I don’t know if it was the 15 minutes I had Thursday that wiped me out on Friday, or the multiple times I listened to the wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, but I felt a little blue yesterday, mostly just a bit distant from God and Her/His love for me. I’ve had a prayer in my heart lately to not feel that distance, and today I feel my prayer was answered. I had a really, really good day.
First of all, I want to mention that since we got Clarissa off the bottle about two and a half weeks ago, she has been sleeping through the night almost perfectly, and I have been sleeping so so so much better. It might take Lily and I a year to recover from all the night wakings we’ve done in over nine years, but I do feel like that recovery is taking place. Lily and I slept very very well last night.
I had a slow morning and caught up with my great friend Morgan which was really nice. I love Morgan, and start to miss talking to him if too much time goes between conversations.
Then I went on an unbelievably fun bike ride with another one of my great friends, Daniel Olsen. I think a bike ride about a year ago was what kicked off our friendship, and it has been so nice to have him as a friend. He is way more in shape than me, but he is always super nice when we ride together, even though I know he’d be going faster without me. He also lets me ride his spare bike since I don’t have a good ride yet. Today I disinfected his handlebars before and after the ride (and his seat after the ride) because of Covid. The ride was absolutely amazing. We went up Provo Canyon to Vivian Park, and then rode 4 miles up Vivian park. I don’t know what got into me going up the canyon, but I pushed it really hard, and maybe was even going as fast as Daniel would have been going if it were just him. But I was so tired after that that I was slow the whole way home. Daniel was super nice about it, and only genuinely asked me if I wanted a protein bar at one point. We talked about gardening, covid, kids, food and more. He is so fun to talk to and I also get so much joy out of using my body and exercising. Thank you God and Lily for that bikeride. I was so grateful that Lily allowed me to take that three hours on a precious Saturday. When I came home, she was a bit frazzled from all the chaos that was happening with the kids. Ammon and Clarissa were being their energetic selves and Lydia was throwing a bit of a fit about wanting to dye Easter Eggs. After I had a massive and yummy lunch, I looked for the Easter Egg dye, and couldn’t find any and told Lydia we’d get some today, but we might not do eggs, today, that it might be tomorrow. After her lecture on not whining and being entitled, she chose to have a good attitude about the situation, and I was grateful for that. I also learned something new. The kids explained to me that our tradition was that we leave out decorated eggs for the Easter Bunny and that’s why it was so important to do them today. I guess I forgot that was our tradition, but I noted it 🙂
I then played Operation left handed with both Lydia and Mary. Then I gave Lily a foot massage and let her rest and have some time to herself after she gave me the gift of my bike-ride.
After that, I played a little basketball, and started working on the yard. I reconnected a pipe, connected with our lawn-care person, and found the place to turn on the sprinkler water. Then Clarissa woke up and we headed out to do errands.
First we spent about an hour at our old house so I could turn on the sprinklers, test them, and fix a broken one.
Then we went to target to get the Easter egg dye and some other things. We tried going to Trader Joe’s but there was a huge line because they were only letting so many people in the store at a time, so we decided to go tomorrow.
At home, we ate Mo-Bettas (so good) and then I did egg dying with the girls while Lily talked to her mom and gave her a foot massage.
Lydia and Mary were so happy to be decorating eggs. At one point Lydia exclaimed something to the effect of, “This day before Easter is turning out great!” It really was fun. I was tired, and the scene was very chaotic, but it pulled off, and a good time was had by all.
Ammon is sad in this picture below because I just got upset with him after breaking his second egg in a very short amount of time. I was too hard on him, and I’m quite sure I apologized.
Clarissa barely understood what was going on and spent of a lot of her time spinning, dancing and running around the Les Miserables soundtrack which I was really enjoying today. Before this Lydia Clarissa spun around until I think she actually fell over. I didn’t get anything that funny from her spinning in this video, but I did get her sitting on the bin of Lincoln Logs and acting like it was a potty. 🙂
The kids put out a shrine for the Easter Bunny, completed with decorated eggs, a note, and a gift which was a paper cut out and colored to be a bunny.
After all the egg dying we put the kids to bed. Then Lily and I cleaned, hid Easter eggs and assembled baskets. Lily did such a wonderful job getting all the goodies for the kids. She’s a great mama bunny. When we were all done, Lily grabbed a picture.
And one more with dramatic lighting :). I love her!
