The big headline for today is that Ammon lost his second of his two front teeth today!
Today was a very sluggish, but sweet day. Lily started out strong and ran with Basil, and I slept in which was delicious. Then I finished blogging for our trip while Lily worked in the kitchen preparing for our Friendsgiving with the Flakes tomorrow. I came up around 11:00 from my computer and then we listened to church. The sermon was about trying to be cairns (rock piles) for people in this world, meaning guides that make peoples lives better. There was a business meeting after the sermon and a new pastor, Brittany Mangelson, was nominated and voted in. We love Brittany and are very excited. It’s bitter/sweet because we also adore our old pastor Carla and we are sad that she is leaving in May.
After church, Lily and I took turns, working in the kitchen, feeling tired and taking baths. The kids had their share of screens today, which we didn’t mind since we had confiscated the devices for months prior to this weekend.
Lily worked in the kitchen more and also helped Mary bake brownies while I went to Harmons for groceries. We had rotisserie chicken, homemade mashed potatoes and leftovers for dinner as well as an incredible fruit crumble that Lily made (with vanilla ice-cream). It was a feast.
In the evening, Lily, Lydia and I finished this amazing puzzle that we got from Suzanne. We loved it!
The older girls also helped me clean the upstairs. I also cleaned the kitchen. Lily went to bed early because she was tired and not feeling the best from all her labors of the day (see below) as well as the fact that she thinks she overdid it a bit on her exercise this week and it’s catching up to her. It was a good day!
In the morning I spent some time listening to Ammon read his first chapter book to me!
Then we all headed over to Pleasant Grove because the Marshalls had rented out an entire theater for the twins’ birthday. We thought it was the best birthday idea of all time! They had breakfast for everyone and we all watched Wakanda Forever, easily my new favorite Marvel movie of all time. I loved every minute, and so did all the kids!
singing to Carter and Camden. They are such sweet boys.
After the party we went to Harmons, dropped off Mary at a play date and dropped off Lydia at a birthday party for the twins in her class.
At home later in the day we discovered these legos in Ammon’s mug. We think he was inspired by the plot of Wakanda Forever and submerged them all in water because of it.
Then we came home and Abe went running with Basil. I spent some time on the phone working out some details about The Little Mermaid with Tom and Suzanne who will watch the kids while Abe and I are in D.C.
After all the working out this week I took a long nap and then worked with the kids on their instruments before giving Lydia a long-promised massage before bed.
On Friday we finally caught my mom in a good spell and were able to go out to dinner with her. We have been eating Fat Daddy’s pizza for a long time but have never actually been to the restaurant. It was a fun experience and they happened to be taking footage for their website so they got a lot of videos of Ammon and Abe playing in their mini arcade.
Ammon threw up again in the morning but energy wise and cough-wise seemed to be on the mend. I spent a lot of time practicing piano and reading with him. I also did an hour of piano in the morning with Mary.
I also did another hard interval workout on the bike, tidied the house and tried out a new curling iron which blow-dries and curls at the same time. It took a while but my hair has never held curl so well.
Abe is working so hard at work because it is 4th quarter and business seems to have quadrupled over night. Sales is such a roller coaster.
Ammon has been getting better but still throws up randomly, so he stayed home again. Lydia was also recovering, so she took it upon herself to advance his education. She told him he needed to write a story about Thanksgiving, and that he was only allowed to ask her how to spell one word. He was allowed to ask Alexa how to spell five words.
We were absolutely astonished to discover Ammon can write a story! It was so good. Thank you, Lydia, for being such an incredible teacher to him this day!!
Clarissa taped a googly eye to her forehead and was being so silly and cute.
In the morning I did two workouts and Abe did the 500, and in the evening we went on our first pickle ball date! Abe has played before but this was my first time and I absolutely loved it. We just played to see how many volleys we could get. Abe saves us in those because I love the sound of the thwack and tend to hit the ball way too hard, so he chases all of my crazy balls (which are mostly out) all over and lobs them back at me. We got to a high of 45 thanks to his hustle. It was so fun!
Also because it was my third workout I burned over 1,000 calories during the day and felt so great about that. I hope we play pickle ball every week. It is just two blocks from our house. While we were playing we talked about how our lives are so perfectly set up for thriving in our exact location, and it would be impossible to replicate this anywhere else–especially with these high interest rates!
I also did a lot of tidying up, folding laundry, and made a salad of roasted butternut, pomegranate, gouda, apples, nuts, and mixed greens for dinner.
On Wednesday Ammon threw up again so he stayed home. Clarissa went to school and so did Mary, but Lydia woke up with a flaming red throat and a sore stomach, so she was home too.
Ammon busied himself continuing his Coco inspired banners. The banner turned out beautifully!
Abe spent some time with Ammon letting Ammon show him his process for making his creative cutouts.Clarissa was thrilled to join in on the crafting action when she came home.Abe did Clarissa’s reading lesson while I worked with the kids on their music. At one point Clarissa was supposed to be reading “mud,” but she was only making the “m” sound. Abe kept encouraging her to finish the word and she got confused and started crying. This is her asleep after the effort of learning to read.
I made a pumpkin lasagna with fontina béchamel sauce and some salad for dinner. I think I also did some laundry and started listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Demon Copperhead, which is amazing.
Ammon was still coughing like crazy so we kept him home. He and Clarissa played happily together the whole day.
Clarissa made these adorable slippers. She was so proud and excited to wear them! The kids worked together to make a banner they had seen in the movie, Coco. They did such a good job on it and I love the end product. The mess did kind of take my breath away a little.Wowsers.
We were all not really thinking about the Petrified forest after yesterday’s scare, but Lily researched the roads, and the safest way home was going right by the forest, so we kept our original plan to see the forest. And I’m so glad we did!
We started in the visitor’s center, and the kids had a great time digging for dinosaur bones in a display they had.
After the visitor’s center, we walked along a path just outside of it.
Then we all saw an amazing video that taught us about the park and in the gift shop, Lily bought a silver ring with petrified wood, and each of the kids got a piece of petrified wood. Then we explored the park further. We hiked a path called the Crystal Forest. One of my favorite parts was jogging on it with Lydia and Mary. We also got some amazing pictures.
Also, there was this amazing sign at the end of the trail that succinctly described how the wood petrifying process happens. So interesting!
Then we took a scenic drive on what was (I think) called the blue mesa trail loop. Here are some pictures:
We then drove to the Painted Desert and ate in the car in a parking lot (since it was cold and windy outside). Thank goodness for Lily’s foresight to buy lunch in advance from Whole Foods!
On the way out, we saw a famous Route 66 Inn that was refurbished and then we hit the I-40 (used to be Route 66) and headed East to 191. Once we hit 191, it was miles and miles and miles of this until about an hour before hitting the Utah/Arizona boarder:
Lily and processed the near disaster more together. I thought of going over the Price Canyon pass so we could get home at a decent time, and Lily was upset that I considered that without researching it first given what we had just experienced the day before (and the fact that she suggested that we always research passes going forward). She was right and I felt awful. I had not fully internalized the lessons I needed to learn from yesterday. I did a lot of thinking on the ride home and later codified some new family rules to help us be safe in the winter.
North of home October through April, and south of home November through March:
1. No overnight trips will be planned
2. No summits will be crossed unless specific summit is explicitly researched and it is confirmed that driving conditions are predicted to be good at time of driving. (I later played around with the UDOT app that makes it really easy to research Summits, and it is awesome.)
3. No highways without stoplights or interstates will be traveled unless it is reasonable to believe skies and roads will be clear.
Lily did research the pass and found that it was OK, so we went over it, but not before stopping at (arguably) our all-time favorite family restaurant, Pasta Jays!!
We also enjoyed listening to Stardust in the car and I pulled into our house right around midnight.
We were very very very grateful to be home safe and sound.
Saturday morning was blissful. The kids spent their final time with the bunnies before it was time for me to return them.
Lily did yoga while I ate breakfast with the kids and my dad and Suzanne.
Then Mary joined my dad and Suzanne for the Grand Sanctuary tour where they were driven around in a shuttle for 90 minutes and told all about the sanctuary. Mary said multiple times that experience with Baps and Bappa was one of her favorite parts of her birthday Kanab trip.
After Mary left with Baps and Bappa, I returned the bunny and dropped of Lily, Lydia and Clarissa to join Mary, Baps and Bappa for the pig and goat tour. I then went back to the hotel to load everything in the car, and joined the end of the tour with Ammon. That worked out because Ammon seemed to get sickest after he’s on his feet and exerts too much. Mary loved the pigs. Here are some pictures and a video!
These are potbelly pigs related to Vietnamese potbelly pigs (I guess it’s hard to be sure of any purebred Vietnamese pigs anymore so they just call them potbellies). They used to allow pig sleepovers, but the pigs caused too much damage. Pigs need an acre or so to roam around and be active, and if they are indoors, their hyper-activity turns to destroying things. They are so cute!
We also enjoyed the goats!
Then we all had a delicious vegan lunch at the sanctuary. It was so fun to chat, and my dad was amazed by the jack-fruit in the Mexican-themed lunch. We all love that lunch so much and our bodies just feel good afterwards from all the vegetables. My dad and Suzanne brought gifts for Ammon for his birthday too, and he loved them!
And thus concluded the heaven portion of our day.
After saying good-bye to my dad and Suzanne, we hit the road where we had a hotel booked in Flagstaff. The plan was to stay the night there and then swing through the Petrified Forest on the way home the next day.
I haven’t mentioned this yet, but it was very cold in Kanab. Highs were in the 40s and at night I think it was in the 20s or lower. Temperatures were similar as we were driving south to Flagstaff. We hit very light snow at a couple of points, but nothing that stuck. Then, about 10 miles south of the Utah-Arizona boarder we started climbing a summit. I’m not sure what it’s called, but it might be marble canyon.
The whole way up the roads were clear, except near the very top, I started to see a couple of snow-patches. It was not actively snowing. I slowed the car to be safe, but did not expect at all what was waiting for me around the next bend. Just after crossing the summit, I turned a corner, probably going 35, and right in front of me was 100 feet of snowy ice. There was a truck pulling a horse trailer 50 feet to the left and in front of me that was stuck on the side of the road. I gently hit the brakes so I wouldn’t break into a skid, and gradually pressed them more firmly to try to control my stop. While I was doing that, I started sliding directly towards the truck. I did the mental math and calculated that we would hit the truck. No one wold get hurt. I’d probably hit it going 3-5 miles an hour and we’d both have some body damage that I would be responsible for. As we slowly slid towards the truck, the car jolted to a stop a foot and a half from the truck. I couldn’t believe it. What a blessing! Since we were now in the middle of the road, and not sure how we would drive without sliding right into the truck, I got out of the car, also telling our kids to get out of the car. Then the near nightmare happened.
At this point, I had stepped out of the car and Lily was still in the car and we looked behind us (Lily using the mirrors). Coming at us at about 30-40 miles per hour was an 18-wheeler I had recently passed. It had hit the ice and was sliding towards us. The whole trailer was diagonal and taking up the whole road as it slid towards us. Lily and I processed what was happening in the exact same way. Our mental math told us that the truck would not stop in time, that it would ram straight into our beautiful family and that this was the end. We started screaming at the kids to stay in the car thinking that if they were in the process of exiting, that would be much more dangerous than if they were in their seats when they got hit. Then, the truck came sliding to a stop and stopped about 8 feet from our car. I don’t know if the trailer going diagonal helped the truck slide to stop, especially since the back of it seemed to be catching on a snowbank. I don’t know if the driver was particularly skilled and he navigated the situation with expert precision. All I know is Lily and I though our kids were all going to die, and us with them, and it was the scariest moment of both of our lives, without any competition.
Both of the truck drivers were exceptionally kind. Our kids sat in the heated truck pulling the horse trailer while we figured out what to do. We couldn’t go back (even though that is what we wanted to do because we were so scared and shook up) because we’d have to turn around and try to go up the ice sheet and also, the semi was completely blocking the road. The people with us (who barely fit between our car and the truck pulling the horse trailer) helped push our care away from the truck pulling the horse trailer while I slowly put on the gas. This aimed us correctly and we finished going down the canyon at a very, very slow pace.
We heard that the road was soon shut down. Multiple people were stuck up there. It was a complete mess. Lily and I were both dealing with it in our own way. Lily was balling and highly traumatized. She was also upset at me for not being more assertive about our family’s safety and her anger was warranted. She is the beating heart of our family, and she had almost just witnessed putting her treasures through horrific pain, and losing everything. Also, she had mentioned concerns about driving to Flagstaff because she knew there could be snow there and I didn’t feel worried.
I was focused on just getting us to Flagstaff, and frankly not processing much else in the moment. Lily studied a map, and we had no better, safer alternative than to just follow our original plan. I was very, very quiet on the way to Flagstaff and just laser focused on getting the family there safely. When we finally got into our hotel and we got the kids down, I broke down. I talked with Lily, but I also spent a lot of time alone. I processed all the emotions of almost putting my kids and Lily through tremendous pain and death, of almost losing them all. Of the fact that I just didn’t take the risks of winter driving seriously enough and how that was my fault. It all hurt tremendously, and yet, the gratitude and relief I felt was also immense. It was a very emotional night. I thought very hard about what lesson I could take away from this. I concluded that planning trips in winter months is just a bad idea. It takes so much effort to organize and plan everything that even if weather is bad, it will be too tempting to try to go, even if weather is bad, and in winter is too often bad. So I concluded that south of our home, we will not plan any overnight driving trips November-March, and North of our home, we will not plan any overnight driving trips October-April. We might do something last-minute if we confirm the roads are perfect, but we are done with planning winter-driving trips in advance. After time alone, I joined Lily for bed.
This is a video I took at a dinner restaurant in Flagstaff called Wildflower Bread Company. I was just feeling so shook up and grateful that the kids were alive and I just started videoing them while we waited for food.
Today we woke up at the Best Friends Roadhouse and drove to the Glen Canyon Dam. We recently heard a podcast about it because the water levels are so low that soon it might not be able to produce power and there is some controversy around if it should have ever been built and if it should be drained. It was fascinating to learn about how it stores water for the West and produces so much electricity (which funds a lot of environmental research).
Then we zipped back to Kanab where we were just in time for a quick vegan lunch at the sanctuary (one of our favorite lunches in the world!) before Lily dropped off Mary, Lydia and me for our volunteer stint with the bunnies.
We got to work with a really nice coordinator named Darrin. How showed us how to clean out the bunny cages (usually two bunnies to a cage) because they were completely filled with poop. There was so much poop in them that I figured they must go a week or two between cleanings. Darrin told us they cleaned every other day! It turns out bunnies can poop up to 300 pellets a day. It seems they have a bit of a reputation because I saw this sign on their bathroom wall.
And here are all the pellets we cleaned out of their cages.
Aside from pooping, bunnies also like to chew. Many of their blankets and towels looked like Swiss cheese.
Here are some videos of the girls cleaning the bunny cages.
After cleaning bunny cages, Lydia and Mary were able to feed parsley and lettuce to the rabbits. 90% of their diet is hay, but they also get fresh vegetables to make sure they get vitamins, like vitamin C.
After feeding the bunnies, Mary got to pick the bunny she wanted for a bunny sleepover. She became very endeared to their largest and chunkiest bunny named Kiuke, which they thought meant “cute” in Hawaiian.
One very cute thing about bunnies is that they generally bond with other bunnies. This isn’t just about mating, it’s about how they live their happiest lives. Bonded pairs can be male to male, female to female, male to female, sibling to sibling etc. Basically, bunnies just aren’t as happy alone, so they generally bond to another bunny and then live as companions for the rest of their lives. Bonds can go up 6 in number or even higher I imagine, but usually you will find bunnies bonded in twos. When a bunny first comes to the shelter, if it is alone, the workers will do some speed dating to see if the solo bunny will bond with any of the other bunnies. If the speed dating is unsuccessful, the bunny will live alone unless a bunny bonds with it later. Lone bunnies don’t live as long and aren’t as happy. It so cute! Shadow is Kiuke’s bonded pair, and Mary got to bring him home as well.
We took the bunnies back to the roadhouse, I set up their pen, and all the kids got a chance to be in the pen with them and pet them before we went to dinner. The kids were very very happy.
For dinner we went to the Rocking V cafe and it was delicious. The kids loved the stars that were hanging in the restaurant (as did the grown-ups).
Lydia and Mary did a good job working on their volunteer shift and were tired at dinner.
As soon as we were done, Ammon threw up on the side of the side-walk. He also threw up yesterday. He has still been sick, which made us a bit concerned. Overall, he was functioning ok, but he still had a cough, was more tired than usual and and still has the occasional throwing-up (it’s been going on for almost two weeks now, and Lily already called the doctor’s office about him). Lily resolved to take him to the doctor first thing when we got home. I confirmed with the bunny workers that Ammon can’t transfer any sickness to the bunnies so he still got to spend time in their playpen like the other kids.
After dinner, everyone played with the bunnies, and it was so so fun for the kids.
After spending time with the bunnies, we all looked at pictures of the adoptable animals on the Best Friends tablet in our room.
Lily and I then put the little kids down while Lydia and Mary stayed up and played more with the bunnies. I did a mini-spa experience with Ammon and Clarissa when they were in their beds. Clarissa was way too ticklish to get a massage and it was hilarious. Here is the video. I love this video so much!
Later in the night my dad and Suzanne arrived. They say Lydia and Mary and the bunnies before they turned in for the night. It was a big day for them because they had an open house this morning for the home they are selling and my dad ran it since he is their agent. We were touched and grateful they still made it even though they are so busy right now.
After they left, Lydia and Mary stayed up until 11:00 spending time with the bunnies. I fell asleep waiting for them to be done, and when I woke back up, we all went to bed. I was so glad they were enjoying the experience so deeply. That’s what we came for!
Last night we left to Kanab and after about 90 minutes we heard a chirping/whistling sound from our car that happened even while we were idling. When we researched it, we thought it was our serpentine belt wearing out and we felt uncomfortable starting a long road trip with that risk. We turned around and went to bed.
Today I woke up and quickly got an appointment at the Toyota dealership. They weren’t finished with the car until 5:00 and so we all had a nice cozy relaxing day together while we were waiting for the car to be fixed.
Lily made delicious egg salad and popovers and we enjoyed puzzling together
The funny thing is when we picked up the car, they said they couldn’t replicate the noise and they checked everything under the hood and the car was in great shape for a road trip. They put in new spark plugs while they were in there since we were over 100,000 miles, but there were no issues with the car.
So we set off again. The car made the noise again on the way down, and then I turned off the fan for the heat and the sound stopped. It somehow coming from our heating system, but that didn’t seem like anything to worry about and the sound eventually vanished altogether.
We arrived in Kanab late at night. Here are Lydia and Mary, ready for for their Best Friends Sanctuary Weekend!
