Author: Abe Darais

Right now we are very busy, but it is with a lot of fun things so there are no complaints.

I had a busy day at work, and while working Lily was busy at home and also went to lunch with our friend Sarah who has moved back to the states. After work, I picked up all the kids from school, took Mary’s love notes to Georgia, dropped off Lydia and Mary (for Lily to do music practice with them), and then took Ammon and Clarissa to their make-up school photos for the Arches year book (we were traveling during picture day). They were super cute, and the photographer Scott was really funny and played with and threw his Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal to get Clarissa to laugh (she had just woken up and was grumpy and it was very hard to get a good smile out of her, but he did!).

After the photoshoot, I picked up the dinner order Lily placed at Spicey Thai and then went home and quickly made Ammon’s 100 shirt with him. Tomorrow is the 100th day of school, and kids are invited to wear a shirt with 100 things on them. I only had 20 minutes or so, so Ammon quickly picked out 100 legos, and I superglued them onto a shirt. My hands were covered in glue by the end. It was very fun!

Then Lily took care of the kids and put them down (Thank you Lily!) while I went to a super fun dinner with my most strategic partner right now, CommonFont. They are based in Montana and love biking and skiing etc and we got along super well. After that I went straight to Nick’s to pick him up and make it just in time for our float appointment. Lily had suggested the idea because of how stressed Nick was. Both Nick and I had wonderful floats and Nick said he felt relaxed and wants to go back! After that we grabbed some food, and ran by the bank for Nick and I dropped him off. I got home at 10:30 and read competitive strategy by Michael Porter while Lily read her book and then went to bed. What a good and busy day!

Lydia helped Clarissa get dressed up all fancy and with make-up and then did a photo-shoot of her.

She also got some cute pictures of Basil.

Lily and the kids also had a super fun playdate with Amy and her kids. We love them!

I worked extra hard today, but I feel I am now in a position to take life at a more reasonable clip which I am very very happy about. While I was working, I skipped lunch and on my empty stomach I smelled bread that Lily baked through my vent. It was intoxicating, it smelled so delicious!

Lily and I both worked very hard today to try to get on top of things. Lily made huge progress on the children’s music with them, and also got the house looking really nice. I plowed into my work. With all of our pushing and dealing with a large blow-up with Mary during her music practice (but Mary rallied and finished a great practice with Lily!), Lily and I were both exhausted by 6:00. We started watching “Being the Ricardos” together, and then I rallied and fed the kids and played Sleeping Queens with the younger kids while Lily watched “Cheer” with Lydia.

Today I woke up and was fortunate to find availability for Swathi and I to get a 3-hour private ski lesson at Sundance today. She was hoping to ski on this trip, and I’ve been dying for a lesson, so it was perfect for us. We booked it at 7:45 and we were out of the house by 8:20.

The ski lesson was awesome. I took a whole page of notes after the lesson to try to remember what I learned. Both Swathi and I grew leaps and bounds. It was the first formal lesson I’ve ever had skiing, and it gave me such great fundamentals to work from going forward. I also went off the ski jump twice and fell both times, but I was grateful to get over my fear of it, and I’m excited to work on that going forward as well. Also, Swathi was awesome company and we both had a good time. She’s still processing the huge news of her job offer which she will likely take as it is a pretty big change for her and her family. It’s a positive change, but still a lot to think through.

While Swathi and I were skiing, Clark was hiking Y mountain with Basil which was a total gift because Basil really needed exercise.

Swathi and I picked up Georgia on our way home and it was so fun all hanging out together. It was great chatting with Georgia, and we all took it really easy, which was really nice because we have been quite active. The kids literally played together all day and it was adorable to watch them. They played games together such as “the ground is lava” so they would need to get around balancing on pillows, baseboards, couches etc. I think they also played a game of dinosaurs and dinosaur catcher or something like that until someone got hurt and they stopped. But they had a tremendous amount of fun, and they were super low maintenance to take care of as they entertained themselves with each other for so much of the day (basically whenever they weren’t eating).

Also, Clark taught us a lot about Cryptocurrency, and he even gave Lydia an incredible lecture not only on Cryptocurrency, but also on the fictional nature of money. Lily was enthralled and videoed part of it.

Also, our sweet Clarissa was very delicate today. Lily put her down early because she was basically falling apart emotionally, but before she went down, she gave us a great gem of a video. When Clarissa was crying upstairs, Lily went to help her and then called for me to come with my phone. I arrived just in time to video Clarissa explaining that she physically could not apologize to Soren because the words, “I’m sorry” were too painful for her throat. We couldn’t help but laugh. Clarissa’s antics were very convincing.

I called her out for making things up, and then Lily was nice enough to put her to bed, but I have to admit, I was also charmed by her bad behavior.

Lily and I were both unbelievably tired today. I was grateful when Nick called and wanted to go get food together because I knew I would enjoy getting out of the house and seeing him. He’s still going through a really rough time and I think the outing did us both good.

While I was on my outing, Lily was chatting with our neighbor, Charity, and helping Lydia get ready for her dance performance (Lydia wore an Olaf costume), and she drove her to the performance. Lily and I are both overwhelmed by how many performances Lydia has. We had no idea of how big of a commitment it was when we signed up. She had 7 or 8 performances this week and would needed to miss school to attend all of them. We only got her to one performance and we think her teacher isn’t too happy about that.

When I got home, I worked for about an hour on figuring out a place from which to purchase the trees we want planted this year. The lady at Cook’s was so nice and also recommended a landscaper who could plant for less money than what they charge. I wanted to go through Highland Gardens since they originally were the ones that had someone come out and recommend trees (hence the map), but they don’t open until March 1 and I wanted to get the ball rolling and they are farther away. I was so impressed with Cook’s that we are going to go through them.

Then I picked up Lydia for her dance performance and came home. Later, I dropped Lydia off at a Valentines party with her friends. Then I bought Valentines with the kids for their classmates. Mary was unsatisfied with the Cheerio valentines I got everyone else, and she got candies that she could put in red saran wrap individually for each kid in her class. Below is her working on her valentines. While I ran those errands Lily swam for an hour. We were both so tired all day, and had to push ourselves to do any type of activity. We took it slow, but still did some things.

In the evening, I tidied the house for a couple of hours while Lily picked up Lydia from her party and did some grocery shopping. We all had delicious lasagna for dinner and Lydia beamed about how fun her party was.

At night, Clarissa was using her heater/AC remote like it was a phone and she had a lot of fun pretending to talk to someone. I took a video:

At work today Royce Lovett (who launched his career from the Voice) spoke to our company, and played songs as well. His message was very powerful, I I downloaded a lot of his music because I loved it and I had never heard it before.

Today I ended work early so Lily could take Lydia and Mary to an art museum with her mom and Amy and her kids. Lily said they all had a wonderful time.

I did homework with Ammon at home while Lily was gone, and when she got back I took Basil to repeat one of his beginner obedience training classes. I’ve been a little frustrated with his behavior at times, so I’m trying to work on it. Next to me was the most beautiful Doberman Pinscher. I was stunned.

Tonight I chatted with my brother Jere. I was so tired that I felt like I wasn’t much good for conversation, but it was still super nice to hear Jere’s voice and catch up a bit. Also, he told me that he recently put up the pictures that Lydia and Mary painted of him a year ago for Christmas (when he had a beard). He sent pictures!

Today Lily spent a lot of time with her mom in the morning. She had an awesome time and was so happy to see that her mom seems to be doing so much better on her new medication plan. When she got home, she talked to our friend, Nick, for almost two hours. Nick is going through an extremely difficult time, and I was so touched Lily took so much time to talk with him. I chimed in a few times (when I wasn’t working) and I noticed that by the end of the call, he was feeling much, much better.

After work, I worked on homework with Ammon. We are still super behind, which is such a strange and semi-frustrating concept to me given he is in kindergarten, but I we are trying to keep up with all the demands of his tiger-teacher and tiger-school. His handwriting is getting really good, as is his reading, so we are definitely happy with the progress. I’m proud of him for how hard he is working!

While I did homework with Ammon, Lily learned knitting with our friend Christian. Christian is amazing at knitting (he knitted the sweater he is wearing). It was also fun to watch him wind a ball of yarn with his yarn-winding device.

I took this picture because I was amused at what an expert job Basil did at disemboweling this stuffed animal.

I took these pictures because I’m also amused at Mary’s obsession with pigs.

Lily and I are really enjoying Clarissa at age 4. She is so adorable and fun to be with. Today, I had a 30 minute break at work and I played with her Polly Pocket and Blues Clues sets, and read her the book about not letting the pigeon ride the bus. Lily joined us too, and it was a heavenly moment. I realized that my work meeting I had next didn’t require me, so I bowed out of it to have more time with Clarissa. We built magnetiles together and then had a dance party with our Polly Pocket and Blues Clues Figurines (see below). We love that little girl!

Tonight, Lily as at dinner and the float spa with her friend, Amy. I’m so glad she’s getting out, it feels like I’ve been having all the fun lately!

Lily and I both had crazy days, but Lily for sure had the craziest. Lily volunteered to help teach art for Lydia and Mary, but we both forgot that would make her late for picking up Ammon and Clarissa. So she picked them up late, went home, couldn’t find Lydia’s snow pants (I had put them in the wash), allowed kids to go to the bathroom and stuff food in their mouth and then rushed to the ski shop to get helmets and goggles, and arrived 25 minutes late to ski lessons for Lydia and Mary, and dealt with multiple children either protesting about something, complaining about something or saying they have to pee so urgently that everything needed to stop for him (Ammon). Lily’s cortisol was super high when she called and I felt bad for her stress.

I had the easy part of finishing my workday, getting my glasses adjusted (and buying more fish oil for my dry-eye condition), renting skis, and heading up the mountain to ski with my kids after their lesson.

It was honestly a complete highlight of my year so far. I can’t believe how the girls are progressing. They don’t need edgie wedgies anymore, they are fine getting on and off the ski lift (we still ask them to slow it down when we get on), and they weren’t even cold or tired at all! After an hour and a half of lessons, we skied another hour and a half, and they just wanted to keep going. I was the one who got cold (especially my hands) and asked if we could call it a night. But all of it loved it so much. I can’t express what a magical time it was for me.

At home, I gave Lily a massage given the super stressful morning she had and the fact that she watched the little ones while I got to ski. We watched Chef’s table, and just had an awesome time being together.