Darais Days

Lily announced yesterday that she wanted to spend time in the evening with the kids. I agreed as I just haven’t been giving them much attention. Yesterday, Ammon asked if I would play ninjas with him. Then today, when I picked him up from pre-school, he asked again if we could play ninjas. I told him I’d play ninjas with him on the way home while we walked, hoping that would satisfy him and free me from a future commitment. I felt a little funny kicking, punching, hiding behind things etc with Ammon as we both pretended to be ninjas on the way home, but it also made me feel like a kid for a moment, and I loved sharing that with Ammon. When we got home, he asked if we could play more ninjas. I told him I would after work.

After my work day, I was bone tired, but I really wanted to come through on playing we Ammon. We ended up playing for about a whole hour in the basement. We put on red biking “ninja” gloves. We used resistance bands as pretend arrows, a tennis ball and bean bags for grenades we we had an amazing time playing. First we trained. Then we fought a bunch of bad guys. I can barely kick without feeling my hamstrings because I’m so inflexible, but it was very very fun. Then we had a whole scenario with 8 crystals hid around the basement that bad guys had stolen from fairies. Ammon peddles on our stationary bike to take us around to each differing peddle location and at each location we fought a bad guy. Ammon and I took turns being the bad guy. Once we collected all the crystals, we delivered them to Lily, Lydia, Mary and Clarissa who were the fairies. It was so fun!

Lily played scrabble with Lydia and Mary for over an hour, and they had a wonderful time together.

Also, Clarissa asked me if I would build a tower with her, but I had already committed to play with Ammon, so tomorrow I’ll make good on her request. It is such a special time in life when our kids think we are cool and want to play with us! Here is a picture of Clarissa drinking her tea. She was a little sick today and didn’t go to Pre-school.

Clarissa drew this and showed it to me. I asked if she drew glasses, and she said, “no, headphones.” I have to say, those really look like headphones! Great job Clarissa!

It appears Ammon and Clarissa were playing with Lily’s iphone today.

We tried ice fishing again today. I bought another pole to double our chances. We used neon green and pink and orange grubbies, but had no success. We met a really nice man named Lawn who gave us great fishing tips, like that we should be jigging (bobbing our bait up and down close to the bottom). Still everyone had a great time!

Here is a video I submitted to my company about a memory I had that they may share out at some point:

Today we decided to go ice fishing at Utah Lake. We saw people doing it last week on our outing and it looked fun, so we thought we would try. On the way, I stopped by Al’s Sporting Goods store to buy some neon green grubbies to use. When we got to the lake, I dropped in my line and caught this beautiful white bass within about 5 to 10 seconds.

I brought pictures of fish to help me identify them, and I thought this was a white bass when I caught it (which is good to keep and eat), but I figured if it was going to be that easy to catch fish, I could throw this one back, identify it afterwards with the pictures, and then keep later fish I caught after I was more confident in my identification capabilities. After looking at pictures, I confirmed that this definitely is a white bass.

We got skunked after that first catch and Lydia and Mary went on and on about how I should have kept that bass because they really wanted to eat it. I was still hearing about it hours later on the way to dinner, haha.

All in all it was a very good time. Clarissa was so sad that she didn’t catch a fish at one point, and wanted to try again when it was getting to be time to go. I need to do more research so we can have more success, but it was so fun to be in nature and on the ice! Here is a video and some pictures:

Today, Ammon made a really cute robot costume.

Also, Lydia and Mary have been doing a great job running a mile which is the exercise requirement for the home-school curriculum Lily set for them.

Today, I helped Lydia with her Rube-Goldberg machine for school. I was so tired, and so grumpy. I made the kids clean the basement with me before I helped, and I found myself constantly getting after Lydia (and Mary) for making messes, or doing things wrong, or playing when they should be focusing, or quiet. I was definitely not in “fun dad” mode as I was feeling tired and stressed. But, they put up with me, and honestly, I was super thrilled about the product, and the whole thing turned out to be a huge bright spot in my day. Here is the video of our machine. I love those girls!

Here is a cute video of Clarissa telling a story, and Clarissa and Ammon sharing about cute things they made.

While I was biking in the morning Clarissa came down and actively snuggled and played with the two blankets I crocheted and sewed for her while on bedrest. I don’t think she knows they are blankets I made for her, but I was so thrilled, delighted, and touched to see her playing with them. She is the cutest.

After I was done I read her fifteen books before getting ready for the day. I just wanted an excuse to cuddle her. She’s so, so cute!!!!!

Abe and I went on a long walk in the evening and Lydia joined us too. She has been having a hard time sleeping so we figured the exercise would help her. She talked and talked and was darling to listen to. She got a little freaked out by the news today. The Trump supporters stormed the capitol carrying American, Confederate, Nazi, and a Book of Mormon flag called “the Title of Liberty”–and I probably ranted too much about them, so Lydia had a lot to process.

Also, one cute anecdote from the day occurred at bath time. Clarissa was in the bath when I told Ammon he needed to jump in too. Clarissa protested, saying she didn’t want to take a bath with him. When I said it wasn’t up for negotiation, the minute he stepped in she screamed, “NO, AMMON!! I DON’T WANT TO TAKE A BATH WITH YOU ‘CAUSE YOU SOOOOOOO SMELLY!!!!!!” –and broke down sobbing.

I coaxed her out of the bath and comforted her while laughing so hard inside.

On Sunday after Zoom church (which was amazing, as usual) we took the kids to the start of the Provo River Trail. It was gorgeous, but unfortunately there was a duck hunter there shooting ducks right next to us, and when we turned to go he turned to go too. When we went back because he appeared to be leaving, he turned around also. I was already on high, high alert and very stressed at the sight of a man in camo smoking, wielding an oversize gun, and eyeing my children and me (he looked like every picture of a stereotypical Trump supporter I’ve ever seen), but when he turned around as we did for the second time, I about lost it. We went straight back to the car.

Abe was not alarmed at all and thought he was just a friendly duck hunter and suggested calling out to him (with Clarissa on his shoulders) to ask him politely not to shoot us while we walked. I don’t know if Abe was crazy or I was crazy, but we had vastly different ideas about what was safe in that moment.

After coming home Abe and I talked it out and figured out we have no idea what the right thing to do was, but since we still wanted a walk we took the kids to one of our favorite river walks near the Qualtrics building. We walked for over an hour and the kids had a great time while I slowly felt my heart go from code red back to green.

On Saturday we went to Utah Lake State Park to see if we could find the start of the Provo River Trail, but instead we saw a lot of people playing and ice fishing on the frozen lake. We spent the next couple hours playing on the lake. Here are some videos!

The kids all loved drawing on the ice with sticks. Here is one of Abe’s drawings.