I was pretty energetic from my juice cleanse this morning. I got up at 5:30, spent an hour studying my scriptures, steam cleaned and vacuumed the entire downstairs, dusted, organized, fed the children multiple times, and had a fun (picture-less, sorry Grandma!) play date with Misty and her adorable kids.
Lydia and Mary played chase while I cleaned the house. During the process, Mary’s pants fell down. Even though she’s about to turn two, these 18 month sized pants are just way too big on her.
Then I crashed. I proceeded to lie in bed lethargically until I decided I needed to eat something. It had been a day and a half by then, and I was starting to obsess over food in my head. It didn’t feel healthy.
I wasn’t the only one to crash. I came downstairs to discover Lydia passed out on the floor.She proceeded to nap for the next two and a half hours. The child really NEEDS to nap, even though she’s refused to do this for a year.
After Abe came home, we ate dinner and drove to Red Butte Gardens…only to discover they were closed. No matter. We headed over to Sugar House Park so the girls could still see ducks and then play on the play ground. I had a lot of fun chasing Mary around (in spite of my ankle, which didn’t enjoy the chasing as much as Mary or I).
Abe and I are having a homework party. He has hours and hours of extra work to do for his job, and I have a ton of homework to do. It works! Except for the fact that I am exhausted and slightly nauseous from the juice experiment. Hopefully we can finish soon and get some sleep at the start of this weekend. We had a pow-wow to plan tomorrow hour by hour because it is so packed. I really hate Saturdays that don’t feel free, but it looks like tomorrow will be one of those days…
The only time in my life I’ve ever been good at fasting was on my mission. That was kind of the Golden Era of fasting in my life, and ever since then I have really struggled. Usually, I break down a couple hours before dinner because all I can think of is food. Last month I didn’t even make it past breakfast! At least today I made it until after my post-church nap, but then I started thinking about food and couldn’t stop. The theme at church seemed to be “God loves us no matter what. Even if we literally can not get out of bed, God loves us as much as if we were the most active, productive people in the world. His love is unchanging.” As I forked into my spaghetti, I was comforted by that message. Next month I will try again.
The pace of the day picked up after that, when I attempted to make a big batch of soup from dried black beans. Here’s something I am ashamed about: I have only tried cooking with dried beans (lentils don’t count) twice in my life, and both times were a huge flop! Until now, I have opted for the cans. But they are so darn expensive, so last night I tried again to soak a bunch of black beans to cook today. I soaked them overnight, cooked them for hours, and reread Mark Bittman’s little homily on the ease and economy of dried beans to bolster my courage. However, even after all of that, my beans still weren’t as creamy as the canned kind. Does anyone know if they need to soak for two days? Cook for six hours? What am I doing wrong?
After I turned my fibrous, less-than-creamy beans into soup, we rushed out the door to drop the kids off at Tom and Suzanne’s so we could attend a baby blessing. Our friends, Aria and Clay Rockwood, had a home blessing tonight. It was exactly the same as a blessing in church, only a lot more fun and with food. They had the best bruschetta I have ever eaten in my life, and Abe and I embarrassed ourselves by going back for…fifths. Aria’s going to send me the recipe for her spread (which involves feta, cream cheese, butter and lemon). Have you ever seen the scene in Julie and Julia where Julie and her husband are eating bruschetta for dinner? I LOVE that scene, and tonight, I lived it out in person. What a dream!
Then we hung out at Tom and Suzanne’s until the girls were so tired that we took them home and put them straight to bed, sans baths.
Here are today’s pictures (also, I figured out yesterday’s pictures, so I amended yesterday’s post, too):
As I was cleaning the kitchen tonight, I saw this duck on the floor and felt overwhelmed with gratitude that I am a mother of small children. Some day they won’t leave sweet evidences of innocent play all over the house, and that will be sad.Lydia wailed when we removed her from the side of her grandpa. She thoroughly enjoyed her evening with Tom and Suzanne.Lydia was born into a family the loves technology.
