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Today I woke up and rode to Lehi on the Murdock trail and back. At home, I loaded the bikes for the whole family and then we all went to Utah Lake. From Utah Lake, we all rode along the Provo River trail, until we arrived at Kneaders where we got lunch (along with Roxberry smoothies). We then rode the whole way back. The entire thing was 16.5 miles! Here are some pictures and anecdotes about the ride.

I am so grateful for all our working bicycles that allowed for this perfect ride. And the weather was magnificent.

We stopped by Cook’s on the way home and did a couple hours of gardening. Actually, while Lily was gardening, I was mostly picking up (one by one) over a thousand blue glass rocks that Clarissa threw in our window wells when she was three. I returned them to our fire pit where they belong. Lily did amazing work planting more flowers and Lydia picked her beets!

In the evening, Lily and I went to dinner with our friends, The Olsens. We ate (for the first time) at the Lakehouse at Deer Creek Reservoir. We loved it and it is now my and Lily’s favorite local place to eat. We had so much fun conversing with our friends.

What a rich and wonderful day.

By some miracle, I finished work on-time today and Lily and I went to the symphony while Lydia and Mary went to fall fest with their friend Lizzy and her mom, and Josie watched the little kids.

At the symphony, Nemanja Radulovic was performing. He was supposed to play khachaturian violin concerto no. 2 and Lily was particularly excited to hear that piece, but some of the orchestra members got Covid and/or were exposed to it, so they had to switch the piece to Thaikovsky’s violin concerto, which is one of my favorite violin pieces.

Lily and I were blown away by both the violinist and the young French conductor. They both were so expressive and playful and stood close to each other and looked each other in the eyes while they seeming danced together through segments of the song. Nemanja had the greatest facial expressions as he smiled or expressed other emotions with his music. And the actual music was incredible. He also did a Paganini encore which blew away the audience. He had multiple standing ovations.

I love going on dates with my sweetheart and I’m so grateful she arranged this outing for us!

Here is a picture that Clarissa colored. She has been coloring a lot lately.

In the evening we went and saw the play, “Tuck Everlasting” because our friend Olivia was in it. I was so touched by the play, and it was exactly what my soul needed. It was funny, whimsical and very profound. Here is my favorite line (not verbatim) from it:

Don’t be afraid of death. Be afraid Of not truly living. You don’t need to live forever. You just need to really live.

The play affected Lydia and we talked about death afterwards. She is a deep thinker.

Lily and I went to bed feeling grateful for our lives, and talking about times when we have felt truly alive. We’ve realized this blog has captured so much of the “truly living” we feel like we’ve done. Family, travel, connection, home routines and comforts, cute things the kids say, our romance, nature, family and friend relationships have all made our life so rich. We feel so blessed.

Lydia made this card for Mary recently after Mary had her fall during the Park City bike ride. I just today (writing this two days later) was commenting to Lily that Lydia has a heart of gold.

Also, I want to share a bit about Clarissa’s command of the English language, specifically slang. She has always been very verbal, and has charmed us as she has precociously said things like, “what the heck?”. But today took the cake on her use of idioms. While putting her to bed, I was on the phone with my brother Jere, and I let Clarissa say hello. Clarissa told Jere all about how she recreated Toca World from her iPad with blocks in her room. She was so excited and told him all about it and then said, “it was epic!” I thought that was so funny. Only two days ago she asked me what “epic” meant and I explained it to her. What a learner!

I worked from home today and caught this cute scene:

Twice per week (Tuesday and Thursday) Lily has a Clarissa day. That is to say a day when I’m working and the other kids are all at school. Lily has been really throwing herself into giving Clarissa attention on those days. They play together, practice numbers together, read together (Clarissa is progressing) and just be with each other. I can tell these days mean so much to both of them. When I put Clarissa down at night on a Clarissa-mommy day, I’ve noticed she’s likely to cry for Lily and want “mommy” to put her down. Lily also recently told me Clarissa makes her smile every day.

We were in full swing today with our home routines and very busy. I had a big day at work and Lily pushed things forward on the house (mopping, cleaning, laundry etc) and got in a big workout. Lily picked up the kids from school, took them to tennis and then brought them home and fed them. That’s about when I finished work, and then I cleaned the kitchen, bathed Clarissa and put her down and worked with Ammon and put him down. All of that was while Lily and the kids made tremendous progress working on their instruments for I think about three hours. It was a very productive day for all of us. Mary even helped Ammon with his worksheets!

Because I forgot to bring the cereal, Ammon and Jamie fed us breakfast again. They are so kind! Then we just sat around and connected for an hour or so while the kids played. That was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Ammon and Jamie are so fun to connect to. We connected over politics, religion, life/spiritual journeys, family, climate change and possible future locations to live. While we were feeling socially nourished, the kids were having tons of fun together and even built their own home as you can see below:

We then drove home and finished All the Light You Cannot See shortly before we got back to Orem. First we washed Basil and then Lily and I groomed him for a long time (Lily did the hard part). We also unpacked, and Lily worked with the kids on music and Neil Giles came over to give Clarissa ice cream for her birthday. Then Lily and I were so tired, we went to bed early, which was amazing. What a wonderful weekend!

Today we had the most incredible day at Fish Lake and it was soooo fun to share it with our friends Ammon, Jamie and their four kids. We are also grateful that they were so prepared! I joked that I forgot a dozen things, and they always had the things that we were missing. They also made us a hot yummy burrito breakfast in the morning! While we were eating breakfast, the kids built a teeter totter. Quite ingenious! Eventually someone fell off and cried, but it was fun until then.

After breakfast, we all went boating. Weather was perfect, which was especially nice because we were quite cold at night.

We boated to the shallow water across the lake and put in our anchor right on the edge of all the water plants. Within 15 or 20 minutes, people started catching fish. Then we just kept catching and catching. Each of the 8 kids caught a fish and we were delighted at the success. Everyone had a really great time.

Ammon and Clarissa helped me steer the boat back to shore.

Then we had a picnic and it was so delicious. Lily prepared turkey sandwiches on french baguette bread and they were to die for. Then we all hiked on the Doctor Creek Trail, and it was gorgeous. It was a wonderfully immersive aspen experience.

On the trail, we found a treehouse someone had built. We allowed the kids to climb with supervision and that was fun.

Back at camp, I cooked Lily’s tin foil dinners, and they were heavenly. For desert we had banana boats and s’mores and those were also amazing.

Today was so full of fun activities and Jamie, Ammon and their kids were a constant delight to be around. Yay for friends and camping!

Today I focused on wrapping up work while Lily prepared for camping at Fish Lake. 4:15, I was helping with the efforts and we left around 6:30 I think. We met Ammon, Jamie and their family at the campsite and they were so nice to help us set up our tent since we got in late in the dark. While preparing Lily listened to podcasts including one about the Doctrine and Covenants (Mormon Stories) and one about the Great Salt Lake (scientists are now weeping because of the situation).

Clarissa helped Lily bake today. I think these are cookies they are making. Doesn’t she look great in flannel?