October 28 '22

 This week has been pretty busy; mostly good stuff. Last Saturday there was a Women's Conference for our stake. To my great surprise, I didn't wake up until a little after 8:00 am and it started at 9:00 so I arrived a bit late. (No idea why I slept so late!!) They had a brunch first and I actually got there in time for that but I didn't think I would, so I ate before I got there. It was just as well...the food looked good but it was all carbs so the breakfast I ate at home was better for me. I went to two classes and both of them were really good. I'm glad I went! The rest of the day was filled with cleaning, YW stuff and some online shopping, plus watching the BYU football game. I'm not sure why I watched the game until the bitter end...I kept thinking that I really didn't want to watch anymore! There's another game tonight...I'm thinking seriously about skipping this one. I hope they have a better season next year! We actually thought seriously of purchasing tickets to go to the game last Saturday (since it was in Virginia) but the tickets sold out before we made up our minds. We're pretty glad now that we didn't buy tickets! The shopping was for Jared's birthday (ordered a few things for him from his wish list) and to get some new jeans for Seth since the ones he has are too short. They finally arrived yesterday and I washed them today so no more high waters for a while (until he grows a few more inches)!

I taught a short lesson for my YW class on Sunday and then we used the rest of the class time to do a short training about planning activities because both the class advisor and I felt like our class presidency wasn't really understanding how to do that. Then we used what we had just talked about to finish planning Tuesday's activity because our class was in charge. Frank came home from church with a migraine and he took a nap instead of going to Ward Council. He felt quite a bit better after that. I took a nap also and had some time to read. I made so much headway on my book for book club that I was able to finish it on Monday.

I helped with a food distribution for families in need on Monday. The distribution was done by a place called Mission of Mercy but it was at our stake center. (They do free medical and dental clinics at our stake center every Monday also). I helped bag carrots, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Those carrots are the biggest carrots I have ever seen! I was working with two women and one of them looked familiar to me. She said I looked familiar too. A reporter from the newspaper came around and asked permission to take photos of us working and then she asked if we would give her our names. When this other woman gave her name, I realized how I knew her. She was one of Tanner's teachers his first year of Middle School! He actually didn't like her...he thought she was mean...but I didn't tell her that! We talked about the school a bit and she said it was the hardest place she ever worked in her 30 years of teaching so I think she just wasn't happy there at all and that may have come across as being grumpy and mean. (She was only there for that one year.) Anyway, that was kind of a fun coincidence. She remembered Tanner and enjoyed hearing what he's doing now and seeing a picture of him and Darlee. After I finished at the food drive, I went to visit my friend Barbra who is in a care center which is right next to the stake center. (She's the one who had surgery recently, after breaking her hip and arm.) 

The tree across the street on Monday morning...losing a lot of leaves now:

As I mentioned, my class was in charge of the YM/YW activity for Tuesday evening. Originally we were going to go to a corn maze but when I looked into it I discovered that many of them aren't open on week nights and they all close earlier than 7:00 anyway, so we had to come up with another idea. We decided to do a "Fall Festival". One sister in our ward who is really good at cooking / baking taught the kids how to make pie crusts. Then we had a number of games for them to play including a ring toss, pumpkin bowling, corn hole, and a candy maze. The kids each made two mini pies...one with a graham cracker crust and one with a basic pie crust. They turned out really well and the fillings (which this sister made ahead of time, in interest of time) were delicious!!! (I had a bite of each of Seth's pies.) The activity went really well and I think everyone had a really fun time.

I got lots of pictures of the pie making, but not of the other activities because I was keeping an eye on the candy maze.

The deer appeared again on Tuesday morning:

When I am sitting in my living room during the day, I am looking out at these trees, and they always look so beautiful:

On Wednesday I recuperated from the two previous busy days. :) I did have an online meeting for VITA that lasted about an hour. We met the new program manager and talked about some logistics. I went grocery shopping and did vaccuming too because I was planning to go to the temple on Thursday (those are usually things I do on Thursday). I ended up having to change my plans, though. I had been having some mild pain / discomfort which started on Tuesday sometime and late in the day on Wednesday it dawned on me that I probably had a UTI. So I cancelled my temple appointment because I knew I needed to see a doctor for that. I was sorry not to get to go, but I have appointments for the next three weeks so I will get to go again soon. 

Wednesday afternoon and evening nature shots:

At sunset, the sun was hitting the tops of these trees and turning them brilliant colors:

I went to the doctor and I'm waiting on results but in the meantime she gave me an antibiotic to start taking. She also offered to give me a flu shot and since I've been meaning to do that, I agreed to that.

After I got home from the doctor, Jared's mother in law came to talk to me for a bit. They had been down to visit Jared & Jessie last weekend and they were very concerned with Jared's health so she wanted to talk to me about that. She said that Jared looked really sick and they could see a big difference in him in just the couple of months since they saw him last. She said he is still not fully healed from his surgery, he is having tons of GI issues, and his back and joints hurt all the time. They could tell that he was always in pain and she said he moves around like an old man and can't sleep because he feels so bad. She got really emotional when she was talking to me about it. We knew a lot of this stuff, of course, but we didn't realize how bad he has become. She thinks that it may be necessary for them to come back up here to live for a while since Jared can't work much at all and Jessie wants to go back to school. Her job in NC has been a really terrible work environment so she actually gave her notice a few weeks ago and tomorrow is her last day working there. So as early as December / January, they may be coming up here. Jessie's mom wanted to get my thoughts on whether or not we thought it would be possible for Jared & Jessie to live with us, if necessary. I told her we'd be crowded but we'd make it work if that was needed. It's more likely they would move in with Jessie's parents, but they don't have much room either and Jessie's mom is worried because they have a couple of cats and Jessie is allergic to them. So staying there for a visit has been okay but long term may not be. We are also in a more convenient location if Jessie decides to go to school at the local community college. (They have a surgical assistant program, which is what she wants to do.) So anyway, who knows what will happen, but we agreed that between them and us we'd do whatever we can to help them and we are thinking about some things we can start doing now to prepare in case they need to move in. We are, of course, very worried about Jared but we're grateful that his in-laws love him so much and are concerned about him too. Jared has an appointment with a GI doctor on Monday and we are hopeful that they will be able to start getting some answers about what's wrong and what they can do to help him. So far he has been tested for Crohn's disease, Celiac disease, and food allergies and sensitivities but all of those things have come back negative. The joint pain makes us wonder if he has some sort of autoimmune disorder, but who knows. I hope we get some answers soon.

Last night I went to book club and it was fun as always. Next, we are reading a biographical book called Lab Girl.

Thursday morning and afternoon autumn scenes:

Today I have not been feeling too great. For one thing, I think I'm having a reaction to the flu shot...I have a headache and some chills. Besides that, though, the UTI is no better and I'm actually wondering if I have something else. I had this strange incident this morning where my back started hurting on the left side and then I got really nauseated and got hot and started sweating, almost like I was going to faint. Fortunately, it only lasted a little while but it caused me to wonder if maybe I have a kidney stone instead of a UTI. I called Frank at work and he said what I described sounded a lot like a kidney stone. I felt anxious that I was going to get worse, so he got permission to come home and work from here for the rest of the day. Fortunately, I haven't gotten worse and I haven't had any more issues other than the constant mild pain and pressure I've been feeling the last few days. I guess I'll just have to see what happens over the next few days. If it's just a UTI, I will hopefully start feeling better when the antibiotic has time to really start working. In the meantime, I'm lying low and trying to drink lots of water. 

After I finished the book club book on Monday I started reading The Grey King which is the next book in the Dark Is Rising series. I haven't had a lot of time to read but I'm almost half way through it. 

We finally got the dual enrollment stuff worked out for Seth and earlier this week I paid the tuition for his class so he is now getting both high school and college credit for his computer tech class. 

We are having beautiful fall weather and the world looks amazing! I keep trying to get pictures but they never come out as good as I'd like. I've included a few above and I will finish with some that I took this morning. These are the only ones that I didn't take from my front yard or back deck. The first ones I took on the way back from dropping Seth off at school and the others I took just a few houses down from our house.

Weekly Review October 21 '22

I have no idea how we are 3/4 of the way through October already! I feel like this year is just speeding by. It's going to be Christmas before I know it! 

When I write these posts each Friday, I always have a hard time remembering what I did the previous Friday. I spent a little more time working on my talk that evening and got it finalized, but other than that I can't remember. 

Saturday was fairly busy. Frank and I ran some errands in the morning, including going to the store to get some new frying pans. We bought a new set of pans about a year ago and they are holding up pretty well except for the two frying pans. They've taken a beating because they get used nearly every day, often 2 or 3 times a day. We got the set at Bed Bath & Beyond and we have a $50 gift card for that store, so we thought we'd use it to replace the pans. Of course, when we got there we discovered that the frying pans were out of stock. And when we checked their website they were out of stock there too. We ended up ordering them from Amazon, which is fine except we couldn't use our gift card there, of course. That afternoon we watched the BYU football game--sort of! There were lots of interruptions for things like the missionaries stopping by, cooking dinner, and taking Seth to a youth activity and picking him back up, so I don't feel like I saw much of it. (Even though Frank actually took Seth to the activity and picked him up.) It wasn't the best game anyway as most of you know...sadly, BYU kept up their trend for losing their daytime games. We have yet to watch a wining game this season...all the good ones have been late at night for us. The youth activity Seth went to was a regional activity with carnival games and ice cream. We had to talk him into going (he always prefers to stay home if he has a choice) but he had a good time. 

On Sunday I had choir practice before church. When we walked outside to go to church, we had to stop and take some photos of a tree across the street:

The color of the sky contrasting with the bright orange tree was just incredible! (Much better in real life than in the photos, as usual.) Then the sun came out and was shining on the top part of the tree, turning it golden orange. So pretty!

My Sacrament meeting talk went pretty well, I think. I mean, I'm never as articulate as I'd like to be but I've had several people since then tell me how much they liked my talk, or that I inspired them to do something, or that they really felt the spirit. It's nice to get feedback like that! I even had someone tell me that it was not just inspirational, it was also so well organized. I actually felt like this particular talk was more muddled than usual. I was the last speaker and ended up having 10 minutes (instead of 12+ as I expected) so I felt like I had to rush through it, even with cutting things out. (I overprepared, knowing that I might have a lot of time to fill.) So it was particularly nice to have someone say it was organized! At any rate, I'm really glad that's over with and I won't have to speak again for about a year, hopefully! The choir sang in the meeting also and it went really well. We had a lot more people than usual sing and it actually sounded really good and really powerful from where I was standing in the choir, and the choir director told us afterwards that she got lots of enthusiastic comments about it. After church I had a short meeting with my YW class presidency to do some planning for an activity and for some lessons.

Monday through Wednesday were mostly normal busy days. This week was the last week of the 1st term for Seth and I spent some time with him making sure he got everything done. He has continued to have some struggles with his math class and it's been pretty frustrating but it looks like he managed to pull off a C for the term. It's sad that I'm glad about that, but for a while it looked like he was going to get a D so a C seems much better. It's too bad because he usually gets straight As in math. I'm not sure what we can do for term 2 to help him do better, but we're going to look into some tutoring. I really think the biggest problem is that he can't understand his teacher very well and the teacher doesn't give them written problems to practice, so he isn't figuring out how to do them on his own either. On a happy note, it looks like he will get As in his other 2 classes. 

On Tuesday evening we had youth activities as usual. The YW met together and one of the girls taught us how to do faux calligraphy. The YM did some service...they moved some furniture for one of the families in the ward. Frank had some work to do for clients that night so he didn't go. On Wednesday I had a long YW presidency meeting. Frank has been approved to work from home every Wednesday so he was home but he had meetings most of the day so I didn't see him much. It will be nice to have him home every Wednesday, though!

Because Wednesday was the end of term, Seth was out of school yesterday and today. (I think one day was a teacher development day and the other a teacher work day.) Yesterday I helped drive a group of youth (including Seth) to the temple to do baptisms. I'm really glad I got to do that. The YW secretary came too and we were asked to be the witnesses for all the baptisms our youth did. 

Today I've been busy with a lot of YW stuff and errands besides working on the budget and this post. I also called one of the sisters in my ward that I minister to. She had surgery last week so I called to check on her. She is recovering really well, thankfully. 

I've done quite a bit of reading this past week--both listening to audio books and actually reading. I made it through a couple of audio books. I finished reading Greenwitch but I haven't started the next book in that series yet (The Grey King) because book club is next week so I need to focus on the book for book club. I purchased an ebook version of that book on Monday because the library still didn't have it available (and it's a good thing because I still haven't received an email from them saying it's ready for pick up) and I've been trying to read it as much as possible. It's called Snow Falling On Cedars. It has 371 pages and I'm on page 151 so I have quite a ways to go yet but hopefully I'll get it done by Thursday. It's pretty good overall and fairly interesting so far. 

I was able to start exercising again last week and I've been able to continue doing that this week. My foot still bothers me a bit sometimes but it's not too bad. I'm glad to be exercising again and have been enjoying watching movies on Disney plus while I jog. But even better...my clothes are fitting again instead of feeling too tight.

We've had a bit of a cold snap this week with some night temperatures in the 30s and daytime temperatures are usually in the 40s or 50s. (Sometimes 60s.) Most days have been sunny, though, and the trees are really starting to turn colors now so the world looks beautiful! We had a beautiful sunrise one morning too so I will finish with a photo of that. 

Weekly Review October 14 '22

Well, here it is Friday again already. This week was pretty busy and went by fast. Last Friday evening Frank and I went out for dinner. (We offered to take Seth with us but he didn't want to come. He preferred to stay home to play a video game.) 

On Saturday I went shopping for material for a new project. I have a couple of throw pillows on my couch that I got several years ago. They both have trees with autumn colored leaves on them; one says "Be Grateful" and the other says "Friends & Family". Frank has mentioned more than once that we shouldn't have "Thanksgiving pillows" on our couch all year, to which I always retort "we can be grateful any time of year, not just at Thanksgiving". However, I did purchase them at Thanksgiving time and it wasn't originally my intention to keep them on the couch all year. I meant to get different pillows for different holidays / seasons, but I have never found ones that I really like. The "Thanksgiving" pillows are now looking fairly bedraggled after years of "abuse" (Frank likes to put them on the coffee table and rest his feet on them) so I was thinking I should make some covers for them. That's when it occurred to me that I could make several different covers for them for different seasons / holidays. So off I went to the fabric store! I looked at fabric for a lot of different holidays and seasons, but I decided to start by making some Christmas pillow covers, since realistically I probably won't get anything done in time for Halloween or Thanksgiving. (Case in point: I got the fabric last Saturday but I haven't started making them at all yet!) Anyway, I think it will be a fun project to make all these pillow covers even though it will likely take me a year to get them all done.

Our ward had a Chili Cook Off that evening. We didn't make any chili, though--we made mac & cheese and some corn bread. (Lots of other people made chili, and others brought corn bread or desserts). We enjoyed sampling a number of different chilis and it was a fun evening. We got home just in time to watch the BYU football game. Another brother from our ward came & watched with us. He and his wife are fairly new in our ward. We sat at the same table as them at the chili cook off and discovered that they are big BYU fans, so Frank invited them to come watch the game with us. His wife wasn't feeling really well though (she injured her leg recently and is using a cane to get around) so she didn't come but he did. It was fun to get to know him a little bit more, even though the game itself wasn't great. (Better luck next time, BYU!) I found out he served his mission in the Houston area in the mid 1970s. When I told him that we went to the Baytown Ward for a while, he said that he never served there but he did go there for a leadership meeting once and the mission president asked all the missionaries at the meeting to go out contacting in that area after the meeting. He asked them to do this because a local minister for another church was following around the missionaries that were serving in that area. If anyone talked to the missionaries, he would go by that house afterwards and tell them bad things about the Church, to thwart the missionaries' efforts. The mission president figured that if he got a whole bunch of missionaries to fan out over the area that this minister wouldn't be able to follow all of them! It did seem to help a bit, and the work in that area went better after that. 

Sunday was quite busy for both Frank and I. I mean, Frank is always busy on Sunday because he has lots of meetings. This Sunday he had Ward Youth Council in addition to his other regular meetings. I had choir practice before church and I also attended Ward Council because the YW president hurt her back last week and was still recovering. (She attended Ward Youth Council remotely so I didn't have to go to that one.) Seth had to come with me to Ward Council (he waited in another room) because our family had tithing declaration with the bishop right after Ward Council ended. (I didn't know I would be going to Ward Council that Sunday when we signed up for tithing declaration, or I would have picked a different time). It was nearly dinner time before we all got home.

I was back at the fabric store on Monday, but not to buy anything. One of the girls in my YW class suggested on Sunday that we use our next several class activities to make dresses. I told her skirts would be a much better beginner project! The girls in my class seemed pretty interested in learning to sew, though, and I love the idea of teaching them, so I decided to go look at patterns. I remembered that there are always some easy or "learn to sew" patterns so I wanted to see what was available. I did find some good options, and there were even some dresses although I still think skirts would be a better idea! Then I remembered that I only have this class for two more months (there will be a change in how the classes are organized in January). I'm sure we will need more than 2 class activities to do a project like this, so now I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it. But I'm going to talk to the rest of the YW presidency about it...maybe we can figure something out. Seth had a doctor appointment that day after school...just a regular check up for his medicine. 

Tuesday was super busy because we had a combined YM/YW activity that evening and Frank and I both had to be there early. We had planned a steak dinner, but the idea was for the youth to help with the cooking. So we had to be at the church early to guide them through making mashed potatoes and steak as well as setting the tables. I feel like we had to take half our kitchen equipment with us just to make a couple of things! It worked out great, though. All the food was good, the tables looked nice, and the youth seemed to enjoy themselves. I ate dinner at home ahead of time (didn't really want to wait until 7:30 to eat dinner!) so I didn't eat anything except a few bites from Frank's plate, to see how it all turned out. I completely forgot to take pictures of the activity--I was sad when I remembered later.

Seth took the PSAT on Wednesday. He says he didn't do well on the math part because he didn't know how to do half of it. Not much of a surprise, since the test covers Algebra 2, and he is just now taking that class. Hopefully he did well on the reading and writing portions (and maybe he did better on the math than he thinks he did...I guess we'll see). I had a brief physical exam that afternoon because Frank and I are both applying to get some life insurance through his work...it was just getting my vitals checked and some blood drawn...stuff like that. That evening I had a ministering interview with the RS president and right afterwards there was a RS activity. We learned how to make macrame plant hangers. I didn't get very far with mine but I have the basic idea down now so I can keep working on it until it's finished. I definitely went to the activity for the social aspect more than for my desire to have a macrame plant hanger...I don't even have any plants because I always forget to water them and they die. (Frank says I have a "black thumb".) I did really enjoy visiting with the other women who were there, and I will try to find someone to give my plant hanger to when it is done!

I went to the temple on Thursday. It was raining quite hard that morning and I feared that traffic would be terrible. It usually is when it rains, and shortly before I left for the temple Frank called me to tell me it took him 2 hours to get to work. Ugh!! However, by the time I left the rain had slowed down a lot and I got to the temple without any trouble. As a matter of fact, there were even fewer slow downs than normal and I got to the temple quicker than I did on any of my previous trips since it re-opened. No complaints from me! In spite of that, I was pretty tired by the time I got home, but I managed to get groceries, finish the laundry, and vacuum the whole house last night.

The temple in the rain:

In my free time this week I have done some reading and worked on my talk. I finished reading The Dark Is Rising and now I am about half way through the third book in the series, Greenwitch. It's shorter than the other two so I will probably finish it soon. I actually haven't had much time to read it. I've listened to books a lot too, since I can do that while I'm doing other things (cleaning, cooking, driving...). Earlier this week, I chose the part of For the Strength of Youth that I am going to talk about and wrote down a brief outline. I've been thinking about it all week and this morning I spent a couple of hours adjusting the outline and fleshing things out so it's mostly ready now. I still have a few details to hash out, but hopefully that won't take long. I will be glad when giving this talk is over. I'm not terribly nervous about it, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it either.

I still haven't received the book for book chat from the library so I will probably buy a digital copy of it. I know I'm probably not going to have time to read it until next week, though, so I'm not going to buy it until I'm ready to start reading (in case I do get it from the library by then). 

We've had some cold nights lately but the days are usually fairly warm. Today it is sunny again (after all the rain yesterday) and the leaves have started turning colors this last week so the world looks beautiful! I'll finish with some photos of that.

Beautiful misty morning on Wednesday:

Sunshine today: