On Sunday I rested, did the budget, did some other work and got organized in the morning. In the afternoon, I rested and cleaned the house with Lily preparatory to our hosting church for the Community of Christ.
The kids were playing all morning. Clarissa was on a computer game and the other kids were making a store of scary things.
Church was incredible! We had 19 adults and talked all about the nature of God with a focus on the divine feminine and Community of Christ’s decision to give women the priesthood (I think in the 1980s). After church, I talked to my pastor Tyler about becoming an official member, which I’m really excited to do. I just am going to take some courses to prepare myself.
In the evening, I shot hoops while the rest of the family watched “Turning Red” again. We love that movie! I’m so grateful Lily is so supportive of my love for the Community of Christ. She loves it too, but still I really feel her support.
Today, Lily and I took a super lazy morning. Then we cleaned the house with the kids and I took the kids to a trampoline park with our friend Todd Covington and his two kids, Casey and Chora. It was too crowded for my liking, and totally chaotic. There was almost no supervision and kids (often too young to know any better) were cutting in line, or going where a jumper was planning to land. It was nuts! But even still, it was such an incredibly good time. The kids were over the moon, and I had fun jumping and playing on the obstacles a little bit too. It was also so nice to talk to Todd who I haven’t caught up with in a while. Here are a couple cute videos of Clarissa:
At home, I made veggie burgers for everyone. I burned them, but everything was still delicious. We then had everyone shower and we watched “Turning Red” as a family. We all loved it!
After putting everyone down to bed, Lily and I walked again. This time, it was Lily who was really stressed, and she did most of the talking while I listened. She did a lot of research about travel in Mumbai, and that on top of everything else hitting her right now had her really overwhelmed. After walking we watched Madam Secretary together, which is so good!
Today was an incredibly stressful day for me. I woke up at 6 and went straight to work on a point of view document for a deal we are trying to win. I’m still feeling a lot of stress over trying to figure out when I should lean in and do something myself and when I should expect my team to do it. It’s a hard balance for me to find. I then worked a full day with several meetings and felt completely tapped out around 3, which was fine because my meetings were over at that point and I could then quietly and at my own pace (including some resting) work on my tasks.
Around 6:00, we met my boss’s boss, Lucas, and his wife Kim, who are both great friends of ours for dinner at Shoots. It was wonderful and pleasant to see them as always. I was having a great time, until I referenced how bad my team’s pipeline is right now and then Lucas started to discuss that with me. It was an incredibly stressful conversation for me, not because Lucas was being rough, but rather because I’m failing so badly right now in terms of pipeline and billings that it was just so stressful to discuss it with one of my superiors and strike the right balance between taking ownership for not being in a better spot without painting a picture that I haven’t been working hard, because I definitely have and I don’t want him to think otherwise. Our lack of pipeline has been seriously on my mind all week, and especially after Wednesday when my boss had a tough, but fair and measured conversation with me. My pipeline is the lightest in the entire region by far. It’s so hard to be back at the bottom! I’m know we will come out on top, but it is so stressful to be in a turn-around situation again, and the reality is despite all the distractions my reps were dealing with last quarter (including a hospitalization and a very disruptive death in the family), the fact is I wasn’t focused on pipeline the way I am now. I took my eye off the ball and its embarrassing that I’m still learning the lesson after 8 years in sales that I need to be tenaciously focused on driving on my team every single day. Layer onto that that it can’t be just me fired up about driving pipeline, but somehow I need to activate reps, who I don’t control, to do more, only through my influence, and it is a very very very tough challenge.
Then the conversation with Lucas pivoted and he said that the head of the Asia Pacific sales team wants a manager from headquarters to come train various offices and instill some of the tried-and-true processes and values from the AE team at headquarters. Lucas offered that opportunity to me!! I was so grateful for the opportunity. Lily and I just started talking about how to have international experiences for my resume (I want to lead a global sales organization one day) and for the kids exposure, but we just couldn’t figure out how to make it work in our lives right now. This 2-4 week tour right now seems like the best possible scenario considering everything in our lives right now. We were over the moon, and also very stressed. It was a lot to take in. We already planned a big France trip this year, and finances are already tight from me having a down sales year (and Qualtrics stock being down right now). Also, I’m in a turnaround mode with my team right now, so the thought of trying to have a successful year in spite of being gone another 2-4 weeks after Europe all sounds very stressful. Additionally, at home, Lily researched travel in Mumbai, and it sounds very daunting with children, especially since I’ll be training at work during the day. Still, despite all the obstacles, we settled on feeling super grateful for the opportunity knowing that it lines up exactly with our life goals right now with being as minimally disruptive as possible. It was a lot to think about!
After dinner, I was incredibly stressed. My stress was already high from the work day, and then the pipeline conversation with Lucas and the news about Asia was too much. I grabbed desert with Lily at waffle love (which was so fun) and then we put the kids down and watched TV, and then walked and walked and walked until 12:35. Lily just listened to me talk and talk and talk because I was so full of stress and anxiety. It was an incredibly touching thing for me and I felt so supported. I just needed to talk about all the pressure I was feeling at work, and she was really there for me. I’m completely in love with that woman.
I worked late today which was helpful because my team is in an incredibly dire pipeline situation and also I ended work early yesterday. I ended work early yesterday because while traveling on Spring Break, Lily and I talked about life dreams, and the biggest takeaway was that Lily wants to be a writer. We decided to block off 3-9 every Wednesday and yesterday was her first session. She LOVED writing, and I LOVED reading what she wrote. She is so well-read, so thoughtful, and her desires are so good. She’s also an insanely talented writer and I can’t wait to see what she creates!
At 6:30, I met up with Lily and the three youngest kids at Foothill elementary to watch the Foothill Ballroom team perform (Lydia was home sick). They were so good! We signed up Mary and Lydia for Foothill ballroom next year. On the way out we admired the wonderful art from Mary and Lydia.
Mary:
Lydia:
When we got home, we told Lydia that we enrolled her in Ballroom at Foothill for next year which means that she will not be at legacy dance. Lydia was super disappointing and sad. She sat on the stairs feeling very sad and Lily and I talked to her until she felt better about everything. She is so understanding to support the decision. Legacy is way too much money (and in my opinion way to stressful and logistically crazy), and Foothill gives so much of the same benefits for way less strain on money and sanity. Lydia, thank you for understanding!
Today’s weather was absolutely stunning. I had a lot of meetings this morning and then sneaked away in the afternoon for a bike-ride with Lily. It was a major highlight for both of us.
When Lily picked up the kids from school, she brought them home briefly to drop off Basil (who just got the cutest haircut) and then took them to a playdate at the park with Amy’s kids. Amy and her kids gave Chicago book gifts to Lydia and Mary because of their upcoming Chicago trip together which was the sweetest thing ever. We love that family!
This morning I woke up, got ready, and then had so much fun watching all the kids engage with the morning festivities. Here are some videos!
After enjoying the morning festivities with the family, I went auto-cross racing with my friend Chris Dean. I originally told him no, worried about being away from the family so much after just being out of town for work, but Lily really encouraged me, which was so sweet because she’s been so stressed.
I am so glad I went! First of all, it was just awesome to see Chris, but secondly, even though I know next to nothing about cars, I got to have a totally unique experience stepping a toe into car-enthusiast world, and the racing was so genuinely fun. I could have gone 100 times. It was very safe, and you never hit over 50 or 60 miles per hour because it’s a technical course where the focus is in turning technique. Chris was also super trusting and generous to let me race his Audi. He was also an awesome driving with 2.5 seconds better than my best time (which is a lot).
When I wasn’t racing or sitting as a passenger with Chris, I was helping place cones that were tipped over. I snuck a little footage while I was on the job to help me remember what the awesome experience was like.
What a great experience!
At home, Lydia and Mary performed a dance for me that Lydia choreographed.
Also, while I was racing, Ammon lost a tooth. Here is a picture!
Lily made an incredible asparagus soup for dinner. She also had Georgia over for lunch. I think she made some type of special pancake for lunch, but I’m not sure.
After dinner, I played a fun ninja game with the kids on the trampoline in which I was training them and they had to punch and kick my magic wand that I moved around to make the task difficult. Then we finished that and I died and decorated eggs with them. Then we facetimed with Clark and Swathi and Lily and I cleaned and put the kids down.
The egg Ammon is working on is soon to become sparkly as you can see below!
Ammon is getting $6 tonight for losing his first tooth! Go Ammon! Also, after all the kids were down, Lily finished another book she’s been reading. She’s such a bookworm!
This morning I was at my computer by 7:00 getting caught up on work after being behind from my travels. I then prepared for recording a video on my thoughts on generosity (which the Community of Christ asked me to do). After that, I went on a run with Basil and Mary, which was the highlight of my whole day. She really wants to be a runner and she did such a good job. She was sweet to take in my tips and tricks which were so fun to share!
While I was running with Mary, Lily was getting the rest of the kids ready for their ballroom dance competition. I got myself ready and then pitched into help, but Lily, who did the lion-share, was seriously stressed out. Also, I was confused about the time we needed to be there and that didn’t help the situation. I tried to take the kids myself with the idea of giving her some time away from the chaos, and even stay home to take a break, but I forgot some dresses, so she had to drive out to Taylorsville to meet me and was not happy at all about how the whole morning had gone, which was totally understandable, especially given the fact she just did almost an entire week on her own while I was traveling. That started off what became a very rough day emotionally for both me and Lily.
I made a big deal about being two hours early because the sheet said we needed to be and Lydia said they practice before-hand. Turns out, we mostly just sat around for two hours, and being that early seemed completely unnecessary. At any rate, Ammon got to pal around with some of his dancing buddies.
The performances were so fun to watch. Clarissa got a pair of clip-on earrings and went absolutely nuts. In the below performance, she spots me in the audience, and then points to her earrings that she is so excited about.
Before Clarissa’s second performance, she kept pointing to her earrings from side stage as she waited for her performance to start. She was so excited about them. And then, as you can see in the below video, as the show ended, Clarissa, instead of exiting with everyone else on her dance team, walked towards the front of the stage pointing to her earrings and swishing her dress with her hands. It reminded Lily and I of her James and the Giant Peach performance when she walked to the front of the stage at the end, when she was supposed to exit the stage with the rest of her group. Lily and I laughed so hard, and it was such a nice moment to share together as we having a rocky day together.
All the kids did so great, and here is Lydia in her dances below!
After the ballroom dance competition, Lily took the kids home and watched the second Grindlewald movie with them. I drove to the Community of Christ building in Salt Lake and recorded my generosity video and helped them set up tables, chairs and decorations for Easter.
At home I finished watching the movie with everyone and then bought tickets so we could all go watch the Grindlewald movie. Lily suggested we get a sitter for Clarissa. I thought we would be fine. We were not fine. Clarissa and Ammon were both wiggly and difficult, so I took them out of the theater to drive them home, trying to figure out the best way to get Lily home when the movie was over. Then we saw our neighbors Todd and Mikayla, who were able to drive us home, so Lily could have the car. What a gift!
I put the small kids down, had a late dinner, and cleaned poop from the backyard, and then when the rest of the group came home, I helped Lydia and Mary set everything up for Easter. They were such great helpers!
