Late Slips

My kids started attending a charter school back in 2002. There is no bus service, so for the last 6 years (this is my 7th year) I have driven my kids to school and back every school day. I think it's to my credit that we have not been late very many times--maybe 4 or 5 times a year. But on those days that we are late, we have to go inside to fill out a late slip. Having to go inside is torture in and of itself--especially now that I have to get Seth in and out of the carseat! (Besides, it seems inevitable that we are always late on days that I haven't had a chance to get a shower yet! I really extremely dislike going out in public unshowered.)


Now here is my gripe about the late slips. Most of it is fairly easy--child's name, teacher, time in. But then there is that last line--"Reason". Reason? You want to know why we were late? The problem is, half the time I really don't know. We were just late, ok? I mean, everybody is just late sometimes! There was the day that I was calmly driving to school and we were almost there, and Tanner said "We're late." I looked at the clock. It said 9:05. How did that happen?! I didn't think we left late. I wasn't feeling the need to hurry because I thought we were on time. What am I supposed to put on the late slip? We got caught in a time warp? Because honestly, I think that's what happened!

Then there are the days that everybody just dawdles around. Jared is the worst offender. He would rather play with Seth than anything else. What am I supposed to write on the late slip? "Loves his baby brother too much"? I mean, the line is not long enough to fit "He kept playing with his brother in spite of my repeated (sometimes loud and angry) reminders that he needed to get ready for school." It also isn't long enough to fit in something like "the baby was up every two hours all night long, so I couldn't get up when I needed to; somebody lost their shoes; there was no bread for sandwiches; and in spite of all that, we were leaving just in the nick of time when the baby had one of those explosive, out-the-back-up-to-the-shoulders-messy diapers so I had to clean him all up first, and so then in spite of my valiant efforts we were late."

Oh, and PS--having to take the time to fill out this dumb late slip just made my child 5 minutes later!

Look How He's Grown!

Now that Seth is 18 months old, I thought it would be fun to have a "pictorial" look back over his life. I tried to find pictures that were close to each "month" anniversary. It's amazing to see how much he's grown and changed! It went by so fast!

Day 1

About 2 weeks old

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

5 months old

6 months old

7 months old

8 months old

9 months old

10 months old

11 months old

1 year!

13 months old

14 months old

15 months old

16 months old

17 months old

18 months!

You've come a long way, Seth! We look forward to many more....

Weekly Review November 29 '08

We had another busy week, but not as busy as the last couple of weeks have been, I think. Of course now we’re officially into the Christmas season! So I don’t think things are going to slow down too much, but I always try not to let things get too hectic at Christmas time because I really want to enjoy the wonderful spirit of the season. I really try to keep things simple!



I will start this week's post with some pictures of the kitchen. They aren't the best photos--I am not a good enough photographer to know how to capture how pretty the lighting looks at night--but hopefully you'll get the idea:

Here's the new light over the dining area--Frank put a dimmer switch on it, too.

Here's the new light over the sink (off) and the undercounter lights (on).

Here's all the lights on, but the one over the sink is so bright it washed out. (Originally, we put in 60 watt bulbs. We switched them to 40 watt bulbs because it was just too bright! Even 25 watt bulbs would probably be enough.)

Here I was trying to get the pretty blue wall color, but it didn't come out very well.

Sunday was a lot more restful than the one before, but I still didn’t get a nap. Scott was called to be the 2nd counselor in the Teacher’s Quorum but they didn’t set him apart yet because Frank was home with Seth, so hopefully that will happen tomorrow. Tanner should be ordained a Deacon tomorrow also. That evening I took Scott to a stake youth standards night. I admit I expected it to be on the dull side, but I was humbled—they had two youth speakers who gave completely excellent talks, and all the music was really good and touched me deeply. For the opening song we sang “Keep the Commandments”, and the words “in this there is safety and peace” really hit home to me for some reason. I was in a roomful of teenagers and their parents, and I just felt strongly that these teenagers really are going to be ok—that keeping the commandments is going to keep them safe from all the wicked things around them and that they are going to enjoy peace and happiness in their lives.

And on that note, I’ve been listening to a lot of the Conference talks this week and been so “blown away” by how wonderful the talks are. It seems like each one I listen to is better than the last one! It’s amazing to me also, to see how many of them apply so perfectly to the events that have happened since Conference just 8 weeks ago. I have felt very comforted by many of them.

The boys were out of school on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week. Monday and Tuesday I was just trying to get a lot of errands and cleaning done. Scott had an orthodontist appointment on Tuesday after school; Frank took him to that.

Wednesday was Tanner’s 12th birthday! It’s hard to believe he is that old already. I was remembering our first Thanksgiving with him (he was 2 days old), and it really doesn’t seem like that long ago! I still remember how cute he was, with his dark hair, and how he had such a strong little neck from day one—he could lift his head up off my shoulder right away.

Frank worked a half day on Wednesday and was home by around 11:30. Tanner got to open his presents then. He was really happy with what he got—the book Brisingr (3rd book in the Eragon series), a large Halo action figure, a PSP game, and a game for the Nintendo DS. We forgot to check the mail, so he didn’t open his present from Grandma & Grandpa Pew until Friday. He immediately used the money they sent him to go online to order a computer game that he has been wanting tremendously! (I looked everywhere for it in the stores, but it’s an older game, so it’s not available anymore.) Since Tanner is having a birthday party next week, we didn’t have his cake on his birthday, but I asked him what he wanted to do instead, and he requested a pumpkin / cream cheese cake roll that we had sampled at the grocery store a few weeks ago, so we got him that.

What's in them?!

Great presents!

Frank and I were busy that day with advance preparations for Thanksgiving. I made a couple of pudding pies (Seth liked licking the beater), sweet potato casserole, and green bean casserole. Frank made a strawberry pie, complete with homemade crust. Jared went to play with a friend for a few hours that afternoon and seemed to have a lot of fun. Here's Seth, enjoying the beater:

Seth also enjoyed getting into a few things while I was busy. I told those boys not to leave the cereal opened on the table!

We hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! We did. We invited two of the families in our ward over for the day. Between the three families, we had 16 people here, and a TON of yummy food! Besides the things I mentioned earlier, we also made a large turkey and mashed potatoes & gravy. One family brought appetizers, green salad, jello salad, and pumpkin cake, and another family brought cookies, toffee, M&M’s, more turkey, a ton of rolls, and stuffing. Everything was delicious! The weather was pleasant enough that the kids were able to play outside for a while. After dinner, all the men and older boys sequestered themselves in our bedroom to play video games. The boys got to play a little bit of Halo finally (the less violent part) under close supervision and Tanner, in particular, thought he’d died and gone to heaven! The younger kids watched a movie while the women visited and cleaned up the kitchen.

Some of the food

Do you think we have enough rolls?

More food

Even more food!

Jared & Christian watching the big guys play

"Big guys" Scott, Frank & Brody playing

Tanner, "in heaven"!

A rare sight--GIRLS on the Cleveland couch. (Alexandra & McKenna watching the movie.)

Ethan & Michael enjoying the movie

Seth & Emma play with the refrigerator magnets

Jana doing my dishes!

Friday we did a lot of “returning”. We returned library books and merchandise to two different stores. (Luckily, we managed to avoid the worst of the crowds.) The boys were invited to spend the night next door with their friend Kirk. Frank and I spent a romantic evening on the couch—he watched television and I sewed patches on boy scout shirts! Seth was coughing a lot after I put him to bed and he even woke up and cried hard enough that I went in and picked him up to help him go back to sleep. He slept well the rest of the night (I didn’t, unfortunately!) but after he woke up this morning he threw up 3 times and just didn’t seem like himself. He’s really congested, also. So back to the doctor we went. The doctor thinks the congestion in his throat (and drainage into his stomach) is what caused the vomiting, but he also checked his ears and they both look pretty red still so he prescribed a stronger antibiotic. Hopefully that will help “knock out” this infection for good, and Seth can start feeling like himself again.

Today we’ve just been busy with lots of little chores—the boys raked leaves, the tables and chairs went back to the church, and I worked on scouts with the boys. We also got some of the Christmas decorations put up, but the tree is going to have to wait until after Tanner’s birthday party. No room for 7 boys to sleep in the living room if the tree is up! I’m starting to work on a few other Christmas tasks, as well. I’m hoping to get some more scout patches sewed today. Both Scott and Tanner have merit badge patches that need to be sewed onto sashes. Unfortunately, I sewed some of Scott’s on the wrong side (I didn’t know the sash had to go over the right shoulder; Scott thought it was the left shoulder) so I have to take his off and start all over. Patches are a pain to sew, anyway—why don’t they make them iron on?! Frank is at the church right now setting up some new computers. He has to set up a new computer for every ward in the stake during the next couple of weeks, so he’s going to be busy.

Speaking of Frank, he was able to start exercising again this week (he missed most of last week because of illness). I made him weigh himself on Thursday, and he has already lost 7 pounds—not bad for only 3 weeks of exercising (and one of those weeks he was sick). Way to go, Frank!

The earlier part of this week I did a lot of reading. I was trying to get my book for book chat done because it was due on Wednesday and I knew I wouldn’t be able to renew it because other members of our book club have it on hold. I did manage to get it done by Wednesday evening, but it was so late by then that the library was closed so I didn’t bother to return it until Friday morning. The book I was reading is Three Cups of Tea, which many of you have already heard about. It was not very easy to get through, but it was an amazing story so I enjoyed that part of it. It’s the true story of a man who is building schools (mostly for girls) in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The book got a little too political for my tastes near the end, but I do agree that the work this man is doing is a wonderful way to fight terrorism without violence. It was awesome and inspiring to see how the young people’s lives changed so much for the better because they had a chance to get a good education. Read it sometime!

Seth has been feeling better and sleeping better overall this week, in spite of the further problems with his ears. He added “tree” and a few other words to his vocabulary. On Friday he officially turned 18 months old which means, of course that he can go to nursery now! Assuming he ever gets well enough, that is. Frank stayed home from church with him on Sunday so he could recuperate from his double ear infection, and it looks like he won’t be going to nursery tomorrow either.

On the medical front, I have felt congested off and on all week, but have never come down with anything, thankfully! My sense of smell seems to have mostly left me, though, and on Wednesday I really couldn’t taste anything either. (My sense of taste came back in time for Thanksgiving, at least!) All the boys have had colds the last week or two and lately (probably the last month) Jared has been having fairly frequent headaches. I’m not sure what’s up with him, but will get him checked if the headaches persist. I would suspect his eyesight to be a contributing factor except that he just had his eyes checked and got a new prescription about 6 months ago. I suppose his eyes could have changed already, but I hope not! Tanner keeps complaining that he can’t see very well anymore, so I guess we’ll need to have his eyes checked soon, and I am way overdue for an eye check up myself. I am constantly noticing lately how hard it is to see. I wish it didn’t cost so much to get our eyes checked!

However, I really can’t complain too much—this week I also received the insurance statements for my eye surgery. I only had to pay a $30 co-pay for that. My insurance paid over $12,000. This poor insurance company has not made any money off of our family, let me tell you! We’ve been with this company for four years and I have often complained at how much we’ve had to pay for premiums (around $40,000) but I know they paid out well over $30,000 for my heart problems and Seth’s birth, and now they’ve shelled out so much for my eye surgery. That doesn’t count all the other prescriptions and doctor visits over all those years, so I know they’ve paid out a lot more for us than we’ve paid them. We are pretty healthy over all, but the last few years have taught me that it only takes one thing to really tally up the medical bills. So add health insurance to the list of things I’m thankful for—I feel guilty that I ever complained about the cost!

On that grateful / guilty note, I will end this post! I am hoping we are all healthier this week…hope all of you are happy and healthy, also!

Weekly Review November 22 '08

At the end of last week’s review, I was saying how glad I was that the next day was Sunday and we could have a day of rest. Well, here is how Sunday went: church from 9:00-12:00, choir practice from 12:15-12:45, tithing settlement at 12:40 (I left choir a little early), eat dinner, put Seth down for a nap, get him down just in time for the arrival of our home teacher at 2:45, Primary presidency meeting at 3:30, visit Primary children at 4:30, get home at 5:00. Eat supper, have family night, go to bed!

Hmmm…not very restful! I was tired after all of that, but it was still a day of rest. Why? Because on Sunday I always rest mentally and spiritually, even if I don’t rest very much physically. I find that I am always in a different mind set on Sundays than every other day of the week. I don’t think about the same things. I don’t worry about all the usual things. I don’t even give a thought to that long “to do” list that is waiting for me on Monday. Ahhh….rest! I am so grateful for Sunday! It is my favorite day of the week and I truly look forward to it all week long.

A side note about choir practice: I took Seth with me because Frank was helping the other boys count their tithing and fill out tithing slips. That didn’t turn out to be much of a problem because Seth was tired and sat quietly on my lap while I sang. He fell asleep before it was over—appropriately, while we were practicing the song “Still, still, still”. (Some of the words, for those who may not be familiar with them: “Sleep, sleep, sleep, ‘tis the eve of our Savior’s birth” and “Dream, dream, dream, of the joyous day to come.”) Seth was sleeping and dreaming! I got a kick out of that.

Speaking of Seth, I forgot to mention last week that Seth is getting verbal—that is, verbal so that we actually know what he is saying. He said his first word last week—ball. I was cleaning in the basement, and he came to me and said “ball”, and pointed to Scott & Tanner’s room—obviously wanting me to follow him. I did, and when we got there he pointed to Scott’s clock up on his dresser, which looks like a soccer ball. I rewarded him for saying his first word by getting the “ball” down for him. He promptly did what any normal person would do with a ball—he threw it! (Shhh…don’t tell Scott! At least the clock still works.) A few days later, he was looking over my shoulder and started pointing at something behind me and saying something that sounded like “Je ju” over and over. I turned around, and there was our picture of Jesus on the wall. This week he said “Jesus” again, while pointing at a different picture of Jesus on another wall. This week he also said “shoes” while the boys were getting their shoes on—he wanted his shoes, too. He also said “juice” and “spoon”. I wonder what he will say next?

On Monday I resumed my frantic cleaning efforts. While Seth was down for his nap, I cleaned Jared’s room. Oh my goodness! It took me about 3 hours! I am always astounded by the amount of JUNK my kids collect. I filled two and a half large trash bags with just that…trash! Papers, candy wrappers, etc. Why do my boys think they need to save every little scrap of paper that they have ever scribbled on? Why do they get so sentimentally attached to empty bubblegum containers? How come I am the only one in this family who truly appreciates the wonders of the “round file cabinet”? The funny thing was, when Jared got home, he was THRILLED to have such a clean and organized room. I told him it would be easy to keep it that way if he would just put things back where they go when he’s done with them. (And get better acquainted with his trash can.) But I know it won’t last! I don’t understand when they like clean rooms so much why they don’t take a little bit of trouble to keep them that way.

Here’s the update on the kitchen. Frank got one set of the under cabinet lights installed on Saturday night. We decided to wait on the other set because that took so long—as it was, we still didn’t get to bed until after midnight. It was nice to get some of them done and see the effect, though. It is so nice to have that extra light! I told Frank that he has now spoiled me and if we ever move to another house, he is doomed to have to repeat the installation process there. After contemplating the hole in the wall over the sink where the wires from the old light were protruding, we decided that we needed to go pick out the light for over the sink as soon as possible because we weren’t sure we could find one that would not require us to put a new hole further down. Obviously, if any new holes needed to be made, we wanted to do that before painting, not after. So on Monday evening, in between dinner, homework, folding of laundry, and family night activity, we squeezed in a trip to Lowe’s. We found what we wanted and brought it home to see if it would work. We didn’t have a chance to actually take it out of the box and check until Friday, but when we did we discovered that it would work to put it in the same place. Frank still ended up cutting a hole in the wall because he needed to put in a box to install the light, but the light covers the hole and he didn’t need to patch anything. Frank got the priming done on Friday afternoon with some help from one of our neighbors (Tony) who is a professional painter. Frank asked him to come in and give him some advice, and Tony just jumped in and started helping him do it, and got the whole wall done in about 30 minutes! It was so well done, too—I almost hated to see it covered up with paint! (Not really.) Frank got the painting done today. He installed the new light in the dining area in the morning and painted this afternoon (late). I got the kitchen all cleaned up this evening, and now it looks really nice! I am very glad to have that project done and to have a functional kitchen again! Someday I’d like to paint the cabinets, but I’ve had enough remodeling for now!

Seth didn’t sleep well at all on Monday night / Tuesday morning. He woke up at 2:00 am and then again at 4:00 am. The second time he never really went back to sleep, although he dropped off a couple of times. He was crying a lot and we just couldn’t figure out what was wrong until he threw up all over me. Ohhh…that’s what was wrong! Frank and I were both beat on Tuesday, so he stayed home and did work from here. I was supposed to have book chat, but didn’t go. I still had a pretty productive day—did a little organizing in the kitchen—but I was tired! Seth seemed to improve during the day. He was able to keep down soup, crackers, etc. He had a fever, but not a very high one. Overall, he seemed to perk up quite a bit and we thought we were on our way up.

Unfortunately, we were wrong! Tuesday night was even worse than Monday night. Seth woke up just as we were going to bed. He was fussy for a while and then went back to sleep, but when Frank tried to put him back in his crib, he woke up, cried, and threw up again—this time on Frank. We decided to take shifts taking care of him and Frank got two sleeping bags and zipped them together, which we put on the floor in Seth’s bedroom. I took the first shift from 11:00-1:00. I got a little bit of sleep, but Seth woke up about every 30 minutes. Frank took over at 1:00 and I conked out until about 4:30. Then Frank went back to bed, and I took Seth. He didn’t go back to sleep until about 6:00, and only for about half an hour. So we were pretty tired on Wednesday also. When Frank got up again, his throat was hurting and he barely had a voice, so he took a sick day. That was a help to me—Frank put Seth down for a nap while I took the kids to school, went visiting teaching, and got the shopping done. Frank took a long nap that afternoon, and later I convinced Seth to take another nap. I think I had a 15 minute nap on Tuesday and another 15 minute nap on Wednesday, but that’s it. I figure from Monday morning to Wednesday evening I got maybe about 10 hours of interrupted sleep, total!

Seth felt really hot most of the day on Wednesday. His temperature got up to about 100.8. Thankfully, he slept through the night (from 8:30 to 5:00) on Wednesday night, and so did I! He slept even better on Thursday night. Seth was doing better on Thursday, although he still had an incredibly runny nose. Frank made it to work on Thursday, also. He still wasn’t feeling great, but he was truly miserable on Wednesday—achy, sore throat, head ache, and dizziness. Unfortunately, his exercise program has suffered this week since he just wasn’t up to doing it most days. Hopefully next week will be better! On Thursday evening Frank got the rest of the under cabinet lights installed.

In spite of being tired as well as spending more time than usual holding Seth, I have plugged along at my “to do” list and have accomplished a surprising amount this week. I got Tanner & Scott’s room cleaned; it wasn’t nearly as bad as Jared’s but still took 2 hours (I broke it up into two 1 hour sessions). I worked on the kitchen a lot, also. I got a lot of the cabinets better organized and cleaned, and I cleaned the oven and the freezer part of the fridge. I’m almost done with the whole house, with the exception of part of the basement. I guess one nice thing about having a small house is that there aren’t as many rooms to clean! (Although the rooms you have are harder to keep uncluttered.) On Wednesday evening I took the boys to scouts; Tanner’s leader didn’t show up again, so I took him back home. Then after scouts I had a cub committee meeting which thankfully was shorter than usual. It’s nice not to be in charge of that meeting anymore!

Frank didn’t have to work again on Friday which was a great blessing since we were trying to get the kitchen done. He spent the morning installing the light over the sink, then we had lots of errands to run in the afternoon. We finished birthday shopping for Tanner, did a little Christmas shopping, mailed packages, and got some lunch. Frank had been given coupons for two free boxed lunches from Honey Baked Ham, so we did that. It was yummy! Each meal included a sandwich of our choice (Frank got roast beef, I got chicken cordon bleu), a side (potato salad, pasta salad), potato chips, a pickle spear, a drink, and a large cookie. It was nice to get all that for free! We got home shortly before we needed to go get the boys. We put Seth down for a nap and he slept for 3 hours which was helpful—Frank got the priming done while I worked on the budget. I ended up making another trip to the store to get some more things we needed for the kitchen project, and I also picked up the latest Indiana Jones movie and Journey to the Center of the Earth for the boys to watch. (Thanks to Tim & Rachelle for the Blockbuster gift card!) We watched Indiana Jones on Friday night and Journey to the Center of the Earth on Saturday night. I actually didn’t see much of either one of them—too busy to sit down and watch—but everybody else seemed to enjoy them.

Friday was very cold and we had snow flurries off and all on day. Seth was pretty fascinated by those funny white things drifting through the air! Seth had another bad night Friday night, and this morning he seemed off balance, so we decided we’d better have his ears checked. I kind of suspected all week he might have an ear infection, but since he seemed to be improving and he was only fussy, not screaming, we didn’t get him checked. Frank took him to the doctor—he has a double ear infection. Both ears—poor baby!! He’s on an antibiotic now, and hopefully he’ll be feeling better soon.

Report cards came home this week; everyone is doing pretty well. Scott made the honor roll. (They don’t have an honor roll at the other boys’ school.) Tanner did better than I had feared—he got a C in Science, but he got an A in Social Studies and Bs in Language Arts and Math. The lower grades are purely due to missing assignments, so if we can just help him get more organized, less forgetful, and more focused & efficient I know he will do really well. We are going to see if we can have him evaluated, because he really does have an extremely difficult time focusing on work and therefore takes 10 times longer to do it than it should take. He is holding his own right now, but we are worried about high school! We want to make sure he doesn’t have any learning issues and work to find solutions before it gets even harder.

That brings us to today, and this post is very long! I guess you can tell that we had a busy week. While Frank was installing the dining room light, taking Seth to the doctor, helping a ward member fix his computer, and painting, I was not just sitting around. I helped Tanner and Jared get homework done, worked on scout requirements with all the boys, helped Tanner write a talk for Primary tomorrow, kept Seth out of Frank’s way, picked up Seth’s medicine at the Pharmacy, and made trips to Wal-Mart and to Costco. The 3 older boys went with me to Costco (Seth was napping). Remind me to never go to Costco on a Saturday again! It was just insane. I had to drive around and around looking for a parking space. Then the store was completely packed, and the check out lines were, of course, extremely long. The boys had brought money to buy lunch, so they enjoyed hot dogs, churros, and frozen yogurt while I waited in the check out line. Then we had to get out of the parking lot, which was the biggest mess of all. It took us about 20 minutes, I think. Then there was dinner to be made and the kitchen to clean up. I will post pictures of the kitchen soon. For now, I just want to go to bed!

It’s almost Sunday again—thank heavens….

Weekly Review November 15 '08

Talk about the gray days of November! That is what we are experiencing. Cold and gray, with lots of rain. I guess that is to be expected this time of year, though.

I said in last week’s review that I wanted to get some cleaning and organizing done before Thanksgiving, so this week I went at that full throttle. I think I made quite a bit of progress, although there is still a lot to do. I did the master closet, bathroom, and bedroom on Monday (turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated, too!), finished that up and worked on the basement office area on Tuesday (shredded paper for hours!), did the boys’ bathroom and some of the kitchen on Wednesday, and did the living room and Seth’s room on Thursday. I gave myself a break on Friday! (Besides, I started coming down with a cold on Wednesday and haven’t been feeling too great since then.) I still have the rest of the kitchen and the 2 other boys’ rooms to do next week. Then there is the laundry / storage room and the under stairs closet—that is probably going to be the biggest job of all! But I am going to let that be our December project. There’s no way we can get that much done before Thanksgiving if we want to get the kitchen painted also. And it makes more sense to get the kitchen done before then, since that’s where most of the action happens on Thanksgiving! I’m still not sure we will get it done, but we are going to try, at least!

The office area actually looks pretty messy still because I didn’t dare touch all of Frank’s computer stuff from his work which is spread out all over down there. But at least most of it is contained on the tops of the two desks now, so the rest of the room still looks much neater. I had some super glue stored in one of the desks down there, and unfortunately one of the tubes was leaking and I didn’t realize it until I picked it up and got super glue all over my fingers as well as my wedding ring! As you know, super glue doesn’t just wash off. After putting nail polish remover on my hands, and washing them many times, I got some of it off. The rest of it wore off over the next couple of days, and most of it is gone now, but there is still some on my ring. Luckily, it didn’t get the stone, just the band underneath and on the inside. It’s not uncomfortable, but I hope that it all comes off some day!

So that pretty much sums up my week! I also went visiting teaching on Tuesday and took the boys to scouts on Wednesday, along with all the usual shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc. that I do every week. I found that my body was very tired by bedtime every night!

I also did a lot of reading this week, and finished The Song of the Lark. It was pretty good. I like Willa Cather’s writing style. Now I have about 10 days to read Three Cups of Tea.

Seth has the same cold that I do, so he also hasn’t been feeling very well. For someone his age, that translates into not sleeping very well. One night he woke up around 11:00 and then again around midnight. Frank got up with him the first time, then I got up with him the second time and of course I had a lot more trouble going back to sleep than he did. On Thursday morning he woke up around 4:15 and didn’t go back to sleep—that was a joy! By 8:00 am he was a complete mess, though (not surprising) so I got him to go back to sleep (fortunately, Frank didn’t have to be at work early that day, so he was able to take the boys to school) and he slept until nearly noon. (I had too much to do, though, so I didn’t sleep.) He woke up early on Friday, also. I hope he and I both feel better soon!

Frank has decided that what he really wants for Christmas is to lose weight, so he invested in an exercise program on DVD, and he started doing that this week. I’ve watched him do it a little bit, and it looks like quite a work out! He is also being more careful about what he eats. It takes a lot of discipline; so far, he is doing really well. I hope he is successful, because I would like him to be healthier!

Tanner had a field trip to the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore on Wednesday. That was a lot of fun for him, and as a bonus, he didn’t have homework that night. Jared was supposed to have a field trip that day also, but it got postponed until next week.

Frank didn’t have to go to work on Friday, which was nice. Every once in a blue moon it happens that he doesn’t have any work to do that day. We took the boys to school and then went to Home Depot to get some things we need for the kitchen project. While we were there, we also looked at kitchen light fixtures. We want to get a new light to go over the kitchen table as well as a light to go over the sink. We had to take down the light over the sink when the wallpaper came down, and I’ve been missing it—especially now that we are off daylight savings and it gets dark by around 5:00! However, the light that was there was an ugly fluorescent utility light, so as long as it’s already down, I decided to replace it with something a little more aesthetic. We looked around, and got some ideas about what we like, but we aren’t going to buy anything until we get the painting done and are ready to put everything back up. We also got some small lights to mount underneath the cabinets so that we’ll have better lighting for all the work surfaces. I’m sure it will be very nice when we get it all done!

Right after the kids got home from school, the Johnson kids came over so that their parents could go to the temple, so that kept us busy for the next several hours. After the Johnsons went home, Frank wiped all the kitchen walls down to get any residual glue off them.

Today has been very busy and Frank and I are both pretty wiped out. In the morning Frank patched all the holes in the kitchen walls. I tried to keep Seth out of his hair! Then Seth went down for a nap and I went shopping for Tanner’s birthday. That turned into a much longer trip than I anticipated! The stores were crowded and the traffic was bad. I had to go to several stores looking for the things Tanner had asked for. At the same time, I was also looking for some of the things on the boys’ Christmas lists. I didn’t buy much, but I got a lot of ground work laid (compared prices and took notes on where I found what) which will hopefully help Christmas shopping go a lot quicker. Unfortunately, I didn’t find very many of the things that Tanner wants for his birthday, so after all that, I’m still not done shopping. I still have over a week to get it done, though.

By the time I got home, Seth had been up quite a while, so Frank was taking care of him and hadn’t been able to get much done. I took over with Seth so that Frank could sand down all the places he’d patched. I also supervised the older boys, who had homework to do, and worked on some scout stuff with Scott and Tanner. Tanner and I also sat down and did a couple of little things that he needed to complete for his Faith in God. He is done with all of it now except for learning a couple of the Articles of Faith. I did all of that while Frank was sanding. We were hoping to get a coat of primer on today also, but we just ran out of time. Frank realized he needed to get the under cabinet lights installed first because he had to do some drilling and didn’t want to mess up the walls again after he painted. So he worked on that instead. Hopefully we can get the primer done some time during the week so that we can paint on Saturday. While Frank worked on the lights, I cleaned all the floors. We’ve both been on our feet most of the day and we are very glad that tomorrow is a day of rest!

Unfortunately, Seth discovered the toilet this week. He thinks flushing it repeatedly is fun, and so is opening the lid and splashing the water! (Yuck!!) We have gotten pretty good at keeping the bathroom doors closed since Seth was born, but every once in a while someone forgets. We will have to be even more vigilant now. Seth had another molar come in this week, and it looks like one more tooth will be breaking through any day now. Maybe that has had something to do with his poor sleeping, as well.

While I was at the store today, the rain kept coming down hard and then tapering off. I was lucky and I was inside most of the times that it was really heavy. It was actually fairly mild today, temperature-wise, but that is supposed to end tomorrow. Today there was actually a tornado warning for part of the afternoon! I didn’t hear about that until after I got home. Pretty freaky weather for November!

I’ll end this week on a humorous note by telling you about Tanner’s Christmas list. It wasn’t enough for him to give me a list of what he wants, he had to put stars next to each item to indicate how much he wants each thing, and he included a key, just to make sure I understood. Here it is: one star = want, two stars = really want, three starts = want REAL bad, four stars = need, five stars = need so freakishly bad that you would kill for it. Well, hopefully he wouldn’t really kill for anything, but I found it pretty amusing! Then there was number 6 on the list “The ability to play “Halo” and “Halo 2” multiplayer”, followed by 7 stars, 2 hopeful looking smiley faces, and the comment “It is free!” Nice try, Tanner! I have to admire his ingenuity. (I should explain that someone gave Frank an old X Box and those two games about a year ago. The boys didn’t even know he had it for a long time. We won’t let them play those two games because they are rated “M” and we don’t let them play games like that. (Frank hasn’t really played them much either.) But the boys have read the Halo books and loved them, and they all want to play the games. Evidently, the multiplayer versions of the games are a lot less violent. But Tanner is out of luck, because Frank was only given one controller—so it wouldn’t be free after all!) I just get a kick out of that boy!

It’s pretty late now, so I’d better post this and get to bed!

More Salt & Pepper

Kudos to Curtis, who was the first sibling to send me a photo of his salt & pepper shaker set from Grandma Pew. Here it is:


Amy came in a close second; here's hers, which I nabbed from her blog:
Pretty cool, aren't they?!
Who will come in third?

Weekly Review November 8 '08

Wow! We are having the most beautiful weather! It is hard to believe it is November—feels more like early September. In a day or two that is going to change, I hear. Those of you out west have already been hit with cold weather and that same cold weather is on the way here. But for now, we are trying to soak up the warm temperatures while they last. Actually, Thursday and Friday were so warm we had to open the windows. (We could not bring ourselves to run the air conditioning in November!) A lot of the leaves have fallen off the trees now, but there are still some really bright, beautiful colors out there. I’ve tried to take pictures, but the camera just can’t capture the beauty like the human eye can. I can’t put it into words, either!

We’ve been adjusting to the daylight savings time change this week. Everybody’s sleep schedule is a little off. I find that the time change in fall and spring both tend to make me tired. I even took a nap one day this week while Seth was napping! (He hasn’t been sleeping very well, either.) I like having it get light earlier in the morning, but I don’t enjoy how early it gets dark in the evening.

Last Saturday Frank took me out on a date. We went out to eat. I don’t think we’ve done that in months; it was nice! We even left Seth with the other boys, and all went well. We got home later than we had anticipated (long wait for a table) and discovered that Scott had changed Seth’s diaper, given him his bottle, put on his pajamas, and (after the bottle was gone) put him to bed! What a great babysitter!

Sunday was a little busier than normal—I had a presidency meeting in the afternoon and Scott had a fireside that evening. Then Frank got a phone call while Scott was at the fireside and had to run to the stake center to set up all the equipment for a CES fireside. For some reason, the guy who usually does it had not shown up. This was about 15 minutes before the fireside was supposed to start, but Frank still managed to get everything set up and running before the broadcast began. Pretty impressive, I think! Tanner wasn’t feeling very well that day, so Frank took him home after Sacrament Meeting; he took Seth with him, too. Fortunately, Tanner never really came down with anything. Maybe he was just hungry!

Friday was the last day of the school semester, so the boys had Monday off so the teachers could work on grades and they had Tuesday off for Election Day. So it was a short school week, and the boys really had fun, I think. They had chores to do each day, but the rest of the time they had a pretty full social schedule. All three of the older boys were invited to spend the afternoon and sleep over with some friends who used to be in our ward (the Schlenz family--they live in another ward now). Tanner and Scott went earlier in the day—around noon—but Jared had another invitation to go to another friend’s house—his friend Nicholas, from school. It was Nicholas’s birthday, and Jared’s friend Sage was invited also, so the three of them had a lot of fun, from what I hear. Sage’s mom took both of them out there and Nicholas’s mom brought them home, so I didn’t even have to transport him. The older boys went with the Schlenz family to a local attraction--a big wooden slide on the side of a mountain--that afternoon. On the way back from there, they picked up Jared so that he could sleep over also. I’m told they slept outside, on the Shlenz’s trampoline. It wasn’t very cold, so I guess they were pretty comfortable. They all got back home late Tuesday morning.

Meanwhile, Frank and I were left at home with just Seth, which was nice for a change. On Monday evening we decided to take advantage of the older boys being gone and went out to do a little bit of Christmas shopping. We didn’t end up buying anything, though—just looking. We discovered that we couldn’t really do any of the things we were thinking about doing—too expensive! That was kind of a let down, but I’m sure we’ll come up with other ideas and the boys always end up being happy, no matter what we do. We got a treat at Dairy Queen when we were done. The trip wasn’t a total loss—we found some tapes for our video camera, which are very hard to find these days!

I took Seth with me Tuesday morning to go vote—I just put him in the stroller, and he was very well behaved. It helped that I was able to go during the “slow” hours, so I didn’t have to wait in line at all. Frank went to work very early that day, so he was off work around noon. He voted on the way home, and then went to the dentist for his 6 month check up that afternoon. His teeth are in great shape except for one filling that is getting old and the tooth needs to be crowned. Not good news, since our insurance covers only 50% of that—ouch! We still haven’t heard back about getting Scott’s wisdom teeth pulled, but both of these things are just going to have to wait until spring when we get our tax return. (I hope we get a tax return!)

The boys spent that afternoon playing with a friend down the street. Frank was really tired after getting up early, and he was asleep by 9:00, I think. I stayed up until about 10:00 to see what they were saying about election results, and by then they were already saying that Obama won Ohio and New Mexico and that it would take a miracle for a McCain win, so I wasn’t too surprised about the results in the morning. I hope the “change” so many people are wanting so much will turn out to be a change for the better, but I have my serious doubts. I found the whole election pretty frustrating. I really didn’t want to watch the news that day, but when I did see Obama speak I have to hand it to him—he didn’t look like he was feeling all that victorious; more like someone who was realizing he just got a really difficult job! Which is right, so hopefully that is a good thing. I also thought McCain was a very gracious loser, which is more than I can say for a few other people….

I admit to feeling some anxiety over the future these last few days! But when I went to Wal-Mart Wednesday morning, all the Christmas decorations were up and they were playing Christmas music. And you know, that really cheered me up! I thought about what Christmas is really all about, and I felt comforted knowing that no matter how crazy the world gets, there is always, always that wonderful source of peace!

Wednesday evening we all went to the church because there was a Court of Honor and Scott and Tanner were both getting Merit Badges. Scott was in charge of conducting the Court of Honor, and I thought he did a great job. It was just so fun to see him so cool and competent! Tanner helped with the flag ceremony. Tanner received his Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. Scott received that merit badge also, as well as his Citizenship in the Community and his Archery merit badges. Scott also got his Star rank. Only Life and Eagle to go! He is feeling more motivated to get them done, so hopefully we will start making more rapid progress.

Thursday after dinner I took Jared and Tanner shopping—Jared had birthday money to spend, and I wanted Tanner to get some ideas for his birthday (and Christmas). Jared got two Lego Bionicles, and they both got some ideas to put on their Christmas lists.

Scott and Tanner both had a camp out on Friday night. It seems like their troop takes a lot more camp outs during the winter months than any other time of year! But they lucked out on this one since the weather was so mild. In the morning, their leaders took them to pick up all the scouting for food donations and then over to the food bank to help sort all the donations. They didn’t get home until about 1:30 and they were very tired!

Meanwhile, Frank and I took Jared and Seth to dinner at Burger King Friday night and then we came home and watched a movie. Jared let Seth “pick” which movie he wanted, and Seth “picked” Princess Diaries 2, which I enjoyed since it’s a break from the action movies we usually watch.

In the morning, Frank and I went to the temple. We weren’t sure what time Scott and Tanner were supposed to get home, so we were feeling a little pressure to get back home as soon as possible. Because of that, we decided to do sealings instead of an endowment session. We really enjoyed that—ended up doing some family names for 3 different people who were there—but in the end it didn’t save us any time because part way through, they came in and said that the temple president needed to “borrow” all the sealers for about 15 minutes. It ended up being more like 30-40 minutes, though. While we were waiting, the temple worker told us that our new temple president—Elder Earl Tingey—was performing a wedding, and he wanted all the temple sealers to observe so they could see how the seventies have been trained to do it. We thought that was kind of interesting! It was nice to just sit and enjoy the quiet of the temple for a while, and we ended up getting home in plenty of time, so it didn’t matter that it took us longer than we’d planned.

This afternoon we did some leaf raking, much to the dismay of the boys, who were tired and just wanted to lie around. It rained a little bit this morning and it’s cooler than yesterday, but still fairly pleasant. We have the sister missionaries coming over for dinner tonight--we're looking forward to that. Frank did get a little bit of work done on the kitchen last week, but it looks like we aren't going to get anything done today; we're running out of time! I just invited two families to join us for Thanksgiving dinner this year, so I am hoping to get the kitchen done and a lot more cleaning / organizing completed by then. We are going to be very busy the next few weeks!

I'm also trying to get a lot of reading done right now. I am reading The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather for book club. It's really good--I'm enjoying it. We've also been wanting to read Three Cups of Tea, but there was quite a wait for copies to become available at the library, so we decided to all put a copy on hold and hope we could read it in the next couple of months. Well, my copy became available this week, so now I am feeling pressure to get that book read, too! I probably only have 3 weeks to read it because you can't renew a book if someone else has it on hold--and I'm pretty sure someone else does!

I feel like the last several months I’ve really been battling back and forth with my better self and my not-so-good self--mainly between the part of me that recognizes and is grateful for all the blessings I have, and the part of me that sees what I don’t have and feels resentful about it. This struggle became apparent to me again on Thursday, when I learned that the family in our stake who lost their son last week had decided to take their daughter (the one who was critically injured in the same accident) off life support because she has suffered a series of strokes and there isn’t any hope that she will ever come out of her coma. Here I had been worrying about dentist bills, and feeling kind of sorry for myself! Suddenly a very large dentist bill seemed like a very small thing! I just can’t imagine the pain this family is going through—they just had the funeral for their son last week, and now they have to go through the same thing all over again for their daughter! I can hardly stand to think about it! I found myself on my knees, feeling very humble and praying for this family, and also trying to repent for my own lack of gratitude. I find myself doing this a lot lately. I just hope the grateful, good part of me prevails permanently someday! I'm going to keep working on it, anyway.

I'll end with a few of my attempts to capture the beauty of fall (these are all views off our back deck):