Weekly Review February 5 '11

Happy Birthday to Ben!! I had to say that before I forget!


I'll start out with some photos I forgot to post last week. First, here is Snickers with his nice new hair cut:

Doesn't he look cute? He is one handsome dog! I admit I don't really understand dogs. I wonder every day when I take him outside, why he has to sniff and sniff to find the spot that "smells right" before he'll poop. Wouldn't any patch of grass do? (Preferably, one right next to the front door!) When it is cold outside, I would especially like it if he were not so picky! He is fun, though, and I admit that it is good that he gets me outside a lot more than I would be otherwise. I think the outdoors is beautiful, but I tend to stay inside too much. Anyway, here is a picture of Scott and Tanner, also with new haircuts:

I meant to post that one last week. Now, on to this week! One of the benefits of being up early to pick up the boys from Seminary, as well as being forced to take the dog out early every morning, is that I see a lot more sunrises than I used to see. (While Snickers has his nose to the ground, sniffing for the "right" spot, I am looking up at the sky!) Like this one, on the last day of January:

As always, the pictures don't do it justice. These photos were taken after I got back from taking the boys to school. On the way to pick them up, it looked incredible also--the sky was a little pinker and a little sliver of a moon was still up. I didn't have a camara then, though!

Now for the weather report. Today it is "misting". It is wet, cold and miserable. It rained on Wednesday but the temperatures were in the mid 40's, so it felt a bit balmy and after the sun came out if was actually quite nice--until the sun went down and the temperatures dropped. The rest of the week has been cold gray winter. The huge storm we were supposed to get did not really materialize. We did get some freezing rain Monday night and it was a bit icy Tuesday morning, but everyone was still surprised when Frederick County cancelled school that day. What was that about? The kids were thrilled, of course, but I found that day rather trying. I had a lot of work to do and the boys weren't too happy about helping with that. They also weren't happy that I made them do some scouts and some Duty to God stuff, but I am a mean mom so I made them do it anyway. We got a lot done, but it took most of the day and I was exhausted from all the contention! Seth got ahold of the camera and took this blurry photo of Scott playing games (after the work got done):

That's Jared in the background, and in the foreground you can see that Tanner is on facebook, getting caught up with "his peeps", as he calls them.

I think even the kids were glad when normal life resumed on Wednesday and they were able to go to school, basketball practice, and YM. I had a presidency meeting that evening while they were at YM. Frank had work to do, so Seth came with me.

Scott started a new class on Wednesday--he transferred out of his AP Environmental Science class because he found out he was supposed to take Chemistry first, which he hasn't taken. He wanted to take Physics instead, but the counselor insisted that he take Chemistry and he is not happy about it. It's not going to be a fun semester. He can be very stubborn when he doesn't get what he wants. We are already struggling to get him caught up on the things he missed before he transferred into the class. He thinks there is no way that he can pass the class, which is not a very good attitude to have going into it.

Tanner and Jared went to spend the night with Ryan and Bryson last night, so it was just Seth, Scott and I after school. I took this picture of Scott holding Snickers because I thought it was so cute:

Scott had some friends over last night. I've been encouraging him to do some group dating, and he finally got around to getting something organized with some of his other friends. Each of the boys invited a girl and they all came to our house to make dinner, play games, and watch a movie. Scott made lasagna and cheddar biscuits (with my help), Neil (boy in the center) brought a salad, and Ricardo (on the far left) made a cake. They are playing tennis with Collette and Ellen in the picture (yes, that's me with Snickers on my lap in the background):

Scott and Abbie (the girl he invited) are watching:

Ellen came with Ricardo and Neil came with Collette. (Ellen is the girl that Scott took out once this summer--they have the same birthday).

After dinner, they watched a movie (How to Train Your Dragon). Seth really enjoyed having all the "big kids" over. He flirted shamelessly with all the girls. Here he is making himself at home in between Scott and Abbie:

I think everyone had a good time, judging by the amount of laughing going on and how long they stayed up (about 11:00 before everyone started heading home). When I was cleaning up the dishes, I found this on one of the cake pans:

Cute, eh?! I have no idea who wrote it, although it doesn't look like Scott's handwriting.

Since we were up pretty late, we slept in this morning. It's been a bit of a stressful day (mostly because of chemistry) but we are hoping to relax and have some fun together as a family this evening. I have a baptism to attend in a few minutes, so we are waiting until I get back.

The rest of this week was the usual busy stuff. Frank had a lot of work to do. I also did a whole lot of cleaning and organizing on the main level and although I wore myself out a bit, the house does look a lot better. It's amazing how little time it takes for the house to get messy and unorganized! But for now, it looks great, and I breath a deep sigh of satisfaction every time I look around. (But don't ask me to go down to the basement!)

We feel very blessed and we are glad that it is February!

Weekly Review January 29 '11

Greetings from our crazy house! I am wondering if we are ever going to get back to a normal schedule around here.


Sunday started out early for me--I had a meeting at 7:00. Well, at least, I thought I had a meeting at 7:00--it was actually at 7:45. That was ok, though, because it gave me time to set up the chairs in the Primary room. They are always set up, but never the way I want them, so I have to adjust them a bit every week. We had Ward Conference, so the stake presidency came to our ward council meeting before church. It was really good. I didn't get much out of the rest of the meetings because Seth was a handful during Sacrament Meeting and then of course I went to Primary after that so I missed the rest of the meetings. I thought Frank would be able to fill me in later, but as it turned out, he missed the meetings also because he was taking Scott to immediate care. That's because right after Sacrament Meeting, Scott injured his hand. It's hard to explain how it happened, because it was one of those "freak" accidents. Apparently he was reaching out his hand to shake hands with his friend David when another friend (Ricardo) slammed into David, which knocked David's hand hard into Scott's hand, pushing back his thumb. Scott says he heard something "pop"! As it turns out, he didn't break his thumb, but he did pull or tear a bunch of ligaments in his hand. They put a temporary cast on it which he had to keep on until Thursday, and he was not supposed to use his hand at all until then. Here's what it looks like (Scott was resting on the floor Sunday afternoon):

Although it's stiff like a cast, it's removable, so he was able to take it off himself. He did remove it on Thursday, and although it was a little stiff and sore at first, it feels much better now. He still needs to be careful with it, but at least he can write again!

Scott's little adventure complicated my Sunday schedule a bit. I was supposed to go to choir practice right after church and then from there to a Primary visit. I skipped choir and had my secretary go with one of my counselors on the visit instead so that I could drive the rest of the boys home and make sure dinner got started. I was able to take a nap, though--nice!!

Apparently the visit I missed went fantastic. We have been taking Book of Mormon readers to a few of the kids in our Primary who live in semi-active families, hoping that will give them an opportunity to hear some scripture stories or even read them to themselves (for the ones who can read). They visited a family with two young girls. The dad is a member of the church, the mom is not. They come to church sporadically, but haven't come lately. Anyway, they gave the girls the Book of Mormon reader, and the mom suggested that they read a story together right then. So they read the first story--which happens to be the Joseph Smith story ("How we got the Book of Mormon"), with the mom helping them to read and stopping once in a while to explain what some of the words meant. My counselor said the spirit was so sweet and strong while they watched that mom read the scriptures with her daughters! Awesome! Hopefully they will continue to read, and want to come to church more often.

On Monday I put my Valentine's wreath up on the door:

It makes me hungry whenever I look at it--those hearts look too much like chocolate and sugar candy hearts!

Monday and Tuesday were two normal, busy days, with everyone in school. Snickers went to the groomer and came home looking great. I spent a couple of hours deep cleaning the bathrooms on Tuesday. Not much fun, but they look a lot better! I even tried washing the shower curtains in the washing machine, which I have done successfully before, but this time they both ripped. So Tuesday evening I needed to run to the store to buy new ones, and I decided to do the regular weekly shopping trip at the same time, which turned out to be a very good idea. Snow was predicted for the next morning so I wanted to avoid going out in that if I could, and besides that Seth had a fever that evening. He was more "cuddly" than normal Tuesday afternoon, and then when he fell asleep around 3:30, I knew something was up! By the time he woke up a couple of hours later, he felt hot to me, and sure enough--his temperature was 101.4! The funny thing was, the next day his temperature was back to normal. I fully expected it to spike back up again that evening, but it didn't. His nose was running a bit, though, and now he has a pretty nasty cough.

I was spared having to make a decision about whether or not to send him to school, though, because there wasn't any school Wednesday or Thursday. When we got up Wednesday morning, it looked like this outside:

That's not much to brag about, but because the weather was predicted to get worse instead of better, they still cancelled school. We had some kind of precipitation coming down most of the day. First snow, then freezing rain, then rain, then more snow. Around 4:00 it started to snow hard and the wind started to blow, and it was really quite a blizzard out there for several hours! I tried to get some photos, but of course that kind of thing is hard to capture on film. But here are my attempts:

Really, it was much worse than the pictures can show! Frank was at work and had to drive home in it, which wasn't fun, but he was a lot more fortunate than a lot of people were. He left around 3:30 and it turns out that people who left just a half hour behind him got stuck when all the interstates basically turned into parking lots. Some people did not get home until between 1:30 and 4:30 am!!! Apparently the combination of the snow on top of the freezing rain / rain that later froze really created havoc. A couple of transformers blew, also, so many people were without power. We feel very fortunate that didn't happen to us!

We ended up getting a good 7 or 8 inches of additional snow. Here is Seth, checking it out the next morning:

We didn't even bother to set the alarm for Seminary Thursday morning--we knew there would be at least a 2 hour delay! It was nice to sleep in for once. Seth climbed in bed with us when he woke up that morning. I told him I needed to get up to make some pancakes. He said "No, I want you to stay here with me." Then he turned to Frank and said "Daddy, go make Mom and me some pancakes!" We got a kick out of that.

The boys were thrilled, of course, that school was cancelled two days in a row. I didn't let them just lie around, though. They helped with vacuuming, dusting, and laundry and I also had them all work on scouts and Duty to God requirements. There was still plenty of time to play. Tanner and Jared went to Ryan & Bryson's house Thursday afternoon.

Frank was in and out during those couple of days. Power was out at Griffin headquarters as well as at several of his clients' buildings, so that limited the amount of work he could do from here. He ended up making trips down south on both Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday when he was cleaning off my car for me, the broom he uses broke--the wood handle broke in two. Later when he was using the remains of the broom to clean off his car, the handle slipped and jabbed him right in the hand between the thumb and his pointer finger, leaving a pretty deep gash. We thought we might be making our second trip to immediate care in one week, for a while! But after putting pressure on it he got the bleeding to stop and I bandaged him up.

The roads really weren't too bad by mid morning on Thursday. Frank and I ventured out to the grocery store to get a couple of things. We decided that now would be a good time to try out our one month free trial to Netflix. I've been resisting the idea of getting Netflix for a long time because we don't usually rent a lot of movies each month--many months we don't rent any at all. But all the movie rental stores in this area have gone out of business and Redbox has a very limited selection of movies, so we decided to give it a try. I'm already excited about the huge selection of movies available, including many older movies that are almost impossible to find anywhere else!

I kept busy with Primary stuff this week--lots of emails going back and forth as we finalized our plans for this week's activity. I also came across a blog all about names and naming trends, which is a topic I've always found fascinating, so I've been enjoying reading that. That site also referred me to another site where there are lots of quizzes you can take about names, as well as other topics. It's easy to get caught up in "web surfing"--I always have to be careful that I don't waste too much time that way! But in moderation, it's fun and keeps my mind active. I finished Blackberry Wine for book club, and really enjoyed it. I also read a book called Young Fu of the Upper Yaghtzee (a Newberry winner) and started a book called Rifles for Watie (another Newberry winner). So I haven't been sitting around doing nothing! I exercised a few times, too.

Here's pictures of the snow on Thursday:

We have a nice neighbor with a snow blower, and he always does all the walks as well as the parking lot around our cars. You can see we got a pretty decent snowfall, for Maryland! Nothing like last year, of course, but still--it was a pretty good storm.

On Friday there was a two hour delay--I guess they still hadn't been able to get all the parking lots plowed and sidewalkes shoveled, because the roads were pretty good by then. It started snowing again around 9:00 and kept coming down for several hours, but not hard like it did on Wednesday night. I'm sure we accumulated a bit more, but it didn't stick to the roads at all since they had all been plowed and treated. Seth didn't have school at all again, since he doesn't have school when there is a 2 hour delay. He was a little sad about that, but since he was coughing anyway, it's just as well. Plus, he didn't even wake up until nearly 9:00! My car pool boy, Javy, was also sick so I only had Jared to shuttle back and forth. Frank and I wanted to go to the temple Friday night, but he had some work he had to do right at 5:00 and by the time he finished it was too late to make a trip down to the temple. So we made plans to go tonight instead. Once his work was done, we went out for a little while to get a bite to eat--we had a gift card for a local restaurant which we used. Then we came home, put Seth to bed, and the rest of us watched the movie Eclipse, which we just received from Netflix in the mail that day. I enjoyed it--I thought it was better than the previous two movies in that series.

This morning we had a Primary activity--the last one we'll have. Quarterly activities have been discontinued as part of the Primary program, but since we had promised the kids last year that we would have a special activity as a reward for reaching a goal, we got permission to have one more activity. One of the members in our ward who grew up on a sheep ranch talked to the kids about some of his experiences with the sheep and related them to the Savior as the Good Shepherd. Then we played some "sheep and wolf" games, and had ice cream sundaes. We had a good group of kids attend and I think they had a good time. After I got home, Frank had to go do some work on some of the computers at the stake center. The boys helped me get the kitchen floor cleaned up and then we went over to the stake center to watch Scott's team play basketball. Scott couldn't play because of his hand, but he wanted to cheer them on. Jared and Tanner also came because we had arranged to have them talk to one of the other moms, who is also a merit badge counselor, to pass off their Family Life merit badges. Seth enjoyed playing in the nursery during the game, which Scott's team won. We were pretty excited about that, since it is their first win of the season. As a matter of fact, I think it's the first win they've had in more than one season!

After we got home from the game, Frank and I changed and went to the temple. We were just pulling into the parking lot at the temple when I realized that I had left my purse at home, with my recommend in it. Luckily, they were able to get in touch with my bishop so I was able to go in (although I had to wait a while). We decided to do initiatories since we were running late by then. I'm really glad we were able to go! Sometimes it seems like everything works against us when we are trying to go to the temple. Our stake president challenged us on Sunday to go to the temple three times before stake conference, which is the first week end in March, so we don't have many week ends to get that done.

They are predicting another storm for us on Tuesday-Wednesday of this week. Supposedly, it is a "large and powerful" storm. I am hoping it misses us somehow! Snow days are nice once in a while, but we've had too many lately. I am ready for some spring weather!

Weekly Review January 22 '11

I'll start this week with some "January sky" photos. This year, I have been trying to appreciate January for what it is, and guess what? It does help. I am feeling happier this January. I'm actually finding things I like about January--such as the bright "morning star" (Venus) that I see every morning when I go out to pick up the boys from Seminary and the sunrises and sunsets that I get to see most days. Here's the view out my back windows:

I usually find this view rather barren, but this year it looks "restful" to me. I love how I can see the river this time of year. And all those bare trees? Well, I know they are going to be blooming before I know it! Quite the promise of new life in all those trees.

These next two are at sunset one evening. Nothing spectacular, obviously, but still pretty, I think:

And here's sunrise the next morning. It was spectacular a little earlier, when I was in the car, but by the time I got home, it had faded to this:

Try to appeciate January while it lasts...only 9 more days! :) (I couldn't resist!)

Sunday was busy with church, choir practice, home teachers visiting, and a teacher training meeting for me that evening. We didn't have any time to squish in family home evening in between all of that, so we did that Monday evening.

The boys were out of school Monday through Wednesday, so I let them have some friends over. Tanner had his friends Ryan, Brian, and Seth over to spend the night Monday after family night. Scott's friend David and Jared's friend Bryson spent the night Tuesday night. One advantage to having a small house--they all have to sleep in the living room and because of the noise, we make them go to sleep no later than midnight. No "all nighters" at our house!

We got a couple of inches of snow Monday evening and then during the night we had a lot of freezing rain. It woke me up more than once, hitting the windows. I was glad the boys were out of school anyway on Tuesday because I'm sure they would have had a snow day otherwise. We slept in a bit Tuesday morning (except for Frank--work as usual for him) and I was just starting to make waffles and bacon for all the boys when I got a call from the guy in charge of the church building wanting to know if my boys were home and could help with shoveling sidewalks at the church. I laughed and told him he had called the right place--not only were my boys home, but I had 3 extra able-bodied males at my house! So we had a hurried breakfast and then I took them all over to the church to shovel. It didn't take too long with all of them helping; then I took them all home. We barely had time to get back home and get showers before I had to be back at the church for a Primary presidency meeting. The boys came with me; they played basketball in the gym. (Except for Tanner--when I took Ryan home, Tanner stayed there and he ended up spending the night.) I didn't have a formal meeting, actually--we had decided we needed to clean out the Primary closets, so we did that and discussed several items while we worked. The closets look GREAT now!

Wednesday morning I took all the boys to get haircuts. They look great--here is Seth, showing off his new haircut:

Ok, it's a little messy in that photo, actually!

Wednesday was actually quite mild, which we enjoyed while it lasted. (It's back to being frigid now.) Even though the kids were out of school on Wednesday, they still had basketball practice and YM that evening, to make up for the one that got cancelled last week. I also had a RS meeting that evening. It was fun to get out and mingle with other women. I went to a class on "frugal living", even though I think I'm pretty good at that already. Always room for improvement! I felt like I needed that class more than the one on "debt reduction".

At first, snow was predicted for Wednesday night causing groans from most adults who didn't want the kids to be out of school AGAIN. It didn't snow Wednesday night, but the predicted storm moved to Thursday night, and there was an 80% chance of snow, according to the reports. Much to the chagrin of the kids and delight of the adults, the storm went farther north than expected and missed us completely. So there was school for everyone on both Thursday and Friday. I felt like I got a lot done those two days, including exercising a couple of times.

Scott had a check up at the orthodontist Thursday after school. While I was there, I made an appointment for Jared to get his braces on--that will be happening on February 10th. I think he gets just the bottom ones on first. He's not too thrilled about it, but his teeth are a mess, so it has to be done. He inherited large teeth and a small mouth, unfortunately!

Friday was the start of a new semester at school, which meant Scott and Tanner both brought home lots of papers for me to sign. So annoying! They were supposed to start the new term Thursday, but the snow day last week pushed everything back a day.

One thing I accomplished this week that really cheered me up is I cleaned my room. When I started my huge house organization project at the beginning of last year, I ended up stacking a bunch of things against one wall of my bedroom until I could create new places for them to go in other rooms. Well, that stack of things ended up staying against the wall in my room all year! Although I did a lot of work through out the house last year, I wasn't able to finish everything and in particular I haven't been able to buy all the storage items that I want to buy yet. So I never created the new places for all those items that I intended to create. I decided at the beginning of this year that the stack had to go! So I spent an hour or so on Thursday afternoon dispersing the pile. Some things got thrown away, some were given away, and some found temporary homes in storage boxes or other parts of the house. I now have a beauitful blank wall with no "stuff" stacked against it. I feel happy every time I look at it! Clutter makes me crazy; order makes me happy!

While cleaning out that pile, I unearthed a couple of photo albums from when the older boys were little. I sat down to look through them that evening, and before I was done I had both Scott and Jared hanging over my shoulders, laughing their heads off! Jared told me I need to take up scrapbooking again and do our more recent photos. Well, I would like to do a little more of that--haven't done any scrapbooking in years--but I doubt I'll ever scrapbook all our photos. My current ambition is to get all of our prints scanned and then put all our photos (scanned and digital) onto CDs. That's a big enough project in and of itself, without trying to scrapbook them! It would be good to get them all in albums, though--even if they are just put in photo holders with short descriptions.

I have also been reading my book for book club whenever I get the chance, and enjoying it a lot. It's called Blackberry Wine. I haven't finished it yet, so I'll have to reserve judgement on the book as a whole until I'm done.

Seth has been driving me crazy this week by having 2-5 "accidents" per day! I don't know what's gotten into him. It appears that most of the time he is just waiting too long to head for the bathroom, so he makes it there but doesn't get his pants down in time. It's been very frustrating! I'm pretty certain that he is just being distracted too much by his playing to take the time to go to the bathroom, but the frequency of the accidents for several days in a row makes me wonder if something physical might be going on. I guess I will take him to the doctor if the problem doesn't clear up soon.

Now it's Monday--obviously, I didn't get this done on Saturday. That's because Saturday was extremely busy. Jared had a basketball game at 8:00, I had a baby shower to attend from 9:30-11:30, I had a Primary visit at 1:00, and Scott had a game at 2:00. Then Saturday evening I gave the missionaries a ride home from Balitmore. One of them had just been transferred here last week from another area and she had a baptism in her former area that she really wanted to attend. The former area was about 90 miles away, so she arranged to have someone on that end drive them to a halfway point, and I met them there to bring them the rest of the way home. I enjoyed the ride back home much more than the drive over, since I had someone to talk to on the drive home!

Jared's and Scott's teams both lost their basketball games, unfortunately. Scott's game was particularly frustrating to watch because they started out well--his team had a 12 point lead before the first half was over--but they ended up losing by over 30 points. We're still not sure what happened--the other team definitely started playing better the second half and had a couple of guys that made several 3 point shots each, which really helped them out. But I kept looking at the score board periodically and being surprised at how many points they'd made and how our team's score had not gone up at all. The score didn't seem to match what I was seeing happening on the court. We suspect the scorekeeper may have made some mistakes--there were a couple of mistakes that were caught and corrected (ie--giving points to the wrong team). Besides that, we could see a lot of pretty blatant pushing and elbowing going on, but the referees didn't seem to notice. So that was aggravating, but that's how it goes sometimes. It's good for the boys to learn to be good sports, even when things don't seem fair.

The baby shower was fun. It was a brunch, with lots of yummy food. I won the first game--we had one minute to come up with a girl's name for each letter of the alphabet. (Yes, the mom is expecting a girl. And apparently they are having a hard time coming up with a name, so this game was intended to help her out.) I laughed when they described the game because my most recent "game" I play when I am having a hard time going back to sleep is to try to come up with a girl's and a boy's name for each letter of the alphabet. So I've had lots of practice, and sure enough--I came up with a name for each letter while most people ran out of time about halfway through the alphabet. I came home and told Frank that he can't laugh at me anymore for my little "try to go back to sleep games"!

Yesterday was busy and Scott had a little "adventure"--but I'll save the details of all of that for this week's post!

Weekly Review January 15 '11

I'll start this week by recording something cute that Seth says. Too often, I forget to write down the funny things he says, and I know I will forget them someday if I don't record them now. Instead of saying "last week we did..." or "we went there a long time ago..." he says "we did that very, very, very, very yesterday!" He also seems to be confused about growth and how that works. He sometimes talks about "when I get littler..." and more than once he has talked about him being bigger than he is now "back when you were a little girl" (talking about me). In other words, he thinks that when I was a little girl, he was bigger than he is now, instead of not even born yet. He's got it all backwards!

Sunday started early for me--I had ward council at 7:00 am. Primary was enlivened by the discovery of one little girl with head lice--yikes! Makes me want to scratch, just thinking about it! I discreetly went to get her mom and we just as discreetly pulled her (and her sister) out of sharing time. Luckily, the discovery was made early on, so I don't think there was a chance for the little creatures to find new victims. An epidemic in Primary is the last thing I want! Singing time for the older kids went great. We had some trouble with some of the older boys last week but the new chorister managed to get the situation resolved and had all of them singing willingly before she was done--and they sounded really great, too! I suspect a lot of those older kids haven't been singing lately. I love little miracles like that!

We were very sorry to get a phone message from Frank's mom on Sunday...his sister Gladys, who was expecting a baby in May or June, had her baby on Saturday, and he was stillborn. She has had at least one miscarriage before this, so it is particularly heartbreaking for her. We feel so bad about it, and wish we lived closer so we could do more to help her, although of course we are praying.

We kept busy this week, but mostly with the usual things. Seth woke up in the night Monday night, crying inconsolably. It took us a while to figure out what was wrong, but he finally told us that his ear hurt. We gave him tylenol and I took him down to the couch with me to spend the rest of the night. We have recliners on each end of the couch, so I was able to be reasonably comfortable while holding him against my chest which kept his head elevated and alleviated some of the pain. He settled down after a while and I got a reasonable amount of sleep although Seth was restless so I woke up often.

Seth seemed better Tuesday morning, but I kept him home from school and took him to the doctor instead. Sure enough, he had an ear infection. I ran a bunch of errands after the doctor, ending with a stop at the pharmacy to pick up Seth's antibiotic. I had book club on Tuesday afternoon and since Seth was still feeling ok and I knew he wasn't contagious, we went to that. It was shorter than usual because everyone had to get home for kids arriving home from school--the schools were dismissed one hour early that day due to an approaching snow storm. That meant that I had to pick up Jared and Javy from school, since Javy's dad doesn't get home from work in time to pick them up if they get out before 3:45. I didn't mind picking them up, but it was about that time that Seth started hurting again. He cried the whole time we were waiting in the car line, and even after I got him home and gave him some tylenol he still didn't settle down for over an hour. He just sat on my lap and cried. Then he finally calmed down and fell asleep, and slept for about 3 hours. Frank was late getting home from work and I didn't want to move Seth from my lap in case he woke up, so the boys got to make dinner that night. Thankfully, I'd planned macaroni & cheese--from the box!

We got a good 3 inches of snow that afternoon / evening and since this is Maryland, that means there was no school on Wednesday. Since Seth was up late Tuesday night (of course, after that long late nap) I was not too unhappy for the chance to get a little more sleep! Thankfully, he slept fine once I got him to sleep (around 11:30) and he has not seemed to have any ear pain since Tuesday afternoon. He woke up from that long nap happy, and with an appetite--ate 3 helpings of macaroni & cheese!

Tanner & Jared went to hang out with Ryan & Bryson on Wednesday afternoon. I took Seth shopping with me--something I usually avoid doing, but he really wanted to go. The roads were fine by mid morning; I think they could have had a 2 hour delay instead of closing school completely, but that's Maryland for you. Whenever schools are closed, all church activities are cancelled too, so there was no basketball practice, YM, or RS that evening as planned.

It was business as usual on Thursday--back to school and work for everyone. I have a lot of friends who were hoping for a 2 hour delay, but I for one was glad to get back into a somewhat normal schedule! Seth is doing a lot better about going to school, but he still struggles a little bit--especially if he's been out of school for a day or two. Whenever school is delayed 2 hours, he doesn't have school at all and since he already missed Tuesday and Wednesday, I was hoping he would get to go on Thursday. I still haven't had a "normal" school week--with everyone in school 5 days in a row--since before Christmas break. Next week they are out Monday through Wednesday, so it's not going to be a normal week, either.

I managed to exercise a couple of times this week--something I am trying to get back to doing on a consistent basis. It feels really good, but it's hard to find a time to do it! Frank is hoping to start exercising soon also. He just had his blood tested and his triglycerides (blood sugars) are still higher than they should be, so he is feeling motivated to do something before he ends up a diabetic.

Yesterday was Frank's birthday. I think he had a nice day. For one thing, he already had over 80 hours for the pay period (a 10 day pay period) so other than going to a meeting for a couple of hours, he didn't have to work. He got home just in time for me to take him to lunch at his favorite mexican restaurant. After the boys got home, he opened his presents:

First, a card from the boys.

Then a card from me.

Now he is opening the movie October Sky, which he has been wanting for a long time. I couldn't find it in any of the stores, but I finally got smart and checked Amazon--I think they have everything! He was very surprised, but happy to get it.

This is the extended version of Avatar, which he was also very happy to get, although he doesn't look happy in the photo!

He also got this cool pillow and he will be getting a hiker's backpack--I wanted him to pick that out himself.

Then we ordered Chinese food for dinner. (I know, too much restaurant food in one day!) I couldn't believe how much food we ended up with, and it was such a chaotic mess with it spread out all over the table that I had to take a picture!

After we recovered from dinner, we had cake--chocolate with cream cheese frosting. The blue candles each stand for 10 years, the green candle for 1 year!

Lighted candles...

...and blowing them out!

Scott got up really early this morning because he was taking a practice SAT test. It started at 7:30. He didn't want to take it at all--we had a discussion about it earlier this week that got a bit heated and turned into one of those "what are you going to do with your life?" kind of parent / teenager discussions. Scott ended up storming to his room, but it turned out well because after he calmed down a little, he decided to pray about it and apparently he got some answers. Love those tender mercies! He told me "now I know why Enos prayed all day". We decided not to pressure him about it anymore that night, but the next day I casually asked him if he had decided what to do about the test, and he said he'd decided to take it. Anyway, the test is important because it's just like the real SAT but the scores don't count at all. He will get a report later that identifies his strengths and weaknesses and offers study tips.

I had agreed to go with the missionaries to an appointment this morning, but it fell through. Scott had a basketball game at noon, but he missed it because he was still taking the test. He got to the church just as the game was ending. His team lost again, but only by 4 points this time. Jared had a game at 3:00. Only 5 boys showed up to play, so those five played the entire game, of course. It was really fun to watch them play. They played well and his team won 26-16. Jared scored 4 points--1 on a free throw and the others on a sweet 3 point shot. We also ran some errands, I made posters for an upcoming Primary activity, and cleaned the kitchen floor, so we've kept busy. The older two boys are gone to a regional dance now--they won't be back until very late.

I am ashamed to admit that between trying to get reading done for book club every month and just plain being busy, I did not get around to reading the book Mom & Dad gave me for my birthday until this week! It is the fourth book in the "Banner is Unfurled" series about the BF Johnson family, and I enjoyed it a lot. We really have some amazing ancestors, and I feel like I owe a lot to them for their strength and faithfulness to the gospel. The books are great, and I am looking forward to the next one.

Weekly Review Janary 8 '11

We had visitors last Saturday night--my friend Marci and her children stopped in to see us on their way home to Kentucky. It was really fun to see how Snickers still remembered them, even though he hasn't seen them for over a year. (This is the family who gave us Snickers.) The kids enjoyed watching a movie and playing some games while Marci and I went for a drive so that we could talk in peace and quiet. It's been such a hard year for their family, but they are doing amazingly well. I can really see the power of the atonement working in their lives! It was great to see them again even though it was a short visit.

Only Seth, Jared and I went to church on Sunday; everyone else was sick. Because it was the first Sunday of the year, all the Primary kids had new teachers and new classes but in spite of that, things went pretty smoothly. It was Seth's first day in the Sunbeam class. There were only two of them there that day (there are six kids in the class). The other little girl who was there is the daughter of one of my counselors, and she and Seth kept getting out of their chairs and following us around! But once their teacher arrived (she was a little late) they did better at sitting in their seats. She was one of their nursery leaders--I moved her from Nursery to Sunbeams this year to provide some consistency for those kids and it looks like that was a good idea!

After church we tried to relax. We got out the puzzle that we didn't do on New Year's Eve and got it made in just a few hours. I couldn't find a good 1000 piece puzzle, so I got a 500 piece puzzle this year instead and it was definitely a lot easier to put together! I kind of like the challenge of the 1000 piece puzzles better, but it was nice to get the puzzle put together so much quicker, since we didn't have much time. Here is the end result:

We have a whole collection of puzzles of this type now. One day I would really like to put them all together and have them framed!

The kids were all supposed to go back to school this week, but because of illness, I didn't have a single day that all four of my kids went to school. Scott, Jared, and Tanner were home Monday and Tuesday, Tanner was still home on Wednesday, and Seth was home Thursday and Friday. I might have sent Seth to school on Friday, but we got a little bit of snow that morning and there was a 2 hour delay and whenever that happens they cancel preschool. Everyone seems to be better now. They all had the chills / congestion / cough / sore throat / headache thing that I had for Christmas. Frank was really miserable all weekend but was thankfully well enough to go back to work on Monday. As a matter of fact, he worked over 50 hours this week--it was a busy week!

Unfortunately, I still seem to be caught in a time warp--the days have continued to zip by and I don't feel like I get enough done. I had a doctor appointment Wednesday afternoon, a Primary presidency meeting Wednesday evening, took Tanner to a doctor appointment Thursday afternoon, and had my hair done Thursday afternoon also. Besides that, I was working on lots of Primary things, did some shopping for Frank's birthday, and also tried to find something to hang on my front door--but was unsuccessful.

I wanted to get something to hang on the door to replace the Christmas wreath that I just took down. I thought it would cheer me up to have something new for the door since it looks kind of bare. But all I could find in the stores were Christmas things on clearance--nothing generic that would work for January like snowflakes or a snowman or something. I can't figure it out. I did get something for Valentine's Day and for St. Patrick's Day, though--so I guess I'm set for February and March.

My doctor appointment was a follow up with the doctor who did my eye surgery. He removed the stent and says everything looks good. Hopefully I will not be going back there ever again! I had Seth with me and I was very grateful we didn't have to wait very long--last time I went there, I was in the waiting room for 45 minutes. Tanner's doctor appointment was just one of the check ups he has because of his medication. We did have to wait a long time for this appointment but at least Seth was at home! They measured Tanner and he is 5 feet, 11 1/2 inches tall. He is very annoyed that he isn't quite 6 feet yet!

Last night Frank and I went out to eat. He received a gift card from a client for a restaurant we had never been to before, so we decided to try it out. There were a lot of good choices on the menu and the things we chose were really good, so we'll probably go there again. It was great to get away for a while after his long week at work and my long week taking care of sick people!

I spent a lot of the afternoon on Tuesday trying to help Scott with his math class (Algebra 2). The problem is, it's been over 25 years since I took Algebra 2 in high school, so I can't remember how to do any of it anymore. He is trying to prepare for his final exam next week. Unfortunately, he has not done well on any of the tests for this class this term, so it's pretty critical that he do well on the final. It's been frustrating--he's been staying after school to get tutoring and he thinks he understands the concepts but then he still does poorly on the tests so it's obvious that he doesn't understand as much as he thinks he does. Anyway, I ended up feeling pretty tired and frustrated by the end of that day!

Today we woke up to a good inch or two of fresh snow. It's been a busy day with lots of trips to various places. Jared was supposed to have a basketball game this morning at 8:00 but the other team didn't have enough players so they forfeited. Thankfully, they realized last night that they weren't going to have enough players and let us know so we didn't get up early to get over to the church for nothing! None of us were too disappointed when we found out we didn't have to get over there that early. I did have to be at the church at 10:00 for a baptism, though, for one of the little girls in our ward. They do baptisms on the stake level now, but she happened to be the only child in the whole stake getting baptized this month, so it was a smaller group than usual. Since I had been asked to conduct the music as well as do the Primary welcome, I was glad that it was a more intimate group! (I don't enjoy getting up in front of people to do anything!) The baptism was very nice.

I ran an errand on the way home and then came home to eat lunch, give Seth a bath, and sweep & mop the kitchen floor before I had to take Scott back to the church for his basketball game at 2:30. One of our neighbors came with me--she needed a ride to a car dealership to pick up her car and it was very close to the stake center, so that worked out well. Jared came also--I dropped Scott off so he could warm up, then took Jared to his friend Bryson's house, and then went back to the church to watch the game. Our ward's team lost by about 35 points, but I really can't feel too bad about the game. Our team played very well and they were good sports, too. The other team is the best team in the stake and they also play very agressively, so they are hard to beat. I really saw a lot of improvement in our team over other years, so it was actually satisfying to see that. Scott scored the first point of the game on a free throw after he was fouled and he scored the last basket of the game right before the time ran out. I was really proud of him and of his team.

Now it is time to get dinner made and I have some more things I want to do for Primary before tomorrow, so I'd better wrap this up. I hope the new year is going well for all of you so far!

Weekly Review January 1 '11

My planner for this week looks refreshingly...blank! That doesn't mean I sat around doing nothing all week--far from it, actually--but it was nice not to have a bunch of meetings, appointments, etc. to go to. I did some serious sleeping in a couple of days, which was very nice for a change. I just wish Frank could have had more days off so that he could relax a little more, too. He did get off work early a couple of days and he had yesterday off, so we got to see him a little more than usual.

My week was dominated by Primary preparations. This is unavoidably the busiest week of the year for Primary leaders. I still had a lot of documents to update (my new secretary will take care of that from now on, but all the information she would have needed to do it herself was scattered in several different places so it was just easier to do it myself). One of my counselors is out of town and the other one's whole family was battling an extremely nasty stomach virus all week, so just my secretary and I met one evening to put up the new bulletin board. I think it turned out nice. We are combining the weekly scripture assignment with the spotlights this year by having each child choose their favorite scripture to share with us. They will either write what the scripture means to them, or draw a picture (for the younger kids). On the bulletin board, we have a large set of "scriptures" where we will add the children's drawings / thoughts throughout the year.

I also spent a lot of time this week making phone calls and sending emails. I had to find a substitute for one class (a teacher hasn't been called yet) and then there were a lot of arrangements to make for nursery, also. That's because the couple who has been serving as the Junior nursery leaders called me on Christmas day, late in the evening, to let me know that they had just got a call that morning to "come get their baby". They have been in the process of adoption for a while, but the baby arrived a little earlier than they thought. I can't feel too bad about how much that complicated my life, since I am so happy for them! For now, we have decided to combine the Junior and Senior nurseries and see how it goes. Even with the 6 children who are moving out of Nursery and into Sunbeams this week (Seth is one of them!), we still have 12 nursery age children, with about 6 more coming in this year. So we are not going to be able to keep them all together for long.

Sunday was crazy / busy since we had to scramble to get someone to cover nursery, another teacher wasn't able to come at the last minute, a third teacher's substitute didn't show up, and one of my counselors was out of town. I'm hoping that with all the preparations I've been making this week that this Sunday will be a little less hectic. I was not feeling my best still that day, but I was thankful that I was well enough to do everything I needed to do.

Sunday afternoon Scott had his friend David come over for a while. Here is a blurry photo that Seth took of them:
We watched the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"--one of my favorites; believe it or not, my boys had never seen it! Scott and David had planned to make cookies with the dough I made earlier in the week, but they got lazy and decided not to do it. I finally got around to making the cookies on Wednesday. Here is Seth, painting some of them:

He took his job very seriously! I had to coax the other three boys to help, but they all finally came in and did a few. I didn't get any photos of Jared, though--he kept coming in and painting one cookie at a time, so I never caught him on film.

Here's the end products--don't they look beautiful?!:

They tasted good, too! Here's a few pictures of Seth and Jared with Christmas projects they made at school. Seth made a popcorn tree:

Apparently, his teacher's family made these trees when her kids were young and one of them has lasted for over 30 years! We'll see how long Seth's lasts...

Jared made a gingerbread house in his Spanish class--they combined this activity with learning all the Spanish words for different parts of a house.:

While I've been busy with Primary stuff, the boys enjoyed playing their new games and Seth has kept quite entertained with his new toys. They all had chores to do each day, as well and the older boys worked on some homework projects.

On Thursday, another family in our ward called to say they were going to the temple to do baptisms and could use some more people to be proxies. Tanner went with them. Scott wasn't feeling very well (he's been battling a milder version of what I had last week) and Jared doesn't have a recommend yet. We might have tried to get in touch with our bishop to get him one, but Jared's had a cold all week and wasn't feeling very well, either. Tanner got home pretty late, because they stopped to get some dinner on the way home and the restaurant was crowded. Frank and I went over to my friend Rebecca's house for a while so that he could help her with some computer issues.

Yesterday Jared spent the day with his friend Sage. Frank and I went to look at three houses. One of them was a really good price, but unfortunately it needed a lot of work. I liked the third house we looked at the best, but it is more expensive so I doubt we can swing it. Frank took Scott and Tanner to see the movie Tron in 3-D--that was one of their Christmas presents, to go see a movie of their choice. Jared got home around dinner time--we had our traditional "appetizer" dinner. I made a lot more food than we needed so now our refrigerator is overflowing! Frank started to feel sick last night, and today he has been pretty miserable, with chills, aches, dizziness, and nausea. Not the best way to start the new year!

Scott went to a dance / midnight breakfast at the church last night and didn't get home until nearly 2:00 am (he was helping with some of the clean up). Tanner was going to go also, but his stomach was hurting last night so he decided not to go. We watched movies and played games and enjoyed a quiet evening. I forgot to get our new puzzle out, so we'll have to do that another time!

While I was waiting for Scott to get home, I finished reading a book called The Singing Tree. I read that book as well as it's predecessor, The Good Master, the last two weeks. We are reading The Chestry Oak for book club this month, but since I've already read that one, I decided to read some other books by the same author. I still think The Chestry Oak is the best book Kate Seredy has written, but I really enjoyed these two books, The Singing Tree in particular. Ironically, I think my least favorite of her books is The White Stag (I liked it a lot, but not as much as her other books) but that is the book that won the Newberry Medal. Both The Good Master and The Singing Tree are Newberry honor books, but The Chestry Oak isn't even an honor book--go figure!

Today we've been busy taking down all the Christmas decorations and cleaning up. The house looks a little bare--but less cluttered. It will definitely be nice to have more space in the living room again. (The Christmas tree takes up a lot of space!) Since Frank is feeling terrible, the older boys helped take down all the decorations, which was a big help to me. I also made a trip to the store to pick up snacks for the Sunbeams and the nursery kids--when I checked the closets earlier this week, all the snacks were gone and since both groups have new teachers, the new teachers wouldn't know that the snacks need to be replenished.

It's always kind of sad to see the Christmas season end, but I like the feeling of "new beginnings" we get at the beginning of the year. I am determined that this year I am going to find ways to enjoy January (usually my least favorite month)! I am very thankful that, because of the Savior, I have the chance to change, improve, learn, and "start over" every day--to try to be a better person than I was the day before!

Here's one more photo of Seth, playing with the chicken nugget dinosaurs that I made last night as part of our new year's eve appetizer spread.:

Here's to a wonderful 2011!!