In the morning I flew to San Diego. Jean picked me up and it was so good to see her! After she picked me up we went to pick up her niece, Kage, who is a naval cop. We got to tour the naval base in Coronado, which was amazing. Then we picked up Zakaya, her other niece, and went to dinner in Little Italy. It was delicious.
At home Abe took a lot of cute pictures too!
I am slowly cooking my way through the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook and made the jacket potatoes and cauliflower dish yesterday. I also worked with Lydia on her Greek and Latin and did Ammon’s reading with him. I neglected Clarissa’s reading and have been letting Mary take a piano break since she is sick.
In the evening Abe and I played Pickleball and Azul together, which was so fun! Abe beats me every time in Pickleball but I love every minute and want to play it all day every day.
Abe is working incredibly hard at Qualtrics and worked late. We unwound at the end of the day by watching some White Lotus, which is such a fun show.
Abe and the girls went skiing on Monday as they usually do. It was the coldest day but they still had a lot of fun. They took the following pictures:
At home I worked with Ammon and Clarissa on their reading, Ammon’s music, and Ammon’s homework.
Abe and the kids spent hours playing together. I think it was some sort of Zombie game? The eye things remind me of Game of Thrones, but the kids have definitely not seen GoT so I don’t exactly know what they are.
Abe had plans to go see Nick and his grandma after church in Salt Lake, and we got 10 minutes away from Nick but started getting nervous about the roads. Ever since our scare in November winter driving is very stressful for us, and neither Abe nor I feel very confident that we are judging the safety of the road well. So we had the biggest fight we’ve had in a year about the roads, turned around, and drove two hours home. I spent the rest of the day napping and then went to bed at 8pm. (I think I might have been fighting off some sort of virus that Mary and Clarissa came down with too.)
Note from Abe about the game he played with the kids:
We used the fort the kids built to pretend like we were a family that all lived in the woods together. We did different activities, like fishing, eating the fish, and hunting elk. In the elk hunting game, the kids all got toy hunting weapons, and I was the elk. They would need to hit me with the toy weapon without me seeing them. If I saw them, they would need to count to five, frozen, while I ran away. They each got a chance to kill one elk. Then, they pretended to be the dead elk (Lydia made the theatrical paper eye covers), and I carried them to Lydia’s room over my shoulder one by one. Then we roasted each elk (kid) over a fire (garbage can). It was a super fun time.
Last night Clarissa was up almost the entire night (falling asleep around 5am) moaning from the pain of a double ear infection. Abe and I felt so sorry for her that we let her in our bed. She writhed for hours and we felt awful for her pain. Eventually she got really hot sandwiched between us so she moved to the day bed. After she got settled there she went right to sleep.
I called the after hours care for her pediatrician’s office and took her in at 11am to get checked out. The nurse confirmed the double ear infection and said she might have a touch of strep too. While we were there Clarissa started heaving to throw up and only got out blood and mucus, which was sad. A sweet part of the visit though for me was just watching Clarissa, who manages to be cute even when she is miserable.
She sat there somberly with her hands around her pulled-up knees, and when I stroked her nose with my finger (like the bedtime scene in Frozen 2) she gave cute little smiles.
There is so much sickness going around that the only store with children’s amoxicillin within twenty minutes is the BYU CVS!
After I dropped Clarissa at the house I went to get her prescription. I got some coffee afterwards because I hardly slept last night and the night before that got only four and a half hours. I asked the guy who handed me my coffee why the BYU Starbucks was so busy, especially on a Sunday. He must have thought I had no knowledge of Mormons because he explained it was all just a matter of how you were raised and that even though he himself was a BYU student he had been drinking coffee with his family since high school. He said even though the stores sells a lot of non-caffeinated drinks it also sells a ton of coffee to BYU students like himself. So interesting. I honestly did not know many (any?) Mormons who drank coffee in college. Honestly, I had almost 70 LDS roommates in my twenties and none of them ever had a sip of coffee that I knew of. Maybe the culture is changing?
Then I went to Trader Joe’s, came home and cleaned, got a massage from Abe, made a salad to accompany our dinner of rice and salmon spirals, and watched Elf with the kids. I lovelovelove being cozy on the couch with my family in the middle of all my Christmas decor watching Christmas movies. The kids are such wonderful ages and it is so fun when something funny happens and everyone starts laughing hysterically. The best part of the movie (gauging from the level of familial laughter) was when Elf started throwing snowballs in Central Park. Ammon and Clarissa were both snorting and out of breath, and the older girls were also laughing hard.
Before Elf Lydia and Mary both got an hour of practice, Clarissa slept most of the day on various couches, and Ammon learned how to felt from his sisters. Abe took Basil on a long run, cleaned out our fridges (THANK YOU, ABE!!!), and helped me tidy the house. He also grilled the salmon and helped clean up. He is such an amazing partner.
Also, funny story:
Clarissa was asleep for long stretches on the couch. During an early stretch Abe told the older girls that they had to practice the minute she woke up, and additionally they could be in charge of ensuring the house remained quiet for as long as possible so Clarissa could sleep.
Both girls took that job very seriously and ferociously guarded the silence. The knew they would have to practice when she woke up and they did not want that time to come. At one point Ammon started making noise and then came to Abe crying.
“Dad,” he sobbed, “I made noise and Lydia told me to shut up and Mary called me a hot dog!”
Abe and I thought that was the funniest insult, even though Abe did go and correct both girls. But if someone has to call me a name, I hope they take a note from Mary next time and try “hot dog.” I love it!
I loved this day.
I over caffeinated on Thursday and so woke up at 4:30am on Saturday. That was good though because I needed to leave the house by 5:30am to make it to bikram yoga in Lehi at 6am.
I was home a little after 8am, raced to get ready, and drove the girls up to Isobel’s birthday party. Then I grocery shopped and all of us drove to pick the girls up and take everyone, including Isobel and Emerson, to the Christkindlemarkt in Salt Lake. Thank goodness they published a map of parking because we took a different route this time and saved ourselves HOURS of waiting. No joke. The line of cars trying to get in the park via Sunnyside was more than a mile long and they were moving slowly. There was no line the back way, which meant we made it just in time for the parade! We are going to do that route every time in the future.
https://youtube.com/shorts/avkQFH2sI_o?feature=share
We stopped for felt and pizza from Via 313 on the way home. Then the kids played school, played games, ate, and did crafts until 9am when Amy came for her girls. The kids all had a lot of fun.
After the play date Abe and I showed Lydia and Mary some videos of a comedian whom we met and spent a long time chatting with at the national parks donor event. He wrote for Ellen and for Conan O’Brian, and he plays “Kevin the Cashier” on Ellen. I have not laughed that hard in years. He is so hilarious!
Afterward Abe and I watched Yellowstone and the girls sneaked watching more “Kevin the Cashier” in their room until 11:30pm. They did get in a little trouble for that because we thought they were sleeping. But he is really funny, so I can hardly blame them!
On Friday morning I helped Mary learn part of a new piano piece, and it was rough going.
After school I tried to counter that rough experience with some mommy-Mary time. Mary invited Lydia along too but Lydia said that when I am mean to her at the harp she likes being alone with me, and she wanted Mary to have that experience too. Thank you, Lydia! You are such a sweetheart.
Mary and I had the greatest time. Mary is the cutest little talker and I learned so much about her during our date. I had no idea her favorite color is brown! She likes that brown can’t be made into extreme neon shades.
We also had fun laughing at socks and funny cards in one of the shops we browsed. Our favorite card had a picture of a mouse with crazy white hair that said, “A little stressed?” on front. We got a good laugh out of that. Mary thought it would be a perfect card for me (I wonder why?).
Earlier in the day I took Ammon to his well-check appointment. The doctor gave us a referral to a pediatric orthopedic specialist because Ammon’s walk is so crooked. I hope Ammon does not need surgery. He definitely does not want that!
We visited with more lovely parks people at breakfast and listened to some great talks about what the National Parks Foundation is accomplishing. I feel committed for life. The national parks are our nation’s greatest treasures (in my opinion) and I am thrilled to support them in any way. The only caveat to the parks is the stolen land from indigenous people, and as far as I can tell the parks are honestly trying to confront that past.
Our secretary of the interior is of native descent and I have seen multiple rangers of native heritage at the parks this past year, including the one featured at the Christmas tree lighting the night before. Most importantly, the parks do an incredible job preserving and honoring the ecological and cultural aspects of our land, and that excellent stewardship serves all cultures. I love the parks and was so happy to hear the report at breakfast about the ways in which our parks are thriving.
After breakfast Abe dropped off the gift the parks gave us at the hotel while I ordered coffee two blocks from the hotel.
Then we power-walked through three Smithsonian museums: The Museum of American History, the Museum of Natural History, and the National Gallery.
Then we walked as fast as we could to the start of our walking tour. By the time our tour began we had already walked about ten miles that day. On our walking tour we learned so much from the ranger!
This trip was an absolute highlight for Abe and me. Every minute was a delight. We are so grateful to Tom and Suzanne who made it possible to go, and we are grateful to the National Parks Foundation for inviting us out. It was so great to get back home to our children, who light up our lives. But we did have the greatest time in DC, and I will never forget this trip!!
Today, Lily and I went running together. When I got home I did some additional strength training (the 500) and then I enjoyed petting Basil.
Lydia asked for her main Christmas trip to be a shopping trip with her mom. What a sweet wish! Here they are before they embarked to fight the crowds!
And fight they did! Lily told me of one instance when some teenagers (on foot) tried to snatch and save a parking spot she had been waiting for. Lily had to be assertive and she felt bad about that. It’s a jungle out there!
Back at home, I got my dream of having some deep play with the kids. It’s unfortunate to me that I do not do it more. But when I have multiple days at home, it really feels attainable for me to find the time, and today I played Legos with Mary, Ammon and Clarissa for over two hours. We spent the first hour building Lego spaceships.
After we all built our creations, we played for about an hour. The basic plot was that Green Zombie woke up on the wrong side of the bed and decided there was too much happiness in the world, so to rectify that, he was going to kill the pizza man, because he delivered too much happiness to the world. On his way to kill the pizza man, he was intercepted by the good team, and shot out of the sky. He didn’t die, but he made it to his bad-team base where he got the bad team fired up and ready to wage war on the good team for revenge. Then a big war erupted. Right at the very end when they were all about to destroy each other, Relsa (Clarissa’s character) gave a riveting speech suggesting that the bad team should try pizza, and if they liked it, perhaps they could agree the pizza man should not be killed and the war could end. The bad team agreed, loved the pizza, and everyone became friends. Here is a video with some of the action.
Lily was pooped when she got home and in this picture she is cuddling with Ammon while looking at some family pictures Mary printed.
Later we all watched the Great British Baking Show while relaxing on the couch. Basil looks really content in this picture resting after his run today.
Lydia looks great in her new clothes and she is so excited about them!
