Author: lilydarais

Tuesday was the girls’ first day of school! They looked so cute.

After they left, I bathed Ammon and Clarissa in the bath and felt so sad. Mary and Lydia are growing up, and Ammon and Clarissa won’t be such cute babies forever. With that in mind, we spent the morning playing and reading books, and then we headed to the farm at Thanksgiving Point to meet up with Emily and Chloe.

We had a great time at the farm. The weather was absolutely PERFECT. Ammon and Chloe loved feeding the animals, even though a big goat stole Ammon’s popcorn! They also loved the pony rides, of course.

After pony rides, Clarissa was done, so we headed home to eat, play a bit more, and then take naps. I felt so happy and blessed the whole day.

After school, Mary said it was the best day of her life. She made friends and Mrs. Issa loves her. Lydia said her day was terrible because her two friends, Grace and Arielle, played together and left her out. I was thrilled to hear that Lydia was sure to invite the new girl to sit by her at lunch and play with her at recess, although I guess the new girl, another Lydia, is shy. Lydia (my Lydia) has such a kind heart.

Lydia also said she learned a lesson. If you think you don’t like someone, spend time with them, and you’ll learn they are an interesting person! I guess she spent time with someone she had deemed not fun last year, and she found out yesterday that that person is, indeed, interesting.

Then we had music practice. It was the first day practicing in our new school routine, and both girls were tired and prone to screaming and, in Lydia’s case, crying. But we made it through!

Abe came home, grilled the Thai chicken and veggies I had marinating in the fridge, and we all had dinner. After that, I took the girls school shopping. It was incredibly frustrating because I didn’t have any lists, although apparently all of the other parents have lists somehow?! But Lydia was insistent that she needed certain things by tomorrow, so off we went.

Then we came home, put the kids down, and went straight to bed. It was a long, beautiful day!

Monday was a marathon day.

In the morning Abe and I got up early to go running. I ran one lap more than a mile, which is great for me–especially since I thought I would never run again after this last pregnancy.

Then we came home, showered, and I folded a million loads of laundry. I also bathed and groomed all of the kids. They played dress up all morning while I cooked like crazy for our back-to-school feast. Dress up started with them putting a doggy-backpack leash on Ammon and morphed into dressing Ammon up in all sorts of costumes.

Meanwhile I made pie dough, apple filling, and then put it all together for a pie. Then I made some sour cream rolls and put them in the fridge to bake right before dinner.

By that time it was time to go to the fire station to take a tour with Henry, Vika, and Jessi. Henry loves fire trucks and scheduled this tour himself weeks ago. They were so sweet to invite us.

Ammon almost sabotaged the tour, though. He ran all around the station touching EVERYTHING. He touched every nob, tried to scale every fire hose, and peeked under and in every opening he could find. I almost lost my mind telling him to stop. He would punctuate his explorations by giving me and random firemen huge hugs. Finally one of the firemen gave him a ride in the stretcher to calm him down. It didn’t help, but it was funny.

Then we hurried halfway home, only to realize that we needed to pick up Mary’s glasses, so we turned around and after another hour returned home with those.

By then it was already 5:30, so I quickly made the girls’ two favorite soups and baked the rolls. Then we had our feast! We lit the candle, sang a happy first day of school song, and talked about the upcoming year and what the girls want to learn. Mary is excited about art and Lydia is excited about social studies.

Then I gave them presents: new crayons and flashlights. The crayons are for drawing after family scripture study, and the flashlights are so they can read in bed at night.

Then we cleaned up, got everyone in bed, and got ready for school the next day. Abe and I finished by watching some of The Good Wife. He is extremely stressed out by work, so watching this show helps divert him from current stresses and anxieties.

On Sunday I made chicken tikka masala and curried eggplant in the morning before church.

Abe got sustained as a new assistant ward clerk today, and he stayed after to get trained and set apart.

After he came home, we ate and got the kids ready for bed, and Abe headed back to church for the random stake priesthood meeting. Apparently these happen every year, but my memory must be going because when Abe told me about it, I felt like I had never heard of it before.

I stayed at home and climbed into bed at 7:15pm. The girls came running into my bedroom shortly thereafter. They climbed in with me and we cuddled, talked and giggled for an hour. Mary kept talking about how much she loves bacon. Every time she mentioned the word “bacon” she would laugh so hard, and Lydia and I laughed with her. It was so fun. I loved having their little bodies next to mine with my arms around each one of them while we looked out the window at the beautiful trumpet vine, observed bees by the flowers, felt the beautiful breeze, and talked and laughed. It felt like a highlight of motherhood.

Then Abe came home, the girls went to bed, and we all fell asleep really early. It was great to kick start the week with so much sleep!

 

On Saturday I woke up at 5:15am to pick up our neighbor, Ethline, for yoga. We drove to Lehi to do Bikram together and had a great class. During the week I have to leave early to get home in time, but Saturday is nice because I can stay the whole time. This was Ethline’s first time doing Bikram, and she loved it.

When I got home, I took over the kids. Abe had been up until 1am working, so he was exhausted. When he woke up, I started feeling tired. Abe let me nap for a couple hours. I was so tired that I didn’t even wake up during the treasure hunt Lydia made for all of the kids. One of her clues was, “To find your next clue, check the place where you go poo!” …That was in our bathroom. They all trooped into the bathroom to find her clue, and I was so zonked I didn’t hear a thing. Her hunt ended at a box which held a lot of rainbow themed things, including a book she had made about the colors of the rainbow and this cut-out rainbow:

Then when I finally woke up, I menu planned, did the Clicklist, and “helped” Abe organize the girls’ clothes. We switched out all of their old clothes and put their school uniforms in. We also organized Ammon’s clothes. The Marshalls gave us all of their twins’ old clothes, and if we want, we don’t even have to buy Ammon anything this season!

In the evening after the kids were down, Abe and I spent an hour in the backyard enjoying the perfect weather and cloud watching. I felt perfectly happy and full of gratitude for everything in my life, even things which annoy me when I am in a bad mood–like the house, for instance. I looked at the house with Abe and felt so grateful God has given me a perfect place to raise a family.

Then Abe and I went in and binge watched The Good Wife. Normally Abe is much more disciplined, but he let himself channel my over-indulgent tendencies and we watched until midnight.

On Friday I took the kids to the pool to kill the time because Abe had to work late. To our delight we met up with the Przbylas there. Apparently Brittany had texted and invited us to the pool with them, but I never got her text because I never check my phone. Luckily, it all worked out! Brittany and I had a great time chatting, and the kids all had a great time.

After two hours Ammon decided he was cold and wanted to go home. It was WONDERFUL not having to drag him out of the pool. This is probably one of the last times we will go to the pool this season, but I hope I remember for next year: Just stay until Ammon is done. It is so much easier to get him out when he actually wants to get out.

After the pool we went to In-N-Out for dinner. We ate on the front porch until my mom got home from her last day of education week, which she loved so much. This is a picture of her at education week. She came home from education week on Monday, Tuesday and Friday just filled with excitement and youthful vigor.

Because Mary had complained about starving on Wednesday night, I promised her we could bake cookies in the morning. In the morning, Mary actually just wanted to eat the cookie dough, and Lydia baked the cookies mostly by herself. I helped her with the measuring and oven, but the girls did the scooping all by themselves. My phone is out of memory, so I just had to commit to memory the cute image of the girls standing on footstools scooping cookie dough together. When Abe asked the girls recently what meals they would make for someone to show what we eat in our house, the first thing Lydia said was, “cookies!” Sad but true, sad but true.

Lydia crafted all day with glitter and I fear our house will never recover. There is glitter everywhere. But she had a great time. Abe took some pictures of some of her many, many pictures.

We sat in front eating leftover salad and sourdough bread while Lydia ran the cookies around to all of the neighbors.

Also, Abe took Mary to her piano lesson and she did amazing. We have practiced for HOURS this week, and she learned the entire piece of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” hands together. It felt great knowing that we made some progress that finally, finally showed in her lesson.

On Wednesday we had dinner with the McAllisters. Stephanie McAllister was the kind person who let me teach on Sunday even though she had prepared a lesson. It was so fun getting to know her and her husband, Tanner. He seemed like a genius to us. He could talk about everything and even knew about Ira Lipman’s father!! When he talked about that subject, I started wondering if he had a photogenic memory. It was impressive.

It thundered, lightning, and hailed throughout dinner. The hail was HUGE.

Then Abe and I ran out in the hail to our car after dinner so we could go to the stake center and do our stake temple recommend interviews.

One funny thing Mary said today was, “Why do the grown-ups get to feast and the kids starve?” I thought that was hilarious because I feel like the kids eat all day long, and also her melodramatic way of describing our evening situation tickled me. I basically fed the kids corn and bacon and sent them to bed because we were rushing to get dinner on the table before the McAllisters arrived. I figured I wasn’t starving them because, as I said, the kids eat all day long. But, according to Mary, I guess they actually just starved.

On Tuesday Clarissa took her first steps!! Well, everyone else has seen her walk a couple steps before, but this was the first time I saw it happen. We got lots of pictures and videos.

After dinner Abe and I put the kids down and headed to the church to do our temple recommend interviews. I have been nervous about mine, but Moroni Hair, who conducted the interview, was amazing. He handled my issues and concerns with such grace, kindness, and spiritual sensitivity. Afterward Abe and I discussed how lucky we are to know the Hairs. They are such great people.

 

 

On Monday we went to the annual Qualtrics summer party. We thought these parties have always been incredible, but this year to top everything all off, there were elephants on the lawn. Qualtrics is really big on cancer research, and I guess there is an elephant gene that cancer researchers are interested in. So the elephants were actually relevant.

For dinner we ate some food truck farm-to-table burgers. The kids, including Ammon, were so perfectly behaved. In fact, Ammon was so well-behaved that he warmed my heart. He just sat there quietly eating his food all up, and he didn’t act crazy at all.

After we ate, I took Lydia to get her face painted like a unicorn. My phone was out of memory so I couldn’t get a picture, but she looked amazing. While Clarissa, Lydia and I were in the face painting section, Abe, Mary, and Ammon were waiting to ride the ferris wheel. By the time it was their turn, the rain had turned to thunder and lightning.

I have to admit, I was highly annoyed that Abe was going to ride the metal ferris wheel while there was lightning going on. I couldn’t watch so I stormed off to the car while Lydia screamed and cried. Lydia saw a movie recently where the dad gets hit by lightning, so she was terrified Abe, Mary and Ammon were going to die. When we got the prayer, she sobbed out that she wanted to say a prayer. She actually said several prayers and then calmed down. She then verbalized my exact thoughts, which were, “Why is dad putting Mary and Ammon in danger? He can choose to ride the ferris wheel himself, but why is he putting Mary and Ammon in danger?” My thoughts exactly.

Thankfully, they were all safe and no one was hit by lightning. We got home, got cozy, and had a great night’s sleep.

On Sunday I thought I was supposed to teach the lesson on the awesome talk, “Seventy times Seven” by Elder Robbins. I asked my friend, Betsy Croft, to come and share her thoughts on failure with the class. She is a potter, and during our dinner a couple weeks ago she had spontaneously started talking about how she has embraced failure because of her medium of expression and how everything often goes wrong in pottery. So I thought she would offer a really interesting angle on the lesson.

When we got to class, I was horrified to learn someone else was supposed to teach the lesson. There had been a mix-up in teaching schedules. Normally I would have gladly let her teach, but Betsy had driven all the way to the ward, had brought her pottery, and had already set up to teach. So I kind of told the presidency I needed to teach. They were all so nice, and so was the other teacher, Stephanie McAllister. She was absolutely the kindest person about the whole mix-up and let me teach.

The lesson went amazingly well, and Betsy added so much depth to the lesson.

After the lesson, we walked home in the hot sunshine with all of the kids. Abe and I wondered why we don’t walk to church more often. It is such a nice community exercise. Everyone waves as they drive past and it is a very fun and social activity.

When we got home, we released Clarissa’s birthday balloons into the sky. We think this is a good tradition going forward–releasing the balloons the day after the birthday.

Then we had the Crofts over to dinner for Thai grilled chicken and veggies. They brought amazing mango sticky rice that Micah learned how to make on his mission. We had a wonderful visit.

Then for FHE we played a board game Lydia created in the morning. Abe took some great pictures of it and all of the tiny pieces she made.

These pieces are so little–about an inch high. Aren’t they amazing? Isn’t Lydia amzing?!