Month: August 2018

On Friday Ammon and Jojo discovered spider webs in the neighbor’s yard. Then Lydia, Jojo’s mom, came to chat with me while the boys played.

Meanwhile, the girls’ teachers sent me these pictures from school. Lydia was in art class making a pizza and Mary was playing an introductions game getting to know her classmates and writing down their info:

After school we made pretzels. I declared that was dinner because I didn’t have it in me to make an actual meal.

We also went to the pool as soon as the pretzels were baked, and Abe met us there. It was our last day of the season at the Scera pool!

After the pool, we ate more pretzels and I chatted with my neighbor, Meghan. Then I gave her a tour of the house since she is re-doing the house across from us and loves remodeling ideas. I floated my daydreams past her and she was so affirming about my house plans. Also, I realized that my house was completely trashed. Nothing quite brings home the fact that you are living in disarray than giving someone else a tour of your house. Every room was disgusting. I felt so demoralized (given that I clean all day long, it feels like) that afterward I didn’t clean anything. Abe and I binge watched The Good Wife and went to bed with the house in chaos all around us. Good thing there’s a three day weekend to take care of the mess!

One of my favorite new things about the school year is my morning routine with Ammon and Clarissa. It is so fun to be able to focus on just two kids! After the older girls are ready and downstairs, I bathe Ammon and Clarissa:

Then we eat breakfast, I tidy the kitchen, and we head back upstairs to read books, do puzzles, sing songs, and play.

After two hours, we are all ready for quiet time.

After quiet time, we ate and went to the library for some play time. I paid a ton of money for lost books and now am able to check out books again. Honestly, we pay so much in fines that I think it would almost make sense to just buy books…almost.

Ammon loved being a super hero at the library and wearing all of the dress-up capes. He also gave lots of puppet shows and touched my heart by cleaning up the puppets that one boy threw out of the stand. He also invited other kids to clean up with him. Of course, he also caused mischief by playing chase and running all around, but at the end of the day, he mostly made me so happy.

Clarissa also took her first looong walks today! Maybe all of the free floor space at the library inspired her. She took lots of walks, and she didn’t realize I was watching her, so she just clapped for herself at the end of each walk. It was too cute.

Then we picked up the girls and got Dairy Queen for our after school snack. Then we headed home for two hours of practice, after which Mary went to her lesson and the rest of the kids ate tacos, took baths, and got ready for bed. I folded a ton of laundry and cried to Abe about recent church developments that frustrate me.

Then we read scriptures and the girls are now coloring away in their rooms listening to Loreena McKennitt quietly. Lydia is making crowns for everyone in the family and Mary is making love notes.

Today Ethline and I left at 5:30am for bikram yoga. I have been eating so much food lately, and it felt like a relief to sweat a little. Ethline is also the best–she is so funny and easy going, and we have so much fun chatting in the car. She is great.

After the girls left for school, I enjoyed my new morning routine with Clarissa and Ammon. I bathe them, feed them, and spend an hour or two on the floor with them reading, playing puzzles, playing with and admiring them. They are so fun. Then we have quiet time, and I took a nap. Life feels so good right now!

After my nap, I fed Ammon and Clarissa again and took them to the park.

The weather was, once again, perfect.

Then we picked up Mary and Lydia, fed them all dinner, played outside, got their music practice in, and headed to dance. This year Lydia has jazz and hip-hop, and Mary has ballet and hip-hop. While the girls were at their first class, we took Ammon and Clarissa to the splash pad. Mostly Clarissa wanted to play with her stroller, but we did get a cute video of Abe dancing with her in the water.

Then Abe took the babies home while I watched the girls dance hip-hop. It was too cute for words. I was so sad I didn’t have my phone for pictures. Mary announced afterward that she didn’t want to go back because she was the littlest in the class and she doesn’t like it when other kids think she is cute. Since she is over-the-top cute and finds herself in situations like this often, I tried to convince her that it’s not so bad when everyone thinks you’re cute. I don’t think I succeeded, and she is only very reluctantly going back to hip-hop next week.

Tuesday was the girls’ first day of school! They looked so cute.

After they left, I bathed Ammon and Clarissa in the bath and felt so sad. Mary and Lydia are growing up, and Ammon and Clarissa won’t be such cute babies forever. With that in mind, we spent the morning playing and reading books, and then we headed to the farm at Thanksgiving Point to meet up with Emily and Chloe.

We had a great time at the farm. The weather was absolutely PERFECT. Ammon and Chloe loved feeding the animals, even though a big goat stole Ammon’s popcorn! They also loved the pony rides, of course.

After pony rides, Clarissa was done, so we headed home to eat, play a bit more, and then take naps. I felt so happy and blessed the whole day.

After school, Mary said it was the best day of her life. She made friends and Mrs. Issa loves her. Lydia said her day was terrible because her two friends, Grace and Arielle, played together and left her out. I was thrilled to hear that Lydia was sure to invite the new girl to sit by her at lunch and play with her at recess, although I guess the new girl, another Lydia, is shy. Lydia (my Lydia) has such a kind heart.

Lydia also said she learned a lesson. If you think you don’t like someone, spend time with them, and you’ll learn they are an interesting person! I guess she spent time with someone she had deemed not fun last year, and she found out yesterday that that person is, indeed, interesting.

Then we had music practice. It was the first day practicing in our new school routine, and both girls were tired and prone to screaming and, in Lydia’s case, crying. But we made it through!

Abe came home, grilled the Thai chicken and veggies I had marinating in the fridge, and we all had dinner. After that, I took the girls school shopping. It was incredibly frustrating because I didn’t have any lists, although apparently all of the other parents have lists somehow?! But Lydia was insistent that she needed certain things by tomorrow, so off we went.

Then we came home, put the kids down, and went straight to bed. It was a long, beautiful day!

Monday was a marathon day.

In the morning Abe and I got up early to go running. I ran one lap more than a mile, which is great for me–especially since I thought I would never run again after this last pregnancy.

Then we came home, showered, and I folded a million loads of laundry. I also bathed and groomed all of the kids. They played dress up all morning while I cooked like crazy for our back-to-school feast. Dress up started with them putting a doggy-backpack leash on Ammon and morphed into dressing Ammon up in all sorts of costumes.

Meanwhile I made pie dough, apple filling, and then put it all together for a pie. Then I made some sour cream rolls and put them in the fridge to bake right before dinner.

By that time it was time to go to the fire station to take a tour with Henry, Vika, and Jessi. Henry loves fire trucks and scheduled this tour himself weeks ago. They were so sweet to invite us.

Ammon almost sabotaged the tour, though. He ran all around the station touching EVERYTHING. He touched every nob, tried to scale every fire hose, and peeked under and in every opening he could find. I almost lost my mind telling him to stop. He would punctuate his explorations by giving me and random firemen huge hugs. Finally one of the firemen gave him a ride in the stretcher to calm him down. It didn’t help, but it was funny.

Then we hurried halfway home, only to realize that we needed to pick up Mary’s glasses, so we turned around and after another hour returned home with those.

By then it was already 5:30, so I quickly made the girls’ two favorite soups and baked the rolls. Then we had our feast! We lit the candle, sang a happy first day of school song, and talked about the upcoming year and what the girls want to learn. Mary is excited about art and Lydia is excited about social studies.

Then I gave them presents: new crayons and flashlights. The crayons are for drawing after family scripture study, and the flashlights are so they can read in bed at night.

Then we cleaned up, got everyone in bed, and got ready for school the next day. Abe and I finished by watching some of The Good Wife. He is extremely stressed out by work, so watching this show helps divert him from current stresses and anxieties.

On Sunday I made chicken tikka masala and curried eggplant in the morning before church.

Abe got sustained as a new assistant ward clerk today, and he stayed after to get trained and set apart.

After he came home, we ate and got the kids ready for bed, and Abe headed back to church for the random stake priesthood meeting. Apparently these happen every year, but my memory must be going because when Abe told me about it, I felt like I had never heard of it before.

I stayed at home and climbed into bed at 7:15pm. The girls came running into my bedroom shortly thereafter. They climbed in with me and we cuddled, talked and giggled for an hour. Mary kept talking about how much she loves bacon. Every time she mentioned the word “bacon” she would laugh so hard, and Lydia and I laughed with her. It was so fun. I loved having their little bodies next to mine with my arms around each one of them while we looked out the window at the beautiful trumpet vine, observed bees by the flowers, felt the beautiful breeze, and talked and laughed. It felt like a highlight of motherhood.

Then Abe came home, the girls went to bed, and we all fell asleep really early. It was great to kick start the week with so much sleep!

 

On Saturday I woke up at 5:15am to pick up our neighbor, Ethline, for yoga. We drove to Lehi to do Bikram together and had a great class. During the week I have to leave early to get home in time, but Saturday is nice because I can stay the whole time. This was Ethline’s first time doing Bikram, and she loved it.

When I got home, I took over the kids. Abe had been up until 1am working, so he was exhausted. When he woke up, I started feeling tired. Abe let me nap for a couple hours. I was so tired that I didn’t even wake up during the treasure hunt Lydia made for all of the kids. One of her clues was, “To find your next clue, check the place where you go poo!” …That was in our bathroom. They all trooped into the bathroom to find her clue, and I was so zonked I didn’t hear a thing. Her hunt ended at a box which held a lot of rainbow themed things, including a book she had made about the colors of the rainbow and this cut-out rainbow:

Then when I finally woke up, I menu planned, did the Clicklist, and “helped” Abe organize the girls’ clothes. We switched out all of their old clothes and put their school uniforms in. We also organized Ammon’s clothes. The Marshalls gave us all of their twins’ old clothes, and if we want, we don’t even have to buy Ammon anything this season!

In the evening after the kids were down, Abe and I spent an hour in the backyard enjoying the perfect weather and cloud watching. I felt perfectly happy and full of gratitude for everything in my life, even things which annoy me when I am in a bad mood–like the house, for instance. I looked at the house with Abe and felt so grateful God has given me a perfect place to raise a family.

Then Abe and I went in and binge watched The Good Wife. Normally Abe is much more disciplined, but he let himself channel my over-indulgent tendencies and we watched until midnight.

On Friday I took the kids to the pool to kill the time because Abe had to work late. To our delight we met up with the Przbylas there. Apparently Brittany had texted and invited us to the pool with them, but I never got her text because I never check my phone. Luckily, it all worked out! Brittany and I had a great time chatting, and the kids all had a great time.

After two hours Ammon decided he was cold and wanted to go home. It was WONDERFUL not having to drag him out of the pool. This is probably one of the last times we will go to the pool this season, but I hope I remember for next year: Just stay until Ammon is done. It is so much easier to get him out when he actually wants to get out.

After the pool we went to In-N-Out for dinner. We ate on the front porch until my mom got home from her last day of education week, which she loved so much. This is a picture of her at education week. She came home from education week on Monday, Tuesday and Friday just filled with excitement and youthful vigor.

Because Mary had complained about starving on Wednesday night, I promised her we could bake cookies in the morning. In the morning, Mary actually just wanted to eat the cookie dough, and Lydia baked the cookies mostly by herself. I helped her with the measuring and oven, but the girls did the scooping all by themselves. My phone is out of memory, so I just had to commit to memory the cute image of the girls standing on footstools scooping cookie dough together. When Abe asked the girls recently what meals they would make for someone to show what we eat in our house, the first thing Lydia said was, “cookies!” Sad but true, sad but true.

Lydia crafted all day with glitter and I fear our house will never recover. There is glitter everywhere. But she had a great time. Abe took some pictures of some of her many, many pictures.

We sat in front eating leftover salad and sourdough bread while Lydia ran the cookies around to all of the neighbors.

Also, Abe took Mary to her piano lesson and she did amazing. We have practiced for HOURS this week, and she learned the entire piece of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” hands together. It felt great knowing that we made some progress that finally, finally showed in her lesson.

On Wednesday we had dinner with the McAllisters. Stephanie McAllister was the kind person who let me teach on Sunday even though she had prepared a lesson. It was so fun getting to know her and her husband, Tanner. He seemed like a genius to us. He could talk about everything and even knew about Ira Lipman’s father!! When he talked about that subject, I started wondering if he had a photogenic memory. It was impressive.

It thundered, lightning, and hailed throughout dinner. The hail was HUGE.

Then Abe and I ran out in the hail to our car after dinner so we could go to the stake center and do our stake temple recommend interviews.

One funny thing Mary said today was, “Why do the grown-ups get to feast and the kids starve?” I thought that was hilarious because I feel like the kids eat all day long, and also her melodramatic way of describing our evening situation tickled me. I basically fed the kids corn and bacon and sent them to bed because we were rushing to get dinner on the table before the McAllisters arrived. I figured I wasn’t starving them because, as I said, the kids eat all day long. But, according to Mary, I guess they actually just starved.