Author: lilydarais

Before we left for Cancun, one of the bishopric approached Abe and said they had a calling for me: First counselor in the Primary. (That was the calling that was so hard in my last ward.) Abe turned ashen gray and explained that while I would accept whatever calling they gave me, that particular one might be hard for a number of reasons. He then gently suggested that the calling I had already suggested to each individual member of the bishopric, a calling to the nursery, might be better.

Last night I got the call to the nursery. Hip, hip hooray! Thank-you, Honey, for helping me land there. Of course, I credit the listening skills of our new bishopric, my own culturally inappropriate talks with them (effectively preemptive strikes), and God too. Basically, I am thankful to everyone who helped me get a calling that a) I enjoy b) makes me feel like I have something to contribute c) is every other week so I can go to Abe’s Gospel Doctrine classes and c) syncs with my school stress this quarter. A blessing indeed.

Today was my first day in nursery, and it was awesome. It was especially nice not to abandon Mary after having been away so long.

After church, we rushed home to get the house in order for dinner with the Maudsleys. They were in town for a baptism, and Katie offered a couple weeks ago to come over with a raclette dinner. I enthusiastically welcomed yet another opportunity to get out of cooking dinner, and when the Maudsleys got here today, we joked that they were like a food truck. Just look at the amazing dinner they made after transporting ingredients and equipment from over an hour away:

Abe got spit up on twice while holding their adorable new baby, Phillip. He was so happy to be holding a baby again that he didn’t care a bit. Even though I am no longer at the stage where I feel actively allergic to babies, I preferred to watch and coo from a distance.

Just fell asleep twice while typing. Good night!

We made it back yesterday night, and it was so, so, SO wonderful to see the girls. At one point, Mary looked up at my face and exclaimed gleefully, “You came back!” Heartstrings warmed. Both girls came into my room this morning and preferred a long, long cuddle to any offers of food or other entertainment. I got lots of cuddles throughout the day, and we ended with…yet more cuddles in Lydia’s toddler bed. Mary squeezed herself happily in the middle, and I felt like I was in heaven. It is so nice to be back home with my girls.

The only real activity today centered around going to dinner at Chelsea and Derek’s house. Chelsea made magazine-worthy eggplant involtini. It was so good, and it felt so great not to have to cook dinner; the return to reality was softened slightly when Chelsea offered to outsource that task.

For most of the day, we lounged at home with the girls. Abe did a couple of lovely home improvement projects, and we rounded off the day by watching the movie, Emporer. It is about the end of WWII in Japan and the drama surrounding the U.S. decision on how to deal with Hirohito.

Today felt filled with WWII, actually. I devoured the rest of my book on the U.S. rowing team that won the gold medal at the Berlin olympics, and I read a cousin’s post on Facebook about how today marks the 71st anniversary of when Darby’s Rangers were gunned down behind enemy lines. Grandma, I thought of you, and I couldn’t imagine how you felt after you learned about Ralph. You are such a courageous woman. I love you.

Pictures.

I couldn’t bring my camera to our outing today, but never fear! I lifted images off of the internet that show exactly where we were and what we saw.

Trip one:
Akumel for snorkeling with sea turtles, a barracuda, parrot fish, giant sting rays, coral reefs, and an enormous green eel. The eel was coiled up inside of a coral cove, but you could see its mammoth head and neck near the opening. The guide asked us, “shall we continue?” to which I responded with my solo chorus, “YES! Let us please continue!!!” I swam away from that as fast as my flippers would let me.

After forty five minutes in the ocean, I felt cold and very ill, but I did emerge with a shifted paradigm. I had no idea how interesting snorkeling could be! To be honest, I didn’t even feel that scared of being eaten by a shark, even though we were out deeper than I have ever swum in a body of natural water.

Here are my copied pictures:

Trip 2:

It was amazing. I have never seen anything like what I saw today.

After the adventures and lots of good times visiting with Kim and Lucas, we headed back to the resort to spend a couple hours on the beach reading…and ordering food. The food came right to our lounge chairs by the ocean. It was not only magical, but also a little windy and cold. So as soon as we ate our food, we headed to our room to warm up and get ready for dinner.

The farewell Qualtrics dinner was set out on the beach. We ate a bunch of fish that the deep-sea fishing group caught today, and I got to visit with some of my favorite people from the trip.

And now to finish packing. Tomorrow we will be back in Salt Lake with our girls!!

Happy 31st birthday Abe! We celebrated with excessive self indulgence. We skipped our scheduled outing and instead lay by the pool and beach for most of the day. When we’d had our fill of lounging, we got massages (and I got an additional facial). From there we headed straight to the best restaurant on the resort, where we ordered a five course meal, after which we retired to our rooms and ordered brownies for room service. I feel like I can only have one day like this a year if I still desire to call myself a Christian.

Everything we’ve prayed for in terms of Abe’s big deal happened today. It was the best birthday present of all. Thanks, Mom, for your prayers! I know they helped.

We also got to Skype with the girls! It was so fun to see their beautiful faces. That might have been the highlight of my day.

Also, I am sick today. Darn. But it was so good otherwise, I don’t feel like I can complain much. Tomorrow we are snorkeling with sea turtles and in underground caves. It is very uncharacteristic behavior for me to be so adventurous, but I don’t want to let our little group down.

I also took lots of pictures, so here they are:

Right now there is are some beautiful vocalists serenading one of the terraces of the main building on the resort. Our hacienda is very close to the main building, so it feels like I am being personally serenaded with arias and Broadway hits. Very lovely.

I think I actually went into gastronomic shock at dinner tonight. The food is just so amazing, so creative, so abundant, so all-the-time available, and so free. I had no idea we were embarking on a vacation that had the same food issues as a cruise. Tomorrow I am going to practice restraint, if only so I don’t see stars at the end of the day.

Today was also a beach day! Hallelujah, though I think I put on too much sunscreen. I didn’t tan at all! Not making that mistake tomorrow.

And tomorrow just happens to be Abe’s birthday. I do so hope he can submit his big deal to the legal department tomorrow. That would be an over-the-top birthday present for him. Today he got some great news, and he is literally one step away from submitting it all to the legal department and getting this all wrapped up. It’s so close that I’m not sure if Abe is entirely relaxing on this vacation, but he sure put forth a good effort today.

He played tons of beach volleyball, and he convinced me to kayak in the Gulf of Mexico with him. I was scared to death that we would be eaten by a shark, but because I love him, I went with him. I got a little seasick from the waves, but it was fun. We just headed out as far as we wanted towards the horizon, and when the ocean turned black beneath us and the waves got extra choppy, we turned back and returned to shore.

We also had a great visit with some of Abe’s coworkers over lunch. There are just no words to express how pleasant everyone is. I enjoy them all so much.

In the evening we headed downtown to get some shopping in. We took pictures with Abe’s phone there, but they didn’t come through to my email yet. I will post them tomorrow.

I am also getting slightly sick here because at night it gets cooler and I didn’t wear properly warm attire the past couple days.  Off to bed so I can be healthy on Abe’s birthday!

Today we visited Chichen Itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. I took a ton of pictures, so I’ll just post those here with captions.

When we weren’t being scared silly by tales of ancient Mayan worship, we were…eating. The breakfast buffet was the best buffet I have ever been to in my life. There were multiple cheese plates with incredible cheeses, fresh ricotta, a ton of fresh exotic/non-exotic fruit, delightful fruit compotes, stuffed veggies, smoked salmon, an omelette bar, a taco bar, a bread bar, and hot buffet bar, and whatever drinks you could possibly desire to accompany your breakfast.

We had dinner at Las Ventanas, and the whole affair took two hours and forty five minutes. I wanted to take pictures of everything but it wasn’t appropriate. And now we are chowing down on room service. I love this place.

Back home the girls had fun in day care! We are so relieved. They were on our minds throughout the day, and when we heard Lydia tell us she made a lot of new friends, we were so happy. Mary even talked to us tonight! We are so happy they are so happy.

We made it to Cancun! After twelve hours of travel (including a layover, obviously), we finally made it. We are staying at The Royal Hideaway Playacar Resort, a five diamond all-inclusive resort. I feel almost guilty for how nice everything is, but we’re grateful to Qualtrics. In fact, a recurring theme in this trip’s conversations with Abe’s coworkers is how happy everyone on this trip is with Qualtrics right now.

Abe’s coworkers who came on the trip are exceptionally pleasant people. You can spot the Qualtrics people a mile away because they’re all young, married, hipster-Mormons. When approached, they smile and say “thank-you” a lot.

The head of sales told us all to eat a ton because the resort is making a killing on all of us due to the fact that none of us drink. When we got here, there was a huge reception room filled with a full table of freshly poured cocktails, perfumed towels, and chocolates, and the drink-pourer looked bewildered at how every single person went for the bottled water instead of his drinks. I felt bad for him, but I didn’t know how to tell him it wasn’t personal without being awkward.

My favorite thing so far is that I can order room service at any time, day or night, and free food will magically appear at my door. I am contemplating ordering some ceviche, grilled fish and lemon tart, but I am still full from dinner. Maybe if I wake up at 2 am with a hankering, I will take advantage of this amazing, magical service. The only other time I’ve been able to do that was in the hospital after I gave birth to Mary. All the food was free, and you could order a meal every two hours, which I did with religious punctuality. By the time I checked out, the hospital kitchen was exceedingly glad to see me depart.

Oh, boy! Some nice resort worker just showed up at our door with night time chocolates. Yummy. Maybe I don’t need room service after all…

We are going to some ruins tomorrow. Here is the one picture we have from today:

Posting a picture makes me miss the girls. Usually I post pictures of them, but I won’t see them again until Friday. We were so nervous about how they would do on the first day away, but they seem to be doing great. Well, Mary refused to speak to us on the phone, but that was to be expected. (She shunned me for two days after I returned from my Martha Stewart trip. I was sad but not surprised when she refused to say “hi” on the phone.) Tomorrow is their first day in day care (we enrolled them for this week while we’re away), and I really, really hope it isn’t too traumatic for Mary.

Anyway, more pictures tomorrow.

We celebrated Abe’s birthday today by having over our friends, Morgan and Jessie, for dinner. Afterward we went to Paige’s art show at BYU. I am now so exhausted I can barely see the screen.

I get so frustrated at how slow I am in the kitchen. I started cooking around 2pm and didn’t end until 6:30. I made borscht, beef stroganoff, and blood orange tartlets. I made Abe assemble the smoked salmon appetizers because I was so far behind I couldn’t even squeeze those in.

My inspiration came from Mimi Thorisson’s blog. It’s so pretty! http://mimithorisson.com/2012/12/17/borscht-blinis-beef-stroganoff/

At any rate, I only got a picture of my tartlet today. The rest of the food got expedited to people’s stomachs because I was so late getting it ready.

I didn’t get any pictures of the girls because I spent the whole morning cleaning and the rest of the day cooking. To make sure they didn’t do undo my work, I parked them in front of Amazon Prime and voila! My house is perfectly clean, and all of the food (eventually) got cooked!

Here’s one of my tartlets:

Everything in life is a gift. That’s my big takeaway from today. Abe and I spent an hour this evening chatting, and we both came to that conclusion. Abe is stressed out by a mammoth work deal right now, and I am stressed out by culinary school. As we talked through our frustrations and reviewed past situations in our lives where God has helped us through, we came to the conclusion that no matter what trial we’re staring down, each experience in our life is a gift from God.

I also have spent the past couple days thinking about the prophet Jeremiah and the Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom. The latter said, “God is good all the time.”  She said that God was as good to her in the midst of her suffering as he was towards the end of her life (when she lived in abundance and ease). Jeremiah was thrown into a mire without water and left there until he was about to die (and indeed would have died, save for the compassionate intervention of his Ethiopian friend). I wish I could talk to Jeremiah and ask him if he had the same experience of Corrie Ten Boom. Was God good to him during his trial? Did he figure out the gift in that experience? Was that experience a gift?

I have never had trials of remotely similar scale to those people, but from my own experience, I can look back and see how God’s hand is found in every part of my life–even the hard parts. Right now cooking school is hard because I find it very difficult to feel successful. I pray all the time for God to get me through, and yet here I am, six months away from graduating, and I don’t think there’s any way I’ll look back on this time and say, “Wow, God really helped me to ace culinary school!” What I can say, though, is that He has helped me navigate and learn from the multitude of mistakes I make during this experience, and having to face and fight through my weaknesses so frequently has been spiritually transformative. There’s my gift.

Abe has dealt with the trauma of having a deal that he’d hoped and prayed over for three years at his past job go through (a huge high!) and then be taken away, through no fault of his own, just weeks later. Right now it looks like he’s “caught a whale” (his dad’s term) at work, but that trauma lingers in his mind and makes him paranoid and afraid during the long, drawn-out process of complication-navigation. Since he’s what working through feels so big, the complications that arise and his past trauma make him feel intense anxiety and stress.

(Side note: We went to the eye doctor today, and the doctor detected loads of stress in the blood vessels of Abe’s eyes. He told Abe to take a vacation. Mexico, good timing!)

Anyway, the point is that once we understand that all our experience is a gift, we can move forward with confidence. If this deal goes through, what a gift! If it doesn’t, I know God heard our prayers and must be answering us with something better. Abe and I both feel comforted knowing that our lives are in God’s hands, and that He answers our prayers with the best possible gifts.

Pictures: