Weekly Review February 9 '24

 When I wrote last week, I was starting to get over being sick. I mentioned I was going to work on Seminary lessons that night but I didn't end up doing that...I can't remember why now; I think maybe Scott called me so I talked to him instead. I slept later than normal on Saturday morning since I was still recovering and then spent most of that day working on my two lessons for this week. I really struggled to figure out what to do and didn't feel too great about either one of them even after putting in all that time, which was discouraging. I was feeling better physically but stayed in my pajamas all day and didn't even take a shower! I was working at the kitchen table and at some point I took this photo:

#Seminaryteacherlife

I planned to go to church on Sunday but I didn't sleep well at all and woke up with a bad headache so I decided to stay home. I was able to watch sacrament meeting from home, though. In the end, I think it was good that I stayed home because I was coughing quite a bit. After sacrament meeting ended, I took a shower and had some time to read scriptures and review my seminary lessons. 

Sometime in the late afternoon, Frank started feeling worse again and he decided to call the doctor. He was able to get an appointment at their walk in clinic and was diagnosed with a sinus infection and a double ear infection! I kind of suspected all along that he had a sinus infection since he had never felt completely better (even though he had improved quite a bit) and he'd been sick for so long. He got an antibiotic and thankfully that really kicked in quickly and he was feeling a lot better by Monday morning. He was really quite miserable on Sunday evening, though.

Meanwhile, Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and Jared helped me with the final preparations since I wasn't feeling 100% better and Frank wasn't feeling well enough to help. Seth had a youth fireside that evening and he was conducting it so I took him to that and he got a ride home with one of the counselors in our bishopric. Jared, Jessie and I played a game before they had to leave. Tanner called us and talked to us that evening as well so it was a bit busy with everything that was going on.

Seth wasn't feeling too great by Sunday evening either (he probably would have stayed home from the fireside if he hadn't been in charge). He stayed home from school on Monday and Tuesday and from Seminary on Monday. (He did go with me to Seminary on Tuesday but then came back home.) By Wednesday he was doing better and he returned to school and has been working on getting caught up in his classes. 

Ironically, both of my Seminary lessons this week went great! I didn't feel very good about them going in, but several kids volunteered really great comments both days--I was so grateful!! We've been starting to see a bit of a shift in our class lately with the kids being more willing to answer questions and comment and that has been really encouraging! (They didn't do so great on Thursday, though...mostly back to their quiet, sleepy selves. But we've definitely made progress since the beginning of the year.)

On Tuesday my friend Sherrie and I went to visit our friend Wanda...that's the visit we had to postpone from last week because I was sick. We took her some lunch and a bunch of clothes and snacks and other things she had asked us to buy for her (she gave me money to cover it). While we were there, we helped her sort through her clothes and discard ones that don't fit her anymore. I also trimmed her bangs for her. She has a roommate who seemed to be very agitated the whole time we were there and kept talking to us and gesturing but she was speaking Ukrainian, so we couldn't understand her. It was so awkward, but I also felt really bad for her...she was clearly upset and trying to commuicate with us but didn't know that we couldn't understand her. 

We had a guest teacher for Seminary Wednesday morning...he is a boy in our ward who recently returned home from his mission. I was his Primary teacher when he was a Sunbeam...makes me feel old!! He did a great job on the lesson and the kids really enjoyed it. At the end, he had a review. He gave each table a small white board and asked a question. They had to write the answer on the board and hold it up. Two of the kids were "judges" and he gave them some rubber hammers. The losing table (slowest to hold up their answer) got hit on the head with the rubber hammers. That definitely woke everybody up and they were all laughing and having a good time! 

I did my second VITA shift on Wednesday and it went well. We weren't as busy as last week...my first appointment didn't work out because the taxpayer was misisng a critical piece of information we needed to file her return. Then the second appointment no-showed. My third and fourth appointments both showed up early, though, which was nice because I was able to get an early start on both of their returns and I finished early and was able to go home earlier than usual. 

Frank has had a busy week with clients and on Wednesday he had to do some work for a client on his way home from work so he got home late. Seth had a YM activity at our bishop's house that evening so I took him over there. One of the counselors brought him home and I was sound asleep before he arrived (Frank stayed up to wait for him). They had a fire building activity and then roasted marshmallows...Seth seemed to enjoy it.

On Thursday I got the regular chores done and finsihed reading a book that I've been reading in snatches here and there. It was one of the books I got from the library as a possibility to read for book chat. (Tom Lake by Ann Patchett) It was an interesting story and had some good parts but I didn't love it, so I'm glad we didn't choose to read that one for book chat. I started to look over my Seminary lesson for Monday, but I didn't get very far. Seth was home from school by then so I was in the "make sure he gets his homework done and get dinner made" time crunch. After dinner, I updated the finances and started writing this post so that today I can focus on Seminary lessons! I have read both of them and I also listened to a podcast about next week's Come Follow Me reading because sometimes I get ideas for my lessons from that. 

There was a RS activity last night and I wanted to go but I was starting to feel sick again...my nose was starting to run again and I had a headache that felt like a sinus headache...so I took some sinus medicine and went to bed early. That seemed to help, because I'm feeling better this morning. For the activity last night they played "Book of Mormon Bingo" and I think we will definitely do something similar in Seminary sometime. The RS presidency left their leftover refreshments for the Seminary kids this morning, which I thought was really nice. They also left up their decorations, which livened up the room. 

Okay, it's after 10:00...Seminary has been over for 3 hours...and I still haven't started working on lessons! It's so easy to get distracted with other things. (I've been doing my daily scripture study but also getting and sending text messages with my team teacher about future planning for lessons). 

Scott and his friend Lexy went to California this week (Sunday - Wednesday) and got to experience the torrential rains they are having there firsthand. They still had fun...went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, Knott's Berry Farm, and Universal Studios. 

I'll finish up with a few photos I took yesterday morning of the sky because it looked amazing. Now I'd better get going on Seminary lessons!

Weekly Review February 2 '24

 I didn't take any pictures this week and we haven't had a ton going on so I don't think this post will be very long. 

Last Saturday (January 27th) I spent most of the day working on Seminary lessons and updating the finances. I also went to lunch with a group of friends from my ward. One of them just retired from her job, so we took her out to lunch to celebrate. It was fun, and a nice break from all the other things I was trying to get done.

Frank started feeling sick around Thursday of last week (the 25th). He had a headache and was really congested. He took a Covid test Friday morning but it was negative. On Saturday he really started to go downhill and he was pretty sick by the evening. He wasn't well enough to go to church on Sunday which complicated things a bit because he is in charge of setting up the equipment so that sacrament meeting can be broadcast for anyone who can't be there. Seth and I managed to get things set up so that Frank could connect remotely but when he turned on the camera he discovered that it was pointed at the wall so he had to come to the church to fix it (the camera is up by the ceiling, not easily turned). I'm probably not explaining the problem correctly because I don't understand how it all works, but anyway--he got it fixed and then went back home. 

There was an emergency with one of Frank's clients on Sunday too and he had to go try to fix that. Of course it is the client that is over an hour away! I went with him to keep him company and I also drove home so that he wouldn't have to drive all the way there and back, at least. (We left right after church.) He wasn't able to fix the problem completely but he figured out what he needed to do.

I had signed up to feed the sister missionaries that night so they came over for dinner and Frank stayed upstairs. Jared & Jessie were supposed to come too but they both ended up having conflicts so it was kind of a quiet dinner with just Seth, me and the missionaries.

Frank took the day off work on Monday since he was still feeling rotten but of course he didn't get to stay home and rest all day. He had to go back to his client's to finish fixing the problem. I taught Seminary as usual and that lesson didn't go too well so I felt pretty down the rest of the day. I felt like I had prepared a good lesson but a lot of the kids chose not to participate. It is discouraging when that happens. Tuesday's lesson went better. 

Frank has not felt well all week so he has been working from home the rest of the week. His boss said he would rather he stay home and not get other people sick, which makes sense. Meanwhile, I started getting a bit of a headache and sore throat on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning I woke up with a runny nose. I didn't feel too bad so I went to Seminary as usual...the missionaries were our guest teachers that day and they did a good job. Wednesday was also my first day volunteering with VITA (volunteer income tax assistance) for this tax season and I didn't want to leave them without a volunteer at the last minute so I did that too. (They schedule appointments based on how many volunteers are coming in so it's really hard if we can't come in at the last minute.) I really wasn't feeling too bad in the morning but by the last hour of my shift my nose was running non stop and I felt like I had a fever. I had a productive shift, though, and completed 3 tax returns and reviewed another. I was very glad to come home and collapse after that, though! I was supposed to visit my friend Wanda on Thursday so I had to postpone that visit and I also sent out a text message to see if I could find someone to help with Seminary on Thursday and Friday and a couple of moms readily volunteered to do that; I'm so grateful! 

Frank had to do the year end close for one of his clients that evening. There was a youth activity that all the parents were invited to attend too so I thought I was going to have to drag myself to that but then Seth said his head was hurting and his throat hurt a little bit so he wanted to stay home. It's just as well since by 8:00 I was having chills all over and went to bed shortly after that (and I was still shivering, even in warm pajamas and under lots of blankets). Poor Frank didn't get home until 11:00 pm, but he did get the year end close completed successfully. 

Yesterday I mostly stayed in bed all day worrying about all the things I needed to do but wasn't feeling well enough to do. So fun! I read a little bit (and finished the book for book chat) and slept a little bit. Frank made sure I got fed even though he still isn't feeling great himself. Seth stayed home from Seminary and school but didn't seem to be feeling too bad. He said he had a headache all day but he didn't get any worse. 

Probably because I stayed in bed all day, I didn't sleep well last night. I had a really hard time falling asleep and was awake until sometime after 11:00. Then I woke up around 1:45 and didn't go back to sleep until sometime after 4:00. The phone ringing woke me up at about 5:45 and I haven't been back to sleep since then. (Tanner was calling us...he assumed we would be awake because we usually are at that point.) Seth went to school today, but not to Seminary. 

I feel better today than I did yesterday, but still not great. I've been able to get up and do a few things but I'm trying not to overdo it. After I finish this post, I will try to work on Seminary lessons for next week. I haven't done much for either of my lessons beyond reading them and thinking about them. 

Tanner met yesterday with Darlee and her therapist and it did not go well at all. Please keep him in your prayers...this is a very hard time for him. 

I forgot to mention that we saw Jared for a few hours on Tuesday evening...he came over to do some laundry. He also did me a big favor and went to the store to get some cold & flu medicine for Frank since we had run out. And he brought us some Crumbl cookies too! Hopefully we will see both Jared & Jessie on Sunday. 

I hear the groundhog didn't see his shadow so supposedly we are going to have an early spring. This last week has not exactly been warm, but it has definitely been milder than usual for this time of year. Maybe we'll get more snow before this winter is over though...February is usually our biggest month for snow, if we get any at all. 

I said this was going to be short and for once I was right! 

Weekly Review January 26 '24

 Last week when I wrote we were all home because it had snowed and everything was shut down. Today it got up to about 70 degrees...what a change! It's dark now and it is still 62 degrees outside. Tomorrow will not be as warm, but it will still be pretty mild and definitely above average for this time of year. I'm enjoying the change from the really frigid temperatures we had last week. Needless to say, most of the snow has melted (with the exception of piles made by snowplows, and they have shrunk down a lot). Here's a few more pictures from last Friday's snowstorm, which I took later in the day after I wrote last week's post:

In a lot of those pictures, I was trying to capture the snow coming down. There were some pretty big flakes, and it was coming down pretty hard for a while. You can also see that combined with the snow from the week before, we had about 8 or so inches of snow all over everything. 

I can't remember much about Saturday. I probably worked on Seminary lessons and did some reading. On Sunday after church we had Jared & Jessie over for dinner and a game as usual. We decided to play the game Dominion, which Ben & Dee gave to us a few years ago and we have never got around to playing, for some reason. I remember we got it out once and decided we didn't have time to learn all the rules right then and we have never got back to it. Only four people can play but Frank's toe was hurting (it still flares up sometimes) so he wanted to lie down and put his foot up anyway. The rest of us played and really enjoyed it. Much to my surprise, I managed to win the game. I can see how this game could get addictive, for sure! 

I had a dentist appointment on Monday. Just my 6 month cleaning and check up, and everything looks good. Afterwards, I went to see my friend Wanda who lives in a care center nearby. She had been calling me, but I kept missing her calls and she isn't able to answer her phone or pick up voicemails so I don't have a way to communicate with her unless I happen to see that she is calling. She does leave voicemails for me, but since her speech isn't very clear, it is really hard to understand what she's saying. We had a nice visit and I was able to clear up what she had been trying to tell me! I'll be visiting her again with another friend next week and in the meantime I am trying to find a few items she needs (she gave me a list). Actually, I have been able to buy most of the things on her list already but she wants some shirts and I haven't been able to find those.

I taught Seminary on Monday and Tuesday as usual and both of those lessons went fairly well. It does seem to go better if I simplify and slow down. I've been scrolling through some FB groups for Seminary teachers this week and finding lots of good ideas. I really don't know how people manage to be so clever! Coming up with creative ideas for ways to do things is not my forte. My brain doesn't seem to work that way. 

I don't remember a ton about Tuesday or Wednesday either except that I worked on Seminary lessons a bit (still haven't done much beyond read the scripture blocks, read the lessons, and bat around ideas in my head). On Tuesday I got to talk to Amy on the phone for a while (I was cleaning bathrooms while I talked to her and she was folding laundry!) On Wednesday I also went in search of some shirts for my friend Wanda but as I already mentioned, I wasn't successful at finding anything. Frank took Seth to his YM activity that evening and then went back later to pick him up. I went to bed when Frank left to pick Seth up, and I was sound asleep before they got back. 

Yesterday I talked to Tanner for a while and I took Seth to pick up his new glasses. I had book chat last night. I spent some time this last week reading bits of some of the books I got at the library to try to decide which ones to take to book chat. I actually got really interested in the book I mentioned last week, The House is on Fire, and finished reading it over the weekend. I didn't end up taking it to book club, though, because I didn't feel like ther would be a lot to discuss about it. I did enjoy it, but it wasn't fantastic. Last night at book chat we discussed Lady Tan's Circle of Women. The book the group chose to read this time is called The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-year-old Man, by David von Drehle. I'm glad they picked that one because I've already read about half of it. It's pretty good so far. 

Today we had kind of a fun day in Seminary. My team teacher gave each of the kids one of the doctrinal mastery scripture references and they were supposed to come up with a picture to use as a memory trick to help them remember the reference and key phrase. They weren't incredibly successful at coming up with effective memory tricks, but they did have fun. It was fun to see them working together, talking, and just being a lot more awake than they usually are. I wish they could be that way all the time, even if we are doing something a little more serious. Another good thing that happened today is that one of our students came who hasn't been able to come in a long time. He has severe asthma and hasn't been able to come since sometime last October. It was awesome to see him again! 

After Seminary I went to the temple. I can't remember if I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm helping a friend get some work done for some of her family names and that last time I did initiatories for 6 sisters, two of whom we think are twins because they were born the same year and have the first names Mary and Martha. I was thinking earlier this week that I wanted to go to an endowment session today and I thought that I would really like to do the endowments for those twin girls. I was thinking about contacting my friend to see if she wanted their endowments done and before I had a chance, she emailed me their ordinance cards and asked me if I would be willing to do the endowments for the twins. So cool! I got Mary's endowment done today and will do Martha's next time I go. I was glad to go to the temple but I was struggling to stay awake today. Not surprising, considering how little sleep I get these days. 

It rained a lot yesterday and last night, but by the time I got out of the temple the sun was out:

It was also warm, as I mentioned earlier, but my car's thermometer must have been getting hit by direct sunlight because it definitely wasn't as warm as it says!:

It was probably about 68 degrees, not 89. It was hot in the car since the sun had been shining into it for hours, so I actually turned on the A/C for a little while to cool it down a bit. 

After I got home from the temple, I spent the rest of the afternoon doing administrative stuff for Seminary as well as looking for ideas for my lessons. I got a guest teacher lined up for 2 weeks from now, which makes me happy, but I had to send him an email with a link to the lesson and a bunch of information to help him prepare and it took a while to put that together. I also put together an email to send to all the parents about make-up work. A few parents had asked about it and we decided it would make sense to send an email each week with links to the lessons we cover that week so that kids who are absent and need to do make-up work can do make-up work throughout the semester. (Last semester we ended up sending separate emails to each of the kids who needed to complete make-up work at the end of the semester and some of them had to do a lot of make-up work all at once which I'm sure wasn't too fun.) That email took quite a bit of time to put together too--especially since I was adding in links to lessons for the last 4 weeks. 

Now it is getting late (I made dinner and Scott called also) so I guess I will be updating finances tomorrow and finishing my Seminary lessons too. There's never enough time to do everything! I am enjoying teaching from the Book of Mormon though and it is definitely easier than preparing lessons from the epistles of Paul! (Don't get me wrong...the New Testament is great also. I'm just a lot more familiar with the Book of Mormon, which makes it easier.) 

Tune in next week to find out if we have more snow or if it still feels like spring.

Weekly Review January 19 '24

 I don't think I have a lot to write about this week, but maybe I will think of more things as I write. 

Sunday was Frank's birthday. I gave him a card; he had already purchased a few things that he wanted for his gifts. At his request, I made chicken cordon bleu casserole for dinner and some lemon blueberry muffins instead of a cake. Making dinner and the muffins took most of my time after church, although I think I took a short nap too. Jared & Jessie came for dinner and we put a candle in one of the muffins and sang for Frank.

Jared & Jessie gave Frank a game for his birthday called Neanderthal Poetry. It's very similar to Taboo; you're trying to get your teammates to guess the word on the card, but instead of having 5 words you can't use in your description, you can only use one syllable words. And instead of a buzzer if you say a word you can't use, there's a club (inflatable, so it doesn't hurt) that you get hit with. It was pretty amusing! Since we had an odd number of people, Frank was the "judge" and got to hold the club and hit people with it the whole time. Jessie and I were a team and Jared and Seth were a team. The girls team won...I think we had an advantage since Seth is younger! 

Seth had Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off of school. Monday was MLK day, Tuesday was a teacher work day, and Wednesday was a teacher development day. Frank had Monday off for MLK day as well but he spent quite a bit of the day doing work for clients. I enjoyed getting some much needed extra sleep and not having as many Seminary lessons to prepare, but other than that I had all the regular work to do so I kept pretty busy. 

If Tuesday had not been a scheduled day off, there wouldn't have been school anyway because we got about 6 inches of snow overnight / Tuesday morning. Frank also got the day off because the University of Maryland was closed. A few early morning pictures:

Later in the morning; I caught a squirrel on our deck railing when I took this picture:

And later in the day, when more snow was coming down:

And even later, we had a beautiful sunset:

Seth shoveled our walk and cleaned off the cars and by mid afternoon the plows had come through so of course Frank wanted to get out! I had some books waiting to be picked up at the library and there were prescriptions that needed to be picked up at the pharmacy, so Frank and I ran those errands. 

On Wednesday Frank worked but he always works from home on Wednesdays so he didn't have to drive to work. That afternoon I met with my team teacher so we could do some lesson planning for the semester. I also went back to the library because a few more books I put on hold had come in and back to the pharmacy because one of Frank's prescriptions was wrong and I had to pick up the correct one. I also went to the store to get some fruit for Seminary for Thursday morning. Frank was awesome and had dinner ready when I got home from all those errands. Wednesday was sunny but very cold. At least the snow looked pretty:

I taught the Seminary lesson on Thursday since we only had two days of Seminary scheduled this week. We are in 1 Nephi 8 now; Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life. We were specifically talking about the fruit and what it represents, which is why I brought fruit. I mean, we can't talk about fruit that is sweet above all other fruits without eating fruit, can we? Besides, I was secretly hoping that having food would help the kids stay awake, and it did seem to help a bit! I wouldn't say it was my best lesson overall, but it went okay. I almost always feel like I muddle my way through my lessons. I am going to start working on slowing down and paying more attention to the spirit and not trying to get through everything I planned. It's just really easy to get distracted by all the many things I am trying to remember to do or say and to forget things that I think are most important, or to ask good follow up questions when students make comments. Our class is getting a little better at participating than they were at the beginning of the year, so I'm happy about that. Here's some of the notes I took when I was preparing the lesson (we did this activity of labeling the fruit together in class):

I was supposed to have a dentist appointment yesterday but the hygienist was sick so my appointment got moved to Monday. I talked to Seth's school counselor for a bit on the phone to ask some questions to help him figure out what classes to take next year (registration is soon). It's hard to believe this will be his Senior year! How did we get to this point already?

Today we are all at home together again because it snowed again last night. We only got about 3 or 4 inches of snow, but that's enough to shut everything down around here. It has actually been snowing most of the day although usually not very hard. The governor declared a snow emergency, though, so everything is shut down and we probably won't see snow plows on our street until late tonight or tomorrow sometime. Because the forecast was pretty definite that we would be getting snow this morning, the school district made the decision to close school today last night. That made me happy since it meant I could sleep in this morning, instead of getting up and getting ready and then finding out at 5:00 am that there would not be school. My team teacher was supposed to teach Seminary today so she ended up not having to teach this entire week. The University of Maryland closed today again also so Frank has another freebie day off work. 

A few pictures of today's snow:

It's been really cold all week (highs in the 20s or low 30s and lows in the teens) so it is nice to be able to stay inside. Frank helped me with updating the finances and after I finish this post I will work on Seminary lessons for next week. I have read through both of them and read the scripture blocks that go with both of them but haven't done much preparation besides that. 

I have had a little bit of free time this week and I have been looking through books to choose some for book chat, which is on Thursday. I've read bits of a couple of them and I got pretty interested in one of them so I'm about 80 pages into it. I probably won't have time to read all of it before Thursday, though. It's called The House is on Fire by Rachel Beanland. It's historical fiction about some of the people involved in a theater fire in Richmond Virginia in 1811. (The theater fire is an actual event and some of the people are historical figures too but most of the story is fiction.) I am supposed to bring three books to book chat and then everyone decides together which one we will read. I have six books that I'm trying to decide between (and one more waiting at the library to pick up...I just got the notice this morning). They all look interesting, so I will probably be reading some of the others! Besides skimming books, I have also worked on a few logic puzzles and I watched one movie called "Where the Crawdads Sing". It's based on a book that I read years ago. The movie was well done, I thought. I actually didn't love the book...the story was interesting but the ending kind of threw me. I guess since I already knew what was going to happen, the movie didn't bother me as much! While I've been exercising in the mornings, I've been watching a show called Transatlantic which is about a group of Americans who are trying to smuggle Jewish intellectuals out of Europe during WWII. It's fictional, but based loosely on some actual people and events. So far it is pretty good but the part I watched this morning was a bit weird so I'm hoping it doesn't deteriorate into something I don't want to watch. 

Frank talked to Scott for a little bit this morning and he is doing well. He started a new job at the beginning of the year and so far it is going really well. He has also enrolled in an online college and is starting to work towards a degree. He can take one class at a time and he has already passed the first class because he did so well on the pre-test that his professor cleared him to take the final. He reviewed some of the things he didn't understand from the pre-test and then took the final and passed it. Kind of nice that this college allows you to do that! I'm sure he won't be able to do that with every class, but this was an organizational behavior class and his nearly 10 years in the work force gave him the experience that he needed to learn most of the concepts already. Scott's bishop injured his leg really badly last week while shoveling snow and he has to have surgery on Thursday so Scott, as first counselor, has been mostly in charge of the ward for the last week. He's definitely keeping busy but seems to be happy.

That's all the news from around here. Everybody stay warm!

Weekly Review January 12 '24

 I'm late getting this week's post written, but better late than never, I suppose. 

This week felt super long to me. I'm not sure why, but Wednesday felt like it should be Thursday and Thursday like Friday, and so on. I was just thinking about something we did in Seminary this week and suddenly realized it was actually yesterday, not earlier in the week. It feels like a long time ago already!!

Maybe one reason this week felt long is that I was awake for a lot of it. I definitely didn't get enough sleep. My worst night was Sunday night, when I went to bed at 9:00, woke up at 11:00, and maybe drifted off for about a half hour at some point after that, but that was it. I was NOT a happy camper on Monday morning. After Seminary that morning I went home and took a two hour nap, but that still means I only got 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Monday night I slept a solid 7+ hours so I felt like a new person on Tuesday, but the rest of the week I got about 5 hours per night (and only 4 on Thursday night) so overall I spent most of the week feeling exhausted. I read something this week that says if an adult consistently gets less than 6 hours of sleep per night, it can lead to memory loss and impaired decision making. Not very encouraging, except that maybe I'm not getting Alzheimer's yet, I'm just severely sleep deprived. (I've noticed I'm having a much harder time remembering things lately.)

Well, after that cheerful beginning to this post I will say that it really wasn't a terrible week. Plenty of good things happened. 

Going back to last Saturday, we did get some snow and ice. Ultimately, I decided not to go to the Seminary symposium because the weather looked like it was going to be very uncooperative. I was sorry to miss it in some ways, but happy to stay home in my cozy house while the wind blew and the snow and sleet came down. We didn't get a lot snow but we did get some:

By evening it was raining hard, but since there was a lot of sleet mixed in with the snow not all of it melted. Frank and Seth went over to help clean off sidewalks at the church and they got pretty wet. I mostly worked on Seminary lessons and other stuff...not sure where the day went, honestly. 

On Sunday we went to church as usual except the time we meet changed and our meetings start at 9:00 now instead of 10:30. I actually don't mind the earlier start time but a lot of people do. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and afterwards we played two games--the new game Seth got for Christmas and another game that Shellie sent us for Christmas. We had a fun time!

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't sleep well Sunday night so Monday I wasn't too happy. For Seminary, I was teaching about 1 Nephi 1 and since that is one of the "required reading" chapters for the youth this semester, I decided to read the whole thing with them. We sat in a big circle and read together and I stopped them a few times to talk about things we were reading. I'm sure a lot of them got bored but I really felt like that was what I was supposed to do. My team teacher said she thought it was a good model of how they should be reading...not just reading it, but digging into it deeper. We made a list of some truths / principles we learned from this chapter. 

After I went home and took a nap, I felt quite a bit better. I got all my chores done and after school I took Seth to an eye doctor appointment. (We saw Jessie, since she works there.) We ordered some new glasses for Seth because his old glasses are too small. His eyesight really hasn't changed. He only needs correction for one eye; the other eye has perfect 20/20 vision. The eye doctor said that his vision is good enough that he should not have to wear glasses to drive, even though he didn't pass the screening when I took him to get his learner's permit. The eye doctor was able to fill out a form to send to the MVA which will remove the "corrective lenses" restriction from his permit. So technically, we probably didn't even need to get him some glasses but decided it would be good for him to have some on hand anyway. He picked out some really inexpensive frames and our insurance covered most of the cost.

On the way home from the eye doctor we got some donuts for family night treat. I taught a brief lesson and we played a game and enjoyed the donuts. 

I taught Seminary on Tuesday morning also (as usual). Guess what? It was on 1 Nephi 2. We spent most of the lesson contrasting and comparing the way Laman & Lemuel reacted to their father's decision to leave Jerusalem to Nephi & Sam's reaction. I used a Venn Diagram to record what we talked about:

We had an unexpected 3 hour early school closing on Tuesday because it was raining all day and there was supposed to be flooding and high winds. It did rain all day and the river definitely rose a lot and flooded out of its banks and it was also windy but thankfully there wasn't any bad flooding (at least not where we are).  

My team teacher planned a pretty epic lesson on Wednesday morning...we were talking about Nephi and his brothers trying to get the brass plates from Laban and she set up a simulation activity where they were trying to get some chocolate. I won't go into all the details, but it involved one of the kids having to stand on a chair in the middle of the lesson and scream "cock-a-doodle-doo" five times without explaining to anyone else what he was doing. It was hilarious; I will never forget it! (He did get the chocolate for the whole class by doing this, though.) I don't remember much about what I did after seminary except that I tried to do some preparations for Friday's seminary class and I was falling asleep so I decided to take a short nap. I was really surprised when I woke up 2 hours later! I think Tanner called me that day too...it was either Tuesday or Wednesday. That evening there was a combined RS and YW activity. Since Seth had his YM activity too, we went to the church together. He had to be there a half hour early for a planning meeting so I took some seminary stuff with me and worked on it until the activity started. The activity was called "Then and Now" and we all talked about what things were like when we were in middle school / high school. There were a variety of ages of women there, some older than me and some younger than me. It was actually really fun and I think the YW were intrigued by how much things have changed. (They also got to tell us what things are like now, like what kinds of clothes are popular. Apparently pajamas are totally acceptable things to wear to school now. I wish that had been the case in my day!) At one point we were talking about typewriters and one of the YW asked "What is a typewriter?" The activity ended late so I was pretty tired and I almost went home without Seth! In my defense, we usually have RS activities on Thursdays instead of the youth activity night so I'm used to coming home from RS activities by myself. (Plus have I mentioned that I'm totally sleep deprived so I keep forgetting things?) I had driven out of the church parking lot and up the road just a few feet when I remembered. I'm just glad I didn't drive all the way home without him!

On Thursday Seth didn't get up for Seminary so he had to walk to school. I thought he had slept through his alarm again, though, because for some reason the Ring camera didn't pick it up when he left. Besides that, my phone was having issues so I couldn't call or text him. I drove home quickly after Seminary, thinking I would need to wake him up but when I got there he wasn't there and his backpack and lunch were gone. Thankfully, my phone started working again so I was able to text him and confirm that he was at school. We had our lowest seminary attendance so far this year that morning...only 10 kids came. Two were on a band trip and there's been a lot of sickness going around, apparently. I saw something really great happen that day, though. Because fewer kids were there, a few of them sat in different places. (We don't have assigned seats but everyone tends to sit in the same place.) One of the youngest boys who doesn't usually comment or participate much sat next to one of the oldest boys who comments often. At one point, my team teacher was asking for examples of inspiring stories from the Old Testament. I saw the younger boy say something to the older boy and then the older boy said turned to him and said something like "Yes, that's a good answer. You should say that." So the younger boy raised his hand and shared a comment. It totally made my day to see that interaction between two of the youth! On Thursday evening my team teacher and I went to visit one of our seminary students and asked him to be the class president for this semester. We really weren't sure if he would do it, but he said yes, so we're happy about that. 

For Seminary on Friday we played some games and had food and a hot chocolate bar, to make up for the games and food we had planned for the last day before Christmas and didn't get to do. We also had a discussion about some of the results of the questionaires we gave them last week. We played games first and then talked while we ate. We got some helpful feedback from the youth about a few things, so that was good. A couple of them also actually thanked us for everything we've been doing which was really sweet. Hot chocolate I had Friday night with hot chocolate bar leftovers (I didn't get a chance to drink any while we were at seminary):

After seminary I went to the temple and my friend Rebekah went with me. I'm helping another sister in my ward get some temple work done for some of her family. She sent me 6 names for initiatories...these women were all sisters. Two of them were twins named Mary and Martha. They were from a really big family because she told me they had 2 more sisters and 6 brothers! Normally we are only allowed to do 5 names at a time in initiatories, but I decided to ask if there would be time for me to do one extra. When I told the temple workers that all six women were sisters, they said "We can't leave one of the sisters out!" So I got to do all six. 

It was especially nice to have my friend Rebekah come with me to the temple because I had someone to talk to on the way there and back so I didn't get sleepy. We stopped and got lunch together on our way home. I spent the rest of the day getting financial stuff caught up and that's why I didn't get this post written last night. 

I'm going to go ahead and write about today because by Friday I probably won't remember what I did today. This morning I had a hair appointment which took even longer than usual because I had a bunch of highlights done. (Part of the process of letting my gray hair grow in.) I got a lot of little things done like pulling apart a rotisserie chicken (using the chicken to made a chicken cordon bleu casserole for Frank's birthday tomorrow...his request), practicing ukulele, cleaning the kitchen floor, writing an email to the new seminary class president, and putting several books on hold at the library. It's my turn to suggest books when my book club meets in a few weeks so I am checking out a number of books that I've heard other people recommend so that I can get a feel for whether or not they are good choices. (I won't have time to read any of them, but I can glance through them at least). This evening Frank and I went out to dinner with another couple in our ward...this has become a tradition every January because his birthday is the day after Frank's so we celebrate together. It was really fun, as usual. (Although the service at this restaurant was really slow, for some reason.) We watched part of the BYU basketball game on her phone while we were eating and were glad that the cougars won the game in the end. (It was close!) 

A few odds and ends from this week: Frank has been pretty busy doing various small jobs for clients the last few weeks. I feel like he is gone or down in his office working quite a bit. Friday was the last day of the school semester. Seth is happy to be done with Chemistry and Algebra 2 but he's not looking forward to English or Pre Cal. While I exercised in the mornings this week, I watched a mini series called "All the Light We Cannot See". I read the book years ago but as far as I can remember the show followed the book's plot fairly closely. It was really good and I enjoyed it a lot.

That's everything I can think of to tell you about this week and I am feeling quite sleepy so that's it for this week. 

Weekly Review January 5 '23

 Happy New Year, everyone!

This week went by pretty fast, although last Friday seems like a long time ago, for some reason. I guess that's because we were still in our Christmas break last Friday and now we are back in the regular routine, so everything has changed. 

I'm happy to report that I did make a lot of progress with both the tax certification test and my Seminary lessons last Friday and Saturday. By Saturday afternoon, I had passed all three tax tests and both of my Seminary lessons for this week were ready to go. I even got all the other Saturday chores done, too. So far, I feel like the Book of Mormon Seminary lessons are easier to prepare. I'm not sure why, because the format for the lessons is the same, but it just feels easier to me. I think it's because I am so familiar with the Book of Mormon. It definitely feels great spending time in the Book of Mormon. I love the Book of Mormon!! 

Not everything about Seminary has been roses this week, though. For one thing, it's been challenging getting back into my normal sleeping schedule. I've had some bad nights and overall didn't get much sleep but last night was quite a bit better. I took a few naps this week which helped me to not be quite so tired but means I didn't get as much done. Second, one of our students told us she's decided not to come to Seminary anymore. She was really nice about it, but it was a shock because she has been one of our best students...really engaged, answering questions and sharing great insights. I've been aware that her parents were having issues with church, but I thought this girl was okay. She told us she doesn't feel like Seminary aligns with her personal beliefs anymore. There was never any indication that she was struggling with anything that we discussed in Seminary. My team teacher and I have been pretty sad about it. Third, we gave our students a survey to fill out on Monday (anonymous...we told them not to put their names on them) where we asked for feedback and wow, those kids were brutally honest. I mean, I don't think they meant to be brutal but the overall results were pretty discouraging. For example, we asked them to rate a number of things on a scale of 1 to 10 and the majority of them answered "how much do you enjoy coming to Seminary" with a 3 or below. What do they like about our class? We have food on Fridays. There were some interesting contrasts too...more than one said they would like to have more discussions but most of them (including the ones who said they wanted more discussion) rated "How comfortable are you sharing your thoughts in class?" with a 3 or below. Not sure how we are supposed to have more discussions when no one wants to talk! Anyway, I could go on, but I will spare you all the details. Suffice it to say, there is a lot to think about and figure out. I felt really down for a few days, but I am doing better now.

I think my lessons this week went pretty well overall. I acutally took parts of two different lessons for each lesson and I was pleased that I was able to connect them together in a way that made sense. The reason I was trying to cover more material is because the Seminary manual has a week of introductory materials (responsibility of the learner, the plan of salvation, studying the scriptures, etc.), and then a week covering the introductory pages of the Book of Mormon before getting into 1st Nephi. The Come Follow Me manual doesn't have the week of introductory materials so if we didn't condense and combine some things we would be behind the Come Follow Me schedule for most of the semester. We looked through all the lessons and decided what our class needs the most. We did skip some lessons entirely, and others we felt like we could do parts of them. So anyway, I taught one lesson about studying the scriptures and the introduction to the Book of Mormon and another lesson about feeling the spirit and the Title Page of the Book of Mormon. 

Okay, so enough about Seminary! I'm really trying to not let Seminary take over my life, but you can probably tell that I'm not having much success with that. Going back to last weekend, we went to church as usual on Sunday. None of us stayed up until midnight to welcome in the New Year, but we did have our usual dinner of appetizers and we put together a jigsaw puzzle. Jared came over for dinner and helped a lot with the puzzle, but Jessie didn't come because it was her sister's last day here before she returned to college in Idaho so of course she wanted to spend as much time with her sister as possible. Frank went to bed around 9:30, I think, but the rest of us stayed up later. By the time Jared left, we were so close to finishing the puzzle that we stayed up long enough to finish it. We finished right about 11:00 pm and went to bed! We don't usually finish the puzzle on New Year's Eve (even when we stay up until midnight) so it must have been easier than most. 

After we sorted all the edge pieces from the inside pieces. This was around 4:00 pm:

Jared helping (This is around 8:00 pm; we had to move the puzzle into the kitchen because the lighting in the living room is really not good at all.):

Around 9:30 pm:

Finished! (11:00 pm):

On Monday we slept in a bit, of course. Frank helped me get grocery shopping done and they both helped with the other chores. For family night, we talked about goals and we each set a goal and we also set a family goal. Then we played a game that Seth got for Christmas called Left, Right, Center. It turned out to be pretty fun.

Tuesday we all had to jump back into real life...Seminary, school, work. On Wednesday after Seth got home from school and Frank finished work (he works from home on Wednesdays), Frank and I went on a walk (that's one of our goals) and then all three of us worked together to get all the leaves on our front lawn raked and mulched. (We did a lot of leaf raking and mulching when Scott and Tanner were here, but more leaves fell after that and we haven't had a chance to take care of them until now.) We are possibly getting some snow tomorrow so we wanted to get the leaves off the lawn before then. It does look a lot better. After we finished, Frank said we should reward ourselves by going out for dinner and since I never feel like cooking, I agreed. We went to IHOP and I was surprised to discover that they have a discount menu for people age 55 and up. What??! I guess I am officially old now. I spent some time that evening getting Seth registered for FSY. We had to include a photo of him and we didn't have any good ones of just his face, so I had to take one. I actually got one of him smiling! (I cropped this photo so I had a close up of his face for the photo I submitted to FSY.):

Frank took Seth to YM that evening and he stayed at the church to work on some IT stuff. I got ready for bed and then went to bed, although unfortunately it took me a long time to fall asleep.

Seth also had trouble falling asleep on Wednesday night so he decided not to go to Seminary Thursday morning. I told him he would have to walk to school because I was stopping at the store on my way home from Seminary. But then when Seminary ended, I checked the Ring camera (one of those cameras connected to the front doorbell) to make sure he had left for school and he hadn't. I called the home phone and then his cell phone but he didn't answer. So I realized he must not have woken up when his alarm went off, so I knew I would have to go home. When I got home Seth was in the shower...sometime after I called he woke up, saw what time it was, and panicked! He got ready for school quickly but it was too late for him to catch the bus to the CTC, so I had to drive him there myself. I did get him there before the bell rang, so he wasn't late for school and at least he got some extra sleep! 

This morning our bishopric provided breakfast for the Seminary students...or they were supposed to, anyway! One of the counselors came but the rest of the bishopric didn't show up. I think their alarms didn't go off or something because I know they were planning to come. We got a very apologetic email from our bishop later! It all worked out...the counselor who came brought a breakfast casserole and there was plenty so no one went hungry. After Seminary I went to the temple. I've spent the rest of the day updating finances, making dinner, and writing this post. 

Tomorrow there is a symposium at the stake center next to the temple for all the Seminary & Institute teachers in the region. I'm not certain that I am going to go because a winter storm is coming in tomorrow. It's still uncertain if we are going to get lots of snow, a little snow, ice, or just rain. We are close to the line between rain and snow, so it's really hard to tell. If things go as they are predicting now, I will be driving into snow and ice as I return home, which doesn't sound fun. For some reason they were really late getting the detailed information about this symposium to us. They sent us an announcement with the date a few weeks ago, but I didn't get the information about classes until tonight. I'm sure all the classes are good and I am definitely interested in a few of them but the topics are not as aligned with what I think I need right now, so I'm feeling pretty undecided....especially since none of my lessons for next week are fully prepared yet so I am really going to need time to work on them tomorrow. I've certainly spent time on them and I have a pretty good idea of what I am doing for two of them. (I'm teaching three lessons next week instead of two.) I just need to finalize everything. 

It's getting pretty late here and I'm exhausted so I will sign off until next week.