Month: March 2020

Today was a super eventful day, both for me at work, and for Lily, Georgia and the kids at home.

For me it was the end of my sales quarter. All of our forecasts dropped dramatically due to the number of deals that stalled because of the market uncertainty created by Covid-19. Many businesses do not want to sign a new contract without knowing better how their business will fair over the next four months. Still though, my team had three important deals on the table, and I was involved with all of them. Two reps were inches away from promoting and they were the two reps that still had deals in play. My day was nuts because aside from plenty of other stuff hitting me, I was on the phone with my reps, my manager and customers until the deals were in. It was an amazing day because all three deals came in. Ryan earned his promotion and so did Max. I couldn’t be happier for them. Max’s promotion was an amazing journey. He missed his promotion by $7,000 in bookings (very small amount) last quarter, and this quarter he was at risk of narrowly missing it again. If he didn’t promote this quarter, is big Q4 would fall off, and he would basically need to start from scratch to try to promote. He’s been with the company two and a half years and has worked very hard, but has had some setbacks and had not promoted as fast as he had hoped. This felt like a must win situation for him. He had a deal that he needed to go through and today, in the morning, he talked to the President of the company who flat out told him, “no” that he wasn’t going to move forward because of how crazy things were with the Covid situation. He thought that all of his leaders were too constrained dealing with Covid to try to implement something new. Max kept talking to him and by the end of the call, he said his Phoenix office has not really been too affected by Covid and maybe they could implement. He said he would think about it. We sent him a targeted e-mail in the middle of the day to sweeten the deal for him, just to make it that much easier for him to sign. By 4:00 he was telling us he would move forward and we were beside ourselves with happiness. Then we sent over the paperwork, and we got an immediate response that we didn’t understand. It seemed like he was irritated or passive aggressively accusing us of misleading him. We replied to the e-mail, inviting him to talk. We called him. We texted him. For nearly two hours there was no response. Max and I were freaking out thinking the deal was lost. Then we finally got him on the phone and learned that he simply missed the last page of the docusign by mistake. He said he’d sign it right away and everything was good. Max and I were freaking out with joy. We couldn’t believe he got the deal and earned his long awaited promotion. Times like that, I LOVE BEING A MANAGER. I had additional work and calls after Max’s deal wrapped up a little before 8:00, and one of my reps had an issue processing his deal that lasted until 9:00 or so. I don’t remember when I finished my day, but it may have been around 9:30. It was a crazy crazy intense and fun day.

Little did I know that Lily and the family were having an equally eventful day around the house. Before I get into that, here is a display of all of the vitamins that Lily has been using for me and her and the kids to try to help us to all be healthy. Thanks for helping our health sweetie!!

OK, so back to the eventfulness of everyone else’s day while I was working. It all started when our friend Sarah, out of the goodness of her heart decided to come and deliver to us a fresh lobster. Notice the social distancing. Yup, we are still in the heart of Covid-19. It was so nice of her. Thank you Sarah!!

I wasn’t there, but Lily reported that the kids were absolutely enthralled. They took turns holding it.

They fed it some apple.

And ultimately, they cooked it.

Here are some videos of the events:

Ammon and the lobster

The lobster is eating apple

Lily cooking the lobster

I don’t remember what happened this day, but here is a picture of Lydia reading.

Over the weekend (I think?) we moved our bed to our new room in the basement. We absolutely love it! Here is a picture of me working in my office space in our ever evolving new bedroom:

On Sunday I ran to the store to pick up my Clicklist and get some stuff I forgot to tell Abe to get on Saturday. We are going to try not to go back to the store for over a week (or whenever we run out of fresh fruit.) Until the pandemic is over, my personal grocery goal is to only Clicklist fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, dairy and proteins once a week or every ten days. We have to eat down our store of stuff in boxes and cans. We have a TON of that! So no more going into stores physically. It’s just too stressful.

Abe Zoom chatted with his AXB group for almost two hours in the morning. They are such a good group of friends. I was putting groceries away while listening to him chat and just felt so thankful we have friends, support, and ways to stay connected during this time.

Then I lay reading and sleeping on the couch while everyone else did home church. Abe is such a great discussion leader and religious teacher for the kids. He is so wise, so kind, and so loving.

We all had gyros and fruit for dinner, after which Abe played “nobody leave the couch” with the kids. It’s their favorite game. And it’s so cute to watch! Here is a video!. The game ends when Abe is able to get all four kids on the couch at the same time. It is quite a challenge, but today he did it when he pinned everyone down except for Clarissa, who I brought to the couch for him to clinch the victory :).

The kids are so lucky to have Abe for a dad. He is incredibly fun and energetic. And my contribution to the evening was rounding everyone up and having them all watch the Audrey Hepburn War and Peace until almost 10pm. It was one of my favorite movies growing up, and I was so thrilled that my kids–and Abe–seemed to really like it too! (Well, Clarissa fell asleep in the first ten minutes…and Mary and Ammon disappeared to play after an hour…but Lydia was engaged and asking questions the whole time. Lydia, you are a daughter after my own heart. I love you. And all of your siblings too.)

In the morning we did errands. Abe wore a mask and sanitized diligently and it was sooooooo incredible to have bananas again! We go through them so fast and haven’t had any for several days. It’s been rough.

Then we came home and I took a nap. Ammon joined me. He’s so snuggly.

Clarissa ended this moment by coming in and jumping all over us:

Afterward we swept, vacuumed, and mopped the whole basement. It’s so filled with dust from the construction that breathing felt hazardous. But after all that cleaning and having the windows open, it is amazing. And Abe moved our bed down there, so we now have our new bedroom! It is soooooo beautiful. Normally we go to bed by 10:30, but as an exception we stayed up late in our new bedroom watching Unorthodox on Amazon Prime. We set up Alexa and our baby monitor so we can still hear the kids, but we feel secluded in our basement. Abe said it felt like we were newlyweds because we have the whole floor to ourselves. It’s so fun!

Our new room, closet, bathroom, and laundry room in the basement are all finished! Abe moved a desk into the bedroom so he can finally have a work space in the home that isn’t a chair in Ammon’s room or the garage. He was thrilled:

In the evening I Zoom chatted with a bunch of Thrive friends. We stay in touch regularly through Marco Polo and text every day and obviously I just saw a lot of them at Oprah, but it was still so wonderful to visit in real time. I just love those women. And I am grateful that Zoom let’s us have girls’ nights even when we are quarantined. Thank you, technology!!

Gosh, all the days kind of blend together these days. Wednesday Lydia had her harp lesson. Our schedule is going great, so I’m thankful to have that. We end each day by watching several episodes of I Love Lucy together. Abe always makes sure to point out the sexism to the kids and also talk about ways the show is progressive. Lydia is especially enamored with Lucy and looks forward to this time of day all day long.

All of the kids love to dress up. Mary and Lydia make each other and Clarissa incredibly imaginative outfits out of scarves and blankets. Here’s Mary modeling one of their creations:

Also they dress Clarissa up like a doll. She is very patient with the process and it’s totally normal for her to parade halfway through the day down the stairs in nothing but ingeniously tied blankets and scarves. Or they put her in all sorts of dresses. Her favorite thing to say and do when so attired is throw up her arms and yell “I’m the princess!”

Halfway through the day the girls dressed Clarissa up in a size 5T dress. She’s so tall that it doesn’t look too big on her (at least to me!). Here she is jumping and chatting to me while I “napped.”

Actually I napped a lot on Sunday. Clarissa was a very welcome visitor. Pneumonia is a beast.

Lily and I have still been under the weather (Lily especially) and it has given our older children to show their responsible and caring side as they led out and did activities with the younger children. Here is Lydia baking with Ammon and Clarissa. The cookies turned out great!

Here is a picture of Mary reading to Ammon and here is a video of her reading to him.

Then, later in the day, I had an experience that caused me to reflect how responsible my oldest two children really are. I’ve been more involved in Lydia’s harp practice lately, and today when I told it was time to practice, she threw a major grumbly fit (which happens most of the time). I was feeling so tired and overwhelmed from all that is hitting our family that I spontaneously looked at her and we had the following conversation:

Dad: “Fine, quit harp. Just quit it. I am way too tired to force you to do it.”

Lydia: “No dad, I don’t want to quit harp. I just hate practice!”

Dad: “Practice is most of what harp is, and I’m way too tired to keep making you do it. I’m exhausted. Let’s just be done.”

Lydia: “No dad, I want to keep doing harp. O-K, fine I’ll do it! Will you do it with me?”

It’s like wants the counter-pressure was gone and I wasn’t forcing her to do it, a part of her brain realized, “Holy Cow, dad’s gone rogue….but the harp has to get done….but if he’s not going to make me do it…..who will? I will…I will make sure I do my harp!”

I had a very similar experience with Mary the other day. They both protest so much (especially Lydia), but deep down inside they are responsible, they are good, and they do want to work. I see that every time I try reverse psychology. I’m being careful with it though. One day Lydia might say, “fine I’m done.” I haven’t quite planned out what to do yet in that scenario…….

During harp Lydia told me. “I don’t want to quit harp because then I can’t brag about being able to play it.”

Rather than reprimanding her motives (which was tempting to do), I sat back and felt pleased at her self-awareness and transparency. I considered how bragging rights was a fine place to start if it got her through her harp practice. Motives can improve over time. Right now, I’m wanting her to learn a skill.

Isn’t life like that? I do so much of the same stuff I have always done, but now for such different reasons. It’s amazing how God gives us time for our hearts to grow into our actions.

After harp practice, I took Lydia to the garage to do the values activity I’ve been talking to her about. Starting at age 9, I want each of my kids to pick one value every year on their birthday that they think is central to their identity. Then they write the value on a wooden block. The goal for me is that when they leave to college, they will have a token of their first best stab at who they are and what they value, written out in blocks, to help guide them in their life on their own.

Lydia chose determination. I thought about it and it made complete sense. She just finished crushing it in the school reading competition by reading 5 or so hours a day for several days in a row. Two years ago, after scoring a low reading grade, she single-handedly decided to become an amazing reader, and worked at it (on her own) until she read the entire Harry Potter series. And harp is yet one more example of this girl who simply wont quit. Lydia, I am so so proud of you and I pray your determination takes you so so far in life 🙂

Not much to say today other than we kept slogging through. Here are some cute kid pics!