Weekly Review September 29 '23

Here we go with categories again. I don't think there's a lot to report this week, but we'll see.

Frank: He was in the middle of moving offices at work when I wrote last week. Things are still a bit chaotic in the new space...some people still don't have internet access, etc...so it wasn't a super productive week for his department. He didn't have to work any extra hours over the weekend which was fortunate because he actually was sick all day on Saturday. He was a lot better on Sunday and seems to be fine now. Frank had a dentist appointment Wednesday morning...just his biannual checkup...and his teeth look great.

Weather: We had a lot of rain over the weekend and we've continued to have some rain throughout the week. Most mornings when we got up, we could tell it had rained sometime in the night. We definitely need the moisture, so that's good. Seth is going to have to mow the lawn again soon...I'm sure he's not going to be happy about that. Temperatures are still pretty moderate, with cool or chilly mornings but mostly pleasant temperatures during the days. 

Seminary: This is still dominating my life but not quite as much as before. I teach two lessons next week plus I'll be putting together a General Conference Jeopardy game for one of the other days. I got the two lessons mostly prepared by Wednesday and it's getting a little easier to prepare lessons...I'm not taking quite as much time. It definitely feels like less of a mental weight to prepare lessons two at a time instead of trying to figure out five! I'm still not sleeping very well and had one night this week when I only slept from 8:00 to 11:00. If I get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, that is a good night. It's discouraging and exhausting but I hope at some point I will start sleeping better. In the meantime, I can really relate to the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with an angel all night! I feel like that's what I've been doing nearly every night for the last 4 weeks. I've had the chance to talk to a couple of my friends this week who have taught Seminary in the past and they all say it is really hard at first and it gets better, so that is encouraging to hear. Since I got my lessons for next week prepared by Wednesday of this week, yesterday was a much more relaxing day for me. It's the first day since Seminary started that has felt "normal" to me. All my days used to be like that. I am enjoying the kids and we have some good times. I have also had a lot of inspiring moments. I'm learning a lot and I'm grateful.

Seth: He found out on Saturday that he had to give a talk on Sunday. (It was a mix up related to the change in bishopric.) He wasn't thrilled about that, but let's be honest...he wouldn't have prepared his talk before Saturday even if he had known about it earlier! He did a pretty good job on his talk; it was just pretty short. Seth had Monday off of school which he enjoyed. (And I did too since that meant I didn't have to get up super early!) He's still trying to get caught up with some of the school work he missed when he was sick last week. Yesterday he didn't get up for Seminary so he had to walk to school (I don't get home from Seminary in time to take him to school.) On Wednesday he went to YM...they had a combined activity with the YW and they learned some Polynesian dancing. 

Clothes: In spite of the fact that I purchased quite a few new clothing items while I was in Utah, I ended up doing more clothes shopping last Saturday. That's because most of the things I bought in Utah are for summer / milder weather. I realized these last few weeks when it has been chilly in the mornings that I don't have a lot of Sunday clothes for colder weather. I mean, I have plenty if I only need to wear them once a week, but now I wear Sunday clothes 6 days a week! I was able to get a couple of long sleeve shirts / blouses and some sweaters, including a few cardigan sweaters which I can wear over the top of other things that I already have. Hopefully that will be enough to keep me going through the winter months. 

Book Club: I had book club last night. We discussed Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Now we are going to read The Spanish Daughter by Lorena Hughes. I put it on hold at the library but I'm third in the queue so I'm not sure how soon I will get it. I enjoyed book club but I was the first one to leave, since it was already past my bed time. 

Temple: Our stake is having a stake temple night tonight. Frank works a few miles from the temple, so he is going to go straight to the temple from work. I got a ride with a friend in my ward so I will meet Frank at the temple and we will be able to ride home together. I'm looking forward to going to the temple but hope I will be able to stay awake!

That's actually all I can think of for this week. I told you there wasn't much! I'm really looking forward to General Conference this weekend.

Weekly Review September 22 '23

 I'm going to do categories again this week. That just seems to be working better for me lately.

Frederick Fair: The county fair started last Friday and goes through tomorrow. Frank got admission tickets, a parking pass, and ride tickets for free from one of his clients, so we decided to take a break from our work and went to the fair for about 4 hours on Saturday afternoon. We had enough admission tickets that Jared & Jessie could get in too and we tried to coordinate with them to go together, but that didn't work out. We did actually end up being there at the same time for about an hour, but didn't see each other. Anyway, I enjoyed visiting the arts & crafts building (to see all the quilts, crocheted items, etc. as well as photography) while Frank & Seth looked at vegetables and small animals like chickens and rabbits. Then they joined me at the arts & crafts building for a while. After that, we went to see the larger animals like goats, pigs, sheep, and cows. Frank and I took a ride on the ferris wheel, and we all had a few fair treats. It was fun to get out of the house for a while and it was a beautiful day. 

I got a kick out of this cross stitch piece:

Some of the quilts:

Ferris wheel:

Seth is standing under the overhang of that building (in black shorts and black tshirt):

The fair from above:

Weather: Seth actually had to mow the lawn on Saturday because we had enough rain that it started to grow again. This week has still been mostly dry although we've had some rain. Most days have been sunny with cool temperatures in the mornings and pleasant during the days. I'm starting to pull long pants and sweaters out to wear some days, but it's not cold, just cool. We have a tropical storm coming in tomorrow and it looks like we'll have lots of rain and cooler temperatures all next week. 

Seth / School Schedule: Seth was sick this week and missed two days of school. That's pretty unusual for him. When we woke him up Tuesday morning he was all stuffed up and he said he'd been awake a lot in the night so he wanted to skip Seminary to get a little more sleep and then get up for school. I went to Seminary without him but sometime during Seminary he texted me (I was teaching, so didn't see it until the end of the class) that he had thrown up and he had a splitting headache, so he had decided not to go to school. He felt feverish to me when I got home, but according to the thermometer he didn't have a fever. (I'm not sure the thermometer was working properly though...I think it needs a new battery.) Seth didn't throw up again, but his head definitely hurt quite a bit that day and he was quite congested. He also woke up with a stiff / sore neck on Sunday and that was still bothering him too. He was well enough to go back to Seminary and school on Thursday and he seems to be mostly back to normal now. It wasn't a great week for him to be sick because today is midterm and he missed two tests which there hasn't been time to make up yet. (Not to mention missed assignments which also need to be turned in.) Today they had a very short day...got out 3 1/2 hours early. He will be able to take the missed tests next week and I'm sure his teachers will work with him on getting missed assignments in since he was absent two days so in the end it should all work out okay, I hope. Since Wednesday was one of the days that Seth stayed home sick from school, he didn't go to the YM activity that evening. We never got an email about it, so I have no idea what they did. Last night I needed to make some copies for my lesson this morning, so I convinced Seth to come with me to the church to do that and then he got to practice driving in the church parking lot for about 20 minutes. He is doing better...getting more comfortable with it.

Seminary: This was my week to teach and it was definitely a challenging week still although it wasn't any worse than last week. I feel like Seminary is an emotional roller coaster ride for sure...I seem to be down in the dumps, then pull out of it and hit a big high, and then go shooting back down again. I always seem to hit the lows mid week, and then start to feel a lot better at the end of the week. Lack of sleep probably has a lot to do with that! I still had a rough time sleeping a lot of nights this week, although I am starting to fall asleep earlier at least. I'm usually asleep by 9:00 at the latest, and most nights I was asleep between 8:00 and 8:30. Most mornings I still woke up hours before I needed to (I had another night where I woke up at midnight and didn't go back to sleep) but yesterday I woke up only 30 minutes early and today I slept until 10 minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. That means I got around 7 hours of sleep both of those nights, which is pretty good! Lesson preparation still took a lot longer than it should but I had some experiences this week that helped me adjust my thinking a bit. I spent a ton of time on Wednesday preparing Thursday's lesson and was feeling really discouraged that in spite of that I didn't feel like it was very well prepared. I thought it was going to be boring. I wanted to look at it some more and try to make it better, but then I had the distinct impression that I needed to leave it alone. I kept having that feeling over and over. So I did leave it alone, and then the lesson went really well. That helped me feel a lot calmer about today's lesson. I only had a few hours yesterday to prepare today's lesson but I kept feeling like that would be okay, and miraculously it all came together rather quickly. In some ways, it almost seems better for me if I have a time limit...lesson prep seems to fill up whatever time I have to give it! I feel like I am constantly learning new things and figuring things out, which is somewhat encouraging...I really am hopeful that in time things will be a lot better. It has definitely been a lot harder and a lot bigger adjustment than I anticipated! But in spite of that, I have seen a ton of tender mercies and know I am getting a lot of inspiration and help. 

Overall, my lessons went well this week...some were better than others. I'd say Monday and Thursday were the best days. One thing we have figured out is that most of the kids in this class will not volunteer answers to questions, but if you call on them they will usually give a pretty good answer. So I tried calling on people instead of just asking questions to the group as a whole, and that seemed to really help. I don't really like doing that because I worry I am going to put someone on the spot or embarrass them, but so far they have responded well. I tried a variety of different things this week to keep them engaged like object lessons, music, using white boards to answer questions, and breaking into small groups. I feel like after these three weeks I am starting to really see their different personalities and they really are great kids and make me laugh. On Monday I used cinnamon rolls for an object lesson. I was teaching a lesson about going to divinely appointed sources (scriptures, prophets, prayer, etc.) to get answers to their questions. To help them recognize the importance of getting information from trustworthy sources, I showed them the cinnamon rolls and asked who wanted one. Of course everyone did! Then I asked "what if I told you that I was walking in downtown Frederick and found these cinnamon rolls in a box on the sidewalk with a sign that said "Free", so I decided to bring them to give to you?" There was a pause and then one of the boys said "I'll take my chances!!" That made me (and everyone else) laugh. Of course, after making my point that even things that sound good or look good might not actually be safe (they need to know the source), I told them that I actually made the cinnamon rolls myself, they were perfectly safe, and that they could each have one at the end of class. Overall, the kids are quite good natured most of the time and I am enjoying them.

Visual from one of my lessons this week, to help the youth memorize the reference and key scripture phrase for one of their doctrinal mastery scriptures:

After the last two weeks, both my team teacher and I have decided that teaching a week at a time is harder than we anticipated, so we are going to try splitting things up now...I will teach Mondays and Tuesdays and she will teach Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, we will try to have a guest teacher. (This is something our stake encourages us to do and we haven't had a guest teacher yet because we wanted to get into a routine first.) There's no school on Monday so we only have four days next week. Originally we were going to teach two days each but because of the way the schedule was going to fall and with General Conference next weekend and some of the things we're planning to do for that (hard to explain), my team teacher actually offered to teach next week. Right now she is planning to do that, although I told her once she gets into planning if she decides it's too much, I can teach at least one day. We'll see how that goes. Even though I will teach the same number of lessons however we decide to split things up, for some reason teaching 2 or 3 lessons each week seems a lot less overwhelming than teaching 5 lessons one week and 0 lessons the next week. I'm interested to see if it actually is less overwhelming in practice! I honestly have no idea how anyone taught a Seminary class all alone. I can't imagine having to teach every day, every week, for a whole school year. Only doing half of the days has nearly killed me. 

Well, you can see that Seminary is still taking most of my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical energies. I hope you aren't all getting tired of hearing about it. Maybe I will be able to talk about something else eventually!

Frank: He's having a busy week because at work their entire division is moving to another building. The building he's been in is going to be demolished to make way for a new road (or something like that). They started packing things up yesterday and the move is supposed to be happening today. He may have to put in some extra hours this weekend so that things are ready to go in the new space on Monday. Unfortunately, he doesn't like the new space all that much. He will be in a cubicle in the new space...in the old building he had an office with a door. His foot seems to be mostly better now; we're grateful for that. He has continued to be really patient and supportive and helpful while I've been navigating the adjustment to Seminary, which I really appreciate! He has been enjoying a rest from having a church calling but he has to meet with someone on Sunday morning so it looks like he'll be getting a new calling soon.

Other stuff: I was able to go to the temple yesterday. I am planning to go on Fridays this school year, but since Seth got out 3 1/2 hours early today there wasn't time for me to go today. The session I was in yesterday was almost completely full...maybe only 1 or 2 empty seats and I was sitting in the next to the back row on the men's side because there were a lot more women than men. It was really cool to see the temple so busy! I always, always love going there!!

 I got to talk to both Scott and Tanner again this week. It is always good to hear from them! Scott really needs prayers that he will find a job. (He has a small part time job, but he really needs a full time job...and one that is somewhat flexible because he is also planning to go back to school.) 

Jared and Jessie are coming over for dinner tonight. Last Friday when they were here, Jared started getting a lot of messages from people at his work. Sadly, there was a suicide at the shooting range where he works that afternoon. Jared was supposed to work on Saturday but the store and range were closed. He went back to work on Monday. I'm really grateful that he wasn't working the afternoon this happened but sorry for those who were. It must have been really tramautic. Jared worked extra hours this week to fill in for people who weren't feeling up to going in. 

On Sunday, our bishop told my team teacher and I that the stake president had contacted him to say that they are going to mount a television on the wall in the RS room and he wanted our input on where it should go (since we teach in that room every morning, and often use the television). We are pretty happy about that! It will be so nice to have the television there instead of dragging the television cart from the library to the RS room every morning. Not sure how long it will take to actually get the new television mounted...I'm not holding my breath...but it's nice to know that it's in the works. 

I've probably forgotten something, but that is all I can remember to report this week.

Weekly Review September 15 '23

I think categories is going to be the way to go this week again. 

Update on Frank's foot: He went back to the doctor on Monday and found out that he was supposed to have been taking the anti-inflamatory medicine twice a day...the pharmacy messed up and put "take as needed" on the bottle. The doctor prescribed a different anti-inflamatory medicine which seems to be helping. It still isn't totally healed but it looks better than it did. He was able to work from home Monday through Wednesday to give him a chance to rest his foot and keep it elevated. He was able to go to work yesterday and today (although he is working from home this afternoon because he had to go do some things at their data center and it is about halfway in between our house and his office, so he just decided to come home rather than go back to his office.) 

 Sleep: It was still a really bad week for sleeping. I can't remember details anymore...it's all a blur...except that I woke up around 2:30 one morning and another morning I woke up at midnight. (Never went back to sleep either of those mornings). I even tried Melatonin a couple of nights and it did help me fall asleep faster, but I didn't stay asleep long. I tried not to take naps during the day, hoping that I would sleep better at night, but I took a two hour nap on Wednesday because I just couldn't cope anymore without a little more sleep. I did finally sleep well last night, though. I went to bed at 8:00 and woke up at 3:00. I know that's still super early but that adds up to 7 hours of sleep which felt pretty fantastic after all those bad nights. 

Seminary: This still consumed most of my week but yesterday and today have been better. I didn't teach this week--my team teacher did--but I teach every day next week so I was trying to prepare all my lessons for next week. I'm still not done, but I have quite a bit prepared. I wanted to get one lesson prepared each day but things didn't go the way I planned. The same as last week...the lessons are quite challenging and time consuming to prepare and I just kept running out of time. Plus I was tired of course and just not very efficient. We also had a parent get really upset with us for sending out a photo of the September calendar...she's blind, so couldn't see the photo, which we knew but instead I sent her a text message letting her know what day her daughter was assigned to do the devotional. I just didn't think to send her the rest of the information on the calendar (other devotionals, who was bringing breakfast on Fridays) because it didn't really pertain to her but she wanted all the information and felt like we had thoughtlessly excluded her. I saw her angry messages (which she sent to the entire parent group, not just to the teachers) when I woke up way too early on Tuesday morning so that wasn't a great way to start the day and I was in tears and distracted and unable to concentrate for most of that day, which didn't help with my need to be preparing lessons. (We did get things smoothed over, though.)

All in all, it was a really rough week and I felt totally overwhelmed for a lot of it. However, things started to get better yesterday. It didn't start great--still not enough sleep--but when I was lying awake trying to go back to sleep I started praying (not the first time I did that this week, believe me!) I had a calm feeling come over me. I have also been praying for help all week, but I started asking specifically what I could do to manage my time and balance things out better. I asked "please show me how to make this work". Then all day on Thursday I kept having ideas come into my head. Things like "read the lesson and then think about it while you do housework" and "set a timer for an hour, work on your lesson until it goes off, go do something else you need to do and then come back to your lesson and set another timer" and "break down the tasks instead of trying to do everything at once" and "work on it in little increments, like when you are waiting at appointments". Then another thought came to me: "set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier in the morning." That seems crazy, but I thought about it and realized that in the back of my mind I've been anxious that getting up at the time I planned was not going to be enough time to exercise, shower, and get to Seminary on time. I have always been on time so far, but I've been getting up at least 30 minutes (if not hours) before my planned wake up time and I usually haven't been ready to go way in advance. (The mornings I woke up really early, I got up and worked on lessons for a while before getting ready). If I set my alarm 30 minutes earlier, my subconscious mind won't be worrying that I'm not going to get up in time and I might sleep better. So I tried it...I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier before I went to bed last night and it worked! I slept solidly until shortly before the alarm was supposed to go off. I'm getting up earlier, but if I go to sleep around 8:00 and actually sleep, I will get a good night's sleep every night. I'm feeling profoundly grateful for those many little answers to my desperate prayers!

The actual classes this week went really well, overall. Every day is a little different and the kids are more attentive and responsive some days than others. We're figuring out what works and what doesn't work. I feel like we are getting them to open up more, though. I was really pleased that some of the kids who hadn't commented on anything yet started volunteering comments this week...and really good comments, too! My team teacher Tammy is a really good teacher and I am learning a lot from watching her. We also end up talking after Seminary nearly every morning for about 30 minutes, discussing how things went and ideas we have and how much we're struggling with lesson preparations (she's encountered the same difficulties as I have) and so forth. I am super grateful to have such a wonderful team teacher! I also have a couple of really sweet friends who have sent me really kind words as well as positive comments their kids have said about Seminary which has been really comforting. 

Weather: We've had some rain here and there and the temperatures have cooled off a lot. As a matter of fact, the last couple of days the mornings have been a little cool. The days are very pleasant and that has been nice!

Other stuff: I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah on Monday. She went out of town for a couple of weeks shortly after we returned from Utah so we hadn't had a chance to talk for quite a while and had to get all caught up on everything going on in our lives. It was nice!

Seth had an orthodontist appointment on Thursday after school. They just wanted to check his retainers. They look good, and he doesn't have to go back for 6 months. 

There was a RS activity Thursday evening and I wanted to go...it sounded fun...but I wanted to sleep more! And since I actually did go to sleep early and slept well, I don't regret that decision.

This morning we had signed up to take breakfast in to Seminary. We took 3 boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk, and most of it got eaten so I guess everyone liked it.

Today after Seminary I went to the temple to do initiatories. I was able to take one of the sisters I minister to plus her husband with me. They are in their early eighties and aren't comfortable driving to the temple anymore so they were happy to get a ride down there and I was happy to have some company for the drive. It was really sweet, too, because this sister was able to do initiatories for her sister who passed away a few years ago. 

On Sunday we got a new bishopric, as I mentioned in last week's post. Frank got an email from a member of the stake presidency on Saturday asking to meet with him Sunday morning so we wondered a bit about that but he just wanted to officially extend a release to Frank. Anyway, our new bishopric will be great, and Frank is happy to get a rest. The whole meeting was testimonies from the outgoing and incoming bishoprics. Frank did a great job!

Speaking of Frank, he's been really awesome and patient this week offering me sympathy and support and doing lots of things to help me, including making dinner one night. 

Seth went to YM on Wednesday evening but since neither Frank and I had to be there, I'm not sure exactly what they did...Seth says they did a 'boys vs girls Jeopardy kind of thing". Frank and I went grocery shopping while he was gone. 

Last Saturday was a busy but good day. We watched the BYU football game and we all went through our clothes and weeded out things that we aren't wearing or that don't fit. Actually, Frank and Seth just did their sock drawers, but it's a start.

I talked to both Scott and Tanner this week; it was good to get caught up with them. Tonight Jared & Jessie came over for dinner. We weren't a very lively group because all of us are tired, but it was nice to see them. 

That's all the news from us for this week.

Weekly Review September 8 '23

 I think it's going to be easier to report this week by using categories. 

First, an update on Frank's foot: It did improve over the first couple of days after he got the antibiotics. He tried to rest it as much as possible. He was able to go to church on Sunday, although he was limping, couldn't wear his Sunday socks or shoes, and he skipped his after church meeting (ward youth council) to go home and put his foot up. It kept improving earlier this week, but around Wednesday he started complaining that his toe was hurting again. It was really bothering him last night, too. He had a follow up with our regular family doctor this afternoon. Our doctor is somewhat concerned. He took a photo of Frank's foot and wants to see him again on Monday to check his foot again (and compare it to the photo). He also said the antibiotic he's been on isn't working well enough so he prescribed a more powerful antibiotic, and ordered Frank to keep his foot elevated as much as possible over the weekend. Hopefully this new antibiotic will make a difference. Thankfully, his ankle is a lot better than it was so he's not in as much pain as he was last weekend but of course we'd like to see this infection knocked out for good.

Seminary: This pretty much consumed my whole life this week. I spent last Friday evening preparing my second lesson (I only had to teach twice this week) and got it mostly figured out. In spite of that, I still feel like I spent a lot of the day on Wednesday fine tuning both lessons and finishing up extra little tasks like choosing an opening song for each lesson. Then after my first lesson on Thursday morning, I decided I needed to make some more adjustments to Friday's lesson, based on what happened on Thursday, so I spent a lot of Thursday figuring all that out. I'm really not obsessing about teaching the perfect lesson or doing anything elaborate and I have no idea why it's taking so much time. I think it's mostly that it's all so new to me. I'm not used to the lesson formats yet, it's hard for me to judge how much time things are going to take, and it's tricky not having a paper manual (I can't jot notes in the margins). There is also a whole technology piece since I need to connect my laptop to a television to show video clips and I've also been getting a crash course on all the digital scripture marking features of gospel library. It's all added up to a lot of time. Plus I don't know a lot of the kids very well yet so I'm having to figure out what works and what doesn't with this particular group. I'm sure I will be able to prepare lessons more quickly after some practice. At least, I'd better figure it out because otherwise I will get nothing else done for the next couple of years (or however long I have this calling). I didn't have any appointments or other responsibilities this week either (besides usual household chores) and certainly not every week will be like that so I will have less available time to work on lesson preparations.

On Sunday after church my team teacher and I met for a couple of hours to do some final planning and discuss several things. I also passed on information to her that I got at the training the week before as well as some thoughts I had during stake conference. Seth wasn't too happy that we met for that long because he was waiting for me to take him home after the ward youth council meeting ended, but he survived.  

When I wasn't actually actively working on Seminary lessons this week, I was thinking about them and a lot of other Seminary related things and I had a pretty rough couple of anxious days. I started feeling a lot better on Wednesday afternoon and when I was teaching I felt pretty calm. I actually felt more anxious on the days I wasn't teaching, who knows why! I definitely prayed a lot this week and feel like those prayers were answered, so I'm grateful.

So in spite of how it may sound. Seminary actually went pretty well this week. My companion teacher taught on Tuesday and Wednesday and I taught on Thursday and Friday. Since Tuesday was the first day, she planned some games to help us all get to know each other better. She based the games on the travels of the Apostle Paul and had them move from one room to another...each room represented a location Paul traveled to and she told a story about what happened to him there and then had a game that related to that. (She's super clever; I would never be able to think up something like that!) I think the kids mostly enjoyed it. We had 22 kids that had committed to probably come and all 22 of them came on Monday. We had 2-4 kids missing each of the other three days this week, but they were different kids each day so overall, most of the kids were there every day and those who missed days didn't miss a bunch. On Thursday I taught a lesson about the Resurrection of Christ based on the truths taught in 1 Corinthians 15 and today we worked on memorizing the scripture reference and key scripture phrase for 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 ("As in Adam all die, even so in Christ will all be made alive"). On Thursday I ran out of time to do the last section of the lesson which is why I decided to adjust Friday's lesson. I did feel like both lessons went pretty well though and my team teacher is awesome and gave me good feedback including telling me what things she thought I did well, which is always good to hear. 

The class is good...they are good kids! Out of those 22 kids, we only have 6 girls so it's a whole lot of boys. Our biggest challenge is going to be getting them to participate well. I knew this would be the case, since I attended Seminary last year about 4 or 5 times and was surprised at how little they talked or answered questions. A lot of them kept their heads down on the table and were probably napping. It seems like they have gotten into a pretty passive mindset about being responsible for their own learning the last couple of years so that is a mindset we are trying to change. They actually did pretty well overall this first week although getting them to answer questions wasn't too easy. We'll keep working on that! The parents take turns providing a breakfast treat every Friday and today we had donuts...that seemed to help them all wake up a bit more! 

Sleep: This was NOT a good week for sleeping. I went to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 every night but I had a hard time falling asleep (usually didn't fall asleep until 10:00), I was restless and woke up a few times briefly most nights and every night I woke up hours before the alarm was supposed to go off (at 4:00 am). Tuesday I woke up at 12:45 am! Wednesday was 3:00ish I think, Thursday was 3:30 (my best night) and this morning I woke up around 2:30. I did take a two hour nap on Tuesday after Seminary from 8:00 to 10:00 am, but have not had any naps since then. So yes...I'm tired! 

Exercise: I exercised every day but Monday (might as well...I was awake anyway!) It does help me feel better, both physically and emotionally.

Weather: After having a few beautiful days last week, this week was super hot and miserable. Most days were real scorchers with highs in the mid to high 90s and heat indexes over 100. We had severe heat warnings a couple of days. This means that I picked up Seth from school every day because I didn't think it was nice to make him walk home during a severe heat warning. Yesterday wasn't quite as hot and I was going to let him walk home but then happened to check the weather and discovered we were under a severe thunderstorm warning. It looked like it probably wouldn't hit until after he got home, but I started to hear rumbles of thunder so I decided I'd better go pick him up. I'm not positive he would have made it home before the storm hit so it's a good thing I did that. The wind really blew and rain really came down for a good 15 minutes. It rained a bit more later that evening so the grass is looking slightly revived (but not much). It's looking fairly possible that we'll get more thunderstorms tonight, and there's a chance of rain in the forecast for the next 3 or 4 days so hopefully we'll get some more rain.

Jared & Jessie: They come over for dinner last night. We enjoyed spending some time with them but we didn't get to play a game together because Frank had some work to do for a client and I was still trying to make adjustments to my Seminary lesson. Jared also wasn't feeling really great...he had some stomach issues going on and he also had a tooth ache. His stomach is feeling a bit better today and he texted me some questions about our dental insurance so hopefully he made an appointment with a dentist to get his tooth looked at. Jessie is starting a new job on Tuesday. She will be working at our eye doctor's office. Her mom works there too so that will be nice for her. 

Labor Day: Frank had the day off work and Seth didn't have school so we went out to breakfast together. It was nice to have some family time. 

And a few odds and ends: On Saturday a girl who grew up in our ward got married (she's around Tanner's age). Several women in our ward were asked to make a food item to help with the reception. I made a sweet potato casserole. I took the casserole and a card over to the church shortly before the reception started but I didn't stay because Frank wasn't feeling well. The medicine he was taking for his foot was causing him some issues with his stomach. He's doing better now, though. 

We found out on Wednesday evening that our new bishopric will be sustained this Sunday. Frank hasn't heard anything else so we're assuming he isn't going to be in the new bishopric. Unless, of course, they are waiting until the last minute to call him (that's what happened last time) but we doubt that will happen again.

Today I was able to go to the temple. I was concerned about driving there and back on so little sleep, but ultimately decided to go anyway. Miraculously, I didn't get sleepy during the drive there or back and I was only slightly sleepy during the session. I'm so glad I went...it was wonderful to be there again!

I can't think of anything else that happened this week, so I will end on that happy note.

Weekly Review September 1 '23

 When I left off last week, I was getting a few things done before heading to the adult session of our Stake Conference. I took dinner with me and Frank and I ate together at the stake center and then attended that meeting. The meeting was excellent and I had a number of thoughts about things related to Seminary. My only complaint about the meeting is that the air conditioning in the chapel was broken so it got pretty warm. You know it has to get really warm for me to complain...I usually freeze at church when the air conditioning is working properly.

On Sunday we went to our own building to watch a broadcast of the general session of confernce. That meeting was also really good and I had more thoughts come to me about Seminary. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner that evening. Jared came too...Jessie wasn't feeling great so she didn't come. We enjoyed visiting with both Jared and the sisters. 

This week I didn't have any appointments or events on my calendar but I have still managed to keep pretty busy, and a couple of things came up as the week went on too. Frank made an appointment for us to talk with our financial advisor on Wednesday midday. The advisor had reached out to us last week to see if we could talk...we both opened up Roth IRAs at the beginning of this year and the balance in both of them had reached a point where we could decide what investment strategy we wanted them to use for those accounts. We also had a couple of other questions we wanted to ask. The meeting was only 30 minutes and via phone call, so we didn't have to go anywhere, which was nice. 

I made an appointment to go to the temple on Thursday morning but I wasn't able to go. That's because Frank woke up Thursday morning with his right foot / ankle hurting a lot. You may remember his big toe on his right foot was hurting a couple of weeks ago but x-rays didn't show any problems. It gradually got better but on Wednesday Frank mentioned that it was bothering him a little bit. By the time he and Seth got home from YM on Wednesday night (they combined with the YW and cleaned toys & organzied things in the nursery), he mentioned that his ankle was hurting too. He didn't sleep very well Wednesday night and woke up Thursday with his foot hurting enough that he could barely walk on it. I decided I needed to cancel my temple appointment so that I could take him in to have his foot looked at. He didn't want to wait to get an appointment at our doctor's office after it opened up, so I took him with me to drop Seth off at school at 7:00 am and then took him straight to the ER and dropped him off. I came back home to shower (I had just finished exercising when Frank woke up) and to get some other work done and Frank and I kept in touch through texting so I would know when to pick him up. 

It turns out he has cellulitis, which is a skin infection caused by bacteria that enter a crack or break in the skin, such as a scratch, bite, or cut. It can become pretty serious if not treated. Chances are that he already had the infection a few weeks ago when he saw the doctor but that doctor (not our usual family doctor; another one in the practice) didn't follow up after the x-rays didn't show any issues, so now it has moved into his ankle. The ER doctor prescribed antibiotics as well as pain medication and a medication for nausea.  After I picked him up from the ER, he had some lunch and then took a nap. Later on, I picked up his prescriptions and ran an errand for him...took some computer cables to one of his clients. Frank stayed down the rest of the day with a very painful foot. 

It probably sounds like I didn't have much to do this week, but I did. I got up really early a few mornings and I think doing my exercising in the morning is going to work out best. I'm going to try it that way, anyway, and see how it goes. All of the usual grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc. always seems to take up plenty of time. On Tuesday evening Frank and I made a trip to Costco and I did grocery shopping Wednesday evening (instead of Thursday morning) since I was planning to go to the temple on Thursday morning. Frank had some things to do at the church Wednesday evening before YM and Seth didn't want to go over that early so after I got ready to go to the store, I took Seth over to the church before going grocery shopping. We were still early so we took about 20 minutes for him to drive around in the church parking lot, to get in some more practice. He needs to learn to ease into braking a little better! We will keep trying to find opportunities to practice. He needs to get more comfortable before trying to drive out on the roads.

The rest of the week I dedicated to scripture reading and Seminary preparations. That took a lot of time. I had a long list of things to do for Seminary, and I worked through a lot of the list. At the training on Saturday I found out from the other Seminary teacher in my stake that there was a pacing guide and some training available from our coordinator on a platform called Canvas. I tried logging into Canvas but couldn't find anything for our area. After a few email exchanges with my Seminary teacher friend, I decided to contact our area coordinator's admin to get some help. She responded that she must have forgotten to invite me to our local group. She sent me the link, and then I was able to log in and get to the right information. I'm grateful for her help, but I also feel frustrated that I found out this information from another teacher. I wouldn't have even known it existed if this other teacher hadn't mentioned it to me. It seems to me that when a new teacher is called, the new teacher should get an email with information about training resources with links to all those resources. I've never gotten anything like that. So I admit...about the middle of the week I was feeling super overwhelmed and upset about Seminary because I was also struggling with lesson preparations. On Wednesday I was finally able to figure out the first lesson I need to teach next week and get it mostly prepared, and after that I began to feel a little better. This calling is going to keep me humble, though, that's for sure!! I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay if I'm not able to go through all the training and watch all of the S & I broadcasts before I teach my first lesson. There is just so much good information out there to help that it can get overwhelming. I have to remember that I will continue to get training and continue to learn and improve for the entire time that I have this calling.

We have had some really hot and humid weather since we got back from Utah, but on Thursday the humidity and temperatures dropped and it was so beautiful! Temperatures between the 70s and 80s with low humidity is definitely my happy place! One concern, though, is that it's been very dry. We've had hardly any rain and our lawn is looking brownish. Seth doesn't mind that since it means he doesn't have to mow the lawn very often, but I hope we aren't going into a drought. We usually get quite a bit of rain in the fall, so hopefully it will start raining soon. Meanwhile, the cicadas seem to be very happy with the dry weather, if the volume of their "songs" is any indication. They are really loud this year! It's supposed to get really hot again this weekend and stay hot all next week so I'm trying to enjoy these few really nice days that we have.

I was hoping to go to the temple this morning but I didn't sleep well last night so I knew I wouldn't be able to drive down to the temple and back. I also felt that I should be home to help Frank if he needs it. He is working from home today. He had a bit of a restless night also and his foot is still quite painful. Hopefully the antibiotic is doing its work, though, and if so he should start to see some improvement over the next few days. 

Now I still have plenty of Seminary preparations to do as well as updating the finances, so I should get going on those things. We had a beautiful sunset on Wednesday night, so I will finish up with a few photos of that.

Weekly Review August 25 '23

 I feel like I've been super busy this last week, but I'm not sure how much of it will be interesting to read about. When I wrote last week, Jared & Jessie were coming over for dinner that evening. We had a nice dinner with them and then played a game called Time Line. I felt like a champion because I won 2 of the 3 rounds we played. 😄Then we all went to Rita's to get a treat. We enjoyed hearing all about Jessie's family reunion...sounds like they had a good time. They haven't been able to come for dinner since Friday because our schedules didn't align, but we may see them on Sunday. Jessie's sister is getting married next Friday so we won't see them next week at all.

After we got back from Rita's, Seth and Frank played games online with Tanner (and maybe Scott? I can't remember now). They played until pretty late, so we were up late. On Saturday I did my usual chores and I also made a breakfast souffle so Frank would have something to eat (he had to start eating a low fiber diet on Sunday as part of his prep for his colonoscopy) and baked a batch of chocolate chip cookie bars for Sunday's Seminary meeting. I had a little free time that afternoon so I worked a bit on a sewing project...a doll dress that I started ages ago but hadn't finished because I had other projects that were more urgent. Frank and Seth got haircuts which they both desperately needed and they look great! That evening, Frank and I went to a Trek food committee "reunion"...the couple who were the committee heads had all of us over to their house for a BBQ. It was a lot of fun. The food was delicious and after dinner we played some hilarous rounds of charades. At the end, they gave us a thank you note and a cute dishtowel. 

On Sunday we had church as usual and that evening we had the Seminary information meeting. It went well...we had a lot of the students and their parents come. At the end we had refreshments and had time for the parents to work out carpools to school. The group carpooling to TJ (Seth's school) were able to work things out so that I don't have to drive at all--I'm just a back up. I will be there every day, of course, but since the other teacher and I need to stay at the building until all the kids have departed, it's better that I don't have to drive. Since some of the students and parents weren't able to come to the meeting and since we gave out a lot of information at the meeting, we sent out a follow up email with all the information that we shared at the meeting. That took quite a bit of time to put together so I was working on it off and on all week and finally got it sent out yesterday. Other than that, I haven't had a whole lot of time to focus on Seminary stuff this week but next week looks less chaotic so I should be able to start looking over and preparing some lessons next week. I'm feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing but I know I will feel better after we make it through the first couple of weeks. 

School started on Wednesday, so Monday and Tuesday were Seth's last two days of "summer". He went with me to the store on Monday to pick out a new backpack (he's been using the same one for 2 years and it's starting to get worn out). He had Driver's Ed for 3 hours every afternoon this week too. He actually just finished his last class a few minutes ago and he and I are both glad that he is done! He will still need to do 4 sessions of driving on the road with an instructor but that probably won't be happening for a while.

Between working on the Seminary email and the regular chores, I kept pretty busy on Monday and Tuesday. I also continued working on the doll dress and finished it on Tuesday evening. 

I think it turned out pretty cute, and it was mostly fun to make although the filmy fabric for the overskirt was kind of a pain to work with. I'm not sure what project I will work on next. I still have more doll clothes to make, but I also have fabric to make a skirt for me and fabric to make some pillow covers too. Oh, and then there's that quilt that Mom started that I'd like to finish someday. Not sure how much time I will have for sewing projects though, once I am in the thick of Seminary, but hopefully I will have time to do some things once in a while because creating things really does bring me joy.

On Monday evening we all went to a farewell party for two girls in our ward who are leaving for college at BYU this week. I worked with both girls in YW and their moms are good friends of mine. (One is my friend Rebekah's daughter and the other is my Seminary team teacher, plus her husband is our bishop so he and Frank have gotten close.) The party was at a park and a lot of people in the ward came to wish the girls well. It was a fun evening. We will miss those girls, though!

I've been trying to figure out how my schedule is going to work best once Seminary starts and this week I was planning to try getting onto a different schedule to see how that would work but nothing worked out the way I was hoping. I wanted to start getting up really early and experiment a bit with exercising at different times...really early or later in the morning or in the evening, to see what works the best for me. I didn't sleep well at all on Sunday night though, so I wasn't able to get up early on Monday. On Tuesday late afternoon Frank had to start his prep for his colonoscopy and even though that went pretty well and he mostly took care of things himself, I wanted to be available to help him if he needed it so I stayed up until about 11:00 which is when he had to drink the last part of his first dose of medication. Then he had to get up at 4:30 am to take his second dose. He did sleep a bit in between but had to get up a few times and I woke up a few times too and was awake from about 2:00 to 3:00 as well. Neither of us were able to go back to sleep after 4:30, so overall it wasn't a restful night for either of us. Maybe next week I will have more success at getting onto a schedule!

As I mentioned, Seth's first day of school was Wednesday so he had to be up at 6:00. I took him to school and even remembered to take some photographs!

Seth is doing his second year at the CTC (Career & Technology Center). This year he is taking a Cisco course. He goes to the CTC in the morning this year and has two classes in the afternoon (Chemistry and Algebra II). He will have Pre Calculus and English the 2nd half of the year.

After getting Seth to school, I took Frank to get his colonoscopy...he had to be there at 8:30, although his procedure wasn't scheduled until 9:30 and then of course they were running behind so he didn't get taken back for that until 10:00. Everything went smoothly though and he was done and awake about an hour later. We got home around lunch time and I made him something to eat and then we both took a nap! By the time we woke up it was nearly time for Seth to come home from school.

While I was still at the doctor's with Frank, I got an email from the school system saying there had been an "incident" at Seth's school involving a fight between two groups of students. Really? Only a couple of hours into the first day of school?? We received multiple emails from the school and the principal and the next day I read a newspaper article about it. Apparently there was a confrontation between two students and when the safety officers on duty intervened, one of the students cooperated but the other one resisted and got violent. After they convinced the student to go to the office with the officer and one of the school administrators, the student pulled out a knife and threatened the officer and also threatened to hurt other students at the school. Then he resisted arrest. They finally took him into custody and he is being charged with multiple charges, including 1st and 2nd degree assault, resisting arrest, affray, threats of mass violence, dangerous weapon on school property, etc. This student is the same age as Seth...16 years old. It's so sad. Not a great start for the school year. I'm just glad no one was hurt.

Frank wasn't really up for going to the YM activity Wednesday night and after a full day of school and Driver's Ed, Seth didn't really want to go either and since they were planning to do really messy activities (they were warned they would be "hosed down" at the end) and I know Seth doesn't like that kind of thing, I let him stay home. I was still tired and didn't really want to go anywhere either!

I was writing this post around 6:30 last night but at that point I got interrupted by a phone call from Tanner and then we had a place to go after that, so now it is Saturday afternoon. I'll try to finish this up. Thursday was a really busy day for me. I had an appointment in the morning to do initiatories at the temple. With all the traveling we did this summer, I wasn't able to attend the temple much so it was really great to be back in the temple again. I've missed it! 

After I got home, I went to the store to get groceries and then ate lunch before picking Seth up from school. (I picked him up every day this week so he would have some time in between getting home and starting Driver's Ed but next week he gets to start walking home most days.) The rest of my day I was busy making dinner and getting things like laundry and vacuuming done, as well as finishing up and sending the email for Seminary. I also went for a short walk because I hadn't had time to exercise that morning. I was really fortunate that it started raining exactly when I returned home from my walk, and not sooner! I managed to get through everything on my list just in time to go to bed.

Frank took Thursday off work because he wasn't feeling too great with the after effects of his colonoscopy but he was able to get a lot of rest and felt well enough on Friday to go back to work. He seems to be completely back to normal now. 

Friday was also busy for me because I had an appointment to get my hair cut in the morning. Then I did my usual update of finances before I had to pick Seth up from school. Scott called me and I talked to him while making dinner, then as I mentioned before Tanner called me shortly after dinner. I am glad that I got to talk to both of them because I hadn't talked to either of them for a couple of weeks. Last night Frank and I went to an openhouse for a couple who got married last spring...the husband is a boy who grew up in our ward. They got married out in Las Vegas but are here visiting now so they had an openhouse for them now. This boy was one of my Primary kids back when I was Primary president. I'm not sure how I got to be this old!! It was fun to visit with him and others and to meet his wife. 

Today I was up fairly early because I went to a symposium / training for Seminary teachers for all the stakes in this area. It was held at the Washington DC Stake Center, which is right next to the temple. There were 10 different classes to choose from but only four time slots so I had to choose carefully which classes to attend. All the classes I went to were excellent! I went to one for new teachers ("What You Need to Know"), One about helping students read scriptures every day, one about timesavers in lesson preparation, and one about keeping students engaged throughout the entire class. I saw one other person there I know (another newly called teacher from my stake that I met at Girls' Camp) and she gave me a handout from another class which is about using tech in class. My team teacher couldn't go because she left this morning for Utah so I felt like I needed to take really good notes to share with her. I took a lot of notes but also took photos of the power point slides the teachers used in most of the classes. A couple of the teachers mentioned that they would be sharing their slides later, so I'm hoping that I will receive slides later from a lot of the classes, including the ones I didn't get to attend. At the end of the symposium they had a nice lunch for us. 

I had a hard time staying awake when I was driving home so I took a nap after I got home and when I woke up it was time for Frank to leave. Our stake conference is this weekend so he had a leadership meeting that started at 4:00. I will be meeting him at 6:00, bringing some dinner with me, so that we can eat together before attending the 7:00 session for all the adults. 

I have a few things I need to get done before I leave, so I had better go do those things now. 

Weekly Review August 18 '23

 Finally, I only have one week's worth of events to report! Also, I have no pictures to add except these ones:

I took those photos last Friday morning (August 11th) but forgot to include them in my mammoth post last week. I've been waking up early (usually when Frank gets up) most mornings since we got home from Utah, but seeing awesome sunrises is one of the compensations. It's just as well that I'm waking up early since I'll be needing to do that every day when school starts.

Last Saturday (August 12th) was a pretty busy day. Seth and I went to help clean the church first thing that morning. Frank didn't go since his foot was still hurting but there were plenty of people there to help. After we finished cleaning, Seth drove around in the parking lot for a little while so he can start learning how my car works. That was the first time he's ever driven a car and he did okay but will need a lot more practice, of course, before he's ready to drive on the road. Frank finally heard back from the doctor about his x-rays while we were gone and everything on the x-rays looked normal so we have no idea why his foot has been hurting so much. It is still hurting, but it has improved some as the week has gone by so hopefully in time it will be completely better.

Seth mowed the lawn on Saturday and he and Frank spent quite a bit of time playing games together (I think they were playing online with the other boys at various times as well). Meanwhile, I practiced ukulele, cleaned the kitchen floor, ordered birthday presents for Scott and made a trip to JoAnn's to get some thread. One of the new blouses I got in Utah had a button fall off the first time I wore it so I needed to sew the button back on but I didn't have the right color of thread. I went ahead and added reinforcing stitches to all the other buttons as long as I was at it (a few of them looked pretty loose) so hopefully no more buttons will fall off that blouse anytime soon. While I was at JoAnn's, I also looked for some specific fabrics that I would need if I am going to finish the quilt blocks I got from Mom while I was in Utah. (She started making a quilt as a teenager but never finished it.) I did find some possibilities but didn't find everything I was looking for. I spent the rest of Saturday going through all my notes and emails about Seminary and made some lists of everything we still need to do to prepare for the beginning of the year and emailed those lists to my team teacher.

It was nice to attend church in our own ward on Sunday for the first time in a month. I went to RS and enjoyed it, but I also missed going to YW. I miss spending time with the girls and I miss talking with the other leaders that I've been working with. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment for me! After church it was nice to relax and have time for scripture reading and family night. I also watched a church movie called An Ensign to the Nations which I have seen several times in the past but not recently. It has been a favorite of mine since the first time I saw it. It tells the story of the growth of the church in several areas of the world. It was made in 1997 as part of the sesquicentennial celebration of the pioneers arriving in Utah so it's pretty old now and one thing that is interesting about watching it now is to realize how much more the church has grown since then. For example, when they talked about the growth of the church in South America, they talked about the church growing from only 1 member to over 2,000,000 in South America and then mentioned that there are 3 temples in South America with 3 more announced. Six temples in all of South and Central America?? Now there are hundreds! Anyway, I enjoyed watching it again and I even got Seth interested in watching some of it with me although he was too restless to watch the whole thing. 

The rest of the week has been pretty busy for me but it's been good to get back into a somewhat normal routine. I've been able to exercise every day and get all the regular chores done. Seth has been busy because he has Driver's Ed every day from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. It's an online class, so I don't have to take him anywhere but I've been keeping an eye on him and making sure he's staying focused. He has also been checking on the neighbors cats every evening after his class ends and I have gone with him to do that every day except Wednesday (on Wednesday Frank took him and then they went to the church right after for the YM / YW activity). 

Most of my spare time this week has been occupied with doing things to get ready for Seminary. On Monday morning my team teacher, Tammy, and I met together to go through the list of things we need to do and divided them up and also made plans to do a few things together. We have an informational meeting for the students and their parents on Sunday evening so we planned that too. There was a lot to discuss and decide so our Monday morning meeting lasted about 3 hours. On Tuesday morning we met together again...this time we had a brief meeting with the sister missionaries serving in our ward so they could show us what they do to mark their scriptures (so we can pass that on to the Seminary kids). We talked about marking both physical copies of the scriptures and digital copies of the scriptures and I learned a few things. After talking with them, Tammy and I went around to drop off flyers about the information meeting and welcome treats to all the incoming freshmen, as well as to a few of the older students who are a bit "on the fence" about whether or not they will come to Seminary this year. We didn't let anyone know we were coming, but miraculously we found everyone at home except for one freshman girl (and we did get to talk to her older brother and her mom...she was just babysitting somewhere so she wasn't home). We were well received and it was really great to meet all the new students and get to know them just a little bit. One set of twin brothers live on base at Ft. Detrick, so we had to get passes to go to their house which took a bit of time but we were able to meet them too so it was worth it. Meeting with the missionaries and all of those drop off visits took all morning on Tuesday as well. On Tuesday evening I attended an online Zoom meeting which was a training on how to use Wise 2, which is the program used to take Seminary attendance and record reading and so forth.

Since Tuesday, I haven't had any more meetings for Seminary but I have spent quite a bit of time creating some documents (like a birthday list of all the kids in Seminary) and preparing a power point presentation for our information meeting on Sunday. We also decided which student we wanted to ask to be the Seminary class president for the semester and I talked to her mom to get her approval and then talked to the student and she agreed to be the president so that was good too! So all in all, it was a busy week getting things ready for Seminary but we have mostly gotten through our "to do" list now, so I'm feeling a little less overwhelmed. Now I just need to start preparing lessons...! That's overwhelming in and of itself.

I mentioned earlier that Frank and Seth went to the YM / YW activity on Wednesday night. They had a Capture the Flag Nerf Gun War. I think Seth had a lot of fun but his legs have been sore since then because he spent the whole evening "tactical crouch running", as he calls it. While they were at the activity, I decided to go grocery shopping. I normally do that Thursday morning but I had a really big list this time and I just thought it would be better to get it done early. I'm glad I did...Thursday was a lot less hectic than it would have been. (My list was larger than usual because it was my turn to take treats for book chat so I needed to get stuff for that, I need to make treats for the Seminary information meeting on Sunday so I had to buy stuff for that, and Frank is getting a colonoscopy on Wednesday so I had to get a bunch of clear liquids and other things like that for him. The colonoscopy is just routine, since he's over 50 now, so need for concern.)

Thursday evening I had book chat. I barely managed to finish the book a few days before...thank goodness it was pretty short, because it was not an easy read. We read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and I had to read many parts of it 2 or 3 times before I felt like I was beginning to understand what he was saying! I still think I missed a lot and I didn't have much to say at book chat but thankfully other people in my group are more intelligent than me and so I understand it a lot better now after our discussion. (Although everyone admitted that it was hard to follow and many others had to read things through multiple times to understand it, just like I did.) I brought a variety of snacks including some "homemade vegan Snickers bars". Rachelle gave me that recipe while I was in Utah and I decided to try it. They were pretty easy to make and actually turned out to be pretty tasty. Everybody liked them. One of the members of our book club has celiac and some other food allergies and she appreciated that she could eat these. The next book we are going to read is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

Today I slept in until 7:00 so I feel like I haven't been able to get as much done. I updated the budget which thankfully took a lot less time than it did last week! Our kitchen water faucet quit working this morning (it has a motion sensor feature and requires batteries) but with a little bit of text instructions from Frank, Seth and I were able to figure out how to change the batteries so it's working again. Jared & Jessie will be coming over for dinner tonight so we are looking forward to seeing them again. We haven't seen them since we got home from Utah because they were gone to a family reunion all last week with Jessie's family.

I'm really grateful that Mom's surgery went so well this week (even though the delay to get it done was crazy!!) and that she's recovering so well with very little pain. 

That's all I have to report this week. School starts on Wednesday so I'm sure next week will be eventful.