I woke up in a particularly grouchy mood today, but I did my best not to let it show. I think it’s a combo of the aftermath of pushing too hard with all my New Year’s Enthusiasm, still being a bit sick, not sleeping well lately, and not yet having come down from my end-of-year work stress (and still hurting a bit from some of the end of year disappointments I had).
Lily’s sickness progressed to be full-on viral laryngitis, so not only did she not feel well, but she lost her voice all day. In the morning she went to the urgent care and got some medicine to help. Our friend Matt who is a medical professional also prescribed something he thought would help.
While Lily was out, I hustled working on the house to get ready for our company. Lily did great working getting the house into a good spot during the week, so I was able to do a bunch of finishing touching to get things really looking nice, and Lily helped when she got back too.
Then Christian came over and Lily visited with him for an hour. He’s Daniel and Amanda’s son, and he’s going to teach Lily some knitting tricks.
Then we all went up Provo Canyon for some sledding. We were first to arrive and I pet Basil and sang songs about him in the car:
Getting up in the mountains with friends and sledding completely changed my mood. We found an awesome sledding run, and built a great track that was a good blend of exciting, but not too dangerous. We certainly had some whipe-outs, but fortunately, nobody got hurt. My favorite part is we were able to dig the track really long, and some riders actually made it all the way down to the fort, making the track very very long. I had such a good time and in my excitement, I told Lily it was one of the happiest days of my life. I just felt like such a kid again. I hope we do it every year with our “Les Amis” group (that is our WeChat group name, and I rather like it). Lydia, Mary and Ammon each went down a few times and then played around the fort, with Clarissa. Lily kept an I on them while I worked on building out the track, helping the sledders, and going down quite a few times myself. She was such a heroine to do that when she was not feeling well. People loved the track, and there were many runs down it by both kids and grown-ups. Here are a bunch of pictures and videos!
Afterwards, we grabbed some Thai food, and Chris, Jen, Gigi, and Kaylin joined us at our house. We visited over dinner, and then then we ate a King’s cake that Jen and Chris brought. We shared their King’s cake tradition with them of having the youngest children sit under the table and announce who gets what slice, and then eat the cake and see who gets the little toy. The person who finds it gets to where the crown and be the queen or king. Here is a video of Jen explaining the tradition, a video of Gigi finding it, and some more pictures of the evening. We had such a wonderful time with them! Both playing the game and just conversing with them was so enjoyable.
