Darais Days

I slept in super late today, which was an incredible gift she gave to me. While I was sleeping, Lily got out all of the Christmas decor and started on her Black-Friday deal finding. That is a huge process for her, and it took most of her day. She’s such a deal-finder and does such a good job making sure the home is beautiful, organized and the family is well clothed for the most affordable price. Lily’s head was in a fog at the end of the day from all the decisions she made, but I’m so grateful for how she takes care of us!

Aside from Lily’s Black Friday shopping, we spent the entire day cleaning the house (and removing fall, Thanksgiving and other home decor) and putting up all our Christmas decorations. The kids and I also went to buy our tree. Lydia and Mary picked out this one. After bringing it home, Lily mentioned that she had suggested a small tree, which apparently, I had completely forgotten, haha. Fortunately, everyone loves this tree.

The pictures below are from Saturday, and include some additional decorations Lily got from one of her favorite decor shops Sun Garden.

It was a huge lift of shopping, cleaning, organizing and decorating today, and after it all, Lily and I decompressed watching “The Good Place” on Netflix, which is so so so good.

Thanksgiving was definitely different this year with Covid in the air, but we had a truly good time as a family and still got to connect digitally with loved ones outside of this household.

I started the day with a 500 workout (100 burpees, 100 airsquats, 100 pushups, 100 situps, 100 bicep curls) which felt amazing because I didn’t workout much this week and I was craving it.

From 10-11, I helped clean the house and then we all had a wonderful time Zoom chatting with my dad and Suzanne and others on the Miner side of the family.

Then I did more cleaning while Lily spent A TON of time cooking. She was such a star because she even let all of the kids help her cook!

We then had our Thanksgiving program which Lydia fully organized. She also made all of the costumes. She really put work and care into it and it was so fun. I was a cranberry, Clarissa was pumpkin pie, Lydia was a Native American, Mary was a Pilgrim and Ammon was a turkey. Georgia also joined the program through Alexa.

Here are some highlights!

Also, before diving into our Thanksgiving dinner, we had a wonderful time connecting with Clark, Swathi, their kids and Georgia over facetime.

I about died with joy when it came time for the feast. The pumpkin rolls were out of this world. Really everything was so good.

In the past I’ve often said I’m not a huge fan of cheesecake, but I can’t say that anymore because Lily’s cheesecake fully converted me. It was so good!!

I did a lot of the cleanup because Lily slaved all day over the food, and cleaned a ton as she went. After that, Lydia and Mary played Zoom games with my dad, Suzanne, Jere and David, and I went to see my friend Nick and share our Thanksgiving food with him (we usually would have him over on Thanksgiving). It was so nice to catch up with one of my very best friends!

Thank you Lily for the amazing feast, and Lydia for the fantastic program!

Ammon did a wonderful dance to a song in Wicked today!

Lily and I both had a great day today. I think our souls were refreshed from being in nature over the weekend. After work, I did two weeks of blogging. It was a little hard to concentrate, but also highly amusing and joy inducing, to have Lydia and Mary next to me in constant giggle fits. 🙂

Here is Lydia and Mary still goofing off together during Lydia’s harp practicing. They are such cute pals!

Lily is starting to feel better and she had a lot of energy today. She has been so diligent about trying to improve her health after getting knocked down from all the issues with yeast infection and skin rash. I hope she has turned a corner. I love that woman and she has had so much to deal with lately!

As a family, we have been to Canyonlands a number of years ago when we checked out the Island-In-The-Sky district. We liked it, but we were not completely wowed by it. Not long ago when Lily commented to our friend Jessie that we weren’t wowed by Canyonlands, she said, “you’ve never been to the Needles District.” She was right.

This morning we woke up after a semi-dramatic night. Dramatic good and dramatic bad. Dramatic bad was that it was cold, and Lily and my airmat malfunctioned and lost tons of air in the night. Also, Clarissa woke up at night, and needed to jump in Lily and my double sleeping bag. Dramatic good was that it was really fun to cuddle with Clarissa and Lily for warmth, and the stars were unbelievable. Lily slept less than everyone, but she spent a lot of time gazing out her window at the remarkable stars.

In the morning, I played a super fun game with the kids in which we pretended the dirt was lava and someone was chosen to be the lavamonster. As long as people stayed on logs or rocks, they were safe, but as soon as they were tagged by the lava monster or fell on the lava (dirt), that person also became a lava monster to chase (walking slowly per the rules) the rest of the survivors. I had a blast and truly forgot my worries!

Then we headed to the Needles area. The drive was incredibly gorgeous. The cliffs were incredible, and sometimes had climbers on them. Once we arrived in the Needles area, we did the Pot Hole and Walking Slickrock trails. They were so fun! Much of the trail was over interesting rock and boulder terrain. The kids had so much fun climbing on rock features, and hiking on such interesting terrain!

Here are the pictures of the pot hole trail.

Here are the pictures of Slickrock

Here is video #1 and #2 of Clarissa happily working her way down the Slickrock trail.

After our wonderful and sunny hiking, we went again to our most favorite Moab eating establishment, Pasta Jays. Lily got an incredible portabello pasta dish, Mary got macaroni and cheese, Lydia got tortellini and the rest of us got spaghetti and meatballs.

Then we drove home! We rotating requesting songs to play on the way home, and just enjoyed our last bit of time traveling as a family.

At home, Lily and I were exhausted. She bathed to help with the skin issues she’s been having and to decompress, and I decompressed on the floor next to her. We both felt stressed and overwhelmed at the thought of all life is throwing at us right now. I also had a nice long prayer that helped me to center and remember that I’ve always found balance and light through focusing on the Holy Ghost, inviting into my life, and heeding It’s whispers.

This morning, we woke up in our yurt and had a yummy breakfast from food Lily packed from Trader Joe’s. Then Lily and I walked with the kids while they explored around the area of the yurt.

Then we went to see Dead Horse Point Overlook. It was spectacular!

Then we all hiked on what I think was the East Rim trail. Here are some photos.

As soon as I found out Dead Horse point was near Moab, I got really excited. I love Moab. It is so nostalgic for me due to all the times I was there for work, many of which times my family joined me. Pasta Jay’s has become a family establishment, I was really looking forward to going. And go we did!!

I will admit, I was burning out today. Work has been very grueling, especially now that it is end of the year, and I am managing 9 people which is one over the technical maximum for team size-limits.

Still, in spite of my burnout, I had a trip to look forward to (leaving to Dead Horse Point tonight), and also, I was bouyed up by all of the beauty happening around me in my family. For example, here is sweet Mary reading to Ammon. I have to laugh because in the backgound, you can see me holding my forehead on the couch during a break at work…..yeah, I was ready for a vacation.

Lily also was in desperate need of a vacation. She got a UTI on our last trip to Arizona. Then she took anti-biotics, but it still turned into a really bad infection that she could feel in her kidneys. Then she got an insane yeast infection, thrush, and a crazy skin rash that broke out and started moving all around her body at different times. Additionally, she’s been having weird things with the circulation in her hands, where her hands will lose feeling during the night sometimes. I’m really worried about her health :(. Needless to say, I think we both needed a getaway from the daily grind, especially Lily who now has extra pressure during the day with Lydia and Mary homeschooling and Ammon and Clarissa only in preschool 5 hours per week.

Another sweet moment during the day was when Ammon danced to “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman. Here is a video.

It took us a few times to get out the door. First we came back to the house to print out something that would give us a free National Parks pass because Obama started a program for families with a fourth-grader, then we came back for an air-matress and then finally we pulled out. Yay vacation, albeit two days, it’s amazing how immersed one can become in powerful nature in just two days in Utah.

It is difficult to describe how significant this day was for me. Mary has been in eye therapy for, I suppose, about one year now, probably more. We were referred to Dr. Duval by our friend Moroni Hair, while I was doing tithing with him after church. He had a son with a lazy eye, and Dr. Duval was a miracle worker for his son.

We signed Mary up, and Dr. Duval had an entire methodology about how to help Mary’s lazy eye start to work with her brain better in concert with her other eye. The catch? Lots and lots of homework. It was supposed to be 5 days a week. At best, I averaged 2-3 days a week, some weeks were definitely better, some weeks were definitely worse. I think it was equally hard for me and Mary to do. I’d finish a long day of work and feel exhausted, and she would have finished school, piano, and homework, and often feel sad that others could play while she did eye exercises. Last spring, I felt my motivation to finish strong waning, so I made this hundred chart, to motivate both me and Mary to finish strong.

I had to reschedule her graduation one time when we didn’t quite finish the hundred chart on-time, but the fact is, this week we finished it, in time for her graduation today. I am so proud of that girl. I’m also thrilled because last month Dr. Duval said she officially no longer has a lazy eye. That was even before her graduation today! I feel so blessed for Dr. Duval, and his knowledge of how to get eyes working together. Mary made steady progress the entire time we were with Dr. Duval, and I also have to hand it to his staff who were always so cheerful, knowledgeable, and focused. It would honestly be worth it to hang out in the office just so the positive happy vibe can rub off on me. At any rate, I feel so blessed that God connected me to Moroni who referred me to Dr. Duval, for Dr. Duval and his staff, for Mary for putting in the work to improve, and for Lily for being so supportive and managing so many things while I was working with Mary (food, cleanup, Lydia’s harp, baby-duty etc). Today was a truly special day.

When we arrived, one of the first things that happened was we got our homework for the next two months. Seriously, my heart broke a little bit. I really thought homework would mostly be done at the graduation, but this is a lighter battery of homework, and if Mary does well on the two-month check-up, she might be done with homework for good. I’m taking a week or two before ramping back into the homework. I am so so so tired of her eye exercises. Not tired of doing them with her. I honestly loved, and hope to always remember that one on one time we spent together. It was truly special. But I am very tired of just having one more thing to do every day before I feel like the work for the day is done. I look forward to being free of that. And I know that Mary does too.

After we got our homework assignment, Mary got her new pair of glasses which look so adorable on her. She did such a good job picking them! Then she wore a cap and gown and walked around the office while everyone clapped for her while they played Mary’s song of choice “Seven Years Old” by Lukas Graham. Then she picked a Hatchimals prize from the prize rack. Then she got her picture taken with her certificate (my phone was dead at that point). I felt zombie-like and tired, but it was such a special occasion. To make it even more special, Lydia tagged along for the build-a-bear excursion, but got to be a part of the graduation too. It was such a special evening.

After the graduation, we went to the promised build-a-bear trip. Mary and Lydia each picked a bear and some accessories. When what they picked exceeded the budget I declared, they were so sweet and said they didn’t need the bed accessories they picked. They were so nice about it that I told them I would go ahead and get the beds for them. I have such sweet girls, and they behaved so well that I was happy to make sure this was a fully special night for them.

Congratulations Mary my sweet girl!!

The highlight today is that we all played some tennis together after I finished work. It was a beautiful weather day for mid-November! After we all played for a bit, we put Ammon and Clarissa in the car right by the court, and Lily and I played together. We LOVE playing tennis together!

Last night I played dolls with Mary and Lydia, and Ammon sat and watched, wishing he could play.

I told Ammon I would play with him the next night and so tonight we did. Honestly, work has been so stressful, that it was so nice to just tell myself, “Abe forget everything grown-up in your life, and just be a kid with Ammon for the next hour.” It’s hard to describe how refreshing and fun it was for me. We build lots of towers out of magnet-tiles and had a little bit of play with figures with a storyline about crystals being fought over, and then we learned that magnet-tile buildings could look awesome in the dark when we put flashlights in them and turned out the lights. Ammon was enthralled by the discover, and excitedly showed others in the house and continued building magnet-tile buildings with flashlights the next day. I love that boy so so so much!

Also, here is a picture of Lily walking with Lydia and of Lily reading a book to Ammon and Clarissa. She is such a wonderful mother!