Author: Abe Darais

I’m going to start taking pictures during my work trips. I’m always very busy, and feeling preoccupied and also excited to get home, so I never really stop to enjoy the places I go the way I would like to. I commit to starting to post more interesting things from the places I go for my work. This will help my family to feel closer to me as they get to peak into more of my world, I hope. I think I will feel even closer to them knowing they are tapped into things I’m experiencing when I’m not directly with them.

So today I was in San Diego all day. Lily says there was not much to report from the home-front front I’ll tell about my trip.

There actually was some drama. I forgot to pack my phone charger, and my phone was all, but dead in the morning. I was concerned that I wouldn’t even have enough juice to call a Lyft ride to my appointment, and there were none hanging around in the hotel lost and found. So I decided to go on a walk to get one, figuring I’d find a place relatively easily. Well, I was staying right next to the airpot, and I think I walked in the worst possible direction, because I basically walked the length of the airport and it took 30 minutes to get to a gas station to buy my charger. I then walked 30 minutes back, ate my breakfast while my phone charged, called my lift ride and was 30 minutes late to my appointment. With all the anxiety I have felt lately about my faith and personal journal lately, the walk actually felt like a miracle.

My meeting was so cool. I can’t share who I met with because of a signed NDA, nor will I share many details. I’ll just say that my colleague, Sonya from Walker, did the bulk of the presenting and she did an amazing job, and I learned so much just watching her. Also, the potential customer had almost ten people around the table and there was such incredible and insightful discussion that gave me great insights about what is required to get a CX program off the ground. It was one of the best on-sights I’ve ever had in terms of things that I learned. We also made great progress towards getting to the point of working with this great company.

After the meeting, I went straight to the airport, talked to the kids on the phone, ate a burger, cranked out some work and then fell asleep on the plane. I got home at 12:45 AM and fell asleep promptly in my bed, which was a gift as sometimes it is hard to sleep after napping on the plane. I felt very full of doubt, and far from God that day, but there where moments where it felt that hope and God broke through, and it was very very nice to be back home with my sweetheart.

Lily said there was not much to report today, so I’ll share about my day.

Work was mostly consumed by re-imaging my laptop to be SAP compliant and networked now that we are owned by SAP. It’s kindof funny and sad because my boss insisted I upgrade my computer about 5 months ago. I couldn’t have cared less about upgrading. But for those who hadn’t upgraded, they got a brand new fancy machine (better than my upgraded one) and they got to keep their old one for personal use with this SAP transition. I was bummed that I now have a worse machine and not one for personal use, but hey it’s all good.  I had bumps in the re-imaging process and it took me 2-3 hours, but it finally got done.

After work, I came home, had dinner with the family, and helped with the night routine. I then spent a few minutes with Lily giving her a short massage. Harp practices have been especially brutal lately, and she has been getting very stressed out with all her demands. After a moment with her, I drove to the airport, got on a plane and arrived in San Diego very late.

This blog post is devoted to our garden.

I absolutely love gardening. Of all of the hobbies I have, it might be the one I love the most. There is something about having my hands in the dirt, something about growing something from seed (it still feels like magic), something about caring for and tending something and knowing that without your care it will die, that all just really grabs me. Gardening is so easy for me to want to do. I just gravitate towards it.

And there were some major successes this year! Our tomato boxes that Lily found for me started out a bit problematic because I didn’t water them for three days and I learned the hard way they must have water every single day (ideally even twice a day when it is very hot). By learning the hard way, I mean we probably had 50 otherwise beautiful tomatoes develop big yucky brown areas on the bottom. But, after that wave of ruined tomatoes passed, we are now in a season of incredibly delicious tomatoes of all shapes and sizes. Steak tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, yellow baby tomatoes, black and red cherry tomatoes. They are so so good. See the boxes below. I would recommend them to anyone:

You will also notice to the left of the tomatoes our flourishing nasturtium. These are edible flowers that go great in salads. The other flower pot has the fun flowers you see below. I love how they start and end as these little balls, but they pop open with so much energy when they bloom.

Now I will take you through our garden boxes row by row (read captions for details):

I had a relatively good day in Chicago. Travel can be hard because my e-mail inbox is flooding with inbound e-mail as I’m about my activities and so I’m often just trying to steal the moments I can to try to stay on top of things. Even still, it’s nice to mix things up a little bit.

In Chicago, I presented at a CSI user conference. They are wanting to either resell our technology or allow their customers to contract directly with us.  I did a presentation at a break-out session for seven minutes to fifty people. I didn’t feel very on, and I barely prepared (I think those two are definitely related), but I chalked it up to the fact that I have a million things going on right now and this deal was not super big or promising, but CSI is a big SAP partner, and it was important for the overall relationship I feel, that I go and present. Plus some business really could come from it.

Then I met with my contact, Jessica, at a medical device company. They just barely signed their contract. She greeted me with a hug, which felt fitting because we’ve been working together for six months to try to push something through and we finally did. She is a great person and was fun to talk to.

Then it was back home to Provo 🙂

I don’t remember what happened before leaving on my work trip this day. But I do remember that on the plane, and back at the apartment I worked on my “Prison to Playground” book about my story overcoming perfectionism and finding more joy in the gospel. I also ate at a way good Jamaican restaurant.

We wanted to do a day trip to Wyoming to see a reenactment for Labor, but I had a ton of work work that I spent the first half of the day working on. Instead, after my work, we all went to the Scera pool and had a wonderful time as a family. We almost finished off our punch pass.

At 5:15 in the morning Lily woke up with a ton of energy. I, on the other hand, was exhausted out of my mind. Since Lily has had her horrible foot problems, I have been doing the night work for Clarissa, and on the trip her sleep training went out the window, so she usually had one night waking. I really wanted to keep sleeping.

But, Lily was awake and ready for the day. I grumbled, but having woken up, I couldn’t really get back to sleep anyway.

Then, I caught Lily’s vision. We were up early enough that we could drive home in a single day and have a whole day at home on Thursday before I had to go back to work and before Lily had to go back into her normal grind. Once the fog of sleepiness left my mind, I was completely on board, and super grateful Lily had woken up so early.

We packed, got ready, and loaded the kids in about two hours and we hit the road a little after 8:00.  I loved that little cottage that we stayed in. It was so charming. Here is a picture of the kid’s beds:

Lily drove the first leg and we stopped through Portland so she could buy some more books at Powell’s books, which is the most amazing bookstore on the planet. Lily said she almost cried when she saw the religion section because of all the books on faith crisis and faith transition. She is so happy and at home at Powell’s. Her heart was pounding the whole time. I wish she could have had a whole week there.

After Lily’s turn driving, I took over around noon.  I enjoy driving, and I especially enjoyed driving through Idaho, because it reminded me of Guardsmark and I always enjoy a trip down memory lane.

Clarissa was so cute in the car. She loves Baby Beluga by Gerry Raferti, and when she wants to listen to it, she says, “Baby Ga.” I’ve been reflecting on how much I love having a baby in the family, even though it is so hard some times. She is so adorable, and I can’t imagine what it will be like to not have all these cute baby things happening when she gets older because we are not planning on having more children.

On the way home, Lily and I talked a lot. I love connecting with her so much. We talked about religion and faith, a topic on both of our hearts recently. Also, Lily read me passages from Marilyn Robinson’s The Givenness of Things. I love it when she reads to me and shares her wonderful ideas with me. Being married to her is so heart and mind expanding.

I was really in the zone with driving. We skipped lunch because I wanted to keep things going. We had dinner in Boise, and then I powered all the way home. Lily helped keep me awake with good conversation and letting me listen to Gerry Raferti, who I’m sure she’s very tired of listening to by now.

We pulled in around 1AM and Georgia had waited up to greet us. I was tired out of my mind, as I’m sure Lily was to, and we were so grateful to hit the sack. All in all we had about 12.5 hours of driving and 1.5 hours of stopping

Today was our designated beach day that Lydia had been begging for over and over and over. She insisted that she wanted tons of beach time and to be there the entire day.

We started the day with breakfast at a lovely restaurant called the Osprey Cafe.

When Clarissa got fussy, I took her to the Sea Side beach two blocks away and snapped this photo:

Afterwards we stopped back at the place and then did some shopping. Then we went on a very long drive with the sole purpose of letting Clarissa get her beauty sleep in so she could be fresh for all of the time at the beach.

We drove all the way from Sea Side to Tillamook. Lydia and I went in to check out their new visitor’s center which is huge and amazing. Here are some pictures below:

Clarissa slept so long that Lily started to get nervous we would not have the beach time that Lydia wanted so badly, but finally Clarissa did wake up. We went to our first beach in Manzanita.  For lunch we delicious fish and chips (from Big Wave Cafe) on the beach. Lily said they were the best she’s ever had.

Manzanita beach was beautiful and we got to fly all the kites we bought the day before. Just like the man at the kite shop predicted for today, the wind was perfect for kite flying. I especially loved the tails an Lydia and Mary’s kites. It was very fun to fly kites with them.

After playing at the beach for a while it started to rain, so we headed North to another beach. We pulled into a beach (I forgot the name), and were contemplating staying, but Lily happened to bump into a ranger on her way back from the background and he emphatically told her to visit Ecola State Park and that Indian Beach in Ecola State Park was the most beautiful beach in the world. This was such a tender mercy from God for us to get this tip, and great scouting by Lily! We of course headed straight to Ecola State Park.

Our jaws were dropping even before we got the the beach. There was a 4 mile or so ride through the state park to get to Indian Beach and the scenery was unbelievable. There were beautiful mossy trees towering over head, with ferns covering the ground. Below are some pictures that attempt to capture the beauty.

At Ecola Beach the kids played more and Lily took a bunch of photos.  I built an awesome sandcastle with the kids the was on the edge of a small ocean inlet and had a log bridge leading to its entrance.  We then all looked at tide pools.  There were tons of creatures that Ammon loved poking. I also saw a sizable sand crab. Then we all stood in the ocean and let the incoming tide waves splash us. Clarissa was beside herself with glee until she got too wet from a big wave and then she was not happy.

After that, we spent some time at the overlook. Lily and I both gazed out for a solid five minutes just taking in the view. Lily loved the expansiveness and purity of the view on the right. I loved the motion and features of the view on the left. I loved it so much. We were riveted for 5 minutes straight.

With everyone wet, we headed home, getting pizza and candy (from Phillip’s candies) on the way. The sea foam from the candy store was amazing. They made it themselves.

After carefully cleaning everyone and dealing with sandy clothes (our air BNB host was super particular about not getting sand anywhere in the house, tub, washing machine or hot-tub), we got everyone to bed and got some rest.

What a great day!

In the morning we got everyone ready and went over to Pig ‘n Pancake for breakfast.

After breakfast, we headed over to the Seaside carousel. I had read that one of the first things Seaside did to attract tourists back in the day was install a carousel and an arcade. That was really smart because there’s a lot of rain on the Oregon Coast!

After the carousel we did laser tag. We had the whole room to ourselves, which was great. Ammon, who was too little for a vest, ran around tackling Abe. Clarissa was terrified and needed me to hold her most of the time.

Abe and the girls came up with funny names for their laser-tag personas. Abe was “Toeface,” Lydia was “Something,” and Mary was “Deadflower.” Deadflower is very competitive and won both games. Later when we were remembering laser tag, Mary said nostalgically, “Remember when I won laser tag BOTH times!” …and smiled widely at such a happy thought.

Afterwards we went to the arcade. Of course, at one point we lost Ammon. Abe had gone to tell him we were done, and Ammon ran out of the mall while Abe walked to the entrance of the arcade in the other aisle. We ran around the mall frantically looking for Ammon until some sweet Grandma entered from the street holding his hand. Ammon was sobbing about how his daddy ran away from him and lost him. The grandma was saying soothingly, “It’s okay, honey, we’ll find your family.” Sigh. This is how life with three-year-old Ammon goes. We honestly don’t need arcades or laser tags in our lives–just keeping him alive is an emotional roller coaster!

After the arcade we went home for a potty break and then I popped into the nearby outlet to get Clarissa some clothes and shoes. She has one pair of shoes that fit and we were in constant danger of losing one or both the whole trip long. Having another pair just gave me peace of mind. (And while I was there I bought her a dress because none of those fit either. She’s just growing so fast!)

After that we rented a pram bike and biked along the coast. Oh my gosh, it was so fun! I was worried that Clarissa would announce she was “done” and spend the whole ride trying to climb out, but she actually stayed put until the last ten minutes of the ride. Abe and I both held her down to keep her safe, and we all got back in one piece.

On our bike ride, we stopped at Lewis and Clark’s salt works. This is where they sent a party to make salt to preserve fish and meat for the winter.

After the bike ride we were all hungry since we had skipped lunch. We went to Nonni’s Italian restaurant for dinner. Abe and I took turns chasing Clarissa down the street while the other ate.

Then we walked down to the beach and got some Tillamook ice cream en route. I learned that I should never waste calories on flavors that aren’t chocolate, caramel, or lemon.

Afterward we let the kids play at the beach until bed time. It was a perfect day.

Today was an amazing day, maybe my favorite of all the days. Because it was supposed to be super cold in Bryce, we called an audible and decided to explore Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We made two stops.