Month: March 2021

Lily made this cake in honor of Meghan Markle, who made the same cake that week.

Today was gorgeous weather. I feel bad for Lily who has been sick, and didn’t join us for the outings today, but I do think she had some needed downtime to herself with all she invests in the children day in and day out.

After church, I took the kids back to the trail at Squaw Peak that we were at yesterday. This time, we all hiked it. The one difference between today and yesterday was that the trail was sooooo muddy. Lydia thought it was hilarious when Basil plopped his belly down into a very muddy part of the trail. I was not amused at all, and was griping about how we’d have to clean him. Lydia pointed out that I’ve been very grumpy lately. I reflected on her feedback and realized she was right. Thank you Lydia for your honesty. I think having that feedback helped me to loosen up a little bit more and enjoy the rest of the hike more. Here are some pictures:

After the hike, we visited Georgia, and then went back to the same park we were at yesterday. We saw Blaze again (red lab owned by Reid and Shana), and we also invited and saw the Kahlers (and their dog) and Josh Jackson. The kids biked (and scootered for Clarissa) and played with their friends, the dogs played, and the grown-ups talked. Weather was gorgeous. It was a really really good time.

Lily and I had a date planned for tonight at a restaurant with friend and my mom was available to babysit. We’ve had a bug going through our house, so we wanted to make sure it wasn’t covid, so we all got tested this morning before my mom came over.

The kids were terrified that they were going to have the nasal test, and were so relieved when they learned they could take the spit test. Ammon, misunderstanding, thought he had to drink the chemical solution in the vile instead of add his spit into it, but Lily helped him know what to do. I took the rapid nasal test so we could get at least one result back quickly. Lily would have done a nasal result too, but they had already keyed her in as a saliva test and they couldn’t change it.

After getting tested (my result was negative which made us think everyone else would be negative too), we got breakfast from Kneaders and Roxberry Smoothie and went up to a parking lot at Squaw Peak were I took Basil on a trail and ran with him while the family stayed in the car (people weren’t dressed for a hike because we all mostly rolled out of bed and went straight to the car for the shots).

Here are some fun videos of my hike with Basil:

Later in the day, I took the kids to a parking lot to ride on their bikes (and Clarissa and her scooter). I took Basil too and he found some dogs to play with. Lily stayed home as she has been sick lately :(.

Just before 5:00, my mom came over to babysit the kids and Lily and I went to Block restaurant with our friends Matt, Courtney, Jenn, Chris and Heidi. We had such a wonderful time with them (I almost died laughing hearing about Matt’s goat that would pee in its own face), and the kids and my mom had a really great time together. It was a magical evening all around!

Last Week Ammon learned how to ride on his bike. Today after work, I took him and Mary to the church parking lot to practice some more. Today, he learned how to take off on his own. He still struggles with braking, but otherwise, he’s got it down! He whipes out a lot, but I think his fearless nature is how he learned so fast. Mary also did wonderfully!

Here is a picture that Mary made with paint and sculptor’s clay. The clay started to break off, so I threw it away, but I had to get a picture first of such a beautiful work of art:

Also, Lily hasn’t been feeling super great lately, but she looked so content and cozy in her blanket that I had to take a picture!

Basil had his final obedience school class today.

At home Ammon colored in his bed in his Sharky blanket.

Towards the tail end of my work-day, Lily suggested I try to walk into a nearby vaccination location to get my Covid shot. She got hers last week. I gave it a “shot” and even though there were multiple signs outside the building that said, “by appointment only” when I walked in, they took my right away. I’m so grateful for Lily’s recommendation!

Here are some happenings with the children today.

Today, Basil was really mouthy and had a lot of energy, so I let him take it out on my blue play gloves.

Today Clarissa was still sick and Lydia and Mary started to feel sick as well so something is definitely going through our home.

From my side, the most eventful thing was I had a team activity at 2:00. It was a virtual Airbnb experience for which an Italian chef living in Florence taught us all how to make home-made gnocchi, ravioli and pesto.

I had so much fun! I was blown away at how simple it is to make home-made pasta. It is literally an egg and 2/3-3/4 cup flour (depending on the size of the egg) for the pasta, and gnocchi is just boiled potato shredded and mashed mixed with flower. That’s it! The filling for the ravioli was ricotta cheese with lemon-zest, salt, pepper, nutmeg and I think thyme. The pesto was simply olive oil, basil leaves, pine-nuts, and some other stuff I’m now forgetting (salt and pepper?) to the consistency of honey. It all turned out so good!

It also gave me a way increased respect for all the cooking Lily does in our home. I had to get her help just to figure out how to assemble the food processor, and when I was done, there was a giant mess everywhere that took about an hour to clean. Lily, thank you for all of the incredible meals you bless us with. This was such a good reminder of the amount of work that goes into all of that!

Lily learned a lot about her dad today from talking with his first wife, Shirley and it was a lot for her to process. Lily called her mom to talk through it with her, and in the process, we invited her to join us for our home-made pasta dinner. It was so fun to see her! We also had fish and an incredible beat, lentil, and feta salad that Lily made and some mind-blowing cowboy cookies. The whole meal was incredible and I ate myself silly. It’s now past 9:00 the next day and I’m still not hungry.

I love Sundays and today was no exception. The day started with church, and then I had a call with my AXB friends. Three of them are Asian, and we had a sobering dialogue about what they and their families are going through after the Atlanta shooting and all that is happening with Asian discrimination awareness right now.

After that call, we all got ready and went sledding with our friends Jen & Chris, and Courtney and Matt and all of their kids. We went to the head of the Timponogos trail on the Provo side of Alpine loop. We just found a nice hill that started from a snow-bank at the edge of the parking lot. It was the best hill we found in the area, but it had some challenges. For example, in the first part of the sled track, the track veers left and if you don’t veer with it, you could hit a tree. At the end of the sled track, the track dead-ends at either a tree or a brick wall.

For much of the time, people were joyfully building walls to redirect the sleds so that people could safely enjoy the speeds of the track. The first redirecting wall worked very well and didn’t need to be very high, because it was a gentle redirect and the sled wasn’t going very fast yet.

The wall at the end needed to sharply redirect the sled, which by that point was moving very fast, so to be effective, that wall had to be very tall. We were all very proud of our handy work. We never quite got the wall to be big enough to fully redirect an adult on a tube (I could go on a disk no problem because it is not quite as fast as a tube). I narrowly missed the tree when I went on the tube, and I pushed Chris (who went faster than me on the tube) at the end to help make sure he didn’t hit the tree (You can see it in the video below). Ammon was mostly focussed on building the snow wall, and Lydia was did a lot of hunting for ice-cycles. Mary and Clarissa went in the care early because Mary got snow in her boot and Clarissa was sick and we didn’t want her to get to cold. But all the kids got multiple rounds in and loved it. I probably had seven or so runs myself and loved every second. It seemed like our friends and their kids all had a really great time too. It was so much fun!!!

Afterwords, everyone came over to our house for food and we had the most wonderful time all talking together. We talked about fishing, camping, boating, religion and all sorts of things. The kids had a blast playing together as well.

After everyone left, Lily did her Richard Rhor class, and I did some work around the home and then stayed up late journaling about being a better ally to people who are discriminated against.

It was a great great day!

Even though I was completely exhausted today (the work week was intense and I stayed up late last night decompressing with Lily by watching TV), I had a really really happy day. Lily and I took a lazy morning and didn’t go upstairs until 10 or after. We have our Arlo device to help us keep ears on the house when we are taking extra time to ourselves, so that is very nice.

In the morning, Mary made this picture, which touched me deeply as it was only last week that she learned how to ride her bike with me and today the plan was for me to teach Ammon to ride his bike. I think she’s drawing Ammon and me in this picture. You can even see notice the elbow and wrist guards. She is such a great artist!

After I had breakfast and tidied, I took the kids to a church parking lot with the intent to help Ammon learn how to bike.

It was such an amazing experience. I was about to give him a bunch of instructions, but then I just told myself to let him try to do it, and then I could see where he was having trouble and I could coach from there. I think we had one false start of him falling, but on the second try, I ran behind him for a bit and then just pushed him and away he went, peddling and biking completely on his own I couldn’t even believe it. For an hour, I would start him off and then he would just zoom and zoom and zoom around the parking lot. I gave him a tip here or there, but really, he figured out completely on his own.

He was aided by his fearless personality. He wiped out or fell probably over ten times (thank goodness for the wrist, elbow and knee guards!), but he just wanted to keep going. He would say, “dad, can we keep training?” It was so remarkable to see him just take off and get it so quickly.

I am over the moon with both Mary and Ammon now riding their bikes! I told myself I would cross-country ski next weekend if both kids were biking successfully by then. That will be a great time, but the happiest thing for me is knowing they are both biking now. I’m so proud of them!!!!

Here is are pictures and videos.

After that, I drove through Jimmy Johns and then got everyone ice-cream since I committed ice-cream to Ammon for doing such an amazing job on his bike.

At home, Lily and I did some house-work, and then I took Mary to a birthday party for her friend Haven and then I visited with my friends Paul and Jake and their significant others (Jake was in town and Paul was hosting him).

At home, I ate dinner, got our new laser printer up and running, and then picked up Mary. Back at home, I had fun training Basil to do a trick Wingardium Leviosa for which he stands on his back two legs for a treat. I love that dog.

Tonight I’m going to bed early. I can’t wait!!!