On Sunday after church we headed up to Sundance for a hike. We got lost and ended up missing the lift that would have taken us to the Stewart Falls trail head. We ended up taking a short hike and then picnicking on the lawn while a live band played. Abe, the girls, Swathi and Soren all danced. I wish I had gotten pictures of that! But I did get pictures of the hike.
On Saturday afternoon Vince drove up from California and Clark, Swathi, Sruthi and Soren flew in late at night from Pittsburgh.
After Vince arrived, we all did errands. Vince, my mom and I got pedicures while Abe valiantly took all three children out for hair cuts at Cookie Cutterz.
My mom’s furniture came today for her and it looks so pretty! I will have to take a picture when her room is all put together.
It was a little hectic, so I just let the kids play with the neighbors for six hours. I let them all paint some of the moving boxes.
Today was the first day I had spare energy in…half a decade? I don’t know why, but today I actually did not feel even a tiny desire to nap. With that spare energy I sorted boxes with my mom. She put me in charge of all of my “life story” boxes. After going through them, I have concluded that I must be pathologically addicted to documenting my own life. This blog is perfect evidence.
In fact, after sorting through those boxes, I came up with a new daydream. Maybe someday Abe and I can win the lottery and then buy a rinky dink house to store all of our family story stuff. It could be a family museum. Wouldn’t that be fun? In the meantime, I have to pare down or our whole house will be cluttered with “museum pieces”…
Abe and I went to do oil tastings at Mountain Olive Oil Company, and there we discovered we had mixed up our dates and missed the tastings. After rescheduling, we decided to go to the BYU art museum and look at the exhibit there.
It was amazing! The exhibit was about how images helped establish the notion of the “Old West,” and we discovered the artist, Maynard Dixon. His landscapes were almost better than the real thing.
There was also an exhibit about the canyons that we loved.
After looking at the paintings, we missed our kiddos and went home instead of grabbing ice cream. Sometime it’s nice to get away for a minute and realize we actually don’t want to be away all that much.
I have stopped napping recently and that allows me to get so much more done in a day. I am so grateful for that time back, although there is still more to do than seems can be done.
Today I let the girls paint for a couple hours. They enjoyed that a lot. Our new neighbors who moved in today told Abe tonight that they were going to send their son over for us to babysit for the whole day tomorrow. It probably looked like we do nothing since we spent so much time outside painting today. In reality, we spent hours on the kids’ music, flash cards, and reading practice. We also had a harp lesson to attend. I was so, so grateful Abe explained that right now we are on a schedule. It would be rather difficult to babysit on top of everything we are trying to accomplish, but part of me feels like I should try to make that happen. We will see what happens tomorrow, I guess.
Behold too many pictures of my beautiful, sweet, sweet baby. Abe took these while I ran errands in the evening. Just when hand soap decisions had me demoralized and numb, I glanced down and saw these darling jump-starts.
Here are the pictures from harp camp that I never uploaded! I have more that won’t upload, but here are some.
I took a million pictures of Lydia talking with Grace. I loved all of her facial expressions. I get to see these expressions all the time, so I wanted to document them. I loved making friends with Grace’s mom, Colene.
Also, I gave Mary her first piano lesson yesterday! She did so great. I also brought out my flute today and both girls said they want to play it. We listened to a lot of French Trios today. If Ammon just picks up the viola, we will have our very own French Trio.
Today at harp camp Lydia had the best practice session ever. That was made possible by the many bribes I bought at The Book Table yesterday. I love that store and wish we had one in Orem.
Yesterday was also the nadir of my life as a parent thus far, so it was really nice to have such a good day following that. The group coaching from the Suzuki therapist was shockingly helpful. We had good classes today too, and Lydia got to play in the park with her new friends and go to a pool party this evening. Afterward I took her out for sushi where she almost fell asleep into her rice. We returned to our hotel speedily and she is snoring away next to me. I am tempted to watch another Sherlock Holmes episode, but that would be irresponsible.
Oh, I almost forgot to record this: While we were at the park, Lydia started talking to a little boy about doves. (She has been doing her dove call nonstop for a month. Abe now daydreams about sitting on the porch with a shot gun and downing all of the doves from our neighborhood.) Anyway, the minute she said the word “dove,” this boy put his hands to his mouth and made a dove call. Lydia was enamored. She stuck with him like white on rice for the rest of our time at the park. Forget her harp friends–she wanted to hang with the boy who could call the doves!
Here are today’s pictures:
We ran into Roussie this afternoon after institute. She works at Utah State as a Biotech engineer. We had dinner together and walked all around Logan for hours after dinner. I adore Logan. It is so, so beautiful here.
