Today Abe and I celebrated the last day of the quarter by going to a chocolate tasting with our good friends, the Harmons. We had so much fun with them. You know how some people are just easy to be around? That’s the Harmons for us. We can just be ourselves and have fun when we are with them, and we had a great time tonight.
We learned so much! I thought I already knew at least a little about chocolate after I took Lydia to a candy factory last year for her birthday. Nope! I learned that I actually knew very little, and it was so fun to learn tonight.
After the chocolate, we had vinegar and olive oil tastings. The vinegar was actually my favorite part (aside from visiting with Steve and Blair, of course!!).
In other news, the girls attended a fun dinosaur birthday party this afternoon. They played “pin the poor herbivore on the carnivore’s mouth,” among other fun things. It was, apparently, a blast.
In the morning Mary, Ammon and I went to the library and then visited Abe at Qualtrics. Before that, I spent a lot of the morning yelling because Mary refused to follow simple directions that had been uttered (calmly) over twenty times, and Lydia had a break down because she couldn’t remember Cricket Song. I wasn’t mad that she couldn’t remember Cricket Song–in fact, I totally understand why she forgot it in only one day. Yesterday all we practiced was Lightly Row, a song that requires her left hand to do an Alberti bass pattern. Cricket Song calls for broken chords in the left hand, and today she couldn’t remember how to switch back to those broken chords.
At any rate, every time she had a problem (which occurred with every note), she would start screaming in frustration. I honestly just wanted to help her, but since she was screaming, I had to scream to be heard above her screams. (That is my excuse, at least.) Before I knew it, I was screaming at Mary to please just brush her teeth so we could go soon, and I was screaming at Lydia to calm down so I could help her reprogram her left hand. Then both girls told me I’d scared them, and I felt so bad. Sigh. It’s really hard to get this parenting thing right!
The rest of the day was great, though. The girls proceeded to be angels for the rest of the day. I wanted pictures of them sitting on the counter eating pizza, swinging their little legs and whispering to each other, but my phone was in the car. They were so, so adorable, and I just felt so proud of them for being so sweet and kind to each other all day.
I also spent a lot of Ammon’s nap researching our May trips. It has been so fun to plan them!