Weekly Review August 28 '10

So sweet!

Jared & Seth on Seth's first day of preschool


Scott is not really one--I just always forget to buy candles!
(Notice the earphones for his MP3 player dangling from his shirt...common sight)

Scott's friends, Brian & Ricardo, acting up for the picture!

Below: Some of the completed quiet book pages.

Well, we survived the first week of school! It actually went better than I expected. School started for the oldest 3 boys on Monday, Seminary started on Tuesday, and Seth's first day was Wednesday. Tanner seems to be enjoying high school, Seth went right into preschool without a whimper and is having fun there, Scott and Tanner both got up right on time for Seminary all by themselves every day (a major miracle, where Tanner is concerned!) and every day after school Scott and Tanner came home and instead of turning on the television, got all their homework done! How long will it last, do you think?!

Other than school starting, the week was fairly quiet. There weren't any church activities this week so we were able to concentrate on getting into a new routine. I took half a unisom every night in the hopes that doing that would help me get my body conditioned to sleeping all night and getting up early every day. It seemed to help--I was able to get up at 5:00 am with the older two boys every day. We arranged Seminary carpooling with one of the other families in the ward. They pick our two boys up every morning and take them to the church, and then we drive their son and our two from the church to the school every day. That's how it went the first day, anyway. The other days, a lot of extra kids piled in with us for the ride to the school, so I had a car full! (Something about one of the boys who is driving not being able to take other kids with him quite yet...) All the "extra" kids were girls.

It made me feel good to see Tanner walking into school with a bunch of other kids...I was a little worried about him since only 2 or 3 kids from his old school are in his high school. He seems to be doing just fine, though. It's really great to see how those Seminary kids "stick together"! Two of the girls in our ward are in his first block class and one of the boys is in his math class. He has lunch period with a few of the kids from church too, so that really helps. Tanner got a call from one of his friends from his old school on the 2nd day of school and they talked for over an hour. I got the impression that his friend is having a harder time adjusting to high school and that he just wanted to hear a familiar voice.

I managed to drop off my "baby" for his first day of preschool without getting emotional. That's mainly because he didn't get upset at all. I kept busy on Wednesday and Thursday while he was gone running errands, and I did enjoy doing that without him--much easier! Unfortunately he didn't make it to school on Friday, though. First week of school, and he's already absent! That's because Thursday evening Seth started complaining that his left leg hurt, and by bedtime he wouldn't even put any weight on it. Friday morning he was no better, so Frank ended up staying home from work so that we could take him to the doctor. We were quite concerned because he would cry every time we moved him. He always pointed to his left knee when we asked him where it hurt. It didn't seem to bother him too much when the doctor moved his leg around and felt it all over, but when he tried to get him to walk, it was obvious it hurt. The doctor decided to have his whole leg x-rayed to make sure nothing was broken, even though Seth hadn't injured it, as far as we know. He said in kids that age, if they won't put weight on it that usually means it's something fairly serious. The x-rays didn't show any problems, though, so they told us to keep him off of his feet as much as possible, give him children's Ibuprofen, and put ice on it and then call back on Monday if he wasn't any better.

He was pretty miserable for most of the day Friday, but after a long nap and some pizza he perked up a bit, played with cars and even started hobbling around a bit. Today he seems to be almost back to normal. Very mysterious! We are thankful he is feeling better, though. Hopefully the leg pain won't come back.

After we got back from the doctor, I tried to bake a cake for Scott (we had planned to have his friends over that evening for his belated birthday dinner & cake) but when I went to put the cake in the oven I discovered that the oven had not heated up at all. Frank looked at it and figured out which part wasn't working and went to buy a replacement. Meanwhile, some of our neighbors were nice enough to let us use their oven to bake the cake. Frank was able to replace the part and the oven works fine now. I've been wanting to buy a new oven--ours is about 17 years old--but I was hoping to wait to do that until next spring, so I'm glad Frank was able to fix it.

Scott's friends, Brian and Ricardo came over that evening for his belated birthday celebration. We had pizza and cake; they played video games and watched the movie The Best Two Years.

I had a lunch / visiting teaching appointment Thursday which I enjoyed. Seth was really good; he ate his whole sandwich, too, which really surprised me. I guess he burns a lot of energy at school so he's hungrier. I was supposed to visit teach on Friday also, but that appointment got cancelled and that turned out to be a good thing since I was tied up taking care of Seth all morning.

So I finally finished the quiet book!!! We took it to church on Sunday and Seth really seemed to enjoy playing with it. A lot of the kids in the row in front of us looked pretty interested in it, too! I still want to make a bag to carry it in, but I messed up when I cut out the pieces for that, so I had to get more fabric this week so I can try again. I haven't had time to work on it yet, though. Being the perfectionist that I am, there are also a few pieces that I want to do over, but there's no rush on that--Seth can play with it now, and that's all that matters.

After I said a few weeks ago that I didn't think Scott was very interested in dating, he surprised me when he told me that he and his friend Neil were thinking about going on a double date to use the restaurant gift cards they were given. They got it set up, so he is on his first official date right now. I hope he is having fun. His friend Neil asked the girl who gave them the gift cards (Collette), and Scott asked Ellen (the girl who turned 16 the same day he did.) They are friends and they've been joking for the last few years that they needed to go out together on their 16th birthday, so that seemed appropriate. (Their 16th birthday ended up being on Sunday, though, so they couldn't go then.) I drilled Scott a little on proper date etiquette this week, so hopefully he remembers to be a gentleman! I'm sure he'll do all right. Frank had to drive them to the restaurant since none of them have a license yet; he came home and said he was amused by how much Ellen chatters!

I don't think Scott will be going on a lot of dates, though. He was pretty surprised when I warned him that a $25 gift card was not going to cover a meal for 2 people at this particular restaurant! He has birthday money he can spend also so he's good for tonight but since he doesn't have a job and his allowance is pitiful, he won't have much spending money for dating. Of course, there are plenty of free / inexpensive things to do on dates, so we'll encourage him to do that most of the time. Are we ready for all this?! I'm not sure...

Speaking of Scott, he was ordained a priest by Frank on Sunday. After he was ordained, the bishop shook his hand; then Scott turned to Frank...and with a mischevious grin on his face, walked right past him to give me a hug! That made everybody laugh. He gave Frank a hug too, after that. He seems very happy to have reached this stage in his life. He is a good boy and we are proud of him.

Well, on to school week #2...

Weekly Reveiw August 21 '10

Scott being silly!

Then Seth wanted his picture taken!

Our last week of summer vacation is coming to an end--how sad! I have mixed feelings about summer ending. Last year, I definitely wanted summer to go on forever! This summer has been different--I have struggled to get on a regular schedule; it's been busy & hectic with lots of things to get done, and I don't feel like I've actually been able to get much accomplished. So in a way, I welcome the more rigid routine that I know the school days will impose upon us. But I know we'll be even busier and I'm a little sad to see my "baby" heading off to school, also. (I'm glad that it will be only a couple of hours each day. And I am looking forward to shopping / errand running without him!) I'm hoping that getting into a more normal routine will help get my sleep schedule back on track also. I've been struggling all summer to get a good night's sleep, to no avail! This week has been particularly bad; I woke up in the middle of the night almost every night and didn't go back to sleep for hours each time.

When we were reading scriptures Saturday night, Jared's glasses snapped in two. He wasn't doing anything that should have broken them, so we were surprised. Thankfully, he just got the frames this spring so they are still under warranty. We took them in Monday morning and were able to order new frames. The old frames had been discontinued, so he had to pick out something new. They said it would take 7-10 business days to get them, but fortunately they came in 2 days later, so he won't have to go to school squinting next week.

Sunday was Scott's birthday. I just realized that we didn't take any pictures!! That's because he didn't unwrap any presents--as I mentioned earlier, we let him decide what to get so there wasn't any point in wrapping. We weren't able to get the shoes on Saturday, but Frank took him to get the MP3 player and he has spent a lot of time since then "plugged in" to it. (I need to have him read some of those great articles they've had in the Ensign lately about not being plugged into technology all the time...) Anyway, we also didn't do his cake because traditionally we let the boys invite a couple of friends over to share their cake, and we didn't want to do that on Sunday. Because his friends are pretty busy, we haven't done that yet--hopefully next week.

Monday morning was enlivened by our carbon monoxide detector going off--right after I got out of the shower. After some deliberation, we decided that it probably wasn't a true emergency, since we've had the detector for several years and they are supposed to be replaced every 5 years. I ended up buying a new detector, and sure enough--we haven't heard a peep out of the new detector all week. The boys and I all had dentist appointments Monday afternoon. Seth had his very first check up, and he did great--they let him sit on Scott's lap for the whole exam. None of us have cavities--hooray!! Jared and Tanner were both told to brush better, though. On the way home from the dentist we stopped at the mall so Scott could get his shoes. Frank got home from work pretty late; we played a round of golf on the Wii for family night activity.

I was busy on Tuesday with lots of Primary stuff. We all went to Olive Garden for dinner that evening--used one of the gift certificates that Frank won from work. After we got home Scott mowed the lawn and Frank and I did some weeding in the flower beds. That's the first time the lawn has needed mowing since before we went on vacation in June! All of the rain we've been getting the last week or so has really helped--the lawns are starting to look green again.

I had a presidency meeting Wednesday evening. Frank ended up working late again, so I took all the boys with me to the church; the meeting was at 6:30 and Scott & Tanner had scouts at 7:00. (Jared didn't have scouts this week, so he stayed home.) Seth played in the room right next to us with some of my counselors' girls while we had our meeting. Unfortunately he went to the bathroom and the girls didn't tell me. He didn't make it, so he was in the bathroom yelling for me for a while before Tanner discovered him. Thankfully, I had a change of clothes for him in the car so I was able to get him cleaned up. Seth's been doing pretty well overall with potty training, but he's had several accidents this week and also wet the bed twice. So he had some setbacks this week, but I'm sure he'll get there eventually.

I spent a lot of time Thursday morning helping Jared go over his summer math packet. He finished it a couple of weeks ago, but I hadn't had a chance to check his work yet. There were a number of problems that he needed to do over. Thursday evening was back to school night at the high school, so I took Tanner over there for a few minutes so he could find all of his classes. He's lucky--his first two classes are right next door to each other, and his third class is just one hallway over from there. His fourth class is farther-upstairs and several halls over, but still not too far. Scott didn't go with us--he's confident that he knows his way around well enough that he'll be able to find his classes without too much trouble.

Seth and Jared had school orientations on Friday. Seth's was in the morning--we were actually there for a little over an hour so that they could learn the daily routine, have a little tour of the school, practice carrying a tray and unfolding a rug (two things they do a lot at Montessori schools) and have a couple of "lessons" on how to use a couple of the works. They got a chance to use some of the works after they had learned about them. Seth got to stack some cylinders (part of the math area) and practice pouring beans from one little pitcher to another (part of the "life skills" area). He seemed to enjoy himself; hopefully he will like school and the adjustment won't be too difficult for him. I took Jared to the openhouse in the afternoon. All Jared had to do was meet his teachers and see his new classroom, so we were only at the school for a few minutes for him. He has the same teachers that Tanner had last year, so I know them well. They are great teachers and I'm sure he'll have a really good year. The classroom was actually remodeled a bit--one wall knocked down to make the room bigger--and it looks really great.

Tanner and Jared were both invited to a "Lord of the Rings" marathon Friday evening and Scott was at a joint birthday party for him and 2 other youth in the ward. Ellen turned 16 the same day as Scott, and Neil turned 16 on Thursday. The party was held at Neil's house and Ellen did most of the planning. All Scott had to do was bring lemonade and 2 bags of ice. Not bad! Frank and I had a quiet evening with just Seth. Frank had a lot of work to do and Seth was alsleep by 8:00, but Frank took a little time out to relax and we ordered take out for dinner. Frank went to pick up Tanner & Jared at 10:00 (we didn't let them stay for the whole marathon, which would have lasted until 3:00 am, probably). Scott didn't get home until nearly midnight (he got a ride with someone else) so I was up late waiting for him. He seemed to have fun, and although it wasn't a "presents" party, one of the girls who came brought "dating survival kits" for each of them, which I thought was pretty clever. His kit contains a number of items including a dating idea book, a comb, breathmints, a Hot Wheels car, and a gift card to a restaurant. Scott doesn't seem to be all that interested in dating, by the way. He does enjoy being with kids his age--both boys and girls--and he has expressed interest in various girls and different times, but he doesn't seem to feel like he's ready to rush into the dating scene, which is fine with us!

Today Frank has a lot of work to do, so we won't be seeing much of him, I'm afraid. Scott is going to do some work on his Eagle Scout project, I'm hoping to work on Seth's quiet book, there are floors to mop and I need to go over sharing time one last time. So I'm sure we'll keep busy!! We wish we were in Utah celebrating Anna & Buck's wedding instead. We hope you all have a wonderful day!

Tomorrow is going to be busy, also. I have ward council before church, a song practice after church, and Scott will be ordained a Priest. Besides that, it's my week for sharing time. I think I will take a sleeping pill tonight so I'll be ready for all of that!

Weekly Review August 14'10

Seth was all curled up in this blanket and looking so comfortable!

He looked so cute all curled up in the rocking chair, fast asleep! He didn't feel very well that day.

Close up

I took this photo because it is so rare for Snickers to curl up by Seth--he doesn't trust Seth because Seth hurts him fairly often (not on purpose)!

Let's see...it is always hard for me to remember what happened at the beginning of the week! My 1st counselor had sick kids on Sunday, so she wasn't there, and my 2nd counselor was "flying solo" (her husband was out of town) with a 5 month old baby, so we all had our hands full and things were a bit hectic and busy. It all worked out, though. My 2nd counselor almost didn't come either, since her baby had a cold--I'm really glad she came anyway because she was a big help! Tanner gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting, and he did a great job.

I can't say I had the best week of my life. One of my very best friend's husband committed suicide on Wednesday morning. They had separated with no hope of reconciliation a few weeks ago, so things were already hard but still...it was a huge shock and of course makes things even more difficult for her and her children than they already were. I am just heartsick about it! They moved away from here last year, so all I can do for them right now is pray a lot. It's been really hard for the boys also--they are good friends with some of the kids. Yesterday morning another friend who moved out of our ward recently (but still lives in our stake) came by to see me. She had just heard about my other friend's husband, and she knew it would be hard for me, so she came by just to give me a hug. That really made my day!

Well, on to the rest of our week...

The boys and I all had haircuts on Monday, plus I had my hair color touched up. It was really nice to have that done; we all look nice now! That took up a good portion of the day, though. For family night we played speed Uno and ate cookies; there was a slight mishap with some spilled milk all over the cards, but fortunately we brought two Uno decks into our marriage, so we were able to continue the game with our second deck while the other deck dried out.

Scott had driving appointments on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. He is all done with that now; all he has to do now is practice a lot. He needs to drive 60 hours and hold his permit for 9 months before he can get his license, so he can't get it before next March. He is not in a hurry anyway, and neither are we--we're not ready for him to be driving solo yet!

Tuesday evening we had a guy come over to give us an estimate on how much it would cost to replace our windows. I agreed to it kind of on a whim, mostly out of curiosity. I should have known they wouldn't just show up, measure our windows, and give us an estimate! We got a 2 1/2 hour spiel on windows; I actually learned a lot about windows but I had other things I would have rather been doing! Then of course they tried to convince us to make a decision right then and there to buy windows for the whole house, but we didn't bite, even with a 25% discount! I would like to get new windows someday; it's a good investment and I know I'd enjoy staying warmer in the winter, but they are very expensive and I don't want to invest in them now if we end up moving in the next year or two.

Seth woke up sounding kind of "croupy" and feeling warm Tuesday night. On Wednesday he was definitely a bit feverish, although he didn't seem to feel too bad. Wednesday night he didn't sleep well at all; he woke up several times crying. I had just received the news about my friend's husband Wednesday evening, and I stayed up late reading, just to try to get my mind off of things. Seth started waking up shortly after I went to bed, and every time he woke up I stayed awake worrying about my friend for a while, so it was a very restless night without a lot of sleep. I finally got a few hours sleep, but then at about 5:30 a huge thunderstorm blew in and woke me back up. Very strong winds, torrential rain, and constant lightning strikes--I've never seen anything like it! I heard later that there were over 800 lightning strikes in that storm, and I believe it--the storm lasted about 45 minutes, with lightning striking constantly that whole time. It made me nervous enough that I decided to move down to the main level, taking Seth with me. Snickers was terrified, so I let him out of his crate and he curled up on our laps until it was over. Seth was not scared, but he didn't go back to sleep afterwards so that day started very early! I was pretty tired all day but managed to function.

Thursday was a day for violent weather--not only did we have a huge thunderstorm in the early morning, we had a tornado warning in the afternoon. The worst of that storm went to the east of us, but I still made all the boys (including a neighbor boy who was home alone) go down to the basement until it passed. No lightning this time--just more torrential rain and strong winds. We had a "mini river" running through our backyard for a while. There was a lot of flooding in some areas, power outages, and lots of tree limbs and so forth down, but I don't think there was any major damage. Frank was in Frederick working that afternoon although he'd been down south earlier in the day. I was glad he was up here because the tornado's path was supposed to go right through Gaithersburg. I would have been very nervous if he had still been down there!

In between the two violent storms, I took Tanner to freshman orientation at the high school. That was pretty boring for me, since I did the same thing 2 years ago with Scott, but I wanted Tanner to get a feel for the school and a chance to look around. They give all the freshman school t-shirts also, which is nice.

Seth seemed a lot better on Thursday and yesterday he seemed to be back to his normal self. Last night we went to dinner with a family who lives nearby so we could meet them. They have a child who will be going to Jared & Seth's school this year and we are going to carpool with them. I will pick their son up in the mornings and they will bring Jared home in the afternoons. I will still be picking Seth up in the middle of the day, but this means I'll be making 2 trips per day (as usual) instead of 3. Anyway, they turned out to be a very nice little family and we enjoyed the evening. They also have 4 boys, although younger than ours--their oldest is 10; the other three boys are 5, 3, and 2. The mom (Holly) is starting a daycare this year so it was going to be very hard for her to put all those kids in the car every morning to take her 5 year old to school. Her husband gets home from work in time to do the afternoon pickup (except Fridays--I'll be picking up that day, also.)

Today seems to have just flown by. We have had ants invading our kitchen--particularly the pantry--so we took everything out of there, sprayed, and set up traps. Frank and I did some shopping for Scott's birthday. It is getting really hard to figure out what to get him these days, especially this year--all he could come up with is a pair of shoes! We did some scouting around and then came home and gave him some options and let him choose. He decided in favor of a fairly inexpensive MP3 player, along with the shoes. So he won't be surprised with his gifts tomorrow, but at least we know he'll like what he gets. This evening we had the missionaries over for dinner, which we always enjoy. Now it is late, so I'd better get to bed!

Go BYU!

I ran across a news article today on yahoo about Forbes releasing their list of The Best 610 Colleges in America. They did a bunch of research and weighed in a whole bunch of different factors, and then came up with this list. Apparently, it is an honor to make it onto the list at all. So of course I was curious to see if my good ol' alma mater made the list! It did--number 136, which is pretty decent, I'd say. BYU-Idaho was number 200. Hobart & William Smith College, in Geneva, NY (Frank used to work there) came in a few places lower than BYU--I think it is about #140.

The thing that I found really interesting was that you could ask them to rank the list different ways, such as by state or by cost of tuition. I thought BYU would probably have a much lower tuition than most of the colleges on the list. I was right. Out of 610 colleges, only 7 are less expensive than BYU. Five of those seven are military schools--United States Air Force Academy, US Military Academy, US Naval Academy, US Coast Guard Academy, and the US Merchant Marines Academy. Number 6 is a college in Kentucky called Berea College, and number seven is BYU-Idaho. So BYU is the 8th least expensive of the 610 best colleges in America, beat out only by the United States military, one of it's "sister schools", and some obscure little college in Kentucky--what a bargain!!

Go BYU!!

Weekly Review August 7 '10

Brotherly love

Seth fell asleep during Percy Jackson

He plays with his hair when he's getting tired, so he fell asleep with his hands up on his head!

Well, I did make it to church on Sunday. I still wasn't feeling too great and my right eye and a large part of that side of my face was pretty swollen, but it wasn't nearly as painful as it had been the day before. I had to wear my glasses which was probably less painful than wearing contact lenses would have been, but still not very comfortable since the nose pad had to sit right near the corner of my eye where it was very swollen and sore. I wasn't able to fast because the antibiotic was making me feel a little nauseated without food, but I was glad I was able to go to church and to do sharing time as I had planned. I was very glad to come home and collapse for the rest of the day, though! We had leftovers for dinner, but since we had lots of food from youth conference, that was ok.

The rest of this week I've had lots of little things to do every day; I feel like I've been very distracted and not very efficient. My eye has continued to improve and is mostly back to normal which means it's still tearing up a lot and the corner is still swollen, but I'm used to that. It was still quite tender and I continued to get some pretty decent headaches through Monday and Tuesday, especially if I had to wear my glasses for any reason, but by Wednesday it was better enough that I could wear contact lenses which seemed to help a lot. The antibiotic has continued to make my stomach feel a little upset all week, but it hasn't been too bad.

I wore myself out Monday by going to visit a family with Primary children (although I enjoyed the visit--they are sweet kids, newer in our ward and it was fun to get to know them better) and doing some shopping. As soon as I got home I had to go back out again to help Frank drop off his car at a place to get it fixed. The first place we took it (earlier that morning) had called to say that the problem was the weld had broken apart in the main exhaust system and so it needed to be welded back together but they didn't have the proper tool to weld it since it's stainless steel. They recommended we take it to another place. So we took it there, but after the guy there looked at it he said he couldn't weld it either and we'd need to contact Toyota. We did, and got the unwelcome news that their policy is to "replace, not repair" and by the way...the part costs about $2000! Well, guess what--we don't have an extra $2000 lying around not being used, so that's not going to happen for a while. At least the car still runs, so it's not incredibly urgent that we get it fixed. We're still not sure what we're going to do about it.

Speaking of car repairs, we still haven't heard back from the lady whose car Scott hit. She said she was going to try to get an estimate on Monday, but she has never called us back. I tried calling her on Thursday and left her a message, but still nothing. We're a bit perplexed about that. Hopefully we'll hear soon, and cross your fingers that it won't be another $2000 repair!

Frank has been swamped with work all week--I guess that's the norm these days, not the exception. (I am NOT complaining, even though I'd like to have him around more often. We feel very, very blessed that he has so much work to do, especially when so many people are unemployed or underemployed.) Tuesday was particularly long--he got to work at 4:00 am and didn't get home until 7:30. Last week at their company meeting the owners said that whoever had the most billable hours entered by this Monday would get a "surprise". Well, Frank won that contest--which was NOT a surprise--to me, anyway. The surprise turned out to be $200 worth of restaurant gift cards--nice!

Scott was invited to go sailing with all the kids in his Seminary class on Tuesday, but he had to be there at 7:00 a.m. and when I woke him up at 6:15 he said he was too tired to get up. He went back to sleep--I didn't! I haven't been sleeping too well this week. Generally, I've been trying to get up earlier and I've managed to do that, but I haven't been getting to bed all that early and I've had several nights that I've been awake for hours in the middle of the night--not too fun. It's been a while since I've had this much trouble sleeping, though, so hopefully I'll start sleeping better soon. Jared had a birthday party to go to Tuesday night. He got to see Prince of Persia, and he says it's really good. He was invited to sleep over as well, but didn't get to do that because none of my boys are allowed to sleep over for a while--they stayed up ridiculously late at a couple of sleep overs lately, in spite of my instructions to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so I said "No more!"

We had shopping to do on Tuesday--I took all 4 boys with me; something I usually avoid! It went better than I expected. We got nearly $115 worth of school supplies for Scott and Tanner--ouch! That was one of the days I really wasn't feeling too great so I was not happy when I couldn't find lemon juice because I needed some for dinner and I really didn't want to have to go to another store. I decided to check the juice aisle one more time, and still no lemon juice but then at the very end of the aisle tucked behind some other things and lying on its side I found one lone bottle of lemon juice! I was thrilled--talk about tender mercies! I also managed to nab the last 3 packs of graph paper in the store; I was very grateful!

We spent Wednesday with our friends the Koettings. All the boys played well together all day while Jeanine and I visited. It was a lot of fun. Scott drove us there (about a 45 minute drive) and managed to get us there safely. I must admit I'm a lot more nervous about him driving since he hit that car! He's doing pretty well, though. Wednesday evening I had a primary presidency meeting and then there was a Court of Honor for the boys. All three boys received merit badges (the older 2 got several apiece) and Tanner got a rank advancement. He's officially 1st Class now, but he already has enough merit badges to be a Star scout and only needs one more to get his Life scout, so he just has to finish that one merit badge and wait out his time (4 months to be a Star and 6 months to be a Life).

Thursday evening we met with our realtor to get more financial information and we also went to look at 3 houses. One of them was the house we like the most--we wanted to see it again. It still doesn't smell nice and Frank really hates the tiny master bathroom (I think I could live with it), so we're not sure whether or not to pursue that option. We liked the other two houses as well, but they are a bit on the pricey side.

Friday night we rented the movie Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, popped popcorn and pulled out our stash of "movie candy". I had a lot of other things I should have been doing, but I decided to let them go for the night, and it was very nice to take a break. That's the first time I've sat down and watched a movie all the way through in a long time! I think I would have enjoyed the movie more if I had not read the book, since it deviated in many, many ways from the book. It was a pretty decent story in and of itself--entertaining and with pretty good special effects--but I was kind of annoyed by how much they changed the story from the original. (I'm still reading the 4th book; haven't finished the series yet.) It was during the movie that Mom called to tell me about Uncle Fred's passing. Of course, I am sorry I won't see him again in this life, but I can't feel too bad since it is such a good thing for him. I hope his family are doing ok and feeling our love.

Speaking of movies based on books, the boys were watching Return of the King one day last week and Seth happened to be paying attention at the end when everybody kneels down to honor the hobbits. He got us all giggling when he asked in kind of an awed voice "Are they all going to say a prayer?"

Today Scott had an appointment to go driving with an instructor for a few hours. Then he and Frank had a service project--actually, it was a Teacher's Quorum project that Scott set up; it's one of the last few things he needs to do to finish up his Duty to God requirements. Meanwhile, I was busy baking cookies--I'd agreed to make a batch for a wedding reception being held that evening. I wanted to make something that looks pretty, so I attemped stained glass cookies. The first tray turned out well, but I messed up on the other two trays. I let them bake too long and the candy part burned (they looked good, but tasted terrible). I ended up buying some cookies to replace the ones that didn't work out. As it turned out, there were plenty of cookies and other desserts at the reception, so it wouldn't have mattered if I hadn't brought any. The reception was for my friend Gail Eaton, who re-married her former ex-husband last week. I know that sounds crazy, but it's really an amazing and inspiring story, and we are all thrilled that it turned out to have such a happy ending. When they were married before, she and her husband had 9 children, who are now all grown up and married with children of their own--34 grandchildren, I think she said. For the wedding last week (which was in Utah), all their grandchildren sang "Families Can Be Together Forever." Just thinking about it makes me feel like crying! She and her husband will be living in Lehi, Utah now. (She says on the other side of I-15 from you, Mom and Dad, although 4 of her children live on your side of town.) I will really miss Gail--I served with her in a Primary presidency and have felt close to her ever since--but hope I'll get to visit her whenever I am in Utah. She was really a positive influence on Scott when he was in Primary and struggling a little, so I am grateful to her for that, and Scott LOVES her! So do a lot of other people. The reception was beautiful, with lots of yummy desserts. She wanted a "cupcake cake" (cupcakes set up in tiers) so all the youth in the ward got together and baked the cupcakes and (with help from some talented women in our ward) decorated them. The youth now were the kids back when she was the Primary president, so they wanted to do that for her. It turned out beautiful and she was very surprised and touched.

On that happy note, I will close for this week!

Weekly Review July 31 '10

Where did July go? I am always kind of sad to see July end. August is not one of my favorite months, because it is usually miserably hot and humid around here during that month. But it's already been miserably hot and humid for most of July, so maybe August will be nicer for a change!

This week was not quite as busy. I definitely enjoyed the fact that Scott was done with driving school--he did too! Sunday I had ward council and the choir sang. We are done with choir practices now until September. After church our home teachers came to see us, and Frank & Tanner went home teaching. That, along with family night, filled up our day. I forgot to mention that Jared gave a talk in Primary a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time that he wrote the whole talk himself (without help from me, except for suggestions) and I was really impressed--he did a great job!


Sunday afternoon we had a brief but fairly violent thunderstorm come through. The worst of it went south of us, apparently, because in the Gaithersburg / Rockville area the power was out for about 3-4 days. That meant that on Monday Frank couldn't connect with Griffin's server and many of his clients were also without power, so that limited the amount of work he could do. However, one of his clients who was without power decided it was high time to move their server from their Rockville location to their Frederick location--something they've been planning to do for a while--so he started that project in the late afternoon and ended up working until about 1:00 am. The rest of the week he has been very busy, as usual. In addition to long hours at work, he helped with the cooking for Youth Conference. He went straight from work on both Thursday and Friday to help with that, and didn't get home until pretty late in the evening both days. He also helped with cooking breakfast this morning, so we haven't seen him much for the last 3 days.


The temple was also affected by the power outage. The temple has been closed most of July for summer maintenance and was supposed to re-open on Tuesday. Because of the power outage, it didn't re-open until Friday. We have been very grateful that we didn't lose power up here, since it's continued to be pretty hot. (Although not so hot as it was last week.)


I had book chat on Tuesday, Seth had a doctor appointment on Wednesday, and I had visiting teaching on Thursday. I was supposed to visit teach Friday as well, but the sister we were scheduled to visit wasn't feeling well so that got postponed. The doctor appointment for Seth was his 3 year old check up. He is in the 90th percentile for both weight and height--38 pounds and 3 1/2 feet tall. What a big boy! For my visiting teaching appointment, we met at a restaurant for lunch; I enjoyed that!


Scott had a driving mishap this week which will probably cost us a pretty penny. He was parking the car at Wal-Mart and he swung too wide and hit the back of the van next to us on the passenger side. I realized he was going to hit it, and told him to stop, but not quite in time. We assessed the damage and it wasn't too bad, but there was a dent / crack right under the tail light, so we wrote a note and left it on the windshield of the van. This was on Wednesday afternoon; the driver of the van didn't contact me until Thursday morning. She actually didn't notice the damage and although she saw the paper under her wiper, she thought it was just an advertisement! Thankfully, she was very gracious and understanding about it. She is going to get an estimate for us and then we'll decide whether or not we need to involve the insurance. She can't get the estimate until Monday, though, so we will wait until then to find out how bad the damage to our wallet is going to be. Scott felt really bad about it, but at least I think this will be a good learning experience for him and it could have been much worse!

Unfortunately, Frank also had a driving mishap yesterday. He ran over something (he's not sure what) that flipped up and did some damage to his car. He's not sure what got damaged yet, but he thinks it might be the catalytic converter or the muffler; the car is making a lot more noise now. So he'll have to get it in soon to assess the damage and get it fixed. At least the car still runs!


I got a call from a very good friend on Tuesday morning. She called around 6:45, so I knew whatever she had to say it wasn't going to be good, and I was right. Her marriage is ending and the circumstances are pretty awful. It was a real shock, and I have been hurting for her all week. Things like this seem to be happening to a lot of my friends lately; it's really hard not to feel discouraged sometimes. I can certainly see that the family is under attack!


Scott had youth conference the last three days this week. Youth conference began on Thursday morning. He had his friend Jordan over to spend the night Wednesday night, and I took both of them over to their advisor's house Thursday morning. They did service, went to a place with outdoor challenges, had a dance, and attended workshops. He arrived home this morning and said he had a really good time. (They spent the nights at their advisors' houses.)


Seth is doing really well with potty training. He is getting much more independent about it and I think he's only had about 3 or 4 minor accidents all week. (Mostly because he "waits" too long--typical!) He has even started removing his diaper by himself every morning so he can go (I still put a diaper on him at night, just to be safe). The diapers have been dry, too, so actually he's probably ready to go to underwear 24/7. We're still working on bowel movements, but he's doing better with those also. It is very exciting to see the end of diapers in the very near future!!!

Yesterday the area around my right eye started to feel pretty tender, and by evening was hurting quite a bit. This morning it was worse and it's red and swollen, so I went to the doctor. The doctor started me on an antibiotic so hopefully it will be feeling better soon. However, now I'm feeling motivated to get my right eye's tear duct fixed. It's been watering for several months, with all the same symptoms I had in my left eye a couple of years ago, so I've known for a while that I would probably have to have the same surgery on my right eye that I had 2 years ago on my left eye (creating a new tear duct). I've just been putting it off, but I guess I'd better get it over with. The doctor I saw today said that it is not unusual for someone who has needed this surgery on one eye to have to have it on the other eye, too. She says there's not really any underlying treatable cause that leads to the tear ducts getting blocked, it's more about how the tear ducts themselves are "built". I just got unlucky.

Frank has been bringing home lots of "goodies" from his cooking experiences, so we have a refrigerator full of grilled chicken, hot dogs, lasagne, spaghetti sauce, green salad, cold cuts, potato salad, etc. I don't think I'm going to be cooking for a few days! That's good timing, since I really don't feel so well--my whole head is throbbing and I have a low grade fever because of the infection. I hope I am feeling a lot better by tomorrow because I'm supposed to do sharing time.

Seth is really enamored by sticks lately. He is always picking them up when we go on walks with Snickers, so we have a large collection by the front door now. He brings one in the house occasionally, but usually I make him leave them outside. He likes big sticks, so most of them are 2-3 feet long. It's amazing how much he can entertain himself with a stick!

Other projects I worked on this week: Jared and I worked together to clean up / better organize his room. We're not done yet, but the parts we've done look quite a bit better. As soon as we finish his room, I'm moving on to Scott & Tanner's room. I also worked more on Seth's quiet book; it is getting close to being finished. Just another week or two more and it should be done--finally!

That brings you up to date on all our happenings, so I think I'll go lie down now!

Weekly Review July 24 '10

Snickers adores Frank

Frank, Seth and Snickers hanging out

Some of "my" kids!

Listening to a great American pioneer story

Learning about American pioneers

Making a covered wagon

Covered wagon treats

Learning about African pioneers

Yummy Guatamalan food

We had another busy week--maybe not so much as last week, but still quite busy. On Sunday evening I went to a fireside for all the women in our stake. The three members of our stake presidency spoke; it was very good. We also had family night, as we usually do on Sunday.

We were a bit worried about Snickers earlier this week. He had an unpleasant encounter with one of the neighbor dogs on Saturday afternoon that seemed to really traumatize him. They were sniffing each other and seemed to be enjoying themselves when suddenly the other dog growled and nipped him. I couldn't see any broken skin or anything, but Snickers kept licking a spot on his leg and for the rest of the day he was trembling and he refused to eat. He also didn't potty at all---he would go outside if we offered to take him, but he would just stand outside shivering and then go back in. This behavior continued all through Sunday, but on Monday he finally started to perk up a little bit and by Tuesday he was his old self again. I think he was just a bit traumatized and in shock for a while.

Scott had driving school again all week. Having that every day from 11:00-2:00 has been inconvenient--it breaks the day up too much, and I have had a hard time finding time for Scott to do the other things he needs to do; especially since he hasn't been getting up very early. He did get some more work done on his write up for his Eagle scout project, and a little bit done for Duty to God. I worked on scouts and Duty to God things with the other boys, also. I'm glad driving school is over now! (He still has to go driving with an instructor for three two-hour sessions. He's scheduled those for August.)

The three older boys attended a sleep over birthday party for their friend Ryan on Monday night. They got to go see Iron Man 2, which they all enjoyed. Jared went to bed at a decent hour, but the other two boys stayed up most of the night. Scott didn't get to drive anywhere on Tuesday--I didn't trust him, being so tired! That was too bad, since we also had to go to the orthodontist that afternoon--it's a good distance away, so it would have been good practice for him and would have helped him get some of his driving hours done. The orthodontist appointment was for Scott and Jared both. For Jared, they were checking his progress to see what needs to be done next. He had two teeth come out recently; now they want to see how the new ones look when they come in so they are having him come back in 4 months to evaluate what needs to be done then. The orthodontist thinks it's likely that the two permanent teeth will have to be pulled because his mouth is just too crowded. He will probably be in braces by the end of the year or early next year. For Scott, we moved up his check up scheduled in August because his bottom retainer cracked. (He informed me of this problem right before we left for vacation.) They did an impression and made a new retainer for him right then, so we had to wait a while. They didn't charge us anything for the new retainer, though, so I am not complaining! Scott doesn't have to go back for 6 months now.

Frank had a long day on Tuesday--he left for work around 6:30 and didn't get home until 10:40 that night. He didn't see any of the boys that day at all, since they were all still asleep when he left and they went to bed before he got home. They were all still asleep when he left Wednesday morning, also, so he didn't see them until Wednesday evening. Frank was working from home all day Thursday, though--it was nice to have him around. Then on Friday he had another really long day; didn't get home until nearly 9:00. One of his regular clients (he goes there every Tuesday and Thursday) said they didn't need him to come this week at all. We were concerned about that--worried he wouldn't have enough hours--but it didn't turn out to be a problem! He worked overtime most days, even without the 16 hours he usually works for them.

On Tuesday Frank's car also got a flat tire. He took it in the next day and ended up having to get two new tires. The other two were replaced not too long ago, so hopefully he won't be needing any new tires for a while. He puts a lot of miles on that car, so the tires wear out fast.

When I was at the store with Seth this week, I had an old man smile at me and say "You are a good mother." I guess he had overheard my conversation with Seth, helping him to pick out a birthday card for a friend. Still, I was surprised. It was actually a longer than usual trip to the store (I was buying school supplies as well as the usual groceries) and I wasn't feeling particularly patient. I guess I managed to sound patient, even if I wasn't feeling it! Anyway, it was nice of that man to say something. I smiled the rest of my way through the store. That experience reminded me how easy it is to make someone's day--just by taking the time to say something nice.

The boys had YM Wednesday evening, except Jared--his leader didn't show up. I went to the cub committee meeting that evening because my couselor who usually attends had family visiting. A bunch of the kids decided they wanted to go see Iron Man 2 at the dollar theater after YM / YW ended, so Scott and Tanner went with them. That meant I got to stay up late waiting for them to get home.

On Thursday evening Frank and I went out--we got some yummy mexican fast food (much better than Taco Bell) and then went shopping for a chair. The base of the big Papasan chair that we bought last year broke this week, so we need to either get a new base or a new chair. It would definitely be less expensive and simpler to get a new base, but I'm not very impressed with how durable the last one turned out to be, so I'm not sure I want to go that route. Besides that, I've decided that even though that chair is really comfortable and we all love it, it's round shape makes it take up a lot of room, and it is really too large for our little living room. So we decided to see if we could find a better alternative. That's more complicated than it sounds, though, because Frank and I have different tastes and he tends to gravitate to large, bulky chairs (since he's a tall person) and I gravitate to the smaller, sleeker chairs that turn out to be too small to be comfortable for him. (But just right for me!) Add to that the fact that we have been planning to add new storage pieces in the living room in the (hopefully not too distant) future, so we are trying to find something that will fit in with the overall long-term plan. We ended up discussing several possible ways to rearrange the furniture, and trying to figure out how a chair would fit into the different possible arrangements. Like I said--it got a lot more complicated than you'd think!! So we didn't buy a chair, we just looked and got some ideas, and now we need to figure out what is going to work the best.

Tanner and Jared spent most of Friday hanging out with Ryan and Bryson. I took Seth to a birthday party for his friend Tyler. It was a pirate theme party; they got to go on a treasure hunt. Seth seemed to have fun, although some of the things they did (like a pirate version of "musical chairs" where they had to stand on an "island") were a little over his head. He was thrilled to bring home his "treasure"--a bag of candy--and ate it all up!

Seth is progessing well with potty training, although he still runs and hides when he has a bowel movement--not sure why he does that! Once I convince him to run to the bathroom instead, we'll be set. I think another week or two and he'll have it figured out.

I've been reading the Percy Jackson series, which I'm enjoying, and I have also been able to work on Seth's quiet book a little more this week. I've completed a few more pages, and only have 3 pages to complete, plus a couple of small things to do on a few of the other pages. Tonight I bought fabric to make the cover and a bag to carry it.

This morning we had a Primary activity focusing on the pioneers. We talked about what pioneers are, and then we had some people from our ward who are from different parts of the world do presentations about their countries and talk about the pioneers from their families. We had two families who had the more traditional cross-the-plains type of pioneers tell stories from their families (some emigrated from Europe and others from the easter United States) and then we also had a family from Africa (Nigera) and a family from Guatamala. We were supposed to have one other presentation from Hong Kong, but unfortunately our presenter (my friend Christine) came down with food poisoning and couldn't make it. I thought all the presenters did a great job! We also had all the kids make covered wagons out of rice crispie treats, honeycomb cereal, pretzel sticks, animal crackers, and marshmallows. At the end we had invited the parents to come and share pioneer stories from their own families with their kids. I think the activity went well, and it was very little work to prepare since most of the work was done by the presenters. I was happy with how it turned out. We had a pretty small group--only about 25 kids--but we were expecting that since a lot of people are out of town this time of year and there were also several families involved in swim meets this morning.

This afternoon our ward had their annual Crab Fest, but we decided not to go because it is so hot! It was about 102 degrees with a heat index of 115 degrees. It's been like that the last couple of days, and the next few days are supposed to be pretty hot also. This has definitely been a summer of record breaking high temperatures. We are very thankful for our comfortable, air-condidtioned house!!

I spent some time yesterday looking through our family records to refresh my mind so I could share some pioneer stories with Jared at the activity today. I found a few things that I don't remember ever hearing before (the new BFJ family book is great!) and it was really wonderful to re-read so many other stories. I am truly overwhelmed by how many amazing, fabulous ancestors I have--on both sides of the family! They are incredible people and I am so thankful for the sacrifices they made so that I can have the blessings of the gospel in my life.

Happy Pioneer Day!