Author: lilydarais

On Friday Lydia had her last day of acting camp. She has loved this camp that Eliza Freestone, one of our favorite babysitters, put on. A lot of the neighborhood kids took part too so they all had fun together.

Honestly, I am catch-up blogging and don’t remember what happened this day, but I want to record Abe’s ministry to our family. At stake conference, Abe was struck by one person who said that we should be ministering to our families as much as we minister to others. So every week he picks a person in our family to minister to.

One week he ministered to Lydia by spending an hour on the couch with her while she told him about each and every page in her first grade binder. He listened attentively to her stories, read through her work, and admired her pictures.

Another week he ministered to Ammon by reading to him for an hour. Reading is Ammon’s favorite activity, but I don’t do it as much as he would like. Abe made him so happy by reading to him for so long.

Abe is an amazing father. Our kids are so lucky. I love him so much.

On Wednesday we went to the zoo with Blair, James and Hannah. Lydia stayed behind to go to her acting camp, attend a neighborhood tea party, and play with the neighbors.

The zoo was HOT! I think it might have been over 100 degrees that day. But it was fun to go with Blair and her crew. James, who is just six months older than Ammon, was so good at staying with Blair and not running away. In the meantime, I was literally running around the zoo chasing Ammon. There were times that I lost him even while I was running after him. It was nuts.

During Lydia’s acting camp on Tuesday, I took the other kids to the splash pad.

Then we dried off, picked up Lydia and Eli, and stopped at both the Provo and Orem libraries for books. I let the kids play at the Orem Library.

By that time, Abe was done with work! So he came and rescued us. The kids were going crazy and it was so helpful to have Abe there to corral them.

Then we went home and ate another cobb salad which Abe had the foresight to prepare yesterday. It was delicious, and our favorite part is that everyone is QUIET while they eat cobb salad. The kids don’t complain! They don’t whine! They don’t ask for forks–spoons–napkins–more water–snack food–dessert–or ANYTHING AT ALL. They just eat.

It’s amazing. We are going to eat a lot more cobb salad this summer.

After dinner, Lydia had a harp lesson, and I got my daily Dairy Queen. It’s such a bad habit. Also, on Tuesday Clarissa refused to nurse at all, so I think being done with nursing will really help these cravings (I hope).

While we were out, Abe was valiantly bathing and putting down the kids. He took these pictures:

We came home and visited with our neighbor, Josh, and then tidied the house. Clarissa has decided never to nap or go to bed these days, so she was up until 10pm. Abe and I are exhausted and burnt out. But we are also having a great summer, so there’s that to consider as we fall into bed without even having time to talk about our day each night.

On Monday morning we visited with Aunt Pam and Uncle Steve before they and my mom took off for their week-long adventure. My mom took this picture:

Ammon loves to climb on my back while I crawl around the house picking up toys. He always leans down and cries into my ear, “MY BIR-DAY!”, at which point I sing him “Happy Birthday.”

On Sunday Aunt Pam and Uncle Steve arrived from Oregon! They and my mom are going to be spending the week together in St. George and Salt Lake. It was so fun to see them and reconnect. We had dinner in the back yard and enjoyed some perfect weather before they head down to St. George, where it’s boiling hot.

Today Abe and I were daunted by all we had to do, but we made it through! We decluttered the house and gave away about three giant garbage bags of toys to the neighborhood kids. (I did make them clear it with their parents, first.) Then we gave the rest to DI.

Abe and I also planted a lot of flowers and Abe worked on the garden. Then we grocery shopped and threw a BBQ chicken cobb salad together for dinner. It was actually so much prettier before the picture! There are at least three layers hidden under the visible layers because I couldn’t fit all of the stripes in the small frame of the bowl. But Abe insisted on a picture anyway:

After dinner we put the kids down and Abe helped clean while I cooked for the week. Probably the kids won’t eat any of it anyway so the effort will be wasted…but I tried this week. (Last week I didn’t cook on Saturday and we ate a LOT of chick Fil-A.)

Friday morning Ammon learned how to rip his baby-proof door handle off of his door. I spent the next six hours in my “bitch on wheels” mode–as my therapist calls it. I was in a very bad mood and life seemed bleak without the prospect of Ammon’s daily nap time in it.

By 2:30 I was out of control screaming at the kids like I haven’t screamed in a long time, so I packed everyone up and drove us to the zoo. It was kind of late for a trip to Salt Lake, and I spent the first ten minutes of the drive yelling at the girls about various things. After I finally calmed down, the day got so much better.

We all had a great time at the zoo, thanks to my forgiving, sweet children.

When we got home, my mom had cleaned the house and Abe was decluttering. We meant to put the kids straight to bed, but Abe, Lydia and I got distracted by Ammon. We were all trying to put him down, but he worked himself up into a singing frenzy! He danced around his room for the better part of an hour singing “Coconuck, Coconuck!!!” We watched in delighted amusement as he jumped up and down like a pogo stick, singing joyfully at the top of his lungs about every random subject you could think of. It was an evening to remember.

On Thursday I got out the paint, ribbon, scissors, glitter, and paper plates and we made paper plate jellyfish. My mom took this picture as we were starting out with the first round of neighborhood kids:

A couple hours later we were still going strong. In fact, we started this craft before 11am, and it only ended around 3pm. At that point, the girls thought they day was over and so they climbed into the bath and then changed into pj’s!

I had to get them back in regular clothes because Mary had a piano lesson in the evening. I handed Mary completely over to Abe about a month or two ago in terms of practice. I gave up. He has been doing a great job with her, though, and she nailed her lesson.

After her lesson, we went to Orem’s Summerfest and met up with the Kehlers. The lines were really long for all of the rides, and on the last ride Eli and Lydia climbed into a teacup, and Eli took the wheel. He spun and spun and spun until Lydia got sick. As soon as the ride stopped, I saw Lydia’s ashen face and yelled to Abe to grab her because she was about to throw up. He brought her to me and we walked away from the crowd to a place where she could puke.

I was so sad that Lydia felt sick, but my favorite part of the evening was sitting on the grass with Lydia and Mary waiting for Abe to get the car and pick us up. Lydia was such a prim and proper little puker! She kneeled on the grass with her hands neatly folded speaking softly about her life’s history with carnival rides and nausea. (Apparently, the nausea has worsened each year of her little life!) Every so often she would interrupt the narrative and turn around to gag. It was sad but, in my opinion, so cute. In the meantime, Mary was cuddling with me. Then Lydia came and cuddled, and Mary objected to the puke smell and so had to figure out how to attach herself to me but somehow keep her nose as far away from Lydia as possible. She was admirably contorted by the time Abe picked us up.

It was a full evening!

I have started giving Ammon a bath in the morning. His poops are just too big, and even after using twenty wipes, I still can’t get him to smell fresh. Considering we have been going swimming in the evenings and then take baths afterward, this boy is getting two baths a day this summer.

Our highlight yesterday was going swimming after Abe got home from work. He took the kids on the big, twisty waterslide and figured out the secret to going fast: Lie down and arch your back. Abe was so excited to discover this trick!

All of the neighborhood kids wanted to know who we were taking swimming with us since we took Eli and Chloe swimming on Tuesday. I always feel guilty saying “no” to the neighbor kids all the time, but honestly, there are so many.  Plus, I just prefer having kids in my home that I know well. This is hard because the only way to get to know kids is to spend time with them, but there are so many I am just sticking with the ones I know for now. But I do want to do nice things for the other kids (which potentially sounds charitable, but this desire actually stems from a wish to assuage the constant guilt I feel at always saying, “no,”) so we are planning on doing crafts Thursday with them.

Anamae came over and gave Lydia a harp lesson at home, which was so sweet of her because we totally forgot Lydia’s new lesson time on Tuesday. We were at the pool with Eli and Chloe instead. I love Anamae and feel so, so grateful for her. She is an incredible teacher and an inspiring woman.