Our sweet Lydia got braces today! Yesterday, Lily have her a bunch of caramels that we got in France that were still in her purse since it would be the last time she could have caramel in a while. Today, Lily helped acknowledge the day by buying Lydia some shakes from the grocery store, by making her pureed soup and by buying her a blizzard from Dairy Queen. Lydia’s mouth will be very sore this week. Our hearts our with you Lydia, and you look great in blue!
Lydia has been wondering all week what colors to get. During the week Lydia was having trouble finding a shirt that she thought went with her blue jeans. Lily repeatedly insisted that anything goes with blue jeans. I think that wisdom carried through to Lydia’s choice of navy blue for her braces.
Today was a super full and happy day, however, at church we understood that some people in our congregation are in a lot of pain right now.
Without going into details, our church’s leadership made a decision that affected one of the members of our congregation and several people were very upset about it. Because our Pastor is the one who was designated to carry out the decision, she was feeling very alone and unpopular. Also, the person who was affected by the decision felt very hurt and upset as well. What was interesting to me was that in the first half of church, the people against the decision were able to lift their voices and share their feelings. Our Pastor was also asked to share her feelings by the congregation. In the end, the person giving one of the talks shared a story that helped everyone have empathy for both sides. We then had a potluck and said goodbye to Roy, who is moving, and people shared their favorite stories about him. Even this was a very uncomfortable church session, it was awesome to see a community working out its issues in real-time, with both passion for justice expressed, and empathy and humility expressed.
We then went shopping and picked up Georgia who was joining us for dinner! I made dinner and it was one of my favorite meals I have made. It was relatively standard with salmon, fingerling potatoes, salad, bread and sliced peaches, but everything turned out really good, and I ate until I was completely stuffed. Everyone else enjoyed the dinner also.
While I was making dinner, Georgia played Sleeping Queens with Ammon and Clarissa. The kids were so into the game and I could here their energetic play. It was so sweet for Georgia to give them that experience and I wish I would have taken a video.
Also, while I was making dinner, Lily was helping Mary with a school project. Mary had to do a project that she could learn something from and she chose to make peach muffins. She was asked to take pictures of her project, and I’m including them here to help her remember.
The first thing Mary learned was how to make buttermilk from normal milk. Lily taught her.
The peach muffins were absolutely delicious.
After Lily dropped Georgia off, we tidied the house and then the Giles came over. They are our friends and hometeachers and seriously the sweetest family ever. Our kids absolutely light up around them because they show such genuine interest in each one of them. First Mary played her concerto for them and they effused with praise for Mary (Mary even got a standing ovation). Ammon then played and also got great praise. Afterwards, Ammon and Clarissa talked and talked, and talked and talked……..and talked….and then talked some more telling them all about the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Versailles, our garden, our new soda maker and on and on and on. The Giles were so sweet to give the kids such genuine attention and affirmation. Here is a small clip below:
Today I woke up and rode to Lehi on the Murdock trail and back. At home, I loaded the bikes for the whole family and then we all went to Utah Lake. From Utah Lake, we all rode along the Provo River trail, until we arrived at Kneaders where we got lunch (along with Roxberry smoothies). We then rode the whole way back. The entire thing was 16.5 miles! Here are some pictures and anecdotes about the ride.
Mary went with me to pick up the smoothies while everyone else was at Kneaders. I LOVE that she doesn’t think she is too old to hold my hand.
I am so grateful for all our working bicycles that allowed for this perfect ride. And the weather was magnificent.
Riding along University Avenue
I was especially impressed with Ammon who rode 16.5 miles on his little bike. He probably had to turn is wheel 2.5 times for every time I turned my wheel.
It was so fun to experience this trail. Even though we live in Orem and are in Provo all the time, this trail made it feel like we were experiencing Provo for the first time. Some parts were scenic nature, other parts had fun features like tunnels, and other parts were in busy parts of the city. Mary was nervous about riding through some of the tunnels that had steep downhills followed by steep uphills, but in the end, she did it!
Here is some of the scenic nature near Utah lake.
More nature.
We stopped by Cook’s on the way home and did a couple hours of gardening. Actually, while Lily was gardening, I was mostly picking up (one by one) over a thousand blue glass rocks that Clarissa threw in our window wells when she was three. I returned them to our fire pit where they belong. Lily did amazing work planting more flowers and Lydia picked her beets!
Didn’t Lily’s Hollyhocks turn out great? Also, in the background you can see our sunflowers, which make me very happy.
In the evening, Lily and I went to dinner with our friends, The Olsens. We ate (for the first time) at the Lakehouse at Deer Creek Reservoir. We loved it and it is now my and Lily’s favorite local place to eat. We had so much fun conversing with our friends.
By some miracle, I finished work on-time today and Lily and I went to the symphony while Lydia and Mary went to fall fest with their friend Lizzy and her mom, and Josie watched the little kids.
At the symphony, Nemanja Radulovic was performing. He was supposed to play khachaturian violin concerto no. 2 and Lily was particularly excited to hear that piece, but some of the orchestra members got Covid and/or were exposed to it, so they had to switch the piece to Thaikovsky’s violin concerto, which is one of my favorite violin pieces.
Lily and I were blown away by both the violinist and the young French conductor. They both were so expressive and playful and stood close to each other and looked each other in the eyes while they seeming danced together through segments of the song. Nemanja had the greatest facial expressions as he smiled or expressed other emotions with his music. And the actual music was incredible. He also did a Paganini encore which blew away the audience. He had multiple standing ovations.
I love going on dates with my sweetheart and I’m so grateful she arranged this outing for us!
Here is a picture that Clarissa colored. She has been coloring a lot lately.
In the evening we went and saw the play, “Tuck Everlasting” because our friend Olivia was in it. I was so touched by the play, and it was exactly what my soul needed. It was funny, whimsical and very profound. Here is my favorite line (not verbatim) from it:
Don’t be afraid of death. Be afraid Of not truly living. You don’t need to live forever. You just need to really live.
The play affected Lydia and we talked about death afterwards. She is a deep thinker.
Lily and I went to bed feeling grateful for our lives, and talking about times when we have felt truly alive. We’ve realized this blog has captured so much of the “truly living” we feel like we’ve done. Family, travel, connection, home routines and comforts, cute things the kids say, our romance, nature, family and friend relationships have all made our life so rich. We feel so blessed.
Lydia made this card for Mary recently after Mary had her fall during the Park City bike ride. I just today (writing this two days later) was commenting to Lily that Lydia has a heart of gold.
Also, I want to share a bit about Clarissa’s command of the English language, specifically slang. She has always been very verbal, and has charmed us as she has precociously said things like, “what the heck?”. But today took the cake on her use of idioms. While putting her to bed, I was on the phone with my brother Jere, and I let Clarissa say hello. Clarissa told Jere all about how she recreated Toca World from her iPad with blocks in her room. She was so excited and told him all about it and then said, “it was epic!” I thought that was so funny. Only two days ago she asked me what “epic” meant and I explained it to her. What a learner!
I worked from home today and caught this cute scene:
Twice per week (Tuesday and Thursday) Lily has a Clarissa day. That is to say a day when I’m working and the other kids are all at school. Lily has been really throwing herself into giving Clarissa attention on those days. They play together, practice numbers together, read together (Clarissa is progressing) and just be with each other. I can tell these days mean so much to both of them. When I put Clarissa down at night on a Clarissa-mommy day, I’ve noticed she’s likely to cry for Lily and want “mommy” to put her down. Lily also recently told me Clarissa makes her smile every day.
We were in full swing today with our home routines and very busy. I had a big day at work and Lily pushed things forward on the house (mopping, cleaning, laundry etc) and got in a big workout. Lily picked up the kids from school, took them to tennis and then brought them home and fed them. That’s about when I finished work, and then I cleaned the kitchen, bathed Clarissa and put her down and worked with Ammon and put him down. All of that was while Lily and the kids made tremendous progress working on their instruments for I think about three hours. It was a very productive day for all of us. Mary even helped Ammon with his worksheets!
Because I forgot to bring the cereal, Ammon and Jamie fed us breakfast again. They are so kind! Then we just sat around and connected for an hour or so while the kids played. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Ammon and Jamie are so fun to connect to. We connected over politics, religion, life/spiritual journeys, family, climate change and possible future locations to live. While we were feeling socially nourished, the kids were having tons of fun together and even built their own home as you can see below:
We then drove home and finished All the Light You Cannot See shortly before we got back to Orem. First we washed Basil and then Lily and I groomed him for a long time (Lily did the hard part). We also unpacked, and Lily worked with the kids on music and Neil Giles came over to give Clarissa ice cream for her birthday. Then Lily and I were so tired, we went to bed early, which was amazing. What a wonderful weekend!
Today we had the most incredible day at Fish Lake and it was soooo fun to share it with our friends Ammon, Jamie and their four kids. We are also grateful that they were so prepared! I joked that I forgot a dozen things, and they always had the things that we were missing. They also made us a hot yummy burrito breakfast in the morning! While we were eating breakfast, the kids built a teeter totter. Quite ingenious! Eventually someone fell off and cried, but it was fun until then.
After breakfast, we all went boating. Weather was perfect, which was especially nice because we were quite cold at night.
We boated to the shallow water across the lake and put in our anchor right on the edge of all the water plants. Within 15 or 20 minutes, people started catching fish. Then we just kept catching and catching. Each of the 8 kids caught a fish and we were delighted at the success. Everyone had a really great time.
Ammon and Clarissa helped me steer the boat back to shore.
Then we had a picnic and it was so delicious. Lily prepared turkey sandwiches on french baguette bread and they were to die for. Then we all hiked on the Doctor Creek Trail, and it was gorgeous. It was a wonderfully immersive aspen experience.
On the trail, we found a treehouse someone had built. We allowed the kids to climb with supervision and that was fun.
Back at camp, I cooked Lily’s tin foil dinners, and they were heavenly. For desert we had banana boats and s’mores and those were also amazing.
Today was so full of fun activities and Jamie, Ammon and their kids were a constant delight to be around. Yay for friends and camping!
