My Birthday!

I had the most wonderful birthday today. First of all, it was very interesting because Qualtrics IPOed today, and gave all the employees the day off, encouraging us to do a day of service to give back to the world around us.

I had already planned to take the day off, and got a Qualtrics free pass to go skiing. I debated whether or not to ski, or if I would do service the whole day, but seeing as how I had already planned it, it was my birthday, and my friend was able to join me, I went ahead with plans.

Skiing was soooo wonderful. My equipment wasn’t working the best (right boot was too loose, which is no surprise because I have a right foot a half size smaller than my right), but the snow was amazing, and I was overall feeling pretty good despite a crushing three days of work prior.

I had a wonderful time talking with Joe and Tanner (another Qualtrics colleague). We talked about life on the lift and enjoyed going down the slopes together. I’m getting better, so people don’t have to wait for me quite so much anymore. I really appreciated the ability to reconnect with Joe who used to be on my team, and how I really enjoy as a good friend. He is a very good man.

Here is a photo of us (Joe is on the left)!

After skiing I went home, where I was about to walk into so so much love. Lily is the BEST with holidays. Whether it’s a birthday, St. Patrick’s day, Christmas, an election, or even just a season she wants to celebrate, she is the best at making occasions memorable, making everyone feel festive and happy, and on birthdays making the celebrated one feel truly celebrated.

Whether for my birthday or for one of the kids, I always plead with Lily to not do too much, to not overdo it, but her heart just bursts with festivity, and she LOVES to make people feel special.

And what did I learn today? I learned that all of my children have acquired Lily’s love of and aptitude for holiday’s and celebrating people. For days the kids had been putting up posters, pictures and a banner…

…but when I arrived from skiing, I found a Christmas-style pile of presents waiting for me, people in party-hats, with the kids out of their mind with excitement to give me all of their gifts and celebrate my birthday. Here is a video of me walking into the scene after cleaning up after skiing.

Here are pictures of the festivities:

Mary colored the hats so wonderfully and Lydia wrote the names
Ammon made me a clay mushroom! I love it!
Here is a video of me opening gifts, including some amazing art!
I said that for my birthday, I wanted a picture that would make me smile. This totally did!! Thank you Lydia!

I had fun patting people on the head to the music while people sang to me.

Here is a video talking about her tummy ache from the cake

Even though Lily had trouble sleeping last night, she still watched the kids so I could ski, made me my annual request of borscht soup (and she nailed it again), and she made my cake request (my favorite) of America’s Test Kitchen’s triple chocolate moose cake. Everything was so so good. My family gave me such a wonderful birthday. I am so so so happy just remembering it.

Over dinner, people said things they liked about me, which was very touching. Lydia said she liked that I’m a kid inside. That comment may have inspired what happened at bed-time, which was me chasing the kids around upstairs and throwing them (making them fly) on the couch while we listened to songs about flying (John Denver Fly Away, Lenny Kravitz Fly Away, Sugar Ray I just wanna Fly). It was a fun sequal to what I played with the older girls a week or two ago when they tried to walk across the top of the couch while I pushed them onto the couch while we listened to songs about falling (Free Falling by Tom Petty, Falling by Alicia Keys etc). It’s easy to be a kid when I have such fun kids to play with!

To top it off, I visited Morgan and Jessie at their doorstep to drop off some Borscht. It was so nice to visit for a bit. They usually join us for Borscht, and Jessie especially appreciates the soup since she served her mission in Russia.

Many friends and family called, texted or sent me a facebook message. It was a very very happy day.

Birthday Preparations

Today Lily let the kids help her make my birthday cake. It is one of my all-time favorite cakes. It is a triple-layer chocolate mouse cake from America’s Test Kitchen. She said all the kids lost interest in eating the leftover frosting after a minute or so, but Clarissa was still super into it 20 minutes later.

Here is an adorable video of Clarissa talking about what she likes about cake baking while she licks up the leftover frosting.

Camera Tricks, Ice Fishing and Scrabble

Here is a cute clay creation one of the kids made.

Lydia was having a lot of fun today messing around with camera settings.

We went ice fishing again today, but the ice was very thin, so we fished from the dock.

After ice-fishing we put Ammon and Clarissa to bed, and Lily and I played Scrabble with Lydia and Mary. Lydia styled my hair between turns and she and Mary continued to play with camera settings it appears 🙂

Scrabble was so fun!

Playing with kids

Lily announced yesterday that she wanted to spend time in the evening with the kids. I agreed as I just haven’t been giving them much attention. Yesterday, Ammon asked if I would play ninjas with him. Then today, when I picked him up from pre-school, he asked again if we could play ninjas. I told him I’d play ninjas with him on the way home while we walked, hoping that would satisfy him and free me from a future commitment. I felt a little funny kicking, punching, hiding behind things etc with Ammon as we both pretended to be ninjas on the way home, but it also made me feel like a kid for a moment, and I loved sharing that with Ammon. When we got home, he asked if we could play more ninjas. I told him I would after work.

After my work day, I was bone tired, but I really wanted to come through on playing we Ammon. We ended up playing for about a whole hour in the basement. We put on red biking “ninja” gloves. We used resistance bands as pretend arrows, a tennis ball and bean bags for grenades we we had an amazing time playing. First we trained. Then we fought a bunch of bad guys. I can barely kick without feeling my hamstrings because I’m so inflexible, but it was very very fun. Then we had a whole scenario with 8 crystals hid around the basement that bad guys had stolen from fairies. Ammon peddles on our stationary bike to take us around to each differing peddle location and at each location we fought a bad guy. Ammon and I took turns being the bad guy. Once we collected all the crystals, we delivered them to Lily, Lydia, Mary and Clarissa who were the fairies. It was so fun!

Lily played scrabble with Lydia and Mary for over an hour, and they had a wonderful time together.

Also, Clarissa asked me if I would build a tower with her, but I had already committed to play with Ammon, so tomorrow I’ll make good on her request. It is such a special time in life when our kids think we are cool and want to play with us! Here is a picture of Clarissa drinking her tea. She was a little sick today and didn’t go to Pre-school.

Clarissa drew this and showed it to me. I asked if she drew glasses, and she said, “no, headphones.” I have to say, those really look like headphones! Great job Clarissa!

Ice Fishing Again

We tried ice fishing again today. I bought another pole to double our chances. We used neon green and pink and orange grubbies, but had no success. We met a really nice man named Lawn who gave us great fishing tips, like that we should be jigging (bobbing our bait up and down close to the bottom). Still everyone had a great time!

The kids had a ton of fun running up to each other on the ice and hugging and falling over.

Here is a video I submitted to my company about a memory I had that they may share out at some point: