This is Abe. Lily is at yoga right now. Life has been very good in the Darais house lately, and today is no exception. Two days ago, Lily and I had a pow-wow about our worsening sleep deprivation and made a plan for gettting more sleep. Last night, I slept about seven hours and today I felt great!
Today was very much a recovery day for Lily. Yesterday was a very intense day for her so she caught her breath today as much as she could while still taking care of the children. She even had a poetry session with Lydia, teaching her multiple poems! Lily told me that Lydia likes the poem, “Grandeur of God” which pleased Lily because that is one of her all-time favorites.
Work is going really well for me. Although I was frustrated this morning about my performance, I had a really good lunch-time walk where I prayed a lot and felt like everything was in God’s hands and progressing as it should. Though my afternoon was only mildly successful, I found joy and satisfaction in my work. The last work note is that one of my collegues today told me that today was John Steinbeck’s birthday. My collegue also told me that East of Eden by Steinbeck was one of his all time favorite books. Whenever someone reports to me their favorite book, it makes me think I should read it. Maybe I’ll get it on audio book?
At home I had a breif moment with Lily before she left for yoga. I then put Mary down because she was so exhausted (she was starting to fade in her high-chair) and then I colored downstairs with Lydia before putting her to bed.
Tomorrow I have a regional lunch meeting and there will be a competition for the craziest hair. I’m determined to participate because I’m interviewing for Region positions on Monday and I want to prove that I know how to have fun…..I have no idea how I am going to do my hair…….I’ll try to have a pic to post tomorrow!
Speaking of pictures!
Today was an incredibly rainy day. So great for a desert!
Mary getting one of her favorite books.Mary asking Lily to read the book.Lydia climbing on a mountain/overturned chairA good shot of Lydia’s braid.
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:
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.
My yoga class ended around 10pm tonight, so this is a late night post. Therefore, it will be quick. I took some pictures with my iPad today and in so doing discovered a small back log that I am going to throw up here, since this is the end of my daily report.
Mary woke up before Lydia this morning, so we hung out for an hour. We took some selfies.Mary threw her first angry tantrum today (no tears, just screams and kicks and wriggles) for an hour and a half. This is what happened afterward. We cuddled, unbeknownst to her…This is Mary happy, earlier in the day. Today she wanted my undivided attention at ALL times. It was fun, but the minute I tried to do anything except pay attention to Mary, the fun ended.Then I found this one on the iPad and couldn’t believe I’d forgotten to post it. Mary LOVES climbing, and she’s even gotten from where she’s standing in the picture to the top of the desk. We are now super careful never to leave anything out that could give her a foot lift.Posing.I know Christmas is done, but I LOVE this picture of Lydia cuddling the snowmen. And I miss that tree.
Having Abe home for the past three weeks has been glorious. To be perfectly frank, I am terrified about what next week will bring. It would all be easier if I weren’t in cooking school, but I just have to remember that Abe and I both feel extremely good about that decision. I keep going back to those assurances, because starting Monday Abe starts his new job and we will not see each other much for the next four months. I have class three nights a week, and the other two nights Abe will work late. Pity party at my house!
Aside from feeling terrified that our blissful vacation is drawing to an end, today was pretty good. Abe, who is turning 30 this month, even went outside to work on the snow fort…by himself. Lydia refused to go because she didn’t want to get cold, and Mary was napping. Here’s the fruit of his hard work:
He still says it has a long way to go. When he will find time for the going, I don’t know. But doesn’t it look great? Can you imagine the size this would be if we had the weather currently affecting the Midwest?
I got some fun time in with my children, some cooking, some piano, and now I’m about to don headphones while Abe and I snuggle up to watch our separate movies. He’s going to watch training videos for work while I watch youtube piano videos. Super romantic, I know.
Here are today’s pictures:
Okay, Lydia and I played the piano together, read a ton of books, stamped and crafted postcards for her cat, talked on the phone to my mom and Grandma, and yet…there were still somehow many hours left in the day to kill. These no-nap days are craaazy!! Needless to say, she spent a couple hours with Daniel the tiger, too.My house is a mess. Instead of cleaning it, I took a picture and ran to the piano to get more practice in before 9 pm hit.Since I had all the ingredients on hand, dinner tonight was free. (And by that I mean it didn’t come out of this week’s budget. Ain’t no free lunch in real life.) I just braised some cabbage and onion and layered that with some leftover spelt bread (frozen since Christmas) and some cheese I bought a week ago. I drenched it in broth and baked for 30 min. Loosely based on a recipe I read a couple days ago, and I think it was yummy.Mary in her high chair. These times of day make us all so, so fussy.Since Mary had trouble getting to sleep last night, we fed her second dinner to her a little later today. She is a fan of ramen…and, we found out today, milk! She drank a TON of milk tonight. I’ve only been giving the girls water because I don’t like milk, but I guess it turns out their preferences differ from mine.
After Bikram this morning, I came home to discover this:
Abe and Lydia had spent over an hour building this together.They were still outside, hard at work.Lydia packed the snow by kneeling on it.
Abe told me that he’s done with snowmen for the season.
These are leftover remnants of snowmen from the last snow. The one on the right used to be 10 feet tall. Lydia named (all by herself) the one on the left “Snowhopper.” My mom named the one on the right “Mr. Snowshine.” Their time has since passed.
After I came home, Abe went to lunch with his friends, Morgan, Kendall, and Kade. After that he went to his dad’s house to work on his homework for his new job, and so I had the girls to myself. We played, ate, and napped.
During their naps, I read some more of The Hobbit. That book is meant to be read on a day like today:
While I was reading, fat snowflakes were falling outside of my window and I felt so cozy and warm inside. It felt so wonderful to be reading about such adventures while I was snug under my blankets during an actual snowstorm. I also really like the parts of the book where the travelers get hungry–and then really enjoy getting fed. That cycle seems to happen every couple pages, and it never grows old (on me).
In fact, I was so taken with the coziness of the whole situation that I went downstairs and made soup. Then Abe came home and I spent the rest of the evening practicing. Last night I had nightmares that I had memory slips on La Campanella, and I woke up panicky and spent the next thirty minutes trying to see the score in my head. It was nice to address the shaky parts in real life.
Also, I am really nervous about my competition audition tapes. I did not realize they were an actual audition until Abe read the fine print before packing them up to mail. When I made the recordings, I just thought that the judges wanted to see how you played, and it didn’t really matter what you sent in. Those recordings a) weren’t memorized, b) were chock full of technical errors, c) seriously lacked in musicality, in part because of a. But I guess that the good news is, if I don’t make it into this competition, there are tons of other ones around the country, and I can make other recordings–hopefully, ones that I actually like. In the meantime, though, I’m biting my nails and hoping I make it into the competition.
Mary, bless her, took a four hour nap today. During that time, Abe made his final trip to the office, and I parented Lydia horizontally from bed. Mainly she ran around the house playing pretend while I lay there exhausted, but she did climb up a couple of times and join me. We watched a lot of figure-skating Youtube videos together and daydreamed jointly about Lydia ice skating. I think I will take her ice skating tomorrow since she was so excited about it.
After Abe came home, I left to do Bikram and some grocery shopping. Today is the first day of my new budget, and I have already spent half of my weekly allowance. Although this is cause for alarm, I am also really excited to finally bite the bullet and adjust. I feel like this new regime will make me a better, more disciplined person, and, frankly, I’ll take that over great cheese any day. (Although I quite like great cheese…)
While I was gone, Abe and the girls organized the basement craft station, and now we only have one more closet to go before our house is totally organized (at least by our loose standards). I am so excited!
Since I was sweaty and gross after Bikram, I jumped in the bath with Lydia and Mary. Lydia had fun dumping water all over me and told me to “be brave.” (She watched Brave today.)
I forgot to take pictures since I spent most of the day in bed. Maybe tomorrow?
Happy New Year! Last night Abe and I watched the entire Salt Lake valley explode into fireworks from our bedroom window. It was beautiful! I remember having New Year’s on my mission (in Salt Lake) and wanting so badly to see the fireworks, and with that memory in mind, I enjoyed the luxury of watching the fireworks a little extra last night.
After Bikram this morning, I tried to make sure that I was heading into the new year with only positive connotations about everyone I know. To the best of my knowledge, I think I’m heading into the new year with happy and grateful feelings about all of my friends and acquaintances; if I had any official resolutions, the first would be to keep it that way all year long. If you’re in my life and reading this, know that you are appreciated, respected and loved. If you’re in my life and not reading this, then you’re still appreciated, respected and loved…and I’ll have to try to find ways of communicating that throughout this coming year.
Here are today’s pictures:
We took the girls to the playground today, since it was actually pretty nice out.
In their winter clothes, they made the jogger soooo heavy.Lydia fell asleep on the way to the playground, so Mary got some attention all to herself.She loved going down the slide.I loved cuddling her, but she was wriggling to get down and play some more.…and then Lydia woke up and bravely walked across the wobbly bridge. I love the way she cautiously holds on (an inherited trait from my side of the family).
After dinner, Lydia was in a snuggly mood.
We missed FHE on Monday, so we had it today. We acted out the walls of Jericho three times, and then Abe built a mountain out of pillows which the girls proceeded to repeatedly climb for the next thirty minutes.
Circling the “walls of Jericho.”
Mary was in heaven climbing this mountain of pillows. She’s a happy girl, but Abe remarked that he’s never seen her that happy…and we suspect she would have kept climbing for days–given the opportunity.
My friend, Maria, is in town, so this morning we went to Bikram together. We had a great time, despite the profuse fountain of sweat spurting off of the man behind us. Afterward Maria humorously referred to the situation as “his hydroponics.” That made me laugh.
Then we went to Liberty Heights for cheese, and then to Harmon’s for groceries and lunch. We ate in their little cafe area and talked a lot about blogs.
Maria had a lot of great insights into blogging, one of which was that our children deserve privacy. I agree, and so I came away conflicted about my own blog (which deprives my children of that right). So I’ve been thinking, and here are the reasons I blog:
a) personal therapy/fun
b) to preserve memories and chronicle our family life
c) for my sweet grandma’s daily reading material
d) to help any interested people to get a glimpse of how some Mormons live (light on a hill and all that stuff, except when I’m writing all the bad stuff down–then the light gets pretty dim!). I know there are a lot of monetized Mormon mommy blogs out there, and from what I’ve read and heard of them, I don’t think they represent my “Mormon mommy” life at all. So even though I would never try to monetize this blog or even try to reach a large audience, at least I’m representing my reality as best as I can.
e) because I must be a narcissist. I mean, who else blogs their thoughts every single day? Even though this troubles me greatly, the thoughts keep happening and the blogs keep getting written…
For reasons c and d, not to mention what a hassle it was for me to read my own blog when I had the password system in place, my blog is public. But maybe sometime in the future, that will change again.
We also talked about reading blogs. Personally, I’ve cut out reading any blog that does not teach me to do something (like cook or craft). By my standards, I would not read my own blog if it weren’t my own.
So enough meta. Tonight we had a great dinner party with Maria, her husband, Kyle, and a mutual friend, Cynthia Barlow. I had heard a lot about Cynthia but never met her before tonight. What a lovely person! I am excited because I think she might buddy up with me on a yoga pass, which would be awesome.
Also, to record the bad stuff: I burnt the squash for the dinner party. It was pretty mortifying. I did the squash rings again, and I was SO excited because I amped up the egg and cheese in the filling…but then I baked them on the bottom rack so that there’d be room for the souffle (tonight’s menu was an exact repeat from our dinner party on Friday), and the bottoms of the squashes burned. So sad!
Today’s pictures are few, but here they are:
Abe and Lydia playing with Lydia’s play food.Then Abe left, so Lydia and I played with her new doctor set. After curing me, she helped out her sick doll, Tessa. At one point, Lydia took all of my measurements and exclaimed, “You look great!” I love this little girl.
