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We made it to Cancun! After twelve hours of travel (including a layover, obviously), we finally made it. We are staying at The Royal Hideaway Playacar Resort, a five diamond all-inclusive resort. I feel almost guilty for how nice everything is, but we’re grateful to Qualtrics. In fact, a recurring theme in this trip’s conversations with Abe’s coworkers is how happy everyone on this trip is with Qualtrics right now.

Abe’s coworkers who came on the trip are exceptionally pleasant people. You can spot the Qualtrics people a mile away because they’re all young, married, hipster-Mormons. When approached, they smile and say “thank-you” a lot.

The head of sales told us all to eat a ton because the resort is making a killing on all of us due to the fact that none of us drink. When we got here, there was a huge reception room filled with a full table of freshly poured cocktails, perfumed towels, and chocolates, and the drink-pourer looked bewildered at how every single person went for the bottled water instead of his drinks. I felt bad for him, but I didn’t know how to tell him it wasn’t personal without being awkward.

My favorite thing so far is that I can order room service at any time, day or night, and free food will magically appear at my door. I am contemplating ordering some ceviche, grilled fish and lemon tart, but I am still full from dinner. Maybe if I wake up at 2 am with a hankering, I will take advantage of this amazing, magical service. The only other time I’ve been able to do that was in the hospital after I gave birth to Mary. All the food was free, and you could order a meal every two hours, which I did with religious punctuality. By the time I checked out, the hospital kitchen was exceedingly glad to see me depart.

Oh, boy! Some nice resort worker just showed up at our door with night time chocolates. Yummy. Maybe I don’t need room service after all…

We are going to some ruins tomorrow. Here is the one picture we have from today:

Posting a picture makes me miss the girls. Usually I post pictures of them, but I won’t see them again until Friday. We were so nervous about how they would do on the first day away, but they seem to be doing great. Well, Mary refused to speak to us on the phone, but that was to be expected. (She shunned me for two days after I returned from my Martha Stewart trip. I was sad but not surprised when she refused to say “hi” on the phone.) Tomorrow is their first day in day care (we enrolled them for this week while we’re away), and I really, really hope it isn’t too traumatic for Mary.

Anyway, more pictures tomorrow.

We celebrated Abe’s birthday today by having over our friends, Morgan and Jessie, for dinner. Afterward we went to Paige’s art show at BYU. I am now so exhausted I can barely see the screen.

I get so frustrated at how slow I am in the kitchen. I started cooking around 2pm and didn’t end until 6:30. I made borscht, beef stroganoff, and blood orange tartlets. I made Abe assemble the smoked salmon appetizers because I was so far behind I couldn’t even squeeze those in.

My inspiration came from Mimi Thorisson’s blog. It’s so pretty! http://mimithorisson.com/2012/12/17/borscht-blinis-beef-stroganoff/

At any rate, I only got a picture of my tartlet today. The rest of the food got expedited to people’s stomachs because I was so late getting it ready.

I didn’t get any pictures of the girls because I spent the whole morning cleaning and the rest of the day cooking. To make sure they didn’t do undo my work, I parked them in front of Amazon Prime and voila! My house is perfectly clean, and all of the food (eventually) got cooked!

Here’s one of my tartlets:

Everything in life is a gift. That’s my big takeaway from today. Abe and I spent an hour this evening chatting, and we both came to that conclusion. Abe is stressed out by a mammoth work deal right now, and I am stressed out by culinary school. As we talked through our frustrations and reviewed past situations in our lives where God has helped us through, we came to the conclusion that no matter what trial we’re staring down, each experience in our life is a gift from God.

I also have spent the past couple days thinking about the prophet Jeremiah and the Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom. The latter said, “God is good all the time.”  She said that God was as good to her in the midst of her suffering as he was towards the end of her life (when she lived in abundance and ease). Jeremiah was thrown into a mire without water and left there until he was about to die (and indeed would have died, save for the compassionate intervention of his Ethiopian friend). I wish I could talk to Jeremiah and ask him if he had the same experience of Corrie Ten Boom. Was God good to him during his trial? Did he figure out the gift in that experience? Was that experience a gift?

I have never had trials of remotely similar scale to those people, but from my own experience, I can look back and see how God’s hand is found in every part of my life–even the hard parts. Right now cooking school is hard because I find it very difficult to feel successful. I pray all the time for God to get me through, and yet here I am, six months away from graduating, and I don’t think there’s any way I’ll look back on this time and say, “Wow, God really helped me to ace culinary school!” What I can say, though, is that He has helped me navigate and learn from the multitude of mistakes I make during this experience, and having to face and fight through my weaknesses so frequently has been spiritually transformative. There’s my gift.

Abe has dealt with the trauma of having a deal that he’d hoped and prayed over for three years at his past job go through (a huge high!) and then be taken away, through no fault of his own, just weeks later. Right now it looks like he’s “caught a whale” (his dad’s term) at work, but that trauma lingers in his mind and makes him paranoid and afraid during the long, drawn-out process of complication-navigation. Since he’s what working through feels so big, the complications that arise and his past trauma make him feel intense anxiety and stress.

(Side note: We went to the eye doctor today, and the doctor detected loads of stress in the blood vessels of Abe’s eyes. He told Abe to take a vacation. Mexico, good timing!)

Anyway, the point is that once we understand that all our experience is a gift, we can move forward with confidence. If this deal goes through, what a gift! If it doesn’t, I know God heard our prayers and must be answering us with something better. Abe and I both feel comforted knowing that our lives are in God’s hands, and that He answers our prayers with the best possible gifts.

Pictures:

I liked everything about today. Everything! The best part was that I didn’t have to go to school today, so we got to have a real Family Home Evening tonight. We decided to teach the kids a lesson on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and then we started reading the Book of Mormon as a family. The girls get to color all of the verses we read together. Tonight’s grand total: Two. I wonder how long this is going to take…?

Here are the pictures:

Today was a perfect Sunday. Pictures of the day’s progression:

This day was packed. I worked out this morning and then Abe played basketball. While he was at basketball, I menu planned and wrote a shopping list. Then it was time for lunch, after which Mary napped and I tutored Lydia for an hour. Afterward, Lydia and I  spent almost two hours shopping while Abe stayed home and cleaned the ENTIRE house–thank-you, Darling!! Then we came home, blitz-cooked dinner, and drove to the Marshalls’ to babysit. (We’re doing a stake conference babysitting swap.)

Abe is currently passed out on the bed. We kind of want to watch Mary Poppins because we saw Saving Mr. Banks last night, but we’re both so tired it might not happen. At any rate, we do have some pictures from the day.

Before I post those, though, a prayer solicitation. I need to do an internship this quarter, and Abe turned to me tonight and asked if I wanted to intern at Communal. I laughed in his face because Communal is only the hottest restaurant in Utah Valley right now, and I assumed this was another classic instance where Abe overestimated my abilities. But he then proceeded to tell me that, through work, he has a connection with the owner of Communal, and it looks like a real possibility that I could get an internship there. My jaw dropped when he explained that to me. So right now I am just praying that I get in. Mom and Grandma, could you please pray that I get this internship? I really, really, really, reallyreally want it. (That felt greedy to write, but at least it’s a forthright statement.) Thank-you!

Here are today’s pictures:

Today was a really nice, slow day. I did a lot of cleaning, and Abe got home from work early so we went to the pool with the kiddos.

Here are the pictures:

I had lunch today with my favorite Young Women’s leader (or youth leader period, for that matter) of all time. Camey Hadlock is just an amazing person, and I enjoyed every minute with her. The time just flew.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to execute the lunch menu I had in my head, but I did get around to making a Dorie Greenspan recipe: Torteau de Chevre. It’s basically a cross between a cheesecake and a souffle wrapped in the best sweet tart dough I’ve ever had. I grated some lemon zest into the recipe for added zing, and I just loved it. I wish I could cut and paste Dorie’s essay from her cookbook in here just because she wrote about this cake so delightfully, but I’ll just have to content myself with my own little picture.

I have a feeling the middle was supposed to rise more, but the texture and taste was beauty.

Then I napped. By the time I finally got the girls bathed, it was 5 pm. Feeling guilty, I took the girls to Barnes and Noble to pick out books. Yesterday I bribed Lydia to let me clean out her ears with the promise of a new book, so we made good on that promise today.

Abe had to go to a work dinner tonight, so I took the girls to Smashburger for dinner and milkshakes.

We got home at the same time as Abe, and then we all vegged on the couch watching Winnie the Pooh until the girls’ bedtime.

I need to get a start on my new book club’s book: The Professor and the Madman. It’s about how a man locked up in an criminal asylum for the insane provided most of the definitions we find in the Oxford English Dictionary. So exciting!

Shout out to Mom and Abe, both of whom prayed for me tonight.Thank-you both. I felt God helping me through class today, and I am sure your prayers helped. When I pulled up to school, I had no idea how I was going to make it through. I had a massive headache, and tonight was the first night the restaurant was actually open for service. I felt like I was going to be sick.

Turns out I LOVE service nights! We get out early, and since we’ve prepped most of the food before, it’s actually much less stressful than I anticipated. Also, the food is really good. Here’s what we made:

Sorry this post is (as usual? as usual, probably.) all about me. Abe is doing great at work, the girls are healthy and happy, and everything else is hunky dory.

Oh! We finally got rid of Francie yesterday. At the table later that night Lydia burst out screaming, “But Francie and Bazi go together! Our neighbor Tom told us that!” She calmed down after Abe reassured her that Francie is in a better place, although she occasionally comments about how Bazi must miss Francie.

Okay, to bed to sleep off my headache. Hears to a pain-free tomorrow!