Author: lilydarais

We visited with more lovely parks people at breakfast and listened to some great talks about what the National Parks Foundation is accomplishing. I feel committed for life. The national parks are our nation’s greatest treasures (in my opinion) and I am thrilled to support them in any way. The only caveat to the parks is the stolen land from indigenous people, and as far as I can tell the parks are honestly trying to confront that past.

Our secretary of the interior is of native descent and I have seen multiple rangers of native heritage at the parks this past year, including the one featured at the Christmas tree lighting the night before. Most importantly, the parks do an incredible job preserving and honoring the ecological and cultural aspects of our land, and that excellent stewardship serves all cultures. I love the parks and was so happy to hear the report at breakfast about the ways in which our parks are thriving.

After breakfast Abe dropped off the gift the parks gave us at the hotel while I ordered coffee two blocks from the hotel.

Then we power-walked through three Smithsonian museums: The Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History, and the National Gallery.

Then we walked as fast as we could to the start of our walking tour. By the time our tour began we had already walked about ten miles that day. On our walking tour we learned so much from the ranger!

This trip was an absolute highlight for Abe and me. Every minute was a delight. We are so grateful to Tom and Suzanne who made it possible to go, and we are grateful to the National Parks Foundation for inviting us out. It was so great to get back home to our children, who light up our lives. But we did have the greatest time in DC, and I will never forget this trip!!

Today, Lily and I went running together. When I got home I did some additional strength training (the 500) and then I enjoyed petting Basil.

Lydia asked for her main Christmas trip to be a shopping trip with her mom. What a sweet wish! Here they are before they embarked to fight the crowds!

And fight they did! Lily told me of one instance when some teenagers (on foot) tried to snatch and save a parking spot she had been waiting for. Lily had to be assertive and she felt bad about that. It’s a jungle out there!

Back at home, I got my dream of having some deep play with the kids. It’s unfortunate to me that I do not do it more. But when I have multiple days at home, it really feels attainable for me to find the time, and today I played Legos with Mary, Ammon and Clarissa for over two hours. We spent the first hour building Lego spaceships.

After we all built our creations, we played for about an hour. The basic plot was that Green Zombie woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided there was too much happiness in the world, so to rectify that, he was going to kill the pizza man, because he delivered too much happiness to the world. On his way to kill the pizza man, he was intercepted by the good team, and shot out of the sky. He didn’t die, but he made it to his bad-team base where he got the bad team fired up and ready to wage war on the good team for revenge. Then a big war erupted. Right at the very end when they were all about to destroy each other, Relsa (Clarissa’s character) gave a riveting speech suggesting that the bad team should try pizza, and if they liked it, perhaps they could agree the pizza man should not be killed and the war could end. The bad team agreed, loved the pizza, and everyone became friends. Here is a video with some of the action.

Lily was pooped when she got home and in this picture she is cuddling with Ammon while looking at some family pictures Mary printed.

Later we all watched the Great British Baking Show while relaxing on the couch. Basil looks really content in this picture resting after his run today.

Lydia looks great in her new clothes and she is so excited about them!

In the morning I spent some time listening to Ammon read his first chapter book to me!

Then we all headed over to Pleasant Grove because the Marshalls had rented out an entire theater for the twins’ birthday. We thought it was the best birthday idea of all time! They had breakfast for everyone and we all watched Wakanda Forever, easily my new favorite Marvel movie of all time. I loved every minute, and so did all the kids!

After the party we went to Harmons, dropped off Mary at a play date and dropped off Lydia at a birthday party for the twins in her class.

Then we came home and Abe went running with Basil. I spent some time on the phone working out some details about The Little Mermaid with Tom and Suzanne who will watch the kids while Abe and I are in D.C.

After all the working out this week I took a long nap and then worked with the kids on their instruments before giving Lydia a long-promised massage before bed.

Ammon threw up again in the morning but energy wise and cough-wise seemed to be on the mend. I spent a lot of time practicing piano and reading with him. I also did an hour of piano in the morning with Mary.

I also did another hard interval workout on the bike, tidied the house and tried out a new curling iron which blow-dries and curls at the same time. It took a while but my hair has never held curl so well.

Abe is working so hard at work because it is 4th quarter and business seems to have quadrupled over night. Sales is such a roller coaster.

Ammon has been getting better but still throws up randomly, so he stayed home again. Lydia was also recovering, so she took it upon herself to advance his education. She told him he needed to write a story about Thanksgiving, and that he was only allowed to ask her how to spell one word. He was allowed to ask Alexa how to spell five words.

We were absolutely astonished to discover Ammon can write a story! It was so good. Thank you, Lydia, for being such an incredible teacher to him this day!!

In the morning I did two workouts and Abe did the 500, and in the evening we went on our first pickle ball date! Abe has played before but this was my first time and I absolutely loved it. We just played to see how many volleys we could get. Abe saves us in those because I love the sound of the thwack and tend to hit the ball way too hard, so he chases all of my crazy balls (which are mostly out) all over and lobs them back at me. We got to a high of 45 thanks to his hustle. It was so fun!

Also because it was my third workout I burned over 1,000 calories during the day and felt so great about that. I hope we play pickle ball every week. It is just two blocks from our house. While we were playing we talked about how our lives are so perfectly set up for thriving in our exact location, and it would be impossible to replicate this anywhere else–especially with these high interest rates!

I also did a lot of tidying up, folding laundry, and made a salad of roasted butternut, pomegranate, gouda, apples, nuts, and mixed greens for dinner.

On Wednesday Ammon threw up again so he stayed home. Clarissa went to school and so did Mary, but Lydia woke up with a flaming red throat and a sore stomach, so she was home too.

Ammon busied himself continuing his Coco inspired banners. The banner turned out beautifully!

I made a pumpkin lasagna with fontina béchamel sauce and some salad for dinner. I think I also did some laundry and started listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Demon Copperhead, which is amazing.

Ammon was still coughing like crazy so we kept him home. He and Clarissa played happily together the whole day.

I am starting to engage in unhealthy behaviors and I think it is because Abe is gone. Today I spent a lot of time just scrolling online clothes imagining that if I owned said clothes maybe I would actually start getting dressed in the morning.

Here are Abe’s pictures from his time in Singapore.

On Wednesday Clarissa stayed home sick. We spent the entire morning at the doctor for Mary’s physical and then the hospital where she was going to get blood tests done. She has always been in the 4th percentile for weight but the doctor wants to make sure she doesn’t have celiac’s or something like that. Anyhow I forgot my health insurance card so we waited all that time at the hospital for nothing. We have to go back for that test later next week.

In the evening I went to the basement and logged into a Zoom meeting about the Great Salt Lake. I am so concerned about the lake and think about the effect of its disappearance every day. I wanted to hear from our policy makers and scientists what the health risks of living here are, but they deflected my question. Abe has a friend who founded HEAL Utah so hopefully he will be able to answer my question soon. But in the meantime

I did learn some interesting things in the meeting. It makes me think they will actually fix the problem (in a decade or two), but in the meantime I have to figure out if it is responsible to raise kids here or not.

On Tuesday I dropped off all the kids at school except Clarissa, and then we picked up my mom and she spent the morning with us. We played two full games of memory, which was so fun! After we were all very tired so we took my mom home.

I struggle to remember what else happened that day. I think I might have gone swimming in the evening when all the kids were home. I believe I wasted a lot of time online shopping. I have noticed I do that when feeling depressed, so maybe all the time without Abe affects my emotional charge.