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I woke up at 3:30 am and since I couldn’t get back to sleep, I decided to get up at 5 am to go the gym. After that, I grocery shopped, cleaned the house, made dinner, fed the kids breakfast, and lost all of my steam around 10:30am.

At that point, I was good for approximately nothing for the rest of the day.  The kids are so used to being neglected by this point that they just play together and entertain themselves all day long after I retreat to rest. If they think I’m sleeping, they just work out things out instead of crying or asking for help. I can’t decide if it’s pathetic (as a reflection on me) or praise-worthy (good job, kids!). Maybe it’s both.

At 4pm I left for a five hour shift at the Pizzeria. It was like going from zero to sixty; all of the sudden I was out of bed and lifting huge things, running around like crazy and doing all sorts of stuff. I came limping home and am now back in my favorite place: bed.

In the meantime, Abe took lovely pictures of the girls.

My team leader mentioned the other day that the beginning of a new sales quarter is one of the busiest times of a quarter. That is because so many things wait when it is end of quarter and we are all focusing on selling.  When the quarter is finally over, all the initiatives, action items, meetings etc that were on hold finally roll out and bury all the sales reps that hoped for a break after the final stretch!

But, after a late night of work, I’m all caught up and happy to update everyone on the day a little.

Lily was not at full strength today, but she felt waaaaay better than yesterday.  She’s dealing with some frustration because she has such lofty designs for each day, but this pregnancy has really taken her energy in a major way.  I remember reading the chapter for dads in, What to Expect When You are Expecting and learning how exhausting it is to be pregnant. All of Lily’s best energy is going towards building a new creature that will soon bless our home.  Add on top of that the food poisoning, and she’s had a bit of a tough go recently.  She did make some amazing soup today and spent some great time with the kids.   I’m not sure what is in the soup (squash and spinach?), but it tastes amazing and it has fortified me through my late night of work. She even helped clean the house even though she was sooo tired.

When I got home from work, I finally finished patching the tube on our stroller and I took the girls for a spin.  Below are some pics!

 

I feel better today! Well, actually, I spent the morning wondering if I was about to have a heart attack because I had every symptom, but thankfully I had a doctor’s appointment which confirmed my blood pressure was normal. The best part of the appointment was seeing the baby and heartbeat, but they couldn’t determine gender. I guess I will either have to wait until beyond 20 weeks (they only do gender ultrasounds once a month) or I can hightail it to a 3D place and find out there. I guess I’m okay not knowing for a little while yet.

In the evening, we drove to North Salt Lake to celebrate Passover with Andrew and Sarah Walker, along with some of their other friends. I. loved. it. Every part was so inspiring, and I felt there was so much going on that was beyond my present capacity to absorb. I left feeling inspired to pray for those who currently suffer bondage on the earth, and my heart has been full ever since.

It was also really nice to have Andrew lead the Passover because he has studied directly with the leading LDS authority on the Passover, and he was full of interesting insights on the latter-day perspective of Passover. We are sad that Andrew and Sarah are moving in a couple months–it was so fun to spend time with them! We joked that we can Skype Passover next year while Andrew and Sarah are in Cambridge. (Andrew just got accepted into Harvard Business School.)

 

Yesterday I was on my deathbed with either food poisoning or pregnancy pain or both. Abe had to come home from work early because I was a puddle of puke and tears. Summer rescued me at noon by stopping over randomly and then offering to babysit the girls for free when she saw how miserable I was. I honestly felt like she was an angel sent from God because I was completely incapable of taking care of my children. Between Summer and Abe, I ended up going to bed at noon and am still here at 7:20 am.

I feel a little better today, although I still have some pain. I am a little afraid to try eating anything.

Good news, though. Assuming I can make it out the door, I have my first OB appointment today! I hope they do an ultrasound. I’ve heard that you can tell the gender sometimes on the 12 week ultrasound, so my fingers are crossed.

Abe took pictures of the girls filling up their “adventure boxes” outside and eating Easter candy while he was watching them.

Beyond feeding my children, I was a pretty neglectful mother today. I was so exhausted that I took three naps and lay on the couch in between those. My poor babies! After nap number three, I stumbled downstairs to discover the girls elbow deep in Easter candy. They begged me to unwrap their special chocolate egg lollipops, which I felt compelled to do just because I had neglected them for so long. After I unwrapped the candies, Mary took two bites and then froze. “My back hurts,” she muttered. I figured she meant to tell me that she had a stomachache from all the candy, so I promptly distracted the girls and then threw away the remainders of their lollipops.

We went to Lucas and Kim’s house for a little party with some of Abe’s other coworkers to watch the college basketball national championship. It was really fun, especially since all I had to do was eat and sit on a couch. Just my pace. The girls were exhausted and basically slept through it all.

I do have pictures of the girls playing after we got done grocery shopping this morning.

And then a video of Mary echoing my injunction not to strew the dead grass all over the sidewalk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CffVpK4-N-E

And this one where Mary’s laugh comes through. Also, Lydia says her new favorite phrase, “That’s the spirit!”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LZ87Xu2L3Q

Happy Easter! Ours was filled with General Conference, egg hunts, and lots of candy. In fact, I am pretty sure it will take the girls a couple days to come down from their sugar high of today.

Here was my favorite talk from General Conference: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2015/04?lang=eng&vid=4154894180001&cid=10

We took a ton of pictures and videos.

And finally, I uploaded a ton of videos online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv_QOl2H4fU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_K0Cw1ocmY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6RCD7lLp28

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZBGqf-ySA

I am exhausted from my work shift, so I’m just going to go with another post by pictures.

I had the best work shift that I have experienced to date. I made shortbread, streusel, and prepped: sopresata, speck, butternut squash, bacon (deli-ed), cut mozzarella, and ran a bunch of (in house) errands for the chef and line cook. For the first time there, I felt somewhat competent. I also appreciated a heightened sense of friendship with some of my co-workers. That was nice.

Sadly, Isabella left today. We miss her, and she left us the sweetest note! We’re looking forward to her visiting us again this summer.

 

Lydia had her ballet recital today. Afterward, we had dinner with Jan, Chelsea, Derek, Olivia, Camden, Carter, Tom, Suzanne, Norm and Judy. Those were the highlights of the day. I am currently blogging while we watch The Giver. Isabella brought it with her and wanted to watch it together.

Here are the pictures and videos from Lydia’s recital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw3vfgcuGSU is a video of one of Lydia’s dances.

And another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wK9vrSaocY

And the entire first dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7EcMg6bAJA

In between this and dinner, we squeezed in assembling her cake and another shopping outing. We are having a very hard time finding some of the things on Isabella’s list, but we made incremental headway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNmapBY26W8 is a link of everyone singing Happy Birthday (off key) to Isabella.