therapy. I love going because I feel involved, and I get to observe the exercises they do with her and get tips about how I should be doing them at home.  Kaylie was the person that worked with Mary today and she said that Mary is so cute and that the different workers love when it is their turn to work with her.  I’m kindof obsessed about fixing Mary’s eyes. She has a lazy-eye problem. Her left I will check out and shut off when she is looking at things that are not close up, because her double-vision is bad (from her eyes not working together) and her brain just shuts off her left eye to not have to deal with the double vision. I feel so blessed that we have a doctor that can help her with therapy, and I want her to grow up to have her eyes as normal as possible so I have felt very invested in the process. I’m so grateful for the work Lily and Georgia have also contributed to getting her exercises done at home. Kaylie was so cheerful at the session that that was also a pick-me-up.

At home things just got better and better.  I did piano practice with Mary and she was charming even if focus was difficult at times. I need to also mention here that Mary has been a complete gem recently. We’ve been marveling about how sweet and helpful, and cute and adorable she seems to be ALL THE TIME. A year ago she was having a harder emotional time, I think with being the youngest in her class and struggling to make friends and stay caught up in school. But she’s repeating 1st grade and she’s loving it and finding a lot of confidence and happiness. Maybe that is helping her be so over the top sweet at home?

There was one particularly cute anecdote tonight. We looked everywhere for her math book because Georgia was going to help her with her math homework. After much looking, it finally dawned on Mary that she left it on the cinder-block wall at the edge of our property. She went and grabbed it, and came back and energetically stated, “See dad, here’s the whole deal, I came home, wanted to ride my scooter, set the book on the fence, then went to the backyard to pick lavender without knowing that I put it on the fence, then went inside for dinner, and forgot all about it, but now we found it, so see dad, we just needed to think about it.” It’s hard to explain how cute she was. It was mostly the sweet excited, knowing tone she used. I love her 🙂

After piano, I threw Clarissa and Ammon on the couch over and over which they loved. Dinner also made me happy because we ate so many things that we grew in the garden. We had corn (it turned out decent this year!) and the salad had delicious tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers all from the garden. The garden is my baby, and I love to each fresh vegetables, so dinner was very happy.

After dinner, I cleaned up while Lily did the night routine with the kids. I did scriptures with the kids, wrote in my Jesus journal and now I’m blogging with Lily, my best friend, feeling like it was actually a really good day. I am so blessed 🙂

I’m going to start taking pictures during my work trips. I’m always very busy, and feeling preoccupied and also excited to get home, so I never really stop to enjoy the places I go the way I would like to. I commit to starting to post more interesting things from the places I go for my work. This will help my family to feel closer to me as they get to peak into more of my world, I hope. I think I will feel even closer to them knowing they are tapped into things I’m experiencing when I’m not directly with them.

So today I was in San Diego all day. Lily says there was not much to report from the home-front front I’ll tell about my trip.

There actually was some drama. I forgot to pack my phone charger, and my phone was all, but dead in the morning. I was concerned that I wouldn’t even have enough juice to call a Lyft ride to my appointment, and there were none hanging around in the hotel lost and found. So I decided to go on a walk to get one, figuring I’d find a place relatively easily. Well, I was staying right next to the airpot, and I think I walked in the worst possible direction, because I basically walked the length of the airport and it took 30 minutes to get to a gas station to buy my charger. I then walked 30 minutes back, ate my breakfast while my phone charged, called my lift ride and was 30 minutes late to my appointment. With all the anxiety I have felt lately about my faith and personal journal lately, the walk actually felt like a miracle.

My meeting was so cool. I can’t share who I met with because of a signed NDA, nor will I share many details. I’ll just say that my colleague, Sonya from Walker, did the bulk of the presenting and she did an amazing job, and I learned so much just watching her. Also, the potential customer had almost ten people around the table and there was such incredible and insightful discussion that gave me great insights about what is required to get a CX program off the ground. It was one of the best on-sights I’ve ever had in terms of things that I learned. We also made great progress towards getting to the point of working with this great company.

After the meeting, I went straight to the airport, talked to the kids on the phone, ate a burger, cranked out some work and then fell asleep on the plane. I got home at 12:45 AM and fell asleep promptly in my bed, which was a gift as sometimes it is hard to sleep after napping on the plane. I felt very full of doubt, and far from God that day, but there where moments where it felt that hope and God broke through, and it was very very nice to be back home with my sweetheart.

Lily said there was not much to report today, so I’ll share about my day.

Work was mostly consumed by re-imaging my laptop to be SAP compliant and networked now that we are owned by SAP. It’s kindof funny and sad because my boss insisted I upgrade my computer about 5 months ago. I couldn’t have cared less about upgrading. But for those who hadn’t upgraded, they got a brand new fancy machine (better than my upgraded one) and they got to keep their old one for personal use with this SAP transition. I was bummed that I now have a worse machine and not one for personal use, but hey it’s all good.  I had bumps in the re-imaging process and it took me 2-3 hours, but it finally got done.

After work, I came home, had dinner with the family, and helped with the night routine. I then spent a few minutes with Lily giving her a short massage. Harp practices have been especially brutal lately, and she has been getting very stressed out with all her demands. After a moment with her, I drove to the airport, got on a plane and arrived in San Diego very late.