Month: December 2018

On Friday Abe and I went to bikram yoga in the morning. It was the first time Abe has done bikram yoga, and I loved having him there experiencing it for the first time. It’s a major part of my life, so sharing it with Abe felt so fun and meaningful. He grinned the whole time and waved a ton at me in the mirror, which made the teacher laugh. I love him.

He also hit his quota on Friday!!! He has had so much adversity at work and has been working SO HARD all year. I was so thrilled for him that he finally is seeing his blood, sweat and tears start to pay off. Six of eight of his guys hit their quotas, which is amazing. We celebrated by going to the Provo Mall to see The Crimes of Grindelwald while Charissa and Tiffany babysat our kids.

Congratulations, Abe!!! You deserve every good thing, especially this particular milestone!!!

On Thursday the kids played with play dough all day. Since we don’t have it around all the time, when we do have play dough, it tends to keep the kids’ attention for wonderfully long spans of time. I moved them outside to do the play dough outside since I was cleaning inside most of the time:

 

On Wednesday the girls had their parent ballet recital. Abe, my mom, the babies and I all took turns going from class to class so we could see both Mary and Lydia, who are in different classes. They were both very serious and cute about their dances.

After we went to the next door restaurant to warm up and bumped into Clive Moon, our minister friend. He invited us to his rare book store and took us to the back room where he opened his vaults and showed us treasure after treasure.

On Tuesday the kids had a play date with Grace.  The kids decorated cookies, and at some point Mary felt like Grace and Lydia were leaving her out, so she went to her room to be sad.

I went up and read her some of the love books we gave her for Christmas. Then the other kids joined and we played the foam game Lydia got for Christmas.  I stuck some on my eye to try to convey the concept of sailor and felt sticky glue on my eye for the rest of the day. To be honest, it’s the day after (I am back blogging) and I still feel sticky. That was dumb of me! But we had a lot of fun playing together.

When Clarissa woke up for her nap and had had a snack, we all went to the park. It wasn’t too cold out, and at one point right before sunset, the lighting was GORGEOUS. Everything everywhere was bathed in pink and gold! But my phone was out of memory so I couldn’t take pictures, so I am writing it down to preserve the image in memory. It was a beautiful evening.

On Monday I realized that we had to make it until next Monday with all of the kids at home, half of the house space, and with half of their normal toys and activities packed somewhere in the garage. Since we were going to have Christmas on Saturday anyway (we are flying to Seattle on Monday and don’t want to carry toys there and back), we made a spur of the minute decision and had Christmas Monday…night. The reasoning was that: a) the thought to have it on Monday did not occur to me until Monday at noon and b) I realized that the kids would actually have time to play with their new toys if they got them sooner rather than later.

We explained that we had a hotline to Santa and that he agreed to come early. The kids were very excited. I took them out to the toy store to pick out presents for each other while Abe came home early and put out all of the presents. Thankfully we had everything wrapped on Saturday, so all he had to do was dig them out of the garage, put nicer labels on them, and stick them under the tree.

When we came home, the kids had so much fun unwrapping their presents.

All Mary put on her Christmas list this year were two things: Crayon erasers and love. My mom was right on top of that request for love and immediately started brainstorming a love basket with little notes from everyone in Mary’s life for her. She got Mary’s teacher and other family members (including Abe and me) to write notes, and she wrote Mary the sweetest note I’ve ever heard. She cried when she read it and honestly, so did I. She said that Mary is a shining jewel in her life and that she will always love and treasure her. Mary gave Nana a big hug after that.

Abe and I also gave Mary about five “love books” that symbolize our love for her, including Mary’s favorite so far: Be Brave, Little One.

We let all of the kids stay up later than usual playing with them all. Actually, Abe wanted to play Playmobile with Ammon, and he would have probably kept going until midnight if I had not intervened earlier. Those two were having so much fun playing together!

While I was putting Ammon to bed, Ammon announced for the first time ever  that I should stop giving him back scratches. Surprised, I stopped, turned out the lights, and said goodnight. A minute later I noticed a crack of light shining underneath his door. Ammon just wanted to get out of bed and play more with his new playmobile set!! This warmed Abe’s heart (especially since Playmobiles were his idea).

Pictures:

On Sunday morning Lydia came up and announced there was a big puddle in the basement. Abe was so tired that he just thanked her for telling us and said he’d check it out later. I thought maybe we should check it out sooner than that, so I went down and discovered our toilet gushing water. The basement was actively flooded and flooding.

I ran upstairs to tell Abe, and he came down and turned off the water main. Thank goodness it wasn’t sewage, but still, almost every part of the basement was soaked. Our ward was amazing. People lent us shop vacs and came over to help before church. Our neighbor, Meghan, came and stayed right next to me the WHOLE DAY and helped me pack up every single thing from the basement and move it to the garage. She is my hero and I will love her forever. She is an amazing human being.

After church some guys helped Abe move our heavy, heavy treadmill to the garage, thus completing the basement. At the beginning of the day it was packed with stuff, and now it is empty. Our wonderful ward friend, Moroni, is a contractor and will take care of our basement now that it is clean.

We have so much to be thankful for. We are so grateful it wasn’t sewage. We are grateful we have so many wonderful friends and neighbors to help us clean up and pack up our basement. We are grateful we have space in the garage to move things. We are grateful we get a fresh start at designing our basement. Honestly, even though it was hard to move everything, we mostly felt just SO GRATEFUL all day. The only thing I feel bad about is that we accidentally packed the remote to the TV somewhere and now we have to do all of this week with half of the house space and no TV. I guess we’ll be active!

Somehow in all the chaos, we managed to get this photo:

On Saturday Abe and I enjoyed sleeping in before checking out of the hotel. I almost left it at that, but this is my blog and since I don’t have any way of knowing whether anyone actually reads it, I assume for the most part I am writing to my most curious, family-history-loving posterity after I am dead. You should be rewarded for this kind of effort.

So in the spirit of writing to you from the protection of the grave, and to throw a fascinating, quite-possibly-disgusting-but-sure-to be-interesting anecdote into this daily log blog–as the most bizarre thank you, Posterity Dear, for taking the time to read this far–and finally, as a nod to the tell-all aspect of the current zeitgeist of my times:

Sleeping in is really a vague reference to having sex three times and doing one session of orgasmic meditation. This basically completely changed the chemistry in my brain for the rest of the day. I spent the whole morning grinning from ear to ear, suppressing the urge to skip everywhere and actively feeling like my heart was levitating up out of my body, which also happened to feel like it was filled with butterflies and rainbows. Abe just finished reading the book, Slow Sex, and the author believes that sex should give you energy rather than give you a release for energy. After he applied the book this morning, I have to say I am a fan of this philosophy and highly recommend it to all. Orgasmic meditation for the win.

All of that.

I forgot to pack walking shoes, and since it turns out I couldn’t actually walk in the shoes I wore to the Qualtrics party,  the first thing we did was drive to Main Street and walk/hobble to a store in City Creek to buy shoes. I love City Creek, and Abe is the best friend imaginable for outings. He’s fun, funny, adventurous and insanely affirming. By the time we were done shopping for shoes, he was admiring how well our outfits matched. (For anyone who knows me, I have a nerdy LOVE of matching, so having him notice and care that we were matching made me very, very happy.)

In my new, walkable footwear, we walked to Siegfried’s, the German market. It smelled like Europe, and we bought sauerkraut and the BEST slice of biesenstitch cake–maybe on the planet?? It was, at the very least, leagues above the the biesenstitch I bought at the Christkindlmarkt.

Then we checked out the restaurant at the Hotel Monaco because Abe eats there with clients and wanted me to see it. We felt like giddy tourists just exploring as we walked.

Then we went to Mollie and Ollie’s to split an acai bowl while cuddling on the couch. There were cute stuffed gnomes everywhere that made us smile. (Thus far we hadn’t actually eaten anything that we’d bought because we were planning on bringing it all home, so by the time we split the acai bowl, we were starving.)

Then we walked over to Eva’s Boulangerie and bought some pastries and a baguette before popping next door to the ring shop and taking a picture of Clark and Swathi’s photo on the wall. (Clark had Swathi’s ring made there.)

After our acai bowl, we jumped in the car and headed to 9th and 9th, a cute little corner in Salt Lake. We ate our first official meal at Mazza, a Middle Eastern restaurant.

Afterward we explored the gelato shop next door before heading over to my favorite store in the world, The Children’s Hour. We should have taken pictures but basically we were too busy swooning over everything. In the words of the lady behind me in line: “It’s overwhelming and I want to buy it all.” That’s about exactly how I felt.

By that time, I was basically over the moon with my giddy, happy feelings and couldn’t take any more joy. Which is great because then it was time to drive home.

Ha! Make of that what you will!!

No, honestly, coming home was still fun. We picked up Mary from a birthday party en-route, and she was extremely overjoyed with all of the fun she had just had at the Harry Potter birthday party. The Freestones had taken all of our kids to the ward Christmas breakfast party right before that, so Mary had two parties on Saturday.

Then we came home and discovered Lydia pulling Ammon behind her in a “Santa’s sleigh” they had created with their afternoon babysitter, Charissa.

Clarissa was still happily asleep. She woke up shortly after we came home, and by that time Abe and I were crashing. So we took everyone down to the basement and watched the darling Amazon movie of Ezra Jack Keats’ Snowy Day…four times. I slept through a lot of it but since we watched it four times, I saw it all. Then we watched a bunch of Wallace and Grommit, which was so much better than I remembered. Lydia was making her own incredible miniature clay outfits while we watched. Whoever does that show should probably hire her–her outfits were so good!

We also completely forgot we were supposed to go to the Crofts’ cookie party this night. Darn. We love cookies, Crofts, and Croft cookies, but I guess considering Abe and I could barely peel ourselves off of the couch to put the kids to bed, I don’t think we could have handled a cookie party.

On Friday my neighbor, Brinay, cut my hair in her basement. She has a studio down there, and I feel so blessed to have her as a neighbor. I love her.

In the middle of the cut, my phone rang. It was the school telling me that the kids had a half day and the girls were there waiting for me to come pick them up. Oh no! I couldn’t believe I’d missed that. So I got up with my hair wet and half cut and drove over to pick them up, and then I went back to Brinay, who was very patient with this whole ordeal.

Then she finished cutting and curling my hair for the Qualtrics party. Abe came home a little later than expected and it took us both a while to get ready for the party, which was at the Grand America’s ballroom in Salt Lake. Between the Qualtrics party, which must have had at least a thousand people, and all of the Christmas activities in Salt Lake, the traffic was INSANE. I thought we were going to miss dinner, which was sad since I hate parties like this and only find consolation in the food.

Happily (or probably Providentially) we bumped into Steve and Blair JUST as we were walking in. The chances of this happening, especially considering how many people there are and how late we were, is incredible. I felt so loved by God. He knows how much I hate parties and he put Blair RIGHT THERE for me to help me have the most optimal time possible given the circumstances. She and I went ahead of Abe and Steve, who checked our coats, to make sure we didn’t miss the buffet.

It was so loud I couldn’t really hear anything, but I was thrilled to be by Blair. In fact, I should send her a thank you email. I will do that when I am done blogging.

Then Blair and Steve went to play games, Abe and I checked out the desserts and then hightailed it to our hotel. We had a free night’s stay at the Hilton that expired by the end of the year, so we made sure to take advantage of it and hired babysitters for Friday night AND Saturday morning. It was still stressful leaving our kids and wondering if the babysitters would be okay (we have no doubt our kids will be bind), but by the end of the party I was so cold and tired that I was just happy to be able to drive a block and collapse in the hotel suite. Abe and I watched Ready Player One before falling into bed.

On Thursday the girls performed in the Arches Candlelight Christmas Concert. They both did so great. My favorite moment was when Mary sang, “One for the heeeaaarrrt!” over and over with the sweet little heart gesture. It was just such an appropriate lyric/gesture combo for her.

On Wednesday Lydia was her favorite Civil War hero, Harriet Tubman, in the 2nd and 3rd grade play. She was over the moon to be Harriet Tubman and talked about this for weeks. I am so grateful for good teachers who recognized how much she loved this woman from history and allowed Lydia to have this role.

Ammon and Clarissa also played sweetly together today:

Also, Abe came home at midnight today! This was his last work trip in December. Hallelujah!