This morning I took the girls to the park for our ward play group.
Mary noticed her shoe strap had come undone. Also, the girls LOVE to hold hands whenever we go anywhere.Lydia helped fix Mary’s shoe strap while Mary’s negligent mother looked on and took a picture. Also, see Lydia’s hair? That took me approximately forty minutes this morning. I saw a girl with this hair do yesterday and really wanted to try it on Lydia. Next time I will make her hair more wet before I attempt it.Whee!
The rest of the day was spent feeding kids, napping, reading my book, and folding approximately five huge loads of laundry (basically the girls’ entire wardrobe and more than half of our clothes, too).
Anique and I did our soup exchange yesterday, which was the greatest blessing because I had no time to cook tonight.
Then I went to my Relief Society meeting. I’m on the humanitarian division of the committee, and so we picked which organizations we’re going to help this year.
This morning I sneaked in a trip to the library and grocery store before our fun play date with Paige, Ada, and Liv.
Here are some pictures from the play date:
We did a lot of art: painting, coloring, stamping, and playing with chalk.Paige brought over some polymer sand that was incredible. It looked and felt like sand, but it cleans up like cotton candy–a no mess kind of sand that just makes you marvel at technology.Adorable.
Then the girls were so worn out from the fun that they took a three hour nap. Hallelujah. I read a chapter in my book and then proceeded to do the same.
By the time we woke up, I just had time to make some soup, feed the girls dinner, and eat the last piece of last week’s cake before Abe came home.
We finished up with a Family Home Evening lesson on what it means to be children of God. Of course, we ended by playing parachute…
Days like this make me wonder why every day can’t just be like today. Why can’t they? I can’t figure it out, but I’m really glad when days like this happen.
This morning Lydia crawled into bed with me and wanted the iPad. I trade the iPad for practice time reciting scriptures, and today I actually recorded her reciting her scripture.
Then we went to a Valentine’s day party at preschool:
Lydia spent the rest of the day going through the valentines from her friends over and over. She had so much fun.
Then I took the kids to Gateway for Dairy Queen Blizzards and some pizza:
Again, this part of the day made us all unreasonably happy.
Then I gathered my courage and took both girls to the movie, Frozen.
This was their first movie, and they loved it. Well, Mary spent most of the movie climbing up and down the stairs and running around the theater while I chased her. Thankfully, there was only one other family in the theater, and they had small kids too. At one point, Mary ran right under the huge screen just as a big boom from the movie rang out. She let out a delighted yelp and ran as fast as her little legs could carry her straight back to me. She’s my little thrill seeker.
Then we came home and took naps. They napped so long that I didn’t have the heart to wake them in time for me to get to class, so I just read all of the class slides and did a bunch of homework instead.
The only low point was when I lost my temper at Lydia after dinner because she was screaming for cake. But that really was the only low point for Lydia and me, and the rest of the day was just a delightful series of fun events. I guess if this happened every day, I wouldn’t appreciate these good times the same way…but really, it would be so nice.
On top of it all, Abe got moved up into a track that positions him for the next round of promotions today, so honestly, every one of us had a great day.
Now it’s time for baths and bed. I think I even have time to read my book tonight. Yay!
Here are some more pictures from the day (mainly for Mom and Grandma!):
Talking with Nana and Grandma Cullen.Lydia wanted them to see her cat’s pink smile.She spent a lot of time trying to get them to see her cat.Here’s her cat’s “pink” smile. He needs a bath…I did Mary’s hair while we were on the phone. Clearly, I need to focus more when I’m attempting pigtails.After naps. Trying to figure out the iPadBecause I don’t understand the “less is more” principle when it comes to pictures of my kids.
I am totally exhausted but Abe, who has been working like crazy all day, is downstairs feeding Mary (again) so I can blog and go to bed. I love him.
I almost missed yoga this morning but thankfully woke up at 5:40 and made it into class by 6. Cynthia met me there, and I was relieved that I didn’t sleep through it, since I forgot to set my alarm last night.
After yoga, I showered at the studio and headed straight to school. I started the day practicing knife cuts, but I had to make up the eggs class I missed Thursday…so for the next three hours I did nothing but attempt to make French omelets and flip eggs. For the record, I make eggs all the time at home, but they are in a nonstick pan, and I flip them with a spatula. Also, I make Western omelets (that are brown and folded vs. yellow and rolled).
In the two hours I practiced, I never once flipped an egg successfully. I had eggs land on the floor, on the range, on the counter, and the ones that landed in the pan either turned funny or got their yolks broken by the fall. It was nothing short of disastrous. I am pretty sure the chef thought I was mentally challenged. The fact that I battle terrific shyness, self-consciousness, and a constant terror that I am incapable of performing the task at hand is no help. I just try to smile and say as little as possible, because when I try to talk, I either stutter or say something monumentally stupid. What’s worse is everyone there is incredibly friendly, and I would love to be friends with all of them if I could work up the courage and wit to talk coherently.
At any rate, here is something I plated (under explicit instruction) at the end of the day:
I came home and laughed and cried a little about the experience with Abe, who was so reassuring. It’s nice to have someone to come home to who is familiar with your weaknesses and can still say positive, loving things. Again, I love my husband.
Then I lay in bed until it was time to go to the Alvarez party for Leah. Carolina, Nefi, and Leah live in Bountiful, so we drove there and spent the evening with them. One of the best parts was that my favorite young women’s leader of all time, Camey Hadlock (Elder Anderson’s daughter), showed up! We chatted the whole party. She is one of my life-long inspirations. She has four kids and is about to start a doctorate program in education and technology, and in anticipation of starting the program, she has published an article in the main journal of her new field. She’s also written much of the new church instructional material for Come Follow Me. She’s just an amazing person who has stayed in touch with the young women she’s taught all over the country, and I admire her so much. Here’s a picture of her posing with Carolina and me. She looks the youngest of all of us (even though she has a teenage daughter while Carolina and I have babies).
Here are some more from the party:
Lydia was waking up from her car ride, and Leah was so cute and wanted to play.
Mary, Lydia AND Abe all wanted pictures taken with the Bubble Guppies:
I dropped Lydia off at preschool this morning and then did a ton of errands with Mary. I lost my phone a week ago, so I have no way of taking pictures on the go (unless I want to risk taking my big camera and losing it too!). If I could have taken a picture, though, I would have taken one of Mary in Sprouts. The cashier gave her a balloon, and her wide-eyed fixation on it was so cute; her eyes got even bigger when she let go of the balloon and watched it float up to the ceiling. Another cashier felt sorry for her and tied a new balloon to her wrist, and she looked at nothing else until I wriggled it off of her an hour later.
Then at lunch I got curious and asked Lydia what her favorite things in the whole world are. These are her responses, in order: 1) coloring, 2) playing with her cat, 3) cooking with me, 4) playing with the letters on the fridge. Her responses were really quick, so I think that means they must be sincere. I hope they are, at least, since #3 warmed my heart.
I spent the rest of the day slightly irritable–just like yesterday! I was feeling pretty low when Anique called and asked if she could drop off some soup and tortellini. Seeing her made me happy, as did eating her food. But then I started feeling bad again because I had the HARDEST time being patient with Lydia. She ate six meals today, and between meals 3 and 4 she snacked continually. The constant catering and cleaning made me crazy, but I feel like I should feed her when she says she’s hungry because Abe eats all day long, and I figure maybe she inherited a need for continual nourishment from him.
Class tonight was great, though. I learned why food turns brown and about the effect of acid and alkili on different groups of vegetables. We also did a bunch of food safety videos because after this class, we get some sort of food handling permit (if we pass the test).
While I was gone, the girls opened a letter from my mom. She sent Lydia cat stickers and Mary a butterfly card. Apparently, the girls loved their gifts from Nana and spent a lot of time playing with them. (Lydia put cat stickers all over her coloring book, and Mary walked around with her butterfly card.)
Then I came home and saw this:
Lydia crafted this bird at preschool. She kept trying to show Abe her bird all evening, but he was on the phone with my mom and didn’t pay attention until after Lydia was already in bed. He hung it up because he felt bad and also because it was a great craft. I do all my best parenting after my kids are asleep, too. When they’re asleep, I always think of EVERYTHING I wish I had done better when they were awake. Oh, well. Guess I get to try again tomorrow.
Today started off with a wonderful reunion with some old friends, Jan, Chelsea, and Chelsea’s kids: Olivia (3), Carter (1) and Camden (1). Her boys are fraternal twins, and I think this is the first time I’ve met them in person. It was so fun to see them again, and I started to wonder again why we aren’t moving to Provo (Chelsea lives in Orem–right next door to Provo).
After meeting up at the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum, we headed home for lunch. Olivia was a doll and listened to Lydia blab on and on about her cat while they pretended to have tea. The twins were so cute and need to be in the same room to sleep. We stuck them in Mary’s closet together and they slept beautifully. It was fun to see their different personalities, too!
I just love Jan and Chelsea, and it honestly felt like a family reunion of sorts. Here are some pictures that Jan took:
And from lunch:
Today was also sort of a soup heavy day. I made chili for lunch, and then I remembered I signed up to bring dinner to a woman in our ward, so I made lentil soup after that. During class tonight we made split pea soup and chicken waterzooi. To be perfectly frank, I am less than enthusiastic my other group member tonight, but I got to exercise…patience. I was sorely, sorely tempted to be less than kind (am giving into temptation now by writing about it on the blog), but I just kept thinking: appearance vs. reality, appearance vs. reality. Who knows what kind of hardships this person has endured? My experience of her is so minute compared to the scope of her life and intentions. That said, I am dreading next week because we have to work together for one more week. I just hope some other group members show up so the experience will be somewhat diluted.
So it was a kind of social high/low day. I loved my reunion with Jan, Chelsea, and the kids, and I kind of hated my life a little bit during class. And I just saw some big fireworks from the window as I typed. I have no idea what they were for, but I guess I’ll take that as a sign to sign off.
Oh, and here’s a photo from two days ago that was on my iPad and I never posted. Lydia pre-quiet time.
This morning I fed the girls, practiced, and took them to Institute and the library. At Institute, both girls went to nursery. They did fine until Lydia had a little run-in with a friend, and Lydia burst into tears. At the sight of Lydia in tears, Mary became inconsolable, and I could hear her soundtrack an entire floor down. But I got to attend most of Institute before that, and it was awesome. The curator of the BYU museum of art talked to us about the Carl Bloch exhibit, and I am now dying to go.
Our institute is packed, and so parking is hard. I thought I’d found a great spot today, but when I came out, I discovered a ticket! Did you know you can’t park within 20 inches of a crosswalk? I sure didn’t. I wasn’t blocking the crosswalk, but I guess that wasn’t good enough. I guess I know now.
By the time we came home, the girls had gotten a second wind, so I played with them for another hour before putting them down. Then I did my usual climb-into-bed deal for a nap and some reading. I started Good Lord Bird, and even though it is rather humorous, I already know I’m not going to finish it. Besides, it’s due tomorrow.
When the girls woke up, we ate, cooked, colored, played, read, and I sneaked in more practice (while they ate). Then Abe came home and we had a lightning fast FHE.
Since yesterday was the State of the Union, I decided to do a lesson on our president. I remember when I was a little girl, one of my greatest friends and teachers was my next door neighbor, Ruth. She was in her 90’s, and she was a wonderful listener. She also had a way of gently correcting that never felt like a reprimand but still had great sticking power. On one occasion, I remember going over and saying some negative things about Clinton to her. Ruth responded by telling me that she was from a part of Indiana where the people are called “yellow dog Democrats,” meaning if a yellow dog was on the Democratic ticket, they would vote for it. She said that once she remembered saying something bad about the Republican president, and her mother immediately replied that the presidential office is worthy of our respect and support, no matter who holds it.
I haven’t always acted on the principle Ruth taught me that day, but it’s always in the back of my mind during political conversations. Abe and I read the twelfth Article of Faith to the girls (“We believe in being asubject to bkings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in cobeying, honoring, and sustaining the dlaw“) in the hopes that they learn to respect our leaders and honoring all efforts to uphold our democratic system. In order to drive the message home, we played parachute. By now, Abe and I joke that we can relate parachute to any gospel principle; this time it was, “We should uphold our leaders just like we will uphold these objects…in the air over the blanket!”
Then I ran off to Bikram with Anique. Thank goodness she drove, because I felt so sick afterward, I don’t know how I would have made it home. The room was packed, and so maybe the extra bodies drove the temperature up. Whatever it was, I did not feel good afterward and am only now starting to feel somewhat normal.
Here are the pictures from the day:
Ever since Santa brought Lydia her cat back, Puss has played and ever more central role in Lydia’s life. She has full-blown conversations with him all day long, and he is her favorite thing to discuss with other people. Mary has picked up on this, and when Lydia is feeling sad, Mary has started bringing her her cat. This was after a sad event with a tower Lydia was building, and Mary was cheering her up.Everyone is cheered.I snapped this picture and then joined in. That left corner of the blanket needed some help!
After getting to bed after midnight last night, I woke up at 5:30 am, rushed out the door to yoga, met up with Misty, and did Bikram. It was so awesome to have Misty there–I was so excited that I lost my balance about a million times. Either that or the sleep deprivation made me extra clumsy. But it was so great to do Bikram with Misty, and I was DYING to know what she thought about it, but I had to skip out of class before the cool down so I could shower and make it to the competition team for culinary school.
The competition team is the best kept secret at school, as far as I can tell. You get free instruction from a chef on whatever you want to learn, and today the ratio was: 1 chef to 2 students. Yes. Chef told me that I could research anything I want to learn–as in, if I want to learn about lobster, let him know a couple days ahead of time, and he will have fresh lobsters for me to practice on. My jaw dropped. Can I repeat? This was free. Free instruction, free food, free practice, and the school will pay for all of my competition fees.
There is a catch, though, and that is until we start gearing up for the competition, I have to be in charge of what I want to practice. As I wandered through the storeroom, my mind felt completely blank. I couldn’t decide what skill I wanted to practice, so finally I just cut down three chickens and worked on making tamales with my teammate.
One of the competitions I will enter will be entirely about plating. I have a long way to go, right? Right.
One of the competition rounds I will enter is called a cold salon. All the food is inedible and coated with aspic, and most of the food that I saw looked like it would taste gross. But apparently preparing for this competition will enhance my knife skills and make me more competent at plating, so I’m game.
While I was at cooking school, Abe took the girls to the park. The three of them experienced sunshine for the first time in weeks. Abe was worried the girls would get cold, so in addition to dressing them in their snow pants, he put two coats on each of them. When they fell, they had to wait for Abe to come get them because they had so many layers on, they couldn’t get back up themselves. Mary was also excited that he put Lydia’s hat on her–it meant she got to chew the strings all morning long!
Then I came home and napped for a minute before we turned around and headed out to the Arnold Friberg exhibit at the Gateway. Tom has been telling us we should go for a while, and today we finally got a chance to go. It was incredible. I don’t think I fully appreciated Arnold Friberg today, but the exhibit is breathtaking. Arnold Friberg totally mastered the epic moment, and if we hadn’t been on a time schedule, I could have stayed there for hours. I seriously regret not taking more pictures of the paintings, but I am comforted that no pictures would have done the exhibit a hint of justice (although they might help preserve the memory for me!).
Lydia got into the exhibit when we started telling stories about the paintings and asking her questions. But she was hungry, and it took a lot of effort to stave off a tantrum.
After the exhibit, we drove to the library, only to realize our cards were at home. Dang. So we drove to Sprouts and did some grocery shopping before heading over to the Skarda family’s home for dinner.
We had so much fun with BOTH Skarda families! Jonathon and Michael are brothers and their families live in the same condo building, so we had a pretty full house between the six adults and six children. It was a total blast, and Abe and I left full of food and happy from the company. I felt like a hobbit after a happy feast.
Then it was groceries, gas, children to bed, and now, blog and bed. I am so excited to lie down and go to sleep.
Oh, also! I need to post my picture of Misty’s valentine hearts from yesterday. I didn’t help craft them at all, contrary to Abe’s report yesterday. No, instead I simply admired how cute and Pinterest appropriate they looked, and I took pictures on my now dead phone. Hopefully it will be recharged before I blog tomorrow.
This morning I practiced my knife skills by cutting a bunch of vegetables for lentil soup. The veggies came out noticeably uneven. Also, upon later consumption, I realized that the soup was unsalted and the veggies were practically raw. Yuck! Then I prepped a sweet potato souffle and rushed to play group with the kids. I forgot to bring Lydia’s bike, but that was okay since we didn’t stay long. My old roommates were in town, and as soon as they called, I rushed out of play group to meet them at home.
At one point I calculated that during my single years I had sixty-eight roommates. Granted, I counted my mission roommates, who would change up every six weeks. I also counted people I lived with for as short as a couple weeks. But I think it’s safe to say that those ten years had a variety of living situations, and during that time, my period with the roommates I saw today stands out in memory as one of the happiest living arrangements of my life. I loved my life with them, and it was truly uplifting to see these lovely, fun, funny, kind, intelligent, affirming women today. Vanessa is expecting baby Tessa in March, and Shandi has two kids, one a month older than Lydia and one GORGEOUS baby who is a couple months old.
Our kids got along great, and I loved, loved, loved visiting with Shandi and Vanessa. Shandi and I even got to play and sing together (she did the singing), and that was SO fun. She has a beeee-autiful voice, and I’d been looking forward to hearing it again for a while. Suffice it to say, I was sad when they left–but so glad that they came!
The rest of the day had some reading, some piano, some tantrums, lots of cleaning, and hopefully now some homework. Here are today’s pictures:
Since Mary is now on a one nap a day schedule, we can go to play group again!Shandi’s kids are Sebastian and Penelope. Vanessa remarked that Shandi could open a children’s boutique named “Sebastian and Penelope.” Can’t you picture it?
Abe watched the girls while I practiced tonight. From the sounds of it, they had some rough moments. But he did capture some good ones here:
We’ve all been getting sick for a while now, but I was in denial all morning because I wanted Lydia to be able to go to preschool. Our co-op has a rule that runny noses aren’t allowed, and you would think that’s pretty easy to understand except that I get hung up on the definition of “runny.” Finally, I admitted to myself that she really did have a runny nose, and we stayed home. Bummer.
Until! Until the phone rang. Aria called and suggested a play date, which was perfect since her kids both had slightly runny noses too. Great! We proceeded to have an awesome play date which culminated/ended in lunch and hot chocolate. By the time we were done, Mary was waaaaay overdue for her nap (usually at 11 am, today pushed to 1:30 pm).
After naps, I loaded the girls in the car. They have not set foot outside of the house since Sunday; we were overdue for an outing. But man, oh, man, by the time we were done with our library-grocery store run, I was just about ready for self-induced house arrest for the rest of winter. Waiting in line with two screaming children in an understaffed Sprouts was…horrible. To be fair, Lydia was great 90% of the time, but all it takes is a five minute meltdown for the whole outing to feel like a total disaster. By the time I got both girls back into the car, I was ready for a meltdown myself. Also, Mary lost her binky half way through our outing and screamed for the rest of the time. I spent about five minutes searching up and down the aisles for it before giving up and heading toward the mile long check-out lines.
To make it slightly worse, the woman behind me kept making exasperated sounds while I fumbled to get my groceries loaded onto the checkout stand. I was holding one screaming baby in one hand while the other cried and hung onto my legs, and I was mentally already throwing the b-word around when I realized that the poor woman looked like she was about to have a heart attack. She was bent over in pain and looked ashy gray in the face. I should have made sure she was okay, but she didn’t seem to enjoy the time my situation had already cost her, so I figured I’d better skip the small talk. Instead, I tried to internalized the lesson: Don’t judge on appearances. A woman who might appear to be an unfeeling, heartless b– is much more likely to be a wonderful person who might be acting out of her own personal duress. I hope I have more understanding and patience the next time I run into someone like that.
Anyway, here are today’s pictures:
I set up the princess castle tent for the play date. Espen really wanted Enna to come in with him.He wanted to give her a hug. Precious overload.Mary was on the go the whole play date.Lydia put this hat on Espen. His great grandparents were the first LDS converts from South Africa after the missionaries were sent in the second time, so this was actually a pretty appropriate attire. Also, the girls and I spent part of the morning playing “Imagination” on that pink blanket. I’d forgotten how fun that game is! Also, Lydia handed me a pretend sea shell during dinner, thanks to our morning game.At the library. Lydia was up to her old hoarding tricks again.I made stuffed pumpkins again, and I kind of love taking pictures of them. They’re just…cute.
