Author: lilydarais

On Wednesday I took some medicine that gives me energy, so I went for a two hour walk with Basil before coming home and doing Mary and Clarissa’s hair.

Today all I did was serve and clean meals, and the rest of the time I was still so exhausted I couldn’t do anything standing up. I did plan the kids’ extracurriculars for the coming year and registered them all for their things. Lydia is doing: harp (one and a half hours of practice a day), ballroom dancing, tennis, rock climbing, singing, Wonderland math and German lessons. She is also trying out for the swim team. Mary is doing piano (2 hours of practice a day), ballroom dancing, tennis, rock climbing, and Wonderland math. Ammon is doing piano (45 minutes a day) break dancing, Taekwando, creative dance, pre-ballet, climbing, and ballroom dancing. Clarissa is doing creative dance, pre-ballet, and way too much preschool (3 full days!!).

Abe is being amazing and clearing out his schedule to keep being available to help. I can not overstate how touched I am. He helped me figure out the kids’ activities, and it was fun to do that with him. He is also doing really well this quarter so far, so that is a big relief. Also, to help entertain Clarissa, Abe let her play with magnetiles in our room while he was on a meeting and then he played with her after his meeting.

Right now Mary is doing Wonderland math while the rest of us watch the Olympics. Earlier in the day Lydia made Basil a new favorite toy out of a dishrag, Lydia and Mary did their reading, Lydia had a Zoom harp lesson, and I cooked some fish and couscous for dinner. I also talked to a health worker who interviewed me about Covid and learned the kids have to quarantine 8 days after my last day of quarantine. That means we can’t do our upcoming Yosemite trip, which is disappointing.

We are planning on spending the rest of the day watching the Olympics with the kids, putting them down, and then I will binge Madam Secretary until bedtime. Madam Secretary has been one of my favorite highlights of being sick so far!

At the end of the day, Abe and the kids did a ton of cleaning and then had fun afterwards by having a dance party and then pretending Abe was a bucking bronco. The kids took turns riding him, and Lydia used the timer to see who could stay on the longest. Ammon scored a whopping 23 seconds, and was the winner!

On Monday Abe cancelled a lot of work meetings and took amazing care of everyone all day. He made everyone baked potatoes for dinner and pre-ordered Jimmy John’s for lunch, and he played with the kids on the trampoline and in the house. He also took Basil on a hard run and made sure the girls got their practices done. I literally lay on the couch watching Madam Secretary all day long. After the kids went down Abe joined me before doing some more work. He is my hero. Thank you Abe for taking care of everything!! You are amazing!!!

Clarissa took a hundred pictures on Monday! Taking pictures of the floor and couch pillows seems to be her favorite thing, but since she takes so many there are also some non-floor and non-couch shots too. Here are some that I thought were really cute!

On Sunday Abe got a second negative Covid test and the kids’ tests all turned out negative too. Hooray!

I spent the morning sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, making some cut-up roasted sweet potatoes for the week, and overall just trying to get set up for a good week. I was exhausted and feverish and it was not very smart to do all of that while feeling sick, but now we have clean floors so there’s that!

After all of that I basically watched Madam Secretary and napped. Abe took care of the kids all day, helped clean up and and after they were in bed baked me cookies. I have lost my sense of taste, but I was so shocked and thrilled that he baked me cookies that they are now my favorite cookies of all time. I was so touched.

On Saturday Abe was exhausted and I was still very sick with Covid, so we both spent most of the day napping while the kids ran feral. Abe did take some pictures.

On Friday morning I was feeling very sick, so Abe took the kids to swimming lessons. It was their last lesson of the summer with Aubrey so she let the kids try her mermaid tail. When it was Clarissa’s turn, she refused to take it off and Ammon never got a turn, but he seemed happy diving for rings.

In the afternoon I took the Covid test, and within two hours learned that I have Covid. I was not surprised because by that point I had lost all taste and sense of smell, and all of the other symptoms aligned. I felt very grateful I was fully vaccinated because I can only imagine how bad it would have been without that. Still, I was pretty miserable all day.

Abe had to work a full day, but when he finished we did some laundry together and then he fed the kids dinner and put them to bed while I shivered under some blankets. We were supposed to leave on our Chicago road trip today but obviously cancelled that since we now need to quarantine.

We finished the day by watching a couple episodes of Ted Lasso together. We love that show so much and laughing through a couple episodes helped turn both of our moods around. I had not been very kind (to put it extremely mildly) about Abe working while I had Covid, and Abe had felt stressed because of the prospect of falling further behind in work. But we ended the day in a good place. Thanks, Ted Lasso!

On Thursday I took Basil on a long walk in the morning, and every time I started to run I felt flush and feverish, so I stopped. I started to suspect I might have a mild virus and so did Mary and Ammon’s piano lessons on Zoom. After that I cleaned and had a little fight with Lydia about harp practice, after which I took the car out to wash and vacuum it and calm down. I always feel so bad for Lydia when I lose my temper, and sometimes it is best to just remove myself from the situation so I don’t make things worse.

While I was out I went to Aubergine and mid-meal realized that I was experiencing Covid symptoms. I scheduled an appointment to get tested and went home to go to bed, where I spent the rest of the day.

We did drive to the dealership and picked up our new car (and I didn’t make remote contact with anyone, since I just stayed in the same car there and back) which the kids named Black Beauty. We were thrilled when they named it Black Beauty because it gave us hope that they will keep it cleaner than our last car, which they named–with the greatest affection– “Pigpen.”

The only thing of note on Tuesday as that we showed up to ballet and realized they weren’t having lessons because of dance camp. Knowing now that I had Covid but wasn’t experiencing symptoms yet, this was very fortunate.

We did go visit my mom right after, but we all stayed in the car and gave her some bread we had picked up from Kneaders. We were on our way home to continue the massive cleaning and organizing kick I was on, and I am so glad we didn’t get out of the car and expose my mom unknowingly!

I spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, organizing closets, and organizing Mary and Lydia’s room. We also taped up ripped books and organized all of the picture books in the play room by color. They used to be organized by country and category, but they would get all out of place all of the time. ROYGBIV is mentally easy and visually appealing, so it’s my default organizational method for clothes, books, and everything else. It felt so satisfying to stand back and see everything look so good.

On Monday I started organizing the garage at 6am, and I didn’t stop organizing and cleaning the house until 10:30pm. It was really fun to get everything in order! The garage had been beyond unbelievably disorganized. There were small mountains of stuff everywhere, and every time we arrived home from a trip we just dumped everything in the garage before heading out on the next trip. So I laundered everything and put away everything until all the piles were gone.

Then Mary, Lydia and I picked up Basil from the dog boarding facility and took him straight to the dog wash to clean him up. Everyone was so thrilled to have Basil back!

Then I came home and moved on to the pantry which had been another disaster. It was so bad that I could barely squeeze into the pantry to get stuff because the floor was covered in kitchen gadgets and open boxes of cereal. So I cleaned and organized the pantry until it became useful again.

And then I moved onto every drawer in the kitchen, which was also out of control. There are still some cabinets that could use help, but they are so high I can’t reach them without a small ladder.

It took me the whole day to clean and I am not sure what the kids did this day, but I do have some cute pictures from it!

Oh now I remember. The kids spent a LOT of time doing their nails, and when Lexy came in the evening they did their nails again. They also did a lot of dress up and played outside a lot. I am sure there were screens involved, although I did tell Mary and Lydia they are forbidding from watching anything–other than movies we watch together as a family and the Olympics–until the summer is over.

On Sunday we got up at 4:30am. We basically just woke up, brushed our teeth, and walked to our car. It was still dark, and next to our car we saw this strange looking bird and had to take a picture. I can’t tell if it is a vulture or a duck, or something in between?

After returning our car to Hertz we headed through security and boarded our plane by 7am, and because of the time difference we arrived in Utah before 11am.

Our original plan was to catch church and then do a picnic with Anthony, Malika, Jon, and everyone’s kids, but I was so exhausted that we drove home, showered everyone, and the kids and I napped while Abe drove up to visit with Anthony, Malika, Jon, et. al. They had a great visit and Malika made some delicious tarts that Abe brought home for me to experience. I was so disappointed to miss out on the visit but physically incapable of doing more than sleeping while he was gone.

Abe came home after the visit and took a long nap, and then we doordashed some dinner and put everyone right to bed. Florida was so fun–and exhausting!