On Tuesday I spent a lot of time organizing bedding, doing laundry, tidying, brushing and braiding hair, brushing Basil, baking bread, and cleaning the kitchen again and again. I also practiced with all of the kids and did Ammon’s reading practice with him. I also made some cheese souffle for dinner.
The only image we have from Tuesday is a video of Clarissa talking to me in the evening. She was so, so cute and even though I really don’t know what she was talking about, I love it when she gets excited and just shares everything on her little four-year-old mind. It’s adorable. Abe will upload it because he does all of the videos for the blog. Thanks, Abe!
Note from Abe: Clarissa has been exceptionally talkative lately and it is so cute when she just launches into sharing something. It can go on for an easy 5-10 minutes +.
On Monday Abe and I were talking in the kitchen and he just started laughing really hard. He had caught sight of Basil napping like this under the table.
Mary and Clarissa spent an hour making this adorable robot for Ammon for his birthday (which is in a month and a half. I think they are excited.).Lydia with Basil. These two love each other.
Lydia took this selfie during her quarantine before Clarissa got Covid and we allowed her to come out of isolation.
Because Ammon, Clarissa, and Mary are advised to quarantine something like seven days beyond Lydia’s quarantine, we had Lydia quarantining alone so that all of the kids could go back to school together. But on Sunday Clarissa came down with a 102.8 degree fever and tested positive for Covid, so we released Lydia from the guest room. She was starting to go a little stir crazy in there and was very, very glad to be allowed to play with her siblings again.
Abe and I slept with Clarissa Sunday night because we were worried about how high her fever was. Thankfully she responded very well to medicine and her fever came down after she took that.
On Saturday Abe worked the entire day in the garage. It was a complete disaster because we have all of the stuff from the basement in there, and things had gotten really out of hand. He added a lot of fast track to the walls and hung a lot of tools and things, so now the garage looks so, so much better. We finally know where stuff is now. Thank you, Abe!!
He also spent some time playing hide and seek with the kids in the garage.
Our next door neighbors invited the kids to pick raspberries. Lydia couldn’t come because of her quarantine, but the other kids and Abe headed over to gather these beauties. We are grateful to have kind neighbors!As if organizing the garage wasn’t enough, Abe also built a sand city with the kids!
The sandbox playing ended with a frantic effort to keep the hose-water from breaking through the canal and flooding the city. This was a game that Abe used to play with Anthony in Anthony’s sandbox when he was very young, and it made him so happy to relive that with the kids.
Clarissa playing with a very patient Basil.At one point in the day Clarissa was crying because Mary and Ammon were tired of playing with her. (She can be a bit…bossy.) I invited her to make rice krispie treats with me and suddenly Ammon and Mary were happy to be in her company.Lydia is smiling beautifully even though she was so miserable. She was feverish and her stomach felt abnormal, but maybe the originality of being isolated was kind of fun (at first).The kids have turned the dining room table into a coloring station. I can’t wait until the basement is done and they can color there, but until then it is fun to see them at work.Mary has been helping Ammon draw and color. I think this was a joint creation.
Ammon and Clarissa had two hours of dance in the morning, and after they had fun coloring their pictures from dance. I had fun jogging and walking with Basil along the Provo River Trail while they were in dance. Smash Dance is right next to the river trail so I had a great time exploring it. The weather was beautiful. After school Mary had a play date and I made popovers.
After school Lydia took an uncharacteristic nap, and that slightly alarmed me. She had been saying that her body felt a little off, but I told her she still had to go to school because she is going to miss so much in October. On Thursday she came home, fell asleep on the couch, and woke up feverish. I tested her in the evening for Covid and it came out positive.
I felt so bad for Lydia, who was pretty miserable. I also felt bad because we’d had two play dates to our house this week, and I had to call the parents and tell them the bad news. I hope their kids don’t get sick.
On the upside, I am really grateful that if the kids are going to get Covid, they are getting it now instead of in North Carolina or Greece. That would be so much harder.
I didn’t take any pictures today, but I did go on a really good-feeling run this morning with Basil, and after we dropped off the older girls at school I walked him around the playground while Ammon and Clarissa played. I helped Ammon with his practice, read books to Ammon and Clarissa, caught up on blogging, and took all of the kids swimming after school. After swimming I fed them dinner, turned on Mama Mia 2 for them (because it takes place in Greece and we are going to Greece in October!–and also because we are all crazy about musicals and they hadn’t seen that one yet), and went to register the kids for ballroom dance. Then I came home, cleaned everything up, tucked Ammon in, and am about to bingewatch Madam Secretary.
Abe went to work in the office for the first time in a long time, and he loved being with colleagues, although we all missed him at home.
Because the girls have been so good about getting up at 6:15 am to get their practice and reading in before school, I actually have time to do Mary’s hair. It’s been fun!
Ammon and Clarissa don’t have school until next week, so for now we have been going to the playground after we drop off the girls.
We have been wanting to backpack in the Uintas all summer but have not had a free weekend, and now it is too cold to backpack. So we are now backpacking this upcoming weekend in southern Utah, but on Sunday we drove to the Uintas for a day hike to Cliff Lake. The Uintas are where Abe would backpack every year growing up, and it was so special to go to this place in Utah that has been such a big part of his own history.
On the way to the Uintas, we ran into a herd of sheep. They were grazing in the Aspen forest and nearby meadows, and we had to slow down because they were also crisscrossing the road! The only time I’ve ever stopped in the road for sheep was in Ireland, so to me the sheep seemed exotic. The kids were enchanted and Basil had fun barking at all of them.
When we got to the trailhead, everyone ate breakfast and then we began our hike. The smell of the Uintas is unbelievable. It is maybe the best air I have smelled in my life. The scent of the pines is so powerful, and everything feels clear and fresh.
Lydia was in charge of pictures for half of the hike and asked me to pose for her here.Another shot taken by Lydia.Courtesy of Lydia.Abe and I wanted a shot of the kids taking selfies together.
Here are some fun videos the kids took:
On the hike we stopped by the cliffs at Cliff Lake and set up to fish for a couple of hours. We didn’t even know that they were used for cliff jumping, but some boys jumped off several times while we were there. That felt like free entertainment! Lydia is currently our only child proficient at fishing and casting, so Abe was very, very busy helping tie and re-tie all of the poles, and the rest of the kids spent most of the time playing pretend in the woods and by the shore of the lake. Abe didn’t get very much time to fish himself, but even so he was so happy to just be back in the Uintas.
Here is Basil not wanting to take a bathWe came home, had some takeout for dinner and then let the kids play in the sprinklers until bed time.
