Weekly Review June 1 '13

Here I am, writing this post on Saturday night again.  I'm not sure I'm ever going to get this done on Friday again.  This week was just really busy.  I feel like I ran from one thing to another all day every day, and really haven't had any "down" time to speak of.  So I feel pretty tired.  I hope this coming week isn't quite so hectic.  (Not much chance of that, though.)

 

Sunday after I got back from choir practice Erin and her friend Dan came by for dinner.  We enjoyed visiting with them.  They were on their way back to a house in Deep Creek that a bunch of YSAs rented for Memorial Day weekend--they had gone back down to Virginia that morning because Dan had to give a talk at church.

 

For our Memorial Day, we were invited to another ward members' house for a cook out and for "Monday Home Evening" (They are new members and still learning all of the unique terms we use in the church.  I thought that was cute!)  They invited several families from the ward so there was quite a crowd but it was fun and there was lots of food.  (The missionaries and some neighbors were there too.)  We made strawberry banana ice cream and chocolate chip cookie bars for our contributions; both turned out really delicious.  We got lots of compliments on the ice cream.  The day was busy getting the ice cream made, doing laundry, and other household chores.  Frank and I went to five different stores looking for rock salt and finally had to give up and use regular salt instead (it still worked).  I guess no one makes home made ice cream anymore?!  Most places said they stock rock salt in the winter for putting on roads, but they don't stock it in the summer.  I finished reading Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker in between everything else.  After we got back home, I did a few things to get ready for Seth's birthday party and after he went to sleep, I wrapped his presents.  Tanner was working frantically all day on a school project that he procrastinated too long.  Jared & Frank actually went out to the cook out earlier to help cook but I stayed home with Tanner (and Seth) so that Tanner could work on his project some more.  We also came home a little earlier for the same reason.  He didn't get it completely done, even then, but hopefully he got enough done to get a decent grade on it.

 

Frank drove kids to Seminary on both Tuesday and Thursday because the mom that normally picks up our kids (and several others) was in Ireland all week.  That meant he didn't go in to work quite as early as usual those two days, so he was still home Tuesday when Seth woke up.  We told him earlier that he could open one present that morning so he did that--he also opened cards from us and from Scott.  Here's pictures: 

 



(He got a Cat Woman playset to go with all his Batman toys)

That morning I went into the school to watch him "walk around the sun"--a Montessori birthday tradition:

(The flashlight is the "sun"; the strips of paper on the floor have the names of the months of the year.  Seth carries the "earth".  He starts by the May strip and walks around one time for each year of his life to show that the earth has gone around the sun six times since the day he was born.)

He also got to bring in 3 special things to show and talk about--in the picture below he is showing his class mates his favorite book--Wild About Books:

They also looked at a time line we've made of his life which has a picture for each year.  I almost forgot about it this year and had to quickly pick a picture the night before and print it up here at home to add to the timeline!  Later in the day, at snack time, they had the special treats we brought in.  This year we brought in rice krispie treats.  I was super lame this year and I even bought those!  But it's a good thing because I really didn't have time to make anything homemade this week (besides the ice cream). 

After I left his school, I got a few necessary chores done at home and then I went to help pack a few boxes for a sister in our ward who had to move this week.  She had an offer on her house but wasn't sure until the last minute if it was really going to go through so it was hard for her to plan.  At that point, she still wasn't sure it was going to go through but she'd decided she'd better start packing in case it did.  Another sister and I packed up a lot of stuff in her son's room but I couldn't stay long because I had a few little things to do for Seth's party and I needed to shower still too.  The party was right after school and we picked up a few of his class mates to take to the party with us. 

I have to say that I enjoyed the lack of work I had to do for this party!  When we got there, they had everything ready for us, including this cool bin for all the presents:
 

Seth got to pick out a ball and he and his friends played with it while we waited for the rest of the guests to arrive:

(Seth with friends Shade and Ryan)

Then they all watched a safety video and then we got to go into the first arena to play.  It was nice because there was no one else there except for us and our party guests.  The kids had a blast climbing, jumping, sliding, and going through the obstacle course: 
 

They also liked playing on the play equipment that was there for little kids:

 (Seth with friend Krish)

As the birthday child, Seth got to go into this thing called the cyclone--it mostly just blew air, but as you can see he enjoyed it.

The air hockey table was a big hit with all the kids too.  These are Seth's friends Luke, Eliza, Henry, and Javy (Jared & Tanner visible in the background).

Seth on the obstacle course

Me trying out the obstacle course

After about 40 minutes, we moved to the next arena which had an even bigger slide and a place to play basketball:

 Jared enjoyed slam dunking! 

We all tried out the big slide:

 Frank

 Jared

 Tanner

As the birthday Mom, I got a free 3 minute massage in the massage chair.  It was quite nice!

Now I'm on the big slide

And Seth tried it too.

Tanner and Seth have worn themselves out!

All the kids!  Back row: Luke, Eddie, Paul, Henry, Ryan, Shade, Camilla.  Front row: Javy, Liam, Seth, Eliza, and Krish.  Notice they all look sweaty and pink cheeked!  They played hard!

After another 40 minutes we moved into the party room for cake, pizza, and presents.  Here's the cake:

Seth got to sit in this big inflatable throne while they sang Happy Birthday to him.  (The crown is inflatable too, and he got to keep it.  It says "Guest of Honor" on it.  He loved the crown!)

Blowing out candles

Eating pizza.  His friend Javy is one of the brothers that we car pool to school with.

Opening a card, above and below--opening presents:

The party helpers served all the food, cut the cake, and even made a list of the presents and who gave them.  It was nice because I got to take lots of pictures.  I was so busy taking pictures that I didn't get much time to eat, though!

I think everyone had a great time.  It was nice to come home and not have anything to clean up (except packaging from presents).  Jumping around on all that stuff was fun, but it's easy to get injured.  Tanner got "burns" on his knees.  Frank kept complaining for the few days afterwards about how sore he was!  I didn't do as much as Frank so I didn't have sore muscles but I did have a small injury.  I went down a slide and Seth forgot the rules and came down after me before I got out of the way.  I was just putting my hands down to push myself up from a sitting position when he came down and slammed his feet into my right wrist, which caused my right hand to bend in a way that it shouldn't.  I was very thankful he wasn't heavier because I think he easily could have broken my wrist if he had been bigger.  As it was, it hurt a little right at first but then I forgot about it until a few hours after we got home when it started to feel tender.  It never got very bad, but it's been a little sore all week, especially if I need to pick something up or if I bend my hand in a certain way.  It's actually the back of my hand that's been hurting, not my wrist.  It was the worst on Wednesday but felt quite a bit better on Thursday, thankfully.  It's still not completely back to normal but it gets a little better every day.

I was really pleased with most of the presents Seth was given at this party.  He didn't get a bunch of loud, obnoxious toys!  He got a lot of art things and Lego sets, which I love.  After we got home, Jared and Tanner helped him build his three new Star Wars Lego sets:

 He's been enjoying the new things to play with all week.  One of the coolest things he got was this set to make a cardboard / plastic robot toy.  First you color all the pieces and decorate them with stickers, then you build it into a robot that you can play with.  We haven't got to the building part yet, but here is Seth working on some of the coloring (the head):

 Playing with Lego sets:

 Playing with a dart gun:

Here is Seth with all the gifts from his party:

Here he is showing off his favor "bag" (it's actually a water bottle), with a few goodies inside:

Here he is with all the gifts from us:

 

I admit I got that Crayola glow book thing for him because I thought it looked really cool and I want to play with it!  But neither Seth nor I have had time to play with it yet.  He also received a card from Grandma & Grandpa but he hasn't had a chance to spend the money they sent him yet.  All in all, he was thoroughly spoiled and I think he had a great birthday!

 

Wednesday I got shopping done.  A sister in my ward came over to get quiet book patterns from me--they sat next to us at church the Sunday before and they loved Seth's quiet book.  I visited with her for quite a while.  I prepared for our presidency meeting that night but then we didn't have it because we decided the sister in our ward who was moving needed our help instead.  (We didn't feel right about sitting in a meeting talking about how to help the sisters in our ward when one had such an obvious immediate need!)  I actually didn't go to help that night because of my hand but my two counselors did help.  I stayed home and wrestled with visiting teaching changes all evening, but didn't make a lot of progress.

 

Tanner went to the Drama Club Awards ceremony that night.  Jared was going to go but decided to help with a service project doing yard work for a ward member instead.  There wasn't any YM activity that night because we had a Ward Talent Show last night and the YM and YW were in charge of running the whole thing. 

 

Thursday I took kids to the library at school, went grocery shopping, did laundry  and some cleaning, and tried to work on visiting teaching stuff but didn't get very far.  I took Jared to an orthodontist appointment right after school and then we went straight from there to help with cleaning at the house of the moving ward member.  A bunch of other people helped her earlier that day to move most of her belongings from the old house to the new one.  Jared and I came home long enough to eat dinner; then I went back over to help some more.  Our whole presidency came and we were hoping to have a meeting of sorts while we helped but we ended up just helping with the move and didn't really get a chance to talk.  By then she mostly just needed cleaning done and a bunch of things hauled away to the dump but her renters in the basement, who are also in our ward, were still trying to move things out so we helped them too.  A few other ward members came over to help but we were all there until about 10:00 before everything got done.  The walk through was supposed to be the following morning but the buyer's lender messed up and didn't have all the paperwork done so the lender asked to have it put off a week.  Oh well!  At least she has everything moved and can start settling into her new house.  Both her and her renters moved to new places within our ward boundaries so we're glad we're not losing them.

 

That afternoon while Jared and I were gone, Tanner was doing the sound for the Senior Awards Ceremony at the school.

 

Yesterday I got the budget done and then worked on visiting teaching changes and finally got it all figured out.  Tanner had a sore throat and stayed home from school.  Jared went to help with the Ward Talent Show--he ended up being the emcee.  Frank dropped him off and then I went over a little later to put all the visiting teaching changes into the computer.  When I finished, I went into the talent show--in time to catch the very last act.  We helped clean up and came home.

 

Today has been busy too.  I met with the visiting teaching supervisor this morning to tweak a few final changes and then print up all the new assignment slips.  Frank and I went on a walk and Frank cleaned the kitchen floor for me.  This afternoon Frank went to help do the cooking for an event while I took Seth to a swimming party for a friend at school.  I decided to wear my swim suit too and I'm glad I did because it was really hot and getting in the pool was very refreshing!  I was pretty tired by the time I got home, though.  Seth and I both needed to clean up after that.  They were fortunate the weather warmed up so much this week--last week end it was quite chilly!

 

Now it is late and I have to get up really early for Ward Council, so I'd better get to bed. I hope that at least one night this coming week I don't collapse into bed exhausted at the end of the day!  Wish me luck. 

PS to Weekly Review May 25 '13

I just realized I forgot to mention a couple of things.  I had book chat on Tuesday and it was at my house.  We squished 9 people around our kitchen table (we always have a pot luck lunch).  It was fun, though.  We read a book called Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker.  I actually haven't finished it yet but I've mostly enjoyed it.  Not the most dynamic writing style, but the stories and the inside look at history is interesting.  I've always heard negative things about Abraham Lincoln's wife, and so far the book has not done much to change that viewpoint.  I think she suffered from some pretty serious mental illness.

The boys helped with a service project doing yard work at a member's house today.  Because they were gone, Frank and I took Seth with us to the furniture store and he was a little pill, climbing all over the furniture there.  Seriously, sometimes he just can't hold still! 

Frank took Seth to the park for a while this afternoon while I sorted through some of the stuff in the living room, moving things from the old tables to the new ones.  He and I went on a long walk after that to get some exercise. 

Last but not least, Allie got her mission call yesterday!  She is going to Portland, Oregon and she leaves July 17th.  She is very excited about it. 

Hopefully I didn't forget anything else!

Weekly Review May 25 '13

I'm getting started on this week's post pretty late, so I'm going to attempt to keep it brief.  We'll see how I do!

 

We had a hot and humid week with some rain a lot of days and a fairly severe thunderstorm on Wednesday evening.  Then yesterday we had a complete change--very windy, dry, and highs in the 50's!  Today was a titch warmer--probably up to the 60's--but still VERY windy.  It's sunny, however, so the world looks beautiful even if it doesn't feel like May.  I must say I am not missing the humidity either.

 

Last Saturday I spent the morning and early afternoon at a conference done by the LDS counselors and psychotherapists in this area.  They had several workshops geared towards teaching church leaders how to more effectively help members of their wards.  I went to three classes--one on helping people with depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder or grief; one on helping people who have experienced trauma, and one on helping people suffering from addictions.  I know those don't sound like very cheery topics, but they were all very interesting, uplifting, and helpful.  Hopefully I will be better prepared to help others because I went.  The conference was held at the Washington DC stake center; I rode down there and back with our stake RS president, who is also in my ward.  She is a great person and I enjoyed visiting with her on the way there and back. 

 

After I got home, I took Seth with me to visit one of the ladies I visit teach--she's in a nursing home and she was with her family last week end for Mother's Day so she missed church.  I picked up one of the cards with forget-me-not seeds for her last week so I brought along a little pot with some soil and we planted her seeds with her.  She enjoyed that, and she got a kick out of Seth.  She can't speak very well and when I told her his name, she said "I can't say that.  How about I call you Billy?"  She teased Seth the rest of the visit by calling him Billy and then the next day at church when she saw him, she got this big grin on her face and said "How are you doing, Billy boy?"  Amazingly, Seth seems to understand and he just laughs.  Usually, he gets very indignant if anyone calls him anything except just Seth. 

 

Sunday was super busy.  I had Ward Council before church, a missionary committee meeting after church, choir practice, family night, the boys had a fireside, and one of the sisters in the ward was taken to the ER that afternoon because she had a high fever and was disoriented.  So I ended up dropping the boys off at their fireside and then going to the hospital to make sure she was ok.  By the time I got there she was doing better and much more alert.  Right before I left to go pick up the boys, the doctor made it back in with all the test results.  They decided it was ok to send her home and put her on an antibiotic, so that was good news.  By the time I got home late Sunday evening I was exhausted, though!

 

This week has been a normal busy week.  I got some visiting teaching done, took paper products over to a new family who is moving into our ward (others provided meals for them), and had a presidency meeting on Wednesday evening.  I called several sisters in the ward who have needs and set up some appointments to visit a few.  Today I visited a sister who is disabled and lives alone.  She can't come to church very often because of her health.  I picked up some hamburgers at McDonald's and we had lunch together.  I had a really nice visit with her--we talked about her mission and about what her favorite talks were from last General Conference.  She wasn't feeling really great today because of the change in the weather--every time the weather changes she hurts all over, especially if it's colder.  Visiting with her reminds me how fortunate I am to have such good health!

 

That's all the RS stuff, I think.  Besides that I got a lot of errands done like setting up doctor check ups for everyone, picking out Seth's birthday presents, and ordering a cake for Seth's party.  I was going to make a cake but Frank talked me into getting one at Costco.  So I am really being a lame mom this year!  I volunteered at Seth's school and I tried to go to the temple, but that didn't work out.  I didn't sleep well the night before and my stomach felt a little upset that morning so I didn't go.  I really needed a day to "regroup" though, so that turned out to be a good thing and I got caught up on a lot of things that day that I had been worrying about getting done.  One of those was cleaning out Seth's room--he's definitely been accumulating a lot of stuff and I wanted to get his room cleaned up before his birthday so there would be room for the new things he gets.  His room looks amazing now--every time I go in there, I let out a huge sigh of contentment!  Before I cleaned it, I felt anxious and agitated whenever I had to go in there.   

 

The boys had Board of Reviews for scouts Wednesday night and Jared is going to be a Star scout now.  Tanner is already a Life and can't go any further, of course, until he does an Eagle project.  I've been making more of an effort to work on scout stuff with them lately so maybe someday they will both be Eagles and I can take a (very short) break before Seth starts the process all over for me!  We've been working on the Communications merit badge lately and they are slowly but surely getting through it.

 

Frank and Tanner went home teaching on Tuesday evening and then Frank went on splits with the missionaries.  Tanner and Jared went to a showcase for all the arts and music programs at the high school on Thursday evening--Tanner helped with some of the techie stuff for the concert that was part of that. 

 

Yesterday Frank and I went on a date--we decided to look at furniture.  A few weeks ago our only lamp in the living room quit working.  This lamp was built into a small side table so we needed a new table as well as a new lamp.  (The table was getting pretty rickety anyway--we've had the table / lamp combo since we lived in New York so it's had a long and happy life.)  We had talked about it and decided that we couldn't just go out and buy a table.  We really need more lighting in that room so two end tables would be nice.  Plus, our old entertainment center was outgrown years ago and needs to be replaced and our couches are getting worn and don't provide enough seating.  So why not get everything at once so that we could make sure nothing clashed?  I know it sounds crazy, but having one lamp quit working was the motivation we needed to go out and buy a whole new set of furniture for our living room! 

 

So anyway, we decided to start looking around.  I didn't expect to actually buy anything, but at the first place we went to, we found what we wanted.  They were having a big Memorial Day sale so we were able to get what we liked for really great prices.  Plus the tables we liked were being discontinued so we got the floor models for a reduced price.  We still spent a pretty penny, but I don't think in 21 years of marriage that we have ever purchased solid wood furniture from a furniture store before.  All of our other furniture is the synthetic wood stuff that you get at places like Wal-Mart and Target.  Hopefully this furniture will last a little longer!  This is also the very first time we have purchased a brand new couch.  Ever. 

 

We did run into one complication, though.  After we got home from the store last night we did some more accurate measuring (we had done some quick & dirty measuring before leaving for the store) and discovered that the couch we had picked out was not going to fit.  It was a sectional with three pieces and we thought we had figured out a way to fit it in the room but it turns out we were wrong.  So today when we went back to pick up our tables (we didn't have the large car with us last night) we told them we needed to cancel the order for the couch and pick out a new one.  We ended up picking out a sofa and a love seat that are about the same sizes as the ones we have because we knew they'd fit.  Unfortunately, there just isn't any way we can squeeze more seating options into the room we have.  It's a difficult room, actually, because it's long and narrow and one of the long walls is a high traffic area and has to be kept free, the other long wall has a pillar right in the middle of it that we have to work around, and one of the short walls is mostly windows.  That does not leave us a lot of options!  With the new furniture, I have no idea where the Christmas tree is going to go but I guess we'll deal with that in December.  We'll just have to buy a bigger house before then--hahaha!

 

That didn't turn out to be very brief.  After we finished at the furniture store last night, we went to Café Rio to get some dinner and then went to Lowes to get some lamps.  It goes down as the most expensive date we've ever been on!

 

I'll finish with some pictures of the living room with the new lamps and new tables.  (The new couches and the entertainment center won't be delivered for 2-6 weeks so it's the old couches for now):     

 

Here's the new floor lamp, next to the love seat.

New coffee table, new end tables, and new table lamps.

Close up of the coffee table--the middle part of the top lifts up so you can use it as a work surface (or eating surface) more conveniently while sitting on the couch.  I am really excited to have so many lamps in one room!  This room has always had inadequate lighting.

I took a few pictures of the boys tonight, too.  They were helping us make dinner.

Tanner made banana fritters and Jared made bacon.  Since they did the cooking, Frank and I did the dishes afterwards.

Now I need to get Seth to bed.  Enjoy your Memorial Day!

Weekly Review May 17 '13

 

Last Friday evening Frank & I went to a Silent Auction fundraiser for Seth's school.  The admission price included dinner and the dinner turned out to be really yummy so we were happy about that.  We acquired a couple of things at the auction that we are happy about.  First, we got two cute summer dresses for June:

 



 

They are handmade and I got them for a great price.  For some reason, no one else bid on them so I got them for the starting bid price.  They were kind of tucked in a corner so I'm not sure everyone saw them.  Now I just need to get my act together and get them in the mail!

 

Before we went over to the auction, we looked over the auction catalog to identify items we thought we'd want to bid on.  With Seth's birthday party problem in mind, I noticed that there were a couple of gift certificates available for a few places that do birthday parties, so I went online to investigate those places further.  One of them I really liked and it was more reasonably priced than the others, so we decided to see if we could get the gift certificate for that place.  We were successful at that too--and we got the gift certificate for less than its value so we saved a little money too.  The name of this place is Pump It Up, and it's basically a place that has a ton of huge inflatable things like bouncy castles and so forth.  The thing I liked the most about it is that they have private arenas for birthday parties, so we won't be sharing the space with a ton of other strangers.  I've never liked the idea of doing a party at a place like Chuck E. Cheese's for that reason--it's so impersonal, and even though they have lots of safety measures in place, I would still go crazy trying to keep an eye on a bunch of kids to make sure they are ok in a mob of other people.  So anyway, we got Seth's party booked.  It was even less expensive to have it on a week day than on a week end, so we decided to do it after school on his actual birthday (which is a Tuesday this year).  That avoided the problem of double-booking with his friend, too.  (Although another school friend sent out an invitation for that day and the original friend moved his party to Sunday.  That means Seth is going to the Saturday party but not the Sunday one.  Oh well!  Apparently, May is a big month for birthdays in Seth's kindergarten class.)  I feel a little lame having a party like this--which isn't that creative, really--instead of the normal parties we do which are totally unique and take a lot of thought and planning on our part.  But I know Seth will have just as much fun and I am thrilled, actually, that all I have to do is make a cake!

 

Saturday was a normal busy day with the normal things to do (clean the kitchen floor, go for a walk, work on Personal Progress...) plus a few extras.  Frank helped a family in our ward with a computer problem.  I had Tanner and Jared work on some things for Scouts.  I went through all my clothes and decided to donate a bunch.  Jared & Tanner went over to the church for several hours to have a nerf gun war with a bunch of the other young men. 

 

Sunday was Mother's Day, and I got thoroughly spoiled.  I received real flowers:

  

 And edible flowers:

 

The YW in our ward made the fruit bouquets and sold them as a fundraiser for camp.  I think they did a marvelous job!  Notice they used grapes for the flower stems and honeydew for the leaves.  As you can see, they looked great and they tasted really yummy, too.  (Good idea for a fundraiser--they are doing cakes and cheese & cracker trays for Father's Day too.)

 

The boys made breakfast for me with supervising help from Frank:

 



Along with the fruit, it was actually more than I could eat--someone else had to eat the toast!

 I also received these cards and a couple of WRAPPED gifts in PRETTY PAPER!:

(Wrapped gifts in pretty paper are a big deal because I usually receive my gifts in Wal-Mart bags.)

Then at church all the women received blue roses made out of chocolate kisses and cards with forget-me-not seeds in them.  Plus Seth made me a little paper flower where he wrote down something he loves about me on each petal, and Tanner wrote me a nice note, complete with a hand-drawn TRex on the front. (Seen on the table.)  The wrapped gifts contained the movie Les Miserables and 3 candy bars (2 of them dark chocolate).  Here I am with all the loot:

 I'm wearing the outfit I mentioned in last week's post--the sweater I just purchased with the skirt I got a year ago but had never worn.  Ok, so you can't see the skirt.  But anyway, it was really fun to have something new and spring-like to wear.  I've been wearing a black skirt almost every week for the last year!

The best thing about Mother's Day is that we got to talk to Scott for a couple of hours.  I already wrote about that to most of you, but since this blog is our family history I want to record a little about that.  He was able to Skype us, so we actually got to see him as well as talk.  It was really one of the sweetest experiences of my life to talk to my missionary son and to see how much he has grown spiritually already!  He is working hard and he is happy.  At the end of the conversation he asked to talk to just Frank and I for a few minutes.  First he thanked us in a very heartfelt way for his wonderful childhood.  Then he told us about a sweet spiritual experience he had in the MTC (actually, I had a very, very similar one when I was in the MTC) and told us how much that has changed him.  Then he thanked us profusely and tearfully for giving him the opportunity to serve a mission.  He said even the little bit he has experienced so far is so precious to him that he will be forever grateful.  I was listening to him thank us and I thought how ironic it was that he was thanking us...we actually have the means to support him on a mission because Heavenly Father has blesses US so much!  I pointed that out to him, and he agreed but still said he was thankful to us too.  It was very sweet and tender...as a parent, it doesn't get any better than that!  I've never had a better Mother's Day gift.  We fully realize how fortunate and blessed we are that are children are making such good choices.  Not everyone is so lucky.

Another fun thing that happened for Mother's Day...go check out Scott's mission's blog.  (Just google "Utah Salt Lake City South Mission"--you'll find it.)  There is a mother's day post where they took pictures of all the missionaries--either as companionships or in small groups--holding up signs that say "I love you Mom" and things like that.  Scott is in a group that is lying on a gym floor, spelling out the word "Mom" with their bodies.  He's the middle section of the second "M".  I thought that was such a wonderful idea, whoever thought of it!  There was something just so heartwarming about scrolling through all those pictures and seeing the love those missionaries have for their moms.  Totally made my day!  I'm so grateful that Scott can associate with so many other fine young men and women in this valiant army of God!  (While you are on the mission blog, check out the Riverton zone conference pictures and the 1st & 2nd transfers training pictures.  Scott is in a few of those.) 

Ok, so Mother's Day was totally awesome...moving forward, now!  I had a visit with a new sister Monday morning followed by presidency meeting.  RS was not as time consuming this week as last but it's been a little emotionally draining.  The bishop called me Tuesday evening to let me know about a major crisis with one family and my heart has been very heavy about that.  What's happening to them is life changing and extremely heart breaking so I feel very sad for them.  It's also confidential, so I can't talk to anyone about it...not even Frank or my counselors.  It will be public knowledge eventually but for now, it's very quiet.  I haven't been able to get in touch with them, but I did leave a voicemail and went by their house.  Another sister has been in closer contact with them, though, so she is keeping me posted on them.  Other RS things this week--a new family is moving in soon--supposed to be this week end but that got postponed because their moving van is not on schedule, another visit to a sister who is moving soon, and helping a third sister pack--she's trying to get her house ready to put on the market.  Her husband has already had to move on to the new job location and she's been left with a LOT of stuff to do.  One of my counselors has been over there all week helping her paint.  We are also having a "house warming painting party" for a couple in our ward who were recently married.  They are older (younger than me, but older than a lot of newlyweds--probably in their 30's) and both of them own a house.  They are currently living at her house and trying to get his house painted and fixed up so they can move into it.  Then they will sell her house.  Anyway, the painting party is tomorrow.  I'm going to miss it because I'm going to be at a conference all day but my counselors and secretary have it all under control.  They actually planned the whole thing.  The only contribution that I am making is that I'm going to buy some snacks, water, and fruit for them to have for the helpers.  I need to go out and do that pretty soon.  I guess it was a pretty busy RS week after all, after writing all of that!

Other than all of that, I did all the normal cleaning / shopping etc.  On Wednesday I went to the temple and did initiatories.  The traffic didn't cooperate and I just barely missed the 10:00 session.  It was very nice to be in the temple again.  I also finished up the tax return for the business and got that mailed in.  Big sigh of relief!  I made a list of the all the projects we need to do around the house.  It's a formidable list but we are going to pick one thing at a time to do and hopefully we'll get through the whole list in a year or two!  (By then I'm sure there will be new things to do.)

Wednesday evening the boys had a combined YM / YW activity where they were taught dancing--ballroom dancing swing dancing, cha-cha, and tango.  They had a special award for the top three couples who participated the most, showed the most interest, and were the most enthusiastic.  Jared and his partner won first prize.   That actually didn't surprise me much since Jared is a good sport and game to try new things...plus the partner he had is a good dancer and also a very enthusiastic person!  I suspect there is a bit of a mutual crush between him and his partner, by the way.  If so, I can't say I blame him...she is a cute, talented and vivacious girl.  I like her a lot.

Last night I had Jared & Tanner watch a City of Frederick Mayor & Board of Aldermen Meeting.  They needed to do that to pass off a requirement for the Communications Merit Badge.  Unfortunately, they didn't really discuss any issues at this particular meeting.  The boys were supposed to take notes on an issue where different view points were discussed and then give a report to their counselor on each view point that was expressed.  There really wasn't any good material for that in this meeting, so I guess they will have to go to another one sometime.  At least they were able to watch it on a cable channel instead of attending the actual meeting.  Originally, I was going to take them to the meeting until I found out it was available on cable.  I was able to read to Seth and get some other things done while the boys watched.  

We did book some plane tickets for Utah this week also.  So now we are coming, no matter what! :)  The boys and I are flying out on August 1st.  Frank will fly out the 8th and then we will all fly home together on August 14th.  We're very excited to see all of you! :) :) :)

Our other vacation plans are now all messed up, though.  We were hoping to attend the Bracken family reunion (Frank's mom's family) in Florida on July 6th but when he asked for the days off he was told that since the transition from his current company to the outsourcing company occurs on June 28th, no vacation time will be granted for the 2 weeks following that date.  (Or the two weeks before, either--which is actually half of our summer.)  I am really, really annoyed with the lack of foresight--if they didn't want anyone to take vacation for two weeks after the transition, why did they plan the transition for the week before a major national holiday?!  I'm sure we are not the only ones who aren't happy about that.  As a matter of fact, Frank was told that all vacation time would be cancelled--which means people who already asked for time off and made plans are now going to be told they can't have those days off after all.  At least we didn't do that--that would be even worse!  I actually think they are going to have a bit of an uprising on their hands.  What about people who purchased plane tickets already?  For us, we are just really disappointed.  We haven't been able to attend this reunion for 6 years because it always conflicted with scout camp.  This is the first year we haven't had that conflict and we were really looking forward to seeing everybody again.  The boys are particularly disappointed because we were probably going to take them to Disney World for a few days while we were down there.  But what can we do?  It could be worse--getting laid off would be worse!  At least Frank will still have a job--we think, anyway.

I sound uncertain because there have been a lot of issues going on with the transition this week.  Frank received a verbal offer from the outsourcing company last Thursday and was told he needed to accept by Monday.  Then on Friday he received a written offer and was told he had 7 days to respond to it.  He held off, hoping to hear about some of the internal jobs he'd applied for in the meantime.  After reading the written offer, he had a lot of concerns.  Some of the things in the letter, coupled with the questions he was asked in the interview, led him to believe that the outsourcing company might have plans to hire him just long enough for him to train a replacement and then they'd lay him off.  He talked with some of the other members of his team who had also received offers, and they all felt the same way.  He spoke to his boss about it as well.  The bottom line is, so many people had concerns that a meeting took place yesterday between a bunch of the higher ups in both his current company and the outsourcing company which apparently...rumor has it...turned into a shouting match and his current company's executives told the outsourcing company executives that they'd better fix things fast or the whole deal was off.  That's all hearsay at this point.  Frank and his co-workers were told, however, that new written offers will be coming to them soon and that they should not accept the first written offer.  So that's where things stand right now.  Who knows how it's all going to pan out?  And who needs all this drama?  The whole thing is starting to look like a huge mistake to me.  But if my husband comes out of it with a decent job, I will not complain. 

I'm sure that's all information that should not be shared with the world at large, by the way, which is why I didn't name any companies by name.  (Sorry it made my sentences so awkward, though.)  Nobody outside of family reads this blog, but if someone googled the two companies in question seeking more information, they might accidentally stumble across my blog.  So I'm just being safe.

That's about it for this week.

The Tooth Fairy Came! (PS to Weekly Review May 10 '13)

I got a picture of Seth with his tooth fairy booty this evening, so I thought I'd add it on since I didn't have any pictures in my earlier post.  He lost one of his front teeth on the bottom.  There's no gap in his smile because the new permanent tooth has already come in most of the way.

Weekly Review May 10 '13

This week Relief Society seemed to dominate my life.  We had our monthly RS meeting on Wednesday, I had presidency meeting Monday, a visit on Thursday, visited a sister in the hospital on Wednesday, did food orders on Tuesday and Thursday, and in between everything else I did a lot of apartment hunting (mostly online).  It was a crazy, busy week but it feels good to be spending a lot of time doing the Lord's work, and I feel like I got a lot of worthwhile (or necessary) things accomplished, both for RS and for my family.

Back to Saturday...there was a stake service project up at Catoctin Mountain Park.  Frank helped do the cooking for that and the older boys went up to help with the actual service project, which was pretty hard work--clearing brush and things like that.  I didn't figure I would be much help if I had to keep an eye on Seth at the same time so I opted to stay home with him instead.  I didn't lie around being lazy though--I kept busy all morning finishing up my lesson and going for a walk to get some exercise.  I know I did other things too but I can't remember what now.  When Frank & the boys got home they were very tired but Frank took Seth with him and went to Costco to get some things we needed while I headed down to the temple.  It was really great to be in the temple again...I love the peace that washes over me as soon as I walk through the doors!  While I was gone, the older boys left to go see Iron Man 3--a friend had invited them to go with him to see it.  They were supposed to go to the 7:30 or 8:00 showing but couldn't get into those so they ended up going to the 9:40 showing.  Too bad they forgot to call and tell us that...I started texting them around 10:30 to find out why they weren't home yet and found out that the movie wasn't over.  We all ended up being up very late, which Frank and I weren't too thrilled about.

Sunday we got to church about 20 minutes early because I needed to put a few visiting teaching changes into the computer before church started.  When we were pulling into the parking lot, Frank turned to me and asked "There is church today, right?"  I was wondering the same thing...there were maybe 2 cars in the parking lot!  Well, there was church...our bishop was out of town so there weren't any meetings before sacrament meeting.  Most people didn't show up until about 10 minutes to 9:00.  I wasn't very happy with the way my lesson turned out...I had planned to show a clip from the Worldwide Leadership Training Broadcast and then discuss it, but there were some unexpected technical difficulties which made it hard to hear it and everyone was really quiet so it was hard to get a discussion going.  Oh well!  I certainly got a lot out of the preparation of the lesson, and my counselor and secretary seemed to feel that it went better than I thought it had.  (My other counselor was teaching combined YW that day.)  I had choir after church and then Frank, Seth, and I went to an open house for a girl in our ward who went into the MTC this week.  She is going to the same mission as Scott, so I'm sure they'll see each other occasionally.  The open house was actually outdoors and it was sunny but a bit on the cold side...especially for me in my skirt and sandals!  But it was still nice.

I found out from the Elders on Sunday evening that the people at the mission office did not want the sisters to be in the same complex with the Elders, which meant we needed to find another place for them.  As a matter of fact, they wanted the sisters to be somewhere in the northern 1/3 portion of our ward boundaries if possible.  I immediately knew that wouldn't be an easy task since the northern 2/3 of our ward boundaries is mostly rural.  Also, once I started thinking about it I realized that there are very few apartment complexes in our ward boundaries at all.  I did a lot of online searches that turned up "no results fit your search criteria".  I got creative and googled property management companies and I found a few possibilities there.  It took quite a bit of detective work figuring out what places were actually in our ward boundaries and whether or not they'd be suitable.  I got a good laugh when I was looking up one place...it was an apartment located in the rear of a building and the address wasn't exact enough so I was actually looking at a Google maps street view to figure out where it was.  I found the right place, and it was in our ward boundaries, but then I happened to notice the writing on the window in the front of the building..."Adult Video and Gift Store".  Nope...that one's out!  I had my secretary working on some leads as well.  I finally called back the Elder in the mission office and told him I had about 7 possibilities but all of them had problems...either with the price or location.  He decided to follow up on two of them that were in the best locations even though they were a little more expensive.  He said he'd get back to me...so for now, I don't have to do anything else about that.

I was supposed to have visits Tuesday evening but then they all ended up being moved to later in the week or to next week so I suddenly had an evening free.  I decided to take advantage of that opportunity and did some shopping for some summer clothes.  I mostly just needed shirts...all the short sleeve shirts I bought last year got holes in them (I am not impressed with the quality!) and maybe some sandals.  I spent longer at the store than I'd planned but I was successful in finding quite a few things that I liked and everything was on sale too.  I took so long because I thought I had made up my mind on all the shirts and then on my way over to the shoe section I got distracted by a display of camisoles / layering pieces and I really need a few things like that so I ended up trying on some of those.  Then I finally made it to the shoe section and found a couple of pairs of sandals.  I drove home in a torrential downpour--we've had a lot of rain this week although most of it has come in the form of quick, somewhat severe storms instead of the steady downpour variety. ( It did rain for several hours in the night one night, though.)  Anyway, after I got home imagine how happy I was when I discovered that one of the short sleeve light cardigans I purchased matches a floral skirt I own.  I've had the skirt for about a year and never worn it because I hadn't found anything to go on top that matched.  (If I'd known it was going to be that hard to find something that matched, I wouldn't have purchased the skirt in the first place.)  I didn't even have the skirt in mind when I picked out the sweater...I just liked the sweater and knew I could wear it with jeans or a white skirt.  Even so, at one point I almost put it back.  I'm so glad I didn't!  All over, a very successful trip. 

Tanner and Jared are getting some new clothes too--they don't have many (if any) shorts so we ordered some shorts for them online this week.  It is ridiculous to find their size in shorts or pants so I just order them online now.  I had a promo code that got us a good discount, too, so that was helpful.

Tanner got to do a small job on Tuesday evening...he ran lights and sound for a band show at the high school and got paid a little bit for that.  We got him signed up to take a driver's education course the first two weeks of June (the last two weeks of school).  I wanted to have him take the course over the summer but between different vacation plans, youth conference, Camp Helaman, and the short summer, there were never two consecutive weeks that were free.  He will have to go to the class right after school for three hours every afternoon for two weeks, which is not ideal, but they really don't do much the last two weeks of school anyway so it shouldn't be too bad. 

Wednesday morning they had an event at Seth's school for parents that have kids moving up to the next grade level (ie: from Primary to Lower El, from Lower El to Upper El or from Upper El to Middle School...they don't change teachers every year, just every third year) so that the parents could visit all the classrooms of the next level up to get an idea of what teaching style / classroom environment would be best for their child.  We don't get to pick our child's teacher...just make note of specific characteristics that we think are a good fit for our child.  I liked all the teachers  and classrooms for different reasons although I did like some better than others.  I'm sure Seth will be fine no matter where he ends up, though.

For our RS Meeting Wednesday evening we had two sisters from two other wards come in to talk to us about photo organization, preservation, and display.  They actually went a different direction in their presentations than I thought they would...but I thought the way they went was great.  The first speaker focused mainly on how we should record the stories of miracles that often go along with our photos.  The second one focused on display, but again...talked about the importance of displaying pictures of ancestors and making sure our children know who they are and know their stories.  She had some good ideas of ways to display photos, too.  I expected something a lot more practical and instead it was a lot more uplifting, but I liked it that way.  The second sister who talked mentioned near the end of her presentation "Can't you just feel the spirit of Elijah in the room?"  And she was right...I could feel it!  At the beginning of the meeting we only had about 5 sisters there but there was a pretty steady stream of arrivals and by the end we had 25-30 sisters there so I was happy about that, too.  My counselor who is in charge of the meetings is fantastic...I never have a minute's worry over these meetings because I know they are going to be great.  All I have to do is show up.  I'm very thankful for that!

Last evening Allie (Scott's girlfriend) came over for a couple of hours to visit.  We made some snacks and just gabbed a lot...told her funny (sometimes embarrassing!) stories about Scott.  She has her mission papers in now so we are waiting to see where--and when--she will go.  I checked Scott's mission's blog last night and there were a bunch of new photos up of various meetings and trainings and I spotted Scott in a couple of the photos.  There was also a picture at the top of his mission president with Elder Holland, but no explanation for the picture so I'm wondering if Elder Holland just visited his mission.  Wouldn't that be cool?!

Today is going a lot faster than I would like...seems like Fridays always do.  I got the budget caught up and ran a few errands.  Frank is already home from work and all the boys just got home from school.  Tonight there is a Silent Auction fundraiser for Seth's school--Frank and I are going to that.

Seth lost his first tooth this week.  He came home all excited from school on Tuesday because he lost it at school.  The school nurse sent home a note with him and gave him a tiny little box to put the tooth in.  He was pretty excited to put it under his pillow, and then the tooth fairy forgot (of course!)  Frank explained that it can take up to 3 days for the tooth fairy to get here. :)  Thankfully, the tooth fairy remembered the next night...although not until the very early hours of the morning.  I wish I could have got a picture of Seth coming out of his room with a quarter in each hand and a big smile on his face...it was priceless!   

Yesterday Frank received a job offer from Xerox, the outsourcing company.  He is glad about that but a little undecided about whether or not to accept it...he has applied for several more Marriott jobs and they have already contacted him for more information, which means he will probably get interviews for a lot of them.  He would rather stay working for Marriott, but unfortunately he will almost certainly have to give an answer to Xerox before he knows if any of the Marriott jobs are going to work out.  So we are praying about that decision.  We just need to know what is going to be the best place for him.  But we are very relieved and grateful that he has a job if he chooses to accept it! 

We haven't made any further decisions about summer vacations yet but we are going to try to figure that out this week.   I'm also trying to figure out what to do about Seth's birthday.  I've decided to have a party for him this year but he has several good friends both at church and at school that he wants to invite...but that's too many to fit in our little house.  I can make him limit his list, of course (that's what I always did with the older boys) but I've also been looking into ideas for an alternate location...like maybe a park or something...so that he can have a few more than he could have otherwise.  Then yesterday I found out that one of the boys from school that he really, really wants to invite has a birthday on May 30th and they are planning to have his party the same day that I was planning so that's not going to work out too well.  It's crossed my mind that we could combine resources with this other family and have one party together since they would want to invite a lot of the same kids...but I don't know.  Seth really wants to include kids from church too.  So we are going to have to figure that all out...and soon!  It's only a few weeks until his birthday.

As you can tell there's a lot going on and I've had a lot on my mind lately.  I had a couple of nights this week that I didn't sleep very well...not worrying, exactly, just with my mind going in a lot of different directions with all the things I need to do or figure out.  I do feel like it was a quite productive week, though, and that is a good feeling.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you wonderful mothering souls!

Weekly Review May 3 '13

It's May, it's May, the lusty month of May....  Actually, I don't really like that song, but May has been beautiful so far.  Crisp mornings and warm, sunny days with gorgeous blue skies and the earth looks bright green!  Sorry Utah folks...I don't mean to rub it in.  I hear you had snow.  It's just that I complain so much about bad weather that I feel like I should be just as verbal about good weather! 

 

This week went by fast.  Sunday was the usual...church, choir practice, and family night lesson.  The boys were tired after being up late for the last night of the play.  They weren't as emotional as I expected, though...although Tanner tends to keep his feelings bottled up.  He seems to be doing ok this week though. 

 

Monday was super busy for me.  I did volunteer accounting stuff at Seth's school that morning.  I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and then spent the afternoon making dinner for us and for one of my friends who just had a baby...including making a batch of cookies for dessert.  I wanted to take the food over to her in the early afternoon (it could be warmed up easily later) so that I could visit with her a little bit before all the kids came home from school.  I didn't get there as early as I would have liked, but we did still have a nice visit.  All my kids were home by the time I got home.  I helped Seth work on his science fair project a little and then we had dinner and family night activity.  We were going to mulch the flower beds, but it was raining most of the day so we decided to wait.

 

I spent Tuesday morning / early afternoon doing RS stuff.  I had lots of emails to answer and I had to write a presidency message for the newsletter.  It wasn't my turn to do it, but I forgot to remind my counselor that it was her turn and she's been out of town the last few weeks, helping her daughter get ready for her mission.  I'm also teaching this week so I started working on my lesson.  The bishop asked us to use the Worldwide Leadership Training clips for our 1st Sunday lessons for the next few months, so I started out by watching all of those.  (I'd seen some of them in Ward Council, but we haven't watched all of them yet.)  All I can say about them is...Wow!  They are so good.  I was very moved by them and felt like I was getting all kinds of different thoughts and personal revelation while I watched.  It was hard to pick just one of them to focus on for my lesson this week, but I did choose one.  The kids had a 2 hour early dismissal from school that day so they were home before I knew it.  We cleaned bathrooms and did more science fair project, and I made a grocery list and ran a few errands.  That evening I needed to get a food order filled out...Frank went with me since it was for a single man.  Then Frank & Tanner went home teaching.  Another busy day.

 

Wednesday I did shopping in the morning and had book chat in the afternoon.  That evening I had a presidency meeting and then a meeting with the bishop.  The boys had to be at the church earlier than normal for their activity, so I went over with them.  That left very little time between the time Seth came home and we had to leave to finish up Seth's science fair project display.  We barely got it all done, and even then Frank had to make dinner or we wouldn't have eaten!  Here is Seth with the finished project:    

 

He is making a face because he was having a stubborn moment and didn't want me to take his picture.  The meetings went pretty well.  The bishop told me that we are going to get a set of sister missionaries in our ward (in addition to the Elders we already have) in June.  He said "the ward is responsible to find them an apartment so...looking at me...that means YOU are responsible to find them an apartment."  But then he told me to delegate it to one of my counselors!  We have to find a place by May 14th so there's not much time.  The Elders think they may be able to stay at the same apartment complex as them.  I hope so...that would be easy.  Anyway, I'm pretty excited that we are going to have sisters too.  I can think of a lot of things that they can do to help with the women in our ward.

Yesterday I worked on my lesson again.  I spent a lot of time because I got side tracked.  I remembered an experience I had with the boys when they were little that could relate to the lesson but I wanted to find where I wrote about it to refresh my mind about the details.  So I got out my book where I have printed copies of all the weekly emails I sent to Mom & Dad over the years to try to find it.  The trouble is, I don't remember when it happened.  So I'm scanning through hundreds of emails, and they are quite distracting.  I am so glad I took the time to write all those emails...especially all the cute things the boys said and did when they were little because I had forgotten so many of them.  It's been interesting reading through a lot of them too because I've forgotten what it's like to be a mom of a bunch of young kids!  Wow, it wasn't easy.  It seemed at the time that it would never end, but now I'm wondering how my little boys grew up so fast.  I didn't realize how much life has changed until I started reading those letters.  We really do get lazy with our parenting as we get older, too...I was surprised at how disciplined I was as a parent back then!  Or maybe I was just too up tight...but I'm afraid I've gotten a little too relaxed these days.  There must be a happy medium somewhere. :)

Anyway, I did get a few other things done like grocery shopping, vacuuming, and laundry.  I also went outside with Seth for a while in the evening and drew pictures with sidewalk chalk.  Seth presented his science fair project to his class at school yesterday and he said it went well.  Today the parents were allowed to come in at the end of the day to see the projects.  The kids were certainly enthusiastic...I was greeted at the door by about 3 or 4 eager kids all saying "Do you want to see my project?  Come see my project next!"  It was really cute.  The kids all did a good job.  Seth was kind of bothered that his frozen water samples had melted and he said no one would want to see his project but after I reminded him that he still had photographs of them frozen, he felt better.  There were some good ideas for projects and I should write them down so I won't forget them...I think coming up with a good (and easy) idea is the hardest part!

Besides visiting the school, I also got the budget done this morning.  Frank and I were going to go to the temple this afternoon / evening but Jared and Tanner both needed to help run lights and sound for a show tonight at the high school so Frank went to the temple after work and I am going to go tomorrow afternoon. 

We are still waiting to find out what will happen with Frank's job.  He knows he didn't get the Marriott job he applied for but we are still waiting to find out if Xerox (the new company) will keep him.  We probably won't know until close to the end of May.  If they don't keep him, he will still have a job there until the end of June and he will get some severance too, which helps.  But I'm hoping they will keep him.  There are also more Marriott jobs he can apply for, so he'll be doing that.  Who know where he'll end up.

In the meantime, it's difficult to make plans for the summer but we are probably going to buy plane tickets soon and hope for the best!  Xerox will honor any time off Frank asks for before the transition happens so we should be ok.  We haven't figured out what we are doing yet, but it looks like we probably won't be able to come until August.  The boys have youth conference June 27th-29th and Camp Helaman July 23rd-26th.  It would be nice to come in between, and be there for the 4th of July and my birthday, but Frank's family has a family reunion on July 6th in Florida and we'd like to go to that.  We haven't been to one for about 6 years.  We may go to Disney World for a few days, since we are going to be in Florida anyway.  We haven't decided for sure yet, though.  We may possibly come to Utah straight from Florida, but I'd like to stay a few weeks when we come and that puts us on a pretty tight schedule.  So...it will probably be August.  I'll keep you posted as we make decisions.

We got one good piece of news this week about the summer.  The last day of school was originally scheduled to be Wednesday, June 19th.  With the snow days we didn't use, it was moved to Monday, June 17th.  I was wishing we had used one less snow day so that the last day could be the Friday before that instead...how dumb to have the last day of school on a Monday!  This week we got an email saying that the state had waived one of the days we had off for Hurricane Sandy, since we were in a declared state of emergency.  So now the last day of school is Friday the 14th.  That made me so happy!  It feels like we got an extra 3 days of summer instead of just one since we won't have to be worrying about school over that weekend.  (Someone got smart and realized a lot of people would not bother to send their kids to school that last day!)  We need extra days anyway...we have a particularly short summer this year because school starts again on August 19th.  Kind of a bummer, but the reason for that is that they decided they don't want the school year to extend all the way into the 3rd week of June, as we've been doing all these years.  So we are starting earlier so that we can get out the end of May / beginning of June.  It makes this summer short, but I'm not complaining because I've always hated having the school year go all the way to nearly the end of June...it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!

Here's a picture I took to send to Scott:    

It's Seth's dresser.  His dresser is very messy...covered with his favorite toys...but I smile every time I turn his lamp on or off because the first thing I see is that.  I thought Scott would like it too.

 

That wraps things up for this week.