This post isn’t necessarily specific to today (and I don’t have any pictures), but I just wanted to capture how much Lily loves our home. She reports to me repeatedly how much she loves this home, and how grateful she is for it. She just told me tonight (6/28/20), that after her family, this home is her great love. She has her happy shelf where her jewelry is, and different objects are that make her happy. She has the bathroom, pantry, and closet perfectly organized. She has books everywhere organized by color or alphabet. There are wonderful and purposeful play stations for the kids all over. There are plants, light, and pieces of art. The space is adequate. It is just a wonderful place to be. She thanks me all the time for it, which is sweet, but I try to remind her that everything we do is together, and we are both putting in to the whole operation, so there literally is no need to thank me for and I mean that. But she is so full of gratitude, happiness, and love for the home. I’ve never seen her so happy and her new environment and living situation is a huge part of that.
I feel very grateful to God. I make very intentional values statements and personal goals. I knew Lily would need a better home to feel like her best happiest self because she is so affected by her environments, and she thrives in light, beauty and order. Thinking we didn’t have the money a year or so ago, I made a goal to save some money so Lily could get bigger windows, and lighter flooring and maybe some other updates on the 121 West 720 South house. But God had different ideas. Lily actually received a spiritual impression to not spend money on updates in that home because “this is not your long-term home”. Then she found this house, we stretched to buy it, family pitched in to make it possible, I got a promotion, we sold the condo, and now everything is in a great spot. I’ve been highlighting how much Lily loves this home and I should also mention how wonderful it is for everyone in the family. It is a perfect home for our family.
God, thank you thank you, thank you for this gift that has given her so much joy. The last house was hard on her, and she’s been through a lot bearing, nursing, and raising 4 kids. It is so so wonderful to see the joy this home brings her. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I had an AWESOME Father’s day. As I mentioned before, Lily and I planned our special days in advance together, so we each got exactly what I wanted. I love her!
I started the day by fishing at 8AM. Today was the first time I tied all my own knots (except the nail knot was tied for me at the fly shop). I had soooooo much fun. I pulled up 1.5 miles NorthEast of the tunnel up Provo Canyon, and hiked down to the railroad track, then walked another 3/4 miles or so until I found a spot that I absolutely loved.
I didn’t catch any fish. This is maybe the 8th time that the Provo river has skunked me. I called Jay afterwords and he gave me some empathy and tips. I hope to go with him at some point! I was so happy to be out in nature, practicing my fishing casts, and knots. I feel so happy when I am in nature, when it is just me, God, and the beautiful world. It was peaceful and happy even though I didn’t catch anything and I spent a fair amount of time untangling knots. On the way walking back on the train-tracks, I was confronting my fear that God is a fiction and that there is no inherent meaning or purpose to live. Of course I still choose to believe, and feel I have good reason to, but that fear is still there. While walking on the track, I concluded that whether God is there or not (and I certainly hope in Her/Him), humans have the power to imbue life with meaning and to create purpose, story and beauty. We don’t need to be subject to the situations we are in. Either God is there divinely creating purpose and meaning for us, or we as humans have a special form of consciousness that allows us to be the meaning makers, and in that way to act divine. If in fact this is all random chaos, we don’t need to be subject to that situation. We can stand up and create meaning and beauty, and I choose to do that, in addition to choosing to believe in God. Those thoughts gave me peace and hope and direction. All in all, it was peaceful, spiritual, wonderful. Thank you Lily!
While I was fishing, Lily was taking pictures and videos of Clarissa being unbelievably cute. My favorite picture and video (#6) is of Clarissa putting a piece of paper to her face and saying, “ouch!” She is so cute!!!
Fortunately for me, I did not miss out on all the Clarissa cuteness. This below is what I came home to after fishing. Lydia dressed her up in the most adorable outfit (and even put lipstick on her at one point) and Clarissa posed more for the camera.
I had yummy leftovers with the family (we had so much great food leftover from yesterday) and I opened my sweet notes from the family. Lydia and I were horsing around taking pictures, and we got this one.
One of my sweet notes was from my dear Nephew Soren. Isn’t he adorable!
I also saw this adorable picture posted on the wall from my sweet Mary.
After lunch with the family, we did homechurch. Today’s church went particularly well I thought. Georgia put such good thought and preparation into it. She prepared the songs, made a program, prepared answers to some of Mary’s questions about baptism and even gave me study material to give a lesson on baptism. In the lesson on baptism, I shared that baptism is one way that people can show God that they are committing to be good people, and people can find peace and feel grace when they make these commitments.
After home church, I drove to my dad’s house to be with him on Father’s day. All growing up, my dad was my best friend, and we have always been close. I feel very nourished and loved when I am with him, and my heart just longed to be with him on Father’s day.
When I arrived, we immediately got on the topic of spirituality. It wasn’t really intentional, but it was the area where my dad and I needed to catch up the most. I never fully revealed where I am spiritually until this moment. My dad raised me in the LDS faith, and I cherish that aspect of my upbringing as my experiences in the LDS as a youth were profound and overwhelmingly positive. Most importantly, I developed a thirst for God and doing what is right, and I continue to cherish both that thirst, and the quenching of that thirst that God continues to give me day after day.
I now find myself in a much more nuanced position, where I feel uncertainty at every turn. I do not think the Book of Mormon is literal. I think the church and its leaders are deeply fallible. I think there has been institutional misbehavior, and I think our origin story and early leaders have a lot of issues. And yet, the faith still feels like home, I feel God as I continue to practice it, and I want my children to have a faith tradition that gives them access to spirituality and religious underpinnings, they way that I had. I am definitely not orthodox or a literal believer. I think a lot of this came as difficult news for my dad. We went back and forth about about our views (he is orthodox), and at the end of the day ended with respect and acceptance of the other’s way of thinking. Spirituality and God has always been one of the topics my dad have bonded most over. I hope with all my heart that does not change. I do not feel I am any less spiritual or interested in God than I have been my entire life. I just feel my faith journey has taken me out of the church box, and so here I am. I sent my dad a text afterwords thanking my dad for how supporting, loving and accepting he is. He really is that way. Suzanne also sat and listened kindly the whole time. She too is such a gem, and I’m deeply grateful for both of them in my life. Again, being with them really fills me with hearth.
After our big religious discussion, dad, Suzanne and I did a video conference with the two other brothers for father’s day. It was such an amazing time. David and Olivia got a new puppy and we spent a fair amount of the call watching their two dogs play together and it was adorable. I haven’t mentioned this before, but David took a new job and he and Olivia are moving to Utah! I can’t wait to have them closer!
After a wonderful visit, I drove home, scarfed some food and then watched Rio 2 with the family. It was every bit as good as the first movie. Such good entertainment!!
All in all, such an amazing day. Thank you thank you thank you family for being in my life, for giving me this day, and for giving me so much joy!!
The other night when Lily and I were doing our walk, I mentioned Lily turning 38, and she informed me that she was only turning 37. That was amazing news, because I thought I was 37, and that meant that I’m only 36!! Somehow I lost track of my age, but I felt sheer joy feeling like I just gained a year. Time sure is moving fast, and that was one moment when I felt like time was on my side haha.
Lily and I dictated to each other what we wanted on our special days this weekend (for me Father’s day is tomorrow), and we agreed that is a great way to go. It takes the guesswork out of giving a wonderful day to each other. I love Lily soooooo much. She broadens me, puts so much into the children, loves me, forgives me, comforts me, inspires me and gives me sooo much happiness. Giving her a happy day was such a joy. Here is the report.
First, Lydia made popovers for breakfast for everyone. Lily took time to herself in her room most of the morning. Mostly, she was working on reviewing a book of poetry for our friend Kathryn Sonntag. Both the poetry and Lily’s review are outstanding. Here is the link to Lily’s review that was published by associationmormonletters.org: http://associationmormonletters.org/blog/2020/06/sonntag-the-tree-at-the-center-reviewed-by-lily-darais/
For lunch we had Mobetta’s Hawaiian food. We are all pretty sure it is not very healthy for us, but we are obsessed with how yummy it is. Given today was Lily’s birthday, I thought it was a perfect choice.
Over lunch, Lily opened her presents and nice notes. Lily self-selected my gift to her which was some fancy lip balm.
In the afternoon, Lily went to her favorite plant/decor shop on state street called Sun River Gardens. It is literally one of her favorite shops on the planet. It is perfectly curated and it seems everything there is beautiful and tasteful. Georgia gifted Lily some money for plants as a birthday present to help with the purchases and Lily came home with a beautiful selection. It was so fun to help Lily tidy the house, admire her new plant arrangements and “play house”.
For dinner we had Fat Daddy’s pizza, and red-velvet strawberry icecream cake. We are all crazy about that cake, except for Georgia who has sworn off chocolate (so she didn’t partake), so she had vanilla ice cream we got her from cold stone. Lily and I agreed we both loved the food we had throughout the day.
Lily also got a massage from me. Honey, I hope you had a wonderful birthday. You are the love and light of my life, and you work so hard for our family, and I hope you felt our love today and that the pampering gave you a little more wind in your sail. WE LOVE YOU!!
After swim lessons the children learned all about Brazil. Lily is continuing teaching the children about 26 countries this Summer (one for each letter of the alphabet) and today was a Brazil day. The children watched videos of Carnival, made their own carnival masks and watched Rio with me and Lily. We also had Brazilian food for dinner (that might have been yesterday, I’m writing this 4 days later), which was delicious!
Today I was very busy in the morning with work, but I ended work early to attack the mess that has accumulated in the garage for six hours until it was night time. So I didn’t see the family much today and I’m making it a point to spend more time with them tomorrow. While I was busy with all my work and projects, the family had a wonderful day. Lily and the kids have been so happy with the new home routines, books, and playthings. It is truly a heaven on earth right now.
Here are some cute pictures of Clarissa!
Ammon, Mary and Clarissa were making birthday cards because of Lily’s upcoming birthday. Clarissa made hers for me. She gave it to me and I was so touched and gave her a big hug. How did she know I’m only 40 days away from my half birthday?!?!
Then Lydia decided to make a chocolate cake. It seems she’s always baking. I’m so proud of that girl for developing her love for cooking. She makes a big mess, but lately has been so good about cleaning it up, and the food she makes is so good! I loved the pancakes she made the other day.
The result was so delicious. I had a sizable piece, and then another sliver, and then a bite of someone else’s, and then I was picking off frosting from the platter……yeah, I loved that cake. It was so moist and the flavor went perfect, and it was to die for in combination with milk. Thank you Lydia!
Organizing the garage was like a walk down memory lane. I listened to one of my childhood Bob Marley CDs and bumped into all sorts of things from the past. Here is something I took a photo of, a missionary picture of Georgia with our old G St. house address on it. We love you Georgia!!
In the morning Abe and I attempted the 500 workout, only for us it was more like a 350 workout. We did seven ten rep increments of push-ups, burpees (I hate those), squats, sit-ups, and supermans. By the end Abe was late to work and Clarissa was crying so we had to cut it short.
A little later Lydia had fun taking a selfie of herself in Nana’s chair.
For home preschool Ammon and Clarissa worked with pincers to sort some plastic fruit into a pie, and then they started fighting. So I put Clarissa on the iPad and worked with Ammon on letters, spelling and reading. When I tried to read him a book, he interrupted by reciting it to me. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs as told by Ammon is so adorable and I should have caught it on video. But I was so appreciative that he assumed everybody would want to witness his feat and repeated it for whole family at lunch time. It was so cute.
After lunch we did a couple more hours watching videos about Australia and talking about Australia. Each kid researched the country separately and then took turns teaching us all what they had learned. The girls were enthralled with what they were learning and Ammon’s imagination has been captured by Australian animals and the cultures of Australia’s islander neighbors. He especially likes the New Zealand Haka and the Fijian fire dancers. Also Lydia kept getting up to eat more Vegemite. She has a very adventurous palate.
Ammon wanted to take pictures and told me to smile for the picture below.
After we were done researching we all went up to watch Jack Randall interact with Australian animals. Ammon has every part of the shows memorized and narrated to me everything that was about to happen the whole time. I loved cuddling with my kids.
Then Mary had her piano lesson, and when Abe was done with work, he took Ammon, Clarissa and Lydia to fly kites. The wind was good and they got two kites up and had a good time.
At home I organized the pantry and was salivating over everything because I did a twenty one hour fast on the heals of a 24 hour fast today. I was DYING. So when Abe came home I decided to eat–a LOT.
After that I read more of Bill Bryson’s Down Under to the girls and did a relaxation narrative with them before heading out to walk with Abe. He is so fun to walk and talk with, and I love that time so much. He is going through a lot with the end of quarter work pace stress but he is such a graceful, kind, and thoughtful person–even when things are stressful for him. I love him so much.
This was my favorite kind of day, and I am so excited for tomorrow!
Today, I woke up and went on a run (Lily biked and did yoga at home) and then got ready for work. I admittedly was sluggish today, however, I attribute that to the amount of exercise I’ve had lately.
Around 1:15 PM , I got a text that our condo sale closed, and I checked and sure enough, the money was in my account. I am so thankful to Lily (for persuading me to sell the condo), to Clark, Georgia, My dad and Suzanne, and Jere (for floating us money….yes that many people floated us money), so that we could buy this home and finish the basement before selling the condo, to God (for helping us find the right buyer at the right price as Georgia often prayed for), and to my amazing real estate agent, condo association contact, and attorney. There was a point in time when selling the condo (which needed complicated repairs) during Covid felt daunting and scary, but it all worked out and that is a burden lifted.
Today while working, I peeked outside and Lily was surrounded by children as she was engaging and teaching them. It was a beautiful scene and I think she is and will be an awesome homeschooler. She’s thinking she’ll homeschool the two oldest daughters this upcoming school year for a variety of reasons (Covid precautions being a major one). I am so in love with my family, and that was a heavenly scene to see.
Apparently, while I was working Ammon and Clarissa were painting……which was very brave of Lily to allow 🙂
The only other thing I want to highlight today is that Lyda and Mary played beautifully for most of the evening with their stuffed animals. They LOVE stuffed animals. They built forts for them out of cushions and furniture today. To give you an idea of how much they loved stuffed animals, Lily and I recently put a bunch of smaller ones with sparkly eyes that Lily thinks are ugly in a DI bin. We figured the girls wouldn’t really notice. It turns out some of their stuffed animals have important roles, and we had thrown out the choir!!! The girls were devastated, especially since I wasn’t sure if we still had them, and they were super relieved when I discovered them still in the DI bin. But back to today, the only thing Lydia and Mary seem to love more than stuffed animals each other. Sure, they fight (just like any siblings), but when they are getting along, it is so joyful for me to see their joy as they play together. I was so enchanted with their playing together this evening, that I let Mary skip her eye exercise so she could just keep playing with her sister. It was a very sweet sister time they had. Here is a video to hear them talk about it. They even wore matching outfits!!
I was tired today, I think from the long bike ride the day before and my routine of fasting weekly on Sundays now. I do love that routine. I love the idea of Sunday being a day of rest and fasting is just one more cue to my body to rest.
It was really nice to spend so much time with him because I didn’t get as much quality time with him yesterday as I did with Lydia and Mary.
After putting the bookshelf together, I helped to feed the children and then I put Clarissa down for a nap. Lately she has been throwing a lot of tantrums, and especially when it is time to nap or sleep for the night, but one thing I’m super grateful for is that she does almost always nap and sleep through the night in the end.
Then I played Avengers with Ammon. I’ve been modeling civilized play so he doesn’t think playing always means bad guys destroying everything and fighting with good guys. In our play today, Thanos went to “nice school” graduated his course and then there were escaped animals that needed to be put in their cages. It was fun.
Then Lily gave me a massage, which was amazing and we did home church, covering more BlackLivesMatter content, Mary’s baptismal questions, and a chapter in Ether.
During church, I saw it was super windy, so after church we all went to the park to fly kites (except Mary who wanted to stay home).
When we got to the park, the wind had died down considerably. We only got one kite up for about a minute and then it was over. But Ammon and Clarissa had fun wandering around the field, and Lydia and I had a lot of fun talking to Pauline (an elderly neighbor friend from our old neighborhood), and Josh who came out his back fence to spend time with us. Josh is one of my best friends, and it did my soul a lot of good to see him.
At home we all had Chinese food which Lily ordered. She doesn’t really like Chinese food, but she ordered it to help impress upon the children that the second most common language in Australia is Chinese because of all the Chinese people that have migrated there (we are still learning about Australia as a family). Lily has made learning so fun in our home, and I so love her for all she is doing to teach, raise, and inspire our children.
This morning I went on a long awaited bike-ride with my friend Daniel Olsen. We went about 42 miles, from his house in Orem to Granite Flats Campground in American Fork canyon (just above Tibble Fork Resevoir). That’s the longest ride I’ve done since I was a teenager and I was pretty beet while I got home.
On the ride, Daniel Olsen talked to me about how hard it is to get his children to clean up anything. I could relate. Lily recently made a rule that the children “could not step foot on the stairs” to come down to breakfast until their room is clean.
Recently we have observed the children holding onto the railing and walking down the stair siding, going down the stairs on their butts with their feet up, and (my favorite) today (writing this on 6/15 Monday) Lydia tied pillows to her feet to walk down the stairs without actually stepping foot on them all to avoid “stepping a foot on the stairs”.
While I’m on the topic of parenting, I do feel the need to point out that Lydia has recently picked up the expression “Humpf” and uses it ten to twenty times per day. When I’m in a good mood, I think it’s cute. When I’m in a bad mood I think she’s being rude and disrespectful. At the end of the day, it is part of how her personality expresses right now when she is upset and I wanted to capture it. I love that girl.
At home I got to spend a lot of time with the children, especially Lydia and Mary. I painted one on one with Lydia during the day, and I painted with Mary after the babies went down. I loved painting, and I so loved having one on one time with my sweet daughters. They are at a wonderful age and conversation is so fun right now with them. It means the world to me that they want to spend time with me.
Lydia’s ArtMary’s ArtMy Art
Lily has really gotten into a groove with homeschooling and parenting, and she also continues house organization projects. She’s also taking the kids through a number of books about places around the world (Thank you Preethi for the program from your blog!). It’s been fun to bump into the children playing in spaces or with toys that Lily has arranged for them, and it was especially fun to see all the kids (I think on Friday) huddled around Lily happily learning about Australia (except Clarissa who was mostly playing). They asked me to read them the Wombat book, and they laughed hysterically during the 7th reading of it (Lily did the prior readings).
Friday I woke up early to do cross-fit with Lucas. I haven’t done strength training for a long time so it was quite intense and I loved it. I got home a little after 7:00 with some time to spare so I made smoothie and eggs for their kids and Georgia (Lily was fasting) and used rosemary to write the first letter of the name of each person on his/her egg. This is incredibly unimpressive, and I’m unreasonably pleased with this little thing I did for the kids.
At 10:00 the children went to their swim lessons. Lily got the first spot in the morning for these one on one lessons to reduce risk for Covid and we are very grateful for the spot.
My work was insanely intense today. I started the day working at 8:45 and worked on and off until just before midnight. But I did get it all done, thanks be to God (who I prayed would give me strength during the day). I’m usually quite out of gas by Friday, and today was no exception. Looking forward to the weekend!
