June 4, 2021 – Darais Days

Today the kids had their swim lesson with Aubrey. With Lily out, I’ve been taking the kids to their activities and let me say there are a ton of them. They have tons of different swim lessons with different people (Lily’s #1 goal this summer is to get them all swimming), Lydia has volleyball and voice, Mary has soccer, Ammon has soccer, Clarissa has soccer, and I’m sure I’m forgetting things. That’s on top of the regular music lessons for all of the them and tutoring that Mary has.

Lily put in a ton of effort to sign everyone up, coordinate schedules, write down when and where all the practices and games are etc. I was a bit overwhelmed by it all (and thinking about the budget), and felt like maybe Lily was over-scheduling them. But I had a big lightbulb go off while I was the one running them around. THEY LOVE THEIR ACTIVITIES. Lydia loves volleyball so much and even practices at home. She also told me she was so happy to be in voice. Ammon told me his personal swim class was a highlight of his day, and also when I think about the alternative option to not doing activities is just having them at home, which is great, but they already have plenty of that, even with all their activities. The truth is that it is overwhelming a bit taking them to all their various things in the right outfit toting all 4 kids and a dog. And it does pinch the budget. But one thing I have come to learn about Lily is that she will stop at nothing to give our kids the best possible childhood, even if it strains her or us. She will take that on if it means she can add beauty, magic, education and experiences to our children’s childhood. That attribute is one of my favorite things about Lily.

After my work day, I started on a project I have been wanting to tackle for over a month, and I spent 6 or so hours organizing the garage. I stayed up late, but enjoyed the project and loved listening to U2, Aaron Neville and Journey. Here are pictures of some things I found in the process.