Month: June 2021

Today Lily and Jean took the kids hiking in Provo canyon. It looks beautiful!

It looks to me like Basil got his energy out, haha

Here is a video of Clarissa in dance class:

Also, at 3:30, I joined Lily and the kids at 7 Peaks resort. Fortunately this end of quarter has had fewer fire drills so I felt ok peeling away for a bit. I had so much fun! I went on a giant boomerang ride with Mary. She wanted to go on it, but decided it was a bit much for her. We also went on another tube ride that was more to her liking.

Here are a bunch of videos of Ammon and pictures of the family. It was so fun for everyone to be there with Jean.

And here is a video of Ammon playing piano!

Today Lily, Jean, Ammon and Clarissa had the most wonderful time at Bear Lake. Jean thought the lake was so beautiful, and Lily told me watching Clarissa chase seagulls was so cute. I gather they had a super good time. I so wanted to be there, so yesterday I pulled up a calendar to schedule another Bear Lake day this summer. Too bad North Shore Burgers is out of business now (I think that was the name?). We loved that place, especially their buffalo burgers. Still, I can’t wait to go!

I stayed home and worked. Lydia and Mary stayed home too because they had acting camp, which I’m sure was a good time for them. They also had a lot of doll play which made me happy to see.

Of course they did some music practice as well!

Today we went to church and then got lunch at Spitz. Then we picked up our dear friend Jean from the airport. We love when she visits and it was so fun to see her! We had some time to kill in Salt Lake before the Birthday party at the Miner’s place so we went to memory grove and let the kids and Basil play in the river. They were all so happy, especially Basil, who ran all around getting wet, and muddy and he also played a lot with other dogs.

My clothes got dirty from Basil getting in my lap when he was so dirty. Before the Miner party, we took Basil to a car wash. Lydia took these two cute videos, one of which is a slow motion video of Basil shaking off his water. Dang, it looks like Youtube doesn’t support slow-motion, but I included the video anyway.

The Miner party was super fun. Many birthdays were celebrated including Lily and Lydia’s. It was super fun to visit with people. I learned that Jeff Krysten built a car a while ago (which he later sold) and that he used to drag race a lot. It’s called the Bad Manners Fiat. Here is a video of it:

I also got this cute video of Ammon and Clarissa playing in the Miner’s basement.

Weather was gorgeous, and it was so fun to visit with everyone. I love Miner parties!

Here are two pictures of Clarissa in her shades and a unicorn headband she loves.

And here is a picture of Ammon coloring in his sharky.

Look at all those pictures he made!

Then we all drove home. What a happy day!

Saturday morning was the highlight of the camping trip for me. I didn’t sleep super well because I forgot to bring a pillow, slept in awkward positions and kept waking up, however, I always went back to sleep and felt relatively good. Weather was perfect during the night and in the morning and we started the day by all going on a hike. On the hike, I was still being a dad, and asking kids to stay close to me etc, but it was much less stressful and distracted than the day before so I got to sync in some good conversation with my new friend Todd. We mostly talked about work. I forgot to mention yesterday that Lily didn’t join us because she attended a birthday party for her friend MichaelAnne.

After camping, we all had a delicious breakfast at IHop. Todd was a little tight on time, but we still had a lot of fun. We passed the time waiting for our food playing telephone, which is especially interesting with 3 and 5 year-olds in the mix.

After IHOP, we all went home and got clean and then we met Morgan, Jessie and their kids to play miniature golf. We had an amazing time, and it was so fun to catch up with them!

After miniature golf, we went home and prepared for the family Olympic games, a tradition that Lydia started last year. Lydia made some decorations with chalk to welcome people.

We started a little after 5:00. This year our guest were Dad, Suzanne, Georgia and David (and his two dogs). Here is a rundown of what happened:

Things started off with some informal swordfighting.

Then we all ate veggie burgers, and chicken or tofurkey dogs along with watermelon, handpies, and corn. Then we played Crocket. I was way in front with Crocket, but then I choked and I think my dad won.

Then we did hurdles:

After the hurdles, we did sack races:

Then we did the egg in spoon race. Suzanne barely beat me last year, and it was so close, that I’m still not 100% sure that I didn’t beat her. So this year was my year to prove who is the real undisputed champion. And so I proved, or I should say that Suzanne proved that yes, definitely Suzanne is the champion. She is so good at the egg and spoon race! This year it wasn’t even close. I’m quite good myself as I took first place when she wasn’t in the race.

But when I squared off directly against her, I lost badly twice in a row. She moved so much faster than me so I had to run to catch up and each time I did that, I lost my egg. My hat goes off to you Suzanne, you are the undisputed egg and spoon champion! In one of the videos below, Clarissa got in Suzanne’s way, so we had to pause, reset, and keep going so you only see the second half of the video.

After the egg and spoon racing, we did trampoline routines.

And the final event was seeing how long people who could hold their breath under water, which Lydia won.

All in all people had a very good time, and I love this picture of Georgia!

Here is David with his adorable dogs!

Thank you to Lydia, the inspiration behind the event, as well as to Lily for all her prep and to all of our guests for helping to make it special!

Afterwards, Lily and I went to dinner at Block with Daniel Olson and his wife Amanda. Daniel is always doing things for me, so it was great to reciprocate and treat dinner for him and his wife for his birthday. We had a great time, and we love them!

In the morning, Lily made hand pies with the kids. She thought they didn’t turn out well, but I absolutely loved them and ate my fair share of them over the next few days.

After work I took the kids camping. Three or four weeks ago a neighbor friend, Todd Covington and I both decided to go this weekend. Then we both forgot, and he didn’t remember until he saw his calendar reminder, and I didn’t remember until he texted me yesterday and asked if I still wanted to go. I have been unbelievably overwhelmed lately (June might have been one of the busiest and most stressful months of my life), so I considered not going, but Lily encouraged it, and ultimately the desire to be in the mountains with my family and a friend got the best of me and I decided to go.

It was a bit crazy because I pulled away from cranking very hard on work about about 6:05 and then threw a bunch of stuff in the car and headed up the mountain. When we got there (the campsites right next to Big Springs Park) we saw signs say no fires due to the extremely dry conditions. Lily bought ingredients for amazing tin-foil dinners, and I prepared that and salmon earlier in the day and I was very determined to have that dinner. So I drove home quickly with the kids, threw it all on the grill, then packed it up nicely so it would still be hot, and made it back to camp by 9:15.

Back at camp, the kids were totally crazy, especially Ammon who was so excited to be with and riled up by his good friend Casey. Clarissa was also quite wild, and all five kids were running all around the picnic area in the dark, jumping on tables, going in the bathroom (for fun) and generally not listening to instructions (mostly the younger ones). Trying to manage that chaos and keep them from going too far away, putting dinner on, cleaning up, and still feel stress from the work day and the hurried trip home, I admit I was feeling pretty stressed, and having a hard time sinking into conversation with my friend Todd. Still, it was awesome to be with him, see the kids were having so much fun, and be in the mountains. Also, the salmon and tinfoil dinners were absolutely superb.

At night I was apologizing to the kids for being grumpy, and I imagine I also pointed out how wild they were being because at one point Ammon said something to the effect of, “Dad, I was so wild because I was excited.” I’m so glad my kids had such an amazing time and I hope my grouchy imperfect parenting didn’t spoil the occassion (and it did seem somewhat necessary given the circumstances).

In the morning Lily made strawberry tarts with the kids. I tried one and it was delicious! It looks like everyone had fun, except maybe for Ammon, I can’t quite tell from the picture if he had fun, haha.

In the evening, we all skipped soccer and volleyball to go to the kids dance recital. With all of the activities going on, I’m surprised there haven’t been more conflicts, but Lily did an awesome job masterminding and coordinating everything. We were so impressed with the skill of the advanced dancers we saw, and of course we loved watching our kids and thought they were fantastic!

Today Lily took the kids to bike, scooter, and walk on the Provo River Trail by Utah Lake. Here are some pictures and a video featuring goat feeding!

Today the kids had ballet and then they had soccer and volleyball. The schedules worked out for me today to both coach Clarissa’s soccer, and watch Lydia play today. It was all so fun!

Lily took the kids to Color Me Mine today. I think it was for something they did well, like finishing all their music practice on time. I think Lily said it was a major highlight of the summer so far. It seems like they all had a ton of fun!!! Lily also told me that Ammon and Clarissa’s pieces started out colorful, but they both chose black as one of the final colors and put a black layer over the whole statuette, LOL.