Month: January 2021

On MLK Day the kids Zoomed with Pippa and watched Monte Python and the Holy Grail with her, and after I was thrilled to hear Lydia suggest everyone watch an educational film on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Such good kids, all of them. They give me hope the future is bright.

For dinner we had sushi and I videoed a customer satisfaction survey I took of the kids. I asked them to honestly rate their childhood and give specific feedback on what is working and what could be improved. They all listed vacations and Lydia’s baking in their top two reasons why they like their childhood, and Lydia informed me that I could improve their childhood by swearing less. Note taken, Lydia!

So Abe will upload the survey whenever he gets a chance. These kids were adorable on it!

This is Abe, uploading the videos. I’ll put the real one first, with the out-takes leading up to it first (I think they are cute):

On Thursday Abe and I talked a LOT. I have self-esteem issues and by the end of the conversations I realized we are actually not failing at life. Abe helped me realize that our kids are happy, healthy, educated, actively developing their talents, well-fed, live in a clean home, have structured routines and lots of free time, and above all, live secure in the knowledge that their parents adore each other and will always be there for them. What started as a pretty low day ended in these happy realizations. I am so grateful for a wise, compassionate husband who can see the good in me and in our kids when I feel like I am failing on every front. He is my life’s best gift. I love you, Abe.

Lily announced yesterday that she wanted to spend time in the evening with the kids. I agreed as I just haven’t been giving them much attention. Yesterday, Ammon asked if I would play ninjas with him. Then today, when I picked him up from pre-school, he asked again if we could play ninjas. I told him I’d play ninjas with him on the way home while we walked, hoping that would satisfy him and free me from a future commitment. I felt a little funny kicking, punching, hiding behind things etc with Ammon as we both pretended to be ninjas on the way home, but it also made me feel like a kid for a moment, and I loved sharing that with Ammon. When we got home, he asked if we could play more ninjas. I told him I would after work.

After my work day, I was bone tired, but I really wanted to come through on playing we Ammon. We ended up playing for about a whole hour in the basement. We put on red biking “ninja” gloves. We used resistance bands as pretend arrows, a tennis ball and bean bags for grenades we we had an amazing time playing. First we trained. Then we fought a bunch of bad guys. I can barely kick without feeling my hamstrings because I’m so inflexible, but it was very very fun. Then we had a whole scenario with 8 crystals hid around the basement that bad guys had stolen from fairies. Ammon peddles on our stationary bike to take us around to each differing peddle location and at each location we fought a bad guy. Ammon and I took turns being the bad guy. Once we collected all the crystals, we delivered them to Lily, Lydia, Mary and Clarissa who were the fairies. It was so fun!

Lily played scrabble with Lydia and Mary for over an hour, and they had a wonderful time together.

Also, Clarissa asked me if I would build a tower with her, but I had already committed to play with Ammon, so tomorrow I’ll make good on her request. It is such a special time in life when our kids think we are cool and want to play with us! Here is a picture of Clarissa drinking her tea. She was a little sick today and didn’t go to Pre-school.

Clarissa drew this and showed it to me. I asked if she drew glasses, and she said, “no, headphones.” I have to say, those really look like headphones! Great job Clarissa!

It appears Ammon and Clarissa were playing with Lily’s iphone today.

We tried ice fishing again today. I bought another pole to double our chances. We used neon green and pink and orange grubbies, but had no success. We met a really nice man named Lawn who gave us great fishing tips, like that we should be jigging (bobbing our bait up and down close to the bottom). Still everyone had a great time!

Here is a video I submitted to my company about a memory I had that they may share out at some point:

Today we decided to go ice fishing at Utah Lake. We saw people doing it last week on our outing and it looked fun, so we thought we would try. On the way, I stopped by Al’s Sporting Goods store to buy some neon green grubbies to use. When we got to the lake, I dropped in my line and caught this beautiful white bass within about 5 to 10 seconds.

I brought pictures of fish to help me identify them, and I thought this was a white bass when I caught it (which is good to keep and eat), but I figured if it was going to be that easy to catch fish, I could throw this one back, identify it afterwards with the pictures, and then keep later fish I caught after I was more confident in my identification capabilities. After looking at pictures, I confirmed that this definitely is a white bass.

We got skunked after that first catch and Lydia and Mary went on and on about how I should have kept that bass because they really wanted to eat it. I was still hearing about it hours later on the way to dinner, haha.

All in all it was a very good time. Clarissa was so sad that she didn’t catch a fish at one point, and wanted to try again when it was getting to be time to go. I need to do more research so we can have more success, but it was so fun to be in nature and on the ice! Here is a video and some pictures: