Weekly Review August 2 '19

I'm a day late getting the weekly review done (again). Maybe now that I am home, I will get back on a normal schedule though! I'm going to start with an update on Snickers. When I wrote last Saturday, I mentioned he had been having some accidents in the house. Over the next few days he got worse--more accidents, needing to go out a lot, diarrhea, drinking lots of water, stopped eating--so Frank took him to the vet on Tuesday morning. His blood sugar was sky high again and he was dehydrated. They did more bloodwork, gave him some liquids, put him on 3 medications, and increased his insulin dosage. He seems to be doing a little better now--he has more energy, the diarrhea is gone, and he is sleeping at night and not needing to go out constantly. He still doesn't have much appetite, though. His bloodwork came back normal so they think we are just still in the stage where we are trying to figure out the correct insulin dose. I hope that's all it is. I was pretty anxious about him while I was in Utah and I am glad that I can help take care of him now. Hopefully he will do a lot better with someone at home most of the time.

Here's the summary of what we did each day this week:

Sunday the 28th: Seth and I attended church with Mom. I looked over my Primary lesson for this Sunday and chose the hymns for this Sunday too. (A weekly task, since I am the ward music chairman.) That evening, most of the family came over to celebrate the July and August birthdays. I totally forgot to take pictures! It was fun, though--lots of visiting and lots of yummy desserts! Since my birthday is in July, several kind generous people gave me gifts too. So nice!

Monday the 29th: Seth and I went to Scott's work and had lunch with him. We got to see his "office", met some of the people he worked with, and enjoyed a delicious very inexpensive meal. One of the perks they have for the employees at his work is that they have a cafeteria where they can get nice meals for very low prices. I was pretty impressed with his workplace--seems like a great place to work. We enjoyed visiting with Scott, too. That evening, Mom, Seth and I visited Dad's grave. We took some flowers that Mom picked in her yard.

Tuesday the 30th: We went up to the Jordan River Temple with Amy, Jeremy, Rachelle, Micah, Gwen & one of Gwen's friends. The kids did baptisms and the adults did initiatories. It wasn't as long of a wait this time, but we all finished at about the same time again. Afterwards, we went to a nearby pizza place for a late lunch. It was yummy! Tanner & Darlee invited Seth & I over for dinner that evening. Before going to dinner, we went to a store in Provo that sells flags. I wanted to get some flags for our family (I am starting to collect flags for all the places we've lived and all the places we've served missions) and I also got a small Florida flag for Mom's mission flag display and a larger Florida flag for Jeremy. Then we went to Tanner & Darlee's apartment where they fed us a delicious chicken alfredo dinner. After dinner, we walked down to the BYU botany pond (just a few blocks from their house) and then up to campus to see the new Life Sciences building. It is pretty impressive!!

Wednesday July 31st: We went boating with Darlee's family at Deer Creek Reservoir. It was a lot of fun! We only stayed out for a few hours because it started to sprinkle but we got packed up and headed home right before it started to rain hard, so that was perfect. After that, I stopped to visit with my friend Paula at her house because it was nearby. After we got back to Mom's house and had dinner, I decided to go to the temple one more time. I hadn't had a chance to do an endowment session yet, and I really wanted to do that before I went home. So even though I was tired, I went, and I'm glad I did!

(I took a spin on the tube too, but no one took a picture of me.)

The Heber Creeper!

Proof that I was there. :)

I'm terrible at selfies, but I really didn't have another option.

Thursday August 1st: Seth and I flew home. Amy and Scott came over to Mom's in the morning to visit with us, and Scott took us to the airport. For some reason, there were no lines to check our luggage or to go through security, so we just sailed through to our gate and then had a long time to wait. But I'm not complaining! We found out before leaving for the airport that our flight had been delayed about a half hour. Then after we got on the plane, we had to wait for the co pilot to get there so we ended up leaving Salt Lake City an hour later than originally planned. The flight went well, though, and they even made up for some of the lost time so we got to Baltimore about 30 minutes later than the original plan. We got our luggage really quickly, too, and Frank arrived at the airport right then--so perfect timing. Our flight didn't leave Utah until nearly 5:00 pm, though, and of course we lost 2 hours because of time zones, so we didn't get to our house until nearly midnight. We didn't even bother to unpack--we just went to bed!

Since getting home, I have been very busy getting caught up on everything.

Friday the 2nd: I unpacked, did laundry, paid bills, planned meals, bought groceries, went through the stacks of mail, and did a lot of general tidying up. I also took Snickers on 3 short walks, hand fed him dog food at regular intervals, and generally gave him a lot of TLC. That evening, Seth had a get together with the rest of the Deacons.

Saturday the 3rd: Today was super busy too. I reviewed my Primary lesson, got some treats ready for my class (I brought them salt water taffy from Utah), cleaned the kitchen floor, practiced the ukulele, did some things for my music calling, weeded the flower beds and mowed the lawn, and got some gifts ready for Jessie's birthday. (Her birthday was on Thursday, but since Seth and I were on a plane until late, we are celebrating with her on Monday.) One of the gifts took quite a bit of time to prepare--I will explain and include photos in next week's post! Seth went to play with his friend Krish for most of the day. Now it is getting late but I made it through my "to do" list so I am happy about that. I miss all my Utah family, but it is nice to be home again.

One last tidbit. I didn't take a photo (maybe I will remember to do that this week), but before we left for Utah we noticed a small plant growing in our front yard flower bed. (We didn't plant it.) I was shocked when I got home Thursday night to discover that it is now HUGE!! And it looks like a squash of some sort; maybe even a pumpkin. There are a few flowers on it now, so we are going to let it grow and see what it produces. So strange that it grew there when we didn't plant it!

Weekly Review July 26 '19

This week wasn't as busy as last week and I have been grateful for a bit of down time. We still managed to do quite a bit, though, with family activities and such. Here's the details:

Monday (22nd): This was a quiet day where I caught up on laundry and took care of a few other things that needed to be done. Other than that, I just enjoyed doing some puzzles and watching some shows as well as spending time with Mom.

Tuesday: We all went to the temple. Seth did baptisms with some of his cousins while Mom & I did initiatories. The temple was really busy and we had to wait about an hour for our turn, but it was really nice to be there. We ended up finishing at the same time that the kids did, too, so that was perfect. After coming home to change, I took Seth to meet some of his cousins at the movie theater where they watched the new Lion King movie. Meanwhile, Shellie came to Mom's house while her kids were at the movie so we got to visit with her, which was nice.

Wednesday: The day was pretty quiet and I enjoyed down time. In the evening, all the Utah locals came to Mom's house for a Pioneer Day celebration / farewell party for Daniel (he's moving to North Carolina). We had lots of yummy food, including home made ice cream. And of course there was a lot of visiting, which was fun. We were up pretty late!

Thursday: I got laundry done, did some birthday shopping, and went shopping with Darlee's mom to get some groceries for Tanner & Darlee (so they would have some food in their apartment when they got back from their honeymoon.)

Friday: Amy, Ammon, Mom, Seth and I went on a day trip to Antelope Island (on the Great Salt Lake). It was raining a little bit when we left but it didn't rain long and the day was quite pleasant because it was mostly a little overcast and cooler. We started at the visitor's center, where we learned about local animals, geography, and so forth. Then we drove around the island where we saw some bison (although most of them were pretty far away) and a lot of pretty views of the lake. At the end of the road was a historic ranch, which Seth and I explored a bit (everyone else was tired and stayed in the car). Then we drove to a place with beach access and walked down to the lake. By then the sun had come out and it was hotter, and the walk to the lake was quite long. I could tell I was getting sunburned but we had left the sunscreen in the car. I didn't stay at the lake long; I mostly just put one of my hands in the water. There were a lot of bugs and even though they were tiny and didn't bite or anything like that, Seth was really bothered by them and kind of freaked out and wanted to leave, so I went with him. I was pretty hot & tired by the time we got back up to the parking area and I was happy to sit on a picnic bench in a shaded pavilion! Seth was hot & tired and wanted a cold drink and I thought that was a good idea too but I left my purse in Amy's car and Amy had the key. After she and Mom got back up to the parking area, I got a soda for Seth and root beer floats for Mom and for me. They were really good! After that, we headed back home. We were tired, but we had a good time.

Seth acquired this stuffed bison at the gift shop.

Trying to lasso a "cow"--Grandpa could have done it, I bet!

 The ranch house:

The closest bison--and he had his back to us!

Seth was actually really unhappy when I took this photo. The sun was in his eyes and he wanted to get away from the bugs!:

A view of the long walk to the lake:

After we got back from our trip to Antelope Island, we went to visit Lee & Dianne at their new place. It was great to visit with them and the assisted living center where they are living is really nice.

Today: This morning we had a girls get together--we went to Waffle Love for breakfast. (I forgot to take pictures!) We also found out this morning that a family friend, Ken Chase, had passed away and when we checked to see when his funeral would be held, we discovered that it was today--in about an hour!! So we came back to Mom's to change really quick and then we went to the funeral. We were in the same ward with the Chase family for many years and Ken Chase was our home teacher for several years. He visited us every month and shared an uplifting message. He brought us gifts for our birthdays and sometimes brought our family homemade donuts or other treats. He always showed an interest in us and our activities. He was just a perfect example of ministering! I will never forget him, and I am really glad that I just happened to be in town so I could go to his funeral. The funeral was beautiful, and we got to see a lot of old friends from our ward, so that was wonderful too. After the funeral, Mom and I needed to do some shopping at a couple of places. Then we went to pick up Seth (who had stayed at Amy's house to play games with Ammon) and we visited with Amy for quite a while. Then we had to stop at the grocery store to get some milk and since it was Macey's, we got ice cream cones too. We didn't get home until after 6:00, so we were pretty tired by then. We didn't plan to be gone all day, but that's how it turned out!

Frank is keeping busy at home, mostly with work and taking care of Snickers. Snickers started eating dog food again but he still won't eat treats. He's had a few accidents in the house the last few days, which is a bit of a concern and one night he had to go out 4 times during the night (poor Frank)! But last night he slept through the night. Overall he is a lot better so hopefully he will keep improving.

That's all I've got for this week!