Author: lilydarais

On Friday my neighbor, Brinay, cut my hair in her basement. She has a studio down there, and I feel so blessed to have her as a neighbor. I love her.

In the middle of the cut, my phone rang. It was the school telling me that the kids had a half day and the girls were there waiting for me to come pick them up. Oh no! I couldn’t believe I’d missed that. So I got up with my hair wet and half cut and drove over to pick them up, and then I went back to Brinay, who was very patient with this whole ordeal.

Then she finished cutting and curling my hair for the Qualtrics party. Abe came home a little later than expected and it took us both a while to get ready for the party, which was at the Grand America’s ballroom in Salt Lake. Between the Qualtrics party, which must have had at least a thousand people, and all of the Christmas activities in Salt Lake, the traffic was INSANE. I thought we were going to miss dinner, which was sad since I hate parties like this and only find consolation in the food.

Happily (or probably Providentially) we bumped into Steve and Blair JUST as we were walking in. The chances of this happening, especially considering how many people there are and how late we were, is incredible. I felt so loved by God. He knows how much I hate parties and he put Blair RIGHT THERE for me to help me have the most optimal time possible given the circumstances. She and I went ahead of Abe and Steve, who checked our coats, to make sure we didn’t miss the buffet.

It was so loud I couldn’t really hear anything, but I was thrilled to be by Blair. In fact, I should send her a thank you email. I will do that when I am done blogging.

Then Blair and Steve went to play games, Abe and I checked out the desserts and then hightailed it to our hotel. We had a free night’s stay at the Hilton that expired by the end of the year, so we made sure to take advantage of it and hired babysitters for Friday night AND Saturday morning. It was still stressful leaving our kids and wondering if the babysitters would be okay (we have no doubt our kids will be bind), but by the end of the party I was so cold and tired that I was just happy to be able to drive a block and collapse in the hotel suite. Abe and I watched Ready Player One before falling into bed.

On Thursday the girls performed in the Arches Candlelight Christmas Concert. They both did so great. My favorite moment was when Mary sang, “One for the heeeaaarrrt!” over and over with the sweet little heart gesture. It was just such an appropriate lyric/gesture combo for her.

On Wednesday Lydia was her favorite Civil War hero, Harriet Tubman, in the 2nd and 3rd grade play. She was over the moon to be Harriet Tubman and talked about this for weeks. I am so grateful for good teachers who recognized how much she loved this woman from history and allowed Lydia to have this role.

Ammon and Clarissa also played sweetly together today:

Also, Abe came home at midnight today! This was his last work trip in December. Hallelujah!

On Tuesday Abe left town at 3am for another work trip. I am back blogging and don’t remember anything else from that day!

On Monday for FHE we read the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke two and then played Pin the Tail on Rudolph.

On Sunday Abe asked for a blessing from out ministers, the Moons. They came over after dinner and gave Abe a blessing, and then they stayed and talked with us for an hour. Reed Moon is the owner of Moon’s Rare Books and privately owns the best Mormon book collection in the world. He has copies of Books of Mormon owned by Joseph Smith, Sophronia Smith, Alvin Smith, and Samuel Smith, as well as the personal scriptures of twelve latter-day prophets. He also owns a ton of other rare books, including the first editions of, it seems, most any important book you can name!

Even more interesting is Reid Moon himself, who seems to have a photographic memory and is, obviously, steeped in historical knowledge. I asked him a lot of questions about polygamy, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young, and in response he, at times, quoted obscure letters from heart. He regaled us with tales of Mormon history that are not well known, and he was all around just one of the most interesting people we have ever met. I felt so grateful for the time he took with us because he leads such a crazy schedule he must hardly ever see his family.

I also forgot to take pictures of this day. Darn.

On Saturday after I came home from yoga I raced to get ready so that Mary could make it to her piano lesson, which was right before Lydia’s harp recital. December gets so crazy! Lydia did great at the recital. The student before had changed the key signature of the harp and forgotten to change it back, so Lydia started off playing the wrong key. She powered through without any mistakes,  not stopping even when Anamae came to flip the levers and correct the key. I was so proud of her.

Then we went home and Abe, Clarissa, and I napped while the other kids watched a movie. When we woke up, we piled in the car and drove to Salt Lake to buy my mom’s Christmas present, see the lights at Temple Square, and eat dinner at Cedars of Lebanon, a restaurant Abe and I ate at years ago and remembered fondly. In the ensuing years, the restaurant has become a lot more fancy than we remembered. Abe ended up sacrificing eating dinner with us so and took Ammon and Clarissa out to get the car while the girls and I ate. After we finished, the girls LOVED watching the belly dancer. Mary was copying her moves and asked if she could become a belly dancer when she grows up. I said sure.

Here are the pictures from the outing:

On Friday I took Ammon and Clarissa to the mall playground while the cleaners cleaned the house.

I spent a lot of the day eating sugar and carbs. By the end of the day I felt very burnt out on kids and just wanted Abe to come home. I went to bed early so that the time would pass more quickly until his arrival at 1:30am. I will be so glad when all of his traveling this quarter is all over!

On Thursday I think we were all tired of not having Abe around. Mary threw tantrums, and so did I. We managed to get through all of our normal routines, and I went to bed counting the hours until Abe’s return.

During Clarissa’s nap today I was a bad parent and watched S.H.E.I.L.D. shows while I wrapped Christmas presents. Unfortunately Ammon was around and happened to see someone get stabbed through the heart. I quickly paused it, put him on a phone, and resumed watching and wrapping. If I were having a good parent day, I would have switched off the TV altogether and just focused on Ammon instead. Oh, well. Thank goodness for repentance.

Abe is traveling today and for the rest of the week. It is so sad to have him gone, but the upside is I feed everyone a really early dinner and then the kids are in bed an hour earlier than usual. That means I can catch up on blogging, read my scriptures, finish some of my photo projects…and now binge watch more S.H.E.I.L.D. Hopefully I don’t get nightmares.