This morning I went on a long awaited bike-ride with my friend Daniel Olsen. We went about 42 miles, from his house in Orem to Granite Flats Campground in American Fork canyon (just above Tibble Fork Resevoir). That’s the longest ride I’ve done since I was a teenager and I was pretty beet while I got home.
On the ride, Daniel Olsen talked to me about how hard it is to get his children to clean up anything. I could relate. Lily recently made a rule that the children “could not step foot on the stairs” to come down to breakfast until their room is clean.
Recently we have observed the children holding onto the railing and walking down the stair siding, going down the stairs on their butts with their feet up, and (my favorite) today (writing this on 6/15 Monday) Lydia tied pillows to her feet to walk down the stairs without actually stepping foot on them all to avoid “stepping a foot on the stairs”.
While I’m on the topic of parenting, I do feel the need to point out that Lydia has recently picked up the expression “Humpf” and uses it ten to twenty times per day. When I’m in a good mood, I think it’s cute. When I’m in a bad mood I think she’s being rude and disrespectful. At the end of the day, it is part of how her personality expresses right now when she is upset and I wanted to capture it. I love that girl.
At home I got to spend a lot of time with the children, especially Lydia and Mary. I painted one on one with Lydia during the day, and I painted with Mary after the babies went down. I loved painting, and I so loved having one on one time with my sweet daughters. They are at a wonderful age and conversation is so fun right now with them. It means the world to me that they want to spend time with me.
Lily has really gotten into a groove with homeschooling and parenting, and she also continues house organization projects. She’s also taking the kids through a number of books about places around the world (Thank you Preethi for the program from your blog!). It’s been fun to bump into the children playing in spaces or with toys that Lily has arranged for them, and it was especially fun to see all the kids (I think on Friday) huddled around Lily happily learning about Australia (except Clarissa who was mostly playing). They asked me to read them the Wombat book, and they laughed hysterically during the 7th reading of it (Lily did the prior readings).