Author: Abe Darais

Today we went to church and then got lunch at Spitz. Then we picked up our dear friend Jean from the airport. We love when she visits and it was so fun to see her! We had some time to kill in Salt Lake before the Birthday party at the Miner’s place so we went to memory grove and let the kids and Basil play in the river. They were all so happy, especially Basil, who ran all around getting wet, and muddy and he also played a lot with other dogs.

My clothes got dirty from Basil getting in my lap when he was so dirty. Before the Miner party, we took Basil to a car wash. Lydia took these two cute videos, one of which is a slow motion video of Basil shaking off his water. Dang, it looks like Youtube doesn’t support slow-motion, but I included the video anyway.

The Miner party was super fun. Many birthdays were celebrated including Lily and Lydia’s. It was super fun to visit with people. I learned that Jeff Krysten built a car a while ago (which he later sold) and that he used to drag race a lot. It’s called the Bad Manners Fiat. Here is a video of it:

I also got this cute video of Ammon and Clarissa playing in the Miner’s basement.

Weather was gorgeous, and it was so fun to visit with everyone. I love Miner parties!

Here are two pictures of Clarissa in her shades and a unicorn headband she loves.

And here is a picture of Ammon coloring in his sharky.

Look at all those pictures he made!

Then we all drove home. What a happy day!

Saturday morning was the highlight of the camping trip for me. I didn’t sleep super well because I forgot to bring a pillow, slept in awkward positions and kept waking up, however, I always went back to sleep and felt relatively good. Weather was perfect during the night and in the morning and we started the day by all going on a hike. On the hike, I was still being a dad, and asking kids to stay close to me etc, but it was much less stressful and distracted than the day before so I got to sync in some good conversation with my new friend Todd. We mostly talked about work. I forgot to mention yesterday that Lily didn’t join us because she attended a birthday party for her friend MichaelAnne.

After camping, we all had a delicious breakfast at IHop. Todd was a little tight on time, but we still had a lot of fun. We passed the time waiting for our food playing telephone, which is especially interesting with 3 and 5 year-olds in the mix.

After IHOP, we all went home and got clean and then we met Morgan, Jessie and their kids to play miniature golf. We had an amazing time, and it was so fun to catch up with them!

After miniature golf, we went home and prepared for the family Olympic games, a tradition that Lydia started last year. Lydia made some decorations with chalk to welcome people.

We started a little after 5:00. This year our guest were Dad, Suzanne, Georgia and David (and his two dogs). Here is a rundown of what happened:

Things started off with some informal swordfighting.

Then we all ate veggie burgers, and chicken or tofurkey dogs along with watermelon, handpies, and corn. Then we played Crocket. I was way in front with Crocket, but then I choked and I think my dad won.

Then we did hurdles:

After the hurdles, we did sack races:

Then we did the egg in spoon race. Suzanne barely beat me last year, and it was so close, that I’m still not 100% sure that I didn’t beat her. So this year was my year to prove who is the real undisputed champion. And so I proved, or I should say that Suzanne proved that yes, definitely Suzanne is the champion. She is so good at the egg and spoon race! This year it wasn’t even close. I’m quite good myself as I took first place when she wasn’t in the race.

But when I squared off directly against her, I lost badly twice in a row. She moved so much faster than me so I had to run to catch up and each time I did that, I lost my egg. My hat goes off to you Suzanne, you are the undisputed egg and spoon champion! In one of the videos below, Clarissa got in Suzanne’s way, so we had to pause, reset, and keep going so you only see the second half of the video.

After the egg and spoon racing, we did trampoline routines.

And the final event was seeing how long people who could hold their breath under water, which Lydia won.

All in all people had a very good time, and I love this picture of Georgia!

Here is David with his adorable dogs!

Thank you to Lydia, the inspiration behind the event, as well as to Lily for all her prep and to all of our guests for helping to make it special!

Afterwards, Lily and I went to dinner at Block with Daniel Olson and his wife Amanda. Daniel is always doing things for me, so it was great to reciprocate and treat dinner for him and his wife for his birthday. We had a great time, and we love them!

In the morning, Lily made hand pies with the kids. She thought they didn’t turn out well, but I absolutely loved them and ate my fair share of them over the next few days.

After work I took the kids camping. Three or four weeks ago a neighbor friend, Todd Covington and I both decided to go this weekend. Then we both forgot, and he didn’t remember until he saw his calendar reminder, and I didn’t remember until he texted me yesterday and asked if I still wanted to go. I have been unbelievably overwhelmed lately (June might have been one of the busiest and most stressful months of my life), so I considered not going, but Lily encouraged it, and ultimately the desire to be in the mountains with my family and a friend got the best of me and I decided to go.

It was a bit crazy because I pulled away from cranking very hard on work about about 6:05 and then threw a bunch of stuff in the car and headed up the mountain. When we got there (the campsites right next to Big Springs Park) we saw signs say no fires due to the extremely dry conditions. Lily bought ingredients for amazing tin-foil dinners, and I prepared that and salmon earlier in the day and I was very determined to have that dinner. So I drove home quickly with the kids, threw it all on the grill, then packed it up nicely so it would still be hot, and made it back to camp by 9:15.

Back at camp, the kids were totally crazy, especially Ammon who was so excited to be with and riled up by his good friend Casey. Clarissa was also quite wild, and all five kids were running all around the picnic area in the dark, jumping on tables, going in the bathroom (for fun) and generally not listening to instructions (mostly the younger ones). Trying to manage that chaos and keep them from going too far away, putting dinner on, cleaning up, and still feel stress from the work day and the hurried trip home, I admit I was feeling pretty stressed, and having a hard time sinking into conversation with my friend Todd. Still, it was awesome to be with him, see the kids were having so much fun, and be in the mountains. Also, the salmon and tinfoil dinners were absolutely superb.

At night I was apologizing to the kids for being grumpy, and I imagine I also pointed out how wild they were being because at one point Ammon said something to the effect of, “Dad, I was so wild because I was excited.” I’m so glad my kids had such an amazing time and I hope my grouchy imperfect parenting didn’t spoil the occassion (and it did seem somewhat necessary given the circumstances).

In the morning Lily made strawberry tarts with the kids. I tried one and it was delicious! It looks like everyone had fun, except maybe for Ammon, I can’t quite tell from the picture if he had fun, haha.

In the evening, we all skipped soccer and volleyball to go to the kids dance recital. With all of the activities going on, I’m surprised there haven’t been more conflicts, but Lily did an awesome job masterminding and coordinating everything. We were so impressed with the skill of the advanced dancers we saw, and of course we loved watching our kids and thought they were fantastic!

Today Lily took the kids to bike, scooter, and walk on the Provo River Trail by Utah Lake. Here are some pictures and a video featuring goat feeding!

Today the kids had ballet and then they had soccer and volleyball. The schedules worked out for me today to both coach Clarissa’s soccer, and watch Lydia play today. It was all so fun!

Lily took the kids to Color Me Mine today. I think it was for something they did well, like finishing all their music practice on time. I think Lily said it was a major highlight of the summer so far. It seems like they all had a ton of fun!!! Lily also told me that Ammon and Clarissa’s pieces started out colorful, but they both chose black as one of the final colors and put a black layer over the whole statuette, LOL.

Lily and I have both been so insanely busy and we didn’t plan much for each other’s special days today. We did schedule a fancy dinner in Park City together, and we also decided to make the day special by going on a family hike. All in all, the kids had a great attitude (thanks to Lily they have been hiking a lot lately, and thanks to them, they’ve really taken to being good hikers!). Silver Lake is about 2.5 miles each way. We stopped at the lake at the top and had snacks and played a bit in the lake and then turned around and went back. I carried Clarissa a lot on the way up on my shoulders. But on the way back, she was super motivated about being the leader, and for much of the trail was even running so I struggled to keep up with her. Everyone had a great time on the trail and I was very pleased with everyone’s attitudes. Also, Clarissa and Ammon got very very dirty, haha.

Here are some videos and a picture of when we got back to the car:

Our nanny fell through for tonight so Lily and I didn’t get to have a celebratory dinner together, so we went to one of our favorite family restaurants, Spitz, and it was good to eat all as a family. While I was inside getting the food, Lily made funny faces with Clarissa:

Then we took Basil to the dog wash, and went home for extensive showering. Even after I helped Clarissa shower, there was still a layer of dirt on her that got the inside of her pajamas dirty. I like to think that the dirt on them is representative of how much fun they had!

As a final note, I just want to say this to you, Lily, on your birthday. I know birthdays matter a lot to you, and I know I dropped the ball on this one. I also know that you know what is on my plate right now, and I’m so grateful for your understanding. I had a marvelous day with you, and so grateful for every day that I get to spend with you. I have so much fun being your husband. Just look at the blog entries and remember you are the instigator for the lion-share on the fun, amazing, and adventurous things we do as a family! You make our lives so full, and so happy, and you love me so well, and that love makes me so incredibly fulfilled and happy. I admire all the amazing work you are doing with the children (reading practice, music practice, learning to be clean and pick up after themselves, learning to hike, and all of the lessons you put them in etc etc) and with yourself (you are doing so much better than me at the 75 hard!). You truly are giving the children an unforgettable summer with so many new experiences and entry points. On top of that, you are teaching them boundaries and acceptable behavior and you even turned them all into hikers! On top of that, you have organized trips for the whole family to bond on while we experience something new. On top of that you are taking care of your mom, staying on top of the house and laundry, being an incredible friend, reading and just living with love, positivity and verve. I know there is so much I’m leaving out. It’s impossible to fully capture all the goodness you are putting out, but thank you for being such an amazing force in all of our lives!! It is so fun to be your husband. You are so so so beautiful, and I love you to the moon and back! Happy birthday babe!!!!

This morning was another hike up Y mountain, and this time I joined because it was Saturday. It was so fun!

After hiking we all went to my cousin Christina’s house for an epic Darais pool party. I was in the pool most of the time and did not take any pictures. They had a 20 foot (roughly) high platform that people were jumping off of into the pool. Clarissa she decided she wanted to go off. She jumped, and spread out horizontally for a perfect belly flop. I was under her, watching the whole thing in what felt like slow motion. I thought, “oh no” as I saw her coming down and then SPLAT against the water. She came up and cried a lot. Yikes! She later wanted to go again with me holding her so I did, and we both went in feet first together without a problem. Then she used the little kid diving board, and after she went off, she shouted with excitement, “Dad was that not a belly flop?!” I said something to the effect of, “that was not a belly flop, good job Clarissa!” Her whole belly flop incident really made an impression on her and she talked about ti a lot during the day.

My dad left the pool party early so he could run our open house. It has been great to work with him, and so fun that one of my main partners in crime in selling the house is my own dad. We really have had a great team between Lily, my dad, Moroni (house updates), Crispin (yard), and the great stager my dad referred from his research and the great photographer the stager referred. Lily has been great with knowing the market, having great input on pricing, and having so much knowledge about what home updates are in style right now. My dad has been great to work with and made a great realty sign, handled the paperwork, met with me regularly, found us a stager, ran the open house, has managed all the showings and agent/buyer conversations, and has had input throughout the process. Moroni made the house updates and Crispin helped with the yard.

The open house went fantastically. We think about twenty families saw the house.

This morning Lily took the kids hiking and true to her word, she is developing them into great hikers. I’m so proud of the kids, who, as Lily reported, had incredibly good attitudes on the hike.

Here is a picture of Ammon 🙂

In the evening, I went to a Jazz game with Mary. The Jazz were up by over twenty points at the half, and then lost the game and got eliminated from the playoffs. But it was so fun to be with Mary, and she even won a jersey! She participated in trivia, and when the host asked what her dad does at Qualtrics, she said, “he sells stuff.” Haha, she is so cute!