I woke up at 5:40 this morning to play basketball. After arriving at the gym and finding no one was there, I went home and did a stationary bike-ride. I then did a run to the dump to get rid of a lot of boxes and things that accumulated during Christmas time. At home Lily and I made breakfast for the kids (avocado toast and waffles). I took Lydia and Mary to school which was really fun.
Back at home, I worked with Ammon for over an hour to finish his book 4 writing book. That was the book he missed doing in class while he was in North Carolina and Greece. It is so nice to finally be done with it, and he worked really hard to get us there.
While I was doing that, Lily was practicing an arrangement to accompany our friend Courtney at the funeral of Courtney’s father-in-law. Courtney came over to sing while Lily played, and they sounded amazing!
I then rested with Lily, and then our marathons began. Lily did a bunch of shopping and made a killer lentil soup, and packed the food for our outing and got Ammon and Clarissa all dressed. On my end, I got the fishing poles ready, packed the car with cooking gear, chairs etc, printed my fishing license and other fishing info and then studied the lesson to teach Mary’s art class just in time to race off and teach it.
I LOVED teaching Mary’s art class. First of all, it’s very cute to me how shy Mary is. When I said “hi” to her in class, she gave me a very quiet and small wave. I had a great time teaching the class. It felt very natural, and I loved cracking jokes, while still guiding the class through content. It was fun for me and I really felt in my element. We were learning to draw faces, and I also loved learning the content myself because I love art, but have had very little training myself. I had a great co-teacher, Allison Bender and the kids were so adorable and well-behaved. They really tried to get their faces to turn out. Some were better than others, but most all gave it a solid effort, which is all you can hope for learning something the first time through. Here is Mary’s self-portrait that she drew. I love it!
Right after teaching Mary’s art-class, I drove Lydia (who talked to me the whole way about a boy she now sits next to who gets on her nerves, but maybe isn’t so bad) and Mary to Utah Lake to meet Lily, Ammon, Clarissa and Amy, Emerson, Isabel, Indy, and Hawthorne. We were there to ice-fish. The ice was on the thin side (still about four inches) so Lily and Amy took the kids to a very shallow area to play on the ice while I went to a dock and drilled holes, set up the fishing area, and set up our new camping table (thanks Lily), the stove and the food station and got the soup and water heating.
Everyone joined me just as the soup was warm and the poles were ready. Lily was in heaven serving her home-made soup and bread, cookies and hot-cocoa on a doc over a frozen lake. I also had a really great time, but felt disappointed that we didn’t catch anything. I especially wanted Amy’s kids to have the experience of catching a fish. There were other people there that did incredibly well. I chased one of them down to get advice and learned he was using wax worms and a type of jig head I’d never used before. He was so nice and he gave us his wax worms, and we tried fishing another fifteen minutes, but still had no luck. All in all, it was awesome to spend time with Amy and her family, the weather was great, the lake was beautiful, and perhaps best of all was the incredible warm soup we got to fill our bellies with in the cold evening. The experience was wonderful.
Still, I came home with defeat on my mind. Lydia wanted to keep talking to me at home (because she continued talking to me on the way home about her crushes, which she mostly has to keep life interesting, and asked if I had crushes in school etc), and even though it was so fun talking to her in the car, I told her I was on a mission and needed to focus. I spend the next hour assembling our fish-finder. I made progress, but still need some more time to fully figure it out. I hope having a device that literally tells me exactly where fish are will help us next time. If it doesn’t, I jokingly told Lily tonight on our walk that I might literally lose all of my self-esteem.
I should also mention our kids are staying up way too late these days and Lily did an incredible amount of cleaning, dish-washing, and tidying and now is doing yoga.
Here are pics from the day!
