Month: September 2021

I woke up at 4am and realized my phone was dead. I spent the next few hours trying to charge it in various outlets to no avail, so when the girls woke up I let them go swimming for a mere 35 minutes before we had to head out to the T-Mobile store to see what was wrong with my phone. They were so happy and grateful to be in Chicago and swimming that neither of them complained about how little time they had to swim.

When we got to the store, it turned out that all I needed was a charger, which I promptly purchased. However, since my phone was not charged I don’t have many photos from this day.

That is a tragedy because this was the best day of my life, second only to my wedding. I adored every single second of this beautiful day. After we got the charger, we went to the river to go on an architecture river cruise with Clark and Swathi, who also happened to be in Chicago this weekend for a wedding.

We loved the architecture cruise and learned so much about many of the buildings. There are also now kayakers on the Chicago river! I had never seen that before.

Then we walked with Clark and Swathi to Lou Malnatti’s on Michigan Avenue, ordered pizza, and walked to the Water Tower and popped in for a historical brochure. On the way we examined the stones in the Tribune building and determined that we all need to go to the Philippines together in January of 2023. Swathi and I decided we should start looking for tickets.

After our stroll down Michigan Avenue, we walked back up to Lou Malnatti’s to get the pizza, which we ate in a plaza. The plaza was shady and filled with plants and flowers, and we had a great view of the Tribune building and the river.

After the pizza we walked back down Michigan Avenue to a bike shop across from the Art Institute, where we rented bikes. This was the absolute highlight of my day. I love Lake Michigan, I love biking by Lake Michigan, I love my daughters, and the combination of all three was heaven on earth. We biked up to Lincoln Park Zoo and then down to the Shedd Aquarium. The weather was gorgeous. At the Shedd we stopped for ice cream cones, after which we headed to Buckingham Fountain before returning our bikes.

Did I already say I loved this day? Because I can’t say it enough. I was so grateful to be alive, have consciousness, and experience this incredible life that is amazingly my own all day long. I loved every minute with my daughters in Chicago.

Back at home, Ammon sang a very cute song he learned in kindergarten:

In the evening we had a wonderful dinner with Lucas and Kim at The Happy Sumo. After they came over to our house for a date cake I had made earlier in the day. They are just the most wonderful people, and we always love spending time with them.

Today Clarissa and Ammon played at the park while Lydia and Mary had tennis practice. I love the video below of Clarissa having fun on the zip line.

After dinner, I played magnetiles with Ammon and Clarissa. It was so fun, and we did a little dancing/throwing kids when we were done!

At night, I caught Lily reading to Ammon and Clarissa, as she so often does, and I grabbed a quick video of it. I love how much she reads to our children!

This backpacking trip was a complete dream come true for me. I’ve been dying to backpack with the family, and it has felt difficult to pull off from a scheduling, and weather perspective, but we finally made it happen. Even still it almost didn’t happen because Lily tripped and fell an uneven piece of cement at night the night before. I went to bed thinking it wasn’t going to happen, but in the morning Lily felt ok going forward. We bought her ice packs and an ankle brace. I was very worried about having her hike on it, and it did hurt and it was sore, but from what we can tell, her ankle did ok. That was really the only concern. The rest of the trip was pure bliss for me.

The only other semi-concern was that we drank way more water than I expected (probably about 16 bottles work) getting into camp. I had brought a filter as a backup, so I left camp before 6AM to go a little over a mile up the trail to filter water for all of our bottles for the trek home. I’d never used the filter before and it was a gravity system that took a very long time, but fortunately I got back before Lily started to worry. It was fun to be out on a survival mission for my family (running out of water would have been a huge problem!)

This is campsite 6. We were in campsite 4. Campsite 6 has a nice area in the stream for dipping, so took the picture here for future reference. I had to go to the spring by campsite 7 for water pumping though because apparently this stream has bacteria in it that can’t be filtered out and it’s very dangerous to drink in significant quantities.

Back at camp, Lily was already packing up and getting the camp ready to go, which was a huge help! Before packing up, I took sentimental pictures of our cooking area (the tuna casserole was soooo good last night!) and took videos of the kids singing and dancing in the tent. I don’t know what I love more, the singing and dancing or the smile on Lily’s face while she’s watching them.

While I finished packing up camp, Lily took the kids to the river where they had a wonderful time playing.

Then we hiked back. Hiking back was easier from the standpoint that most people’s packs were lighter, and I did a better job distributing weight according to people’s abilities. It was also easier from the standpoint of knowing the trail. But it was much much much harder from the standpoint that now we were mostly hiking up, instead of mostly hiking down. The family did amazing. I am so proud of them! Part of what I love about backpacking so much is you don’t just get a beautiful immersive experience in nature and the people you are with, but at the end of it, you all feel proud for achieving something difficult. I’m so proud of how everyone did! Part of what made the way back doable was we took a few nice long luxurious breaks.

This was our longest break, and Clarissa took a full 20-30 minute nap.

After finishing we went and got ice-cream at a gas station. This was one of my favorite experiences I have EVER had with my wonderful family. Thank you all for going with me!

On Saturday we hiked 4 miles in 6 hours on the La Verkin Trail in Zion National Park. We had never been to this part of the park before and it was stunning.

Before the hike we woke up Saturday morning in a Conestoga wagon at Zion Ponderosa Ranch. The last time we were at this ranch we only had two kids! We arrived at almost midnight the night before and so Ammon and Clarissa woke up not knowing where they were. When they discovered they were in a wagon, they could hardly contain their excitement.

I had fun driving Ammon and Clarissa to school for their first day together. Ammon was so cute and was singing Skidamerinky-Dinky Dee:

And here are some pictures from during Lydia and Mary’s tennis practice, including a picture of the one of the daughters of the family that Lily and the kids have become friends with at tennis practice.

During the day, Abe found Clarissa in Ammon’s room dancing all alone to let it go in a blue and pink tutu dress. He was delighted and took a video.