We’ve been adjusting to the daylight savings time change this week. Everybody’s sleep schedule is a little off. I find that the time change in fall and spring both tend to make me tired. I even took a nap one day this week while Seth was napping! (He hasn’t been sleeping very well, either.) I like having it get light earlier in the morning, but I don’t enjoy how early it gets dark in the evening.
Last Saturday Frank took me out on a date. We went out to eat. I don’t think we’ve done that in months; it was nice! We even left Seth with the other boys, and all went well. We got home later than we had anticipated (long wait for a table) and discovered that Scott had changed Seth’s diaper, given him his bottle, put on his pajamas, and (after the bottle was gone) put him to bed! What a great babysitter!
Sunday was a little busier than normal—I had a presidency meeting in the afternoon and Scott had a fireside that evening. Then Frank got a phone call while Scott was at the fireside and had to run to the stake center to set up all the equipment for a CES fireside. For some reason, the guy who usually does it had not shown up. This was about 15 minutes before the fireside was supposed to start, but Frank still managed to get everything set up and running before the broadcast began. Pretty impressive, I think! Tanner wasn’t feeling very well that day, so Frank took him home after Sacrament Meeting; he took Seth with him, too. Fortunately, Tanner never really came down with anything. Maybe he was just hungry!
Friday was the last day of the school semester, so the boys had Monday off so the teachers could work on grades and they had Tuesday off for Election Day. So it was a short school week, and the boys really had fun, I think. They had chores to do each day, but the rest of the time they had a pretty full social schedule. All three of the older boys were invited to spend the afternoon and sleep over with some friends who used to be in our ward (the Schlenz family--they live in another ward now). Tanner and Scott went earlier in the day—around noon—but Jared had another invitation to go to another friend’s house—his friend Nicholas, from school. It was Nicholas’s birthday, and Jared’s friend Sage was invited also, so the three of them had a lot of fun, from what I hear. Sage’s mom took both of them out there and Nicholas’s mom brought them home, so I didn’t even have to transport him. The older boys went with the Schlenz family to a local attraction--a big wooden slide on the side of a mountain--that afternoon. On the way back from there, they picked up Jared so that he could sleep over also. I’m told they slept outside, on the Shlenz’s trampoline. It wasn’t very cold, so I guess they were pretty comfortable. They all got back home late Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, Frank and I were left at home with just Seth, which was nice for a change. On Monday evening we decided to take advantage of the older boys being gone and went out to do a little bit of Christmas shopping. We didn’t end up buying anything, though—just looking. We discovered that we couldn’t really do any of the things we were thinking about doing—too expensive! That was kind of a let down, but I’m sure we’ll come up with other ideas and the boys always end up being happy, no matter what we do. We got a treat at Dairy Queen when we were done. The trip wasn’t a total loss—we found some tapes for our video camera, which are very hard to find these days!
I took Seth with me Tuesday morning to go vote—I just put him in the stroller, and he was very well behaved. It helped that I was able to go during the “slow” hours, so I didn’t have to wait in line at all. Frank went to work very early that day, so he was off work around noon. He voted on the way home, and then went to the dentist for his 6 month check up that afternoon. His teeth are in great shape except for one filling that is getting old and the tooth needs to be crowned. Not good news, since our insurance covers only 50% of that—ouch! We still haven’t heard back about getting Scott’s wisdom teeth pulled, but both of these things are just going to have to wait until spring when we get our tax return. (I hope we get a tax return!)
The boys spent that afternoon playing with a friend down the street. Frank was really tired after getting up early, and he was asleep by 9:00, I think. I stayed up until about 10:00 to see what they were saying about election results, and by then they were already saying that Obama won Ohio and New Mexico and that it would take a miracle for a McCain win, so I wasn’t too surprised about the results in the morning. I hope the “change” so many people are wanting so much will turn out to be a change for the better, but I have my serious doubts. I found the whole election pretty frustrating. I really didn’t want to watch the news that day, but when I did see Obama speak I have to hand it to him—he didn’t look like he was feeling all that victorious; more like someone who was realizing he just got a really difficult job! Which is right, so hopefully that is a good thing. I also thought McCain was a very gracious loser, which is more than I can say for a few other people….
I admit to feeling some anxiety over the future these last few days! But when I went to Wal-Mart Wednesday morning, all the Christmas decorations were up and they were playing Christmas music. And you know, that really cheered me up! I thought about what Christmas is really all about, and I felt comforted knowing that no matter how crazy the world gets, there is always, always that wonderful source of peace!
Wednesday evening we all went to the church because there was a Court of Honor and Scott and Tanner were both getting Merit Badges. Scott was in charge of conducting the Court of Honor, and I thought he did a great job. It was just so fun to see him so cool and competent! Tanner helped with the flag ceremony. Tanner received his Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. Scott received that merit badge also, as well as his Citizenship in the Community and his Archery merit badges. Scott also got his Star rank. Only Life and Eagle to go! He is feeling more motivated to get them done, so hopefully we will start making more rapid progress.
Thursday after dinner I took Jared and Tanner shopping—Jared had birthday money to spend, and I wanted Tanner to get some ideas for his birthday (and Christmas). Jared got two Lego Bionicles, and they both got some ideas to put on their Christmas lists.
Scott and Tanner both had a camp out on Friday night. It seems like their troop takes a lot more camp outs during the winter months than any other time of year! But they lucked out on this one since the weather was so mild. In the morning, their leaders took them to pick up all the scouting for food donations and then over to the food bank to help sort all the donations. They didn’t get home until about 1:30 and they were very tired!
Meanwhile, Frank and I took Jared and Seth to dinner at Burger King Friday night and then we came home and watched a movie. Jared let Seth “pick” which movie he wanted, and Seth “picked” Princess Diaries 2, which I enjoyed since it’s a break from the action movies we usually watch.
In the morning, Frank and I went to the temple. We weren’t sure what time Scott and Tanner were supposed to get home, so we were feeling a little pressure to get back home as soon as possible. Because of that, we decided to do sealings instead of an endowment session. We really enjoyed that—ended up doing some family names for 3 different people who were there—but in the end it didn’t save us any time because part way through, they came in and said that the temple president needed to “borrow” all the sealers for about 15 minutes. It ended up being more like 30-40 minutes, though. While we were waiting, the temple worker told us that our new temple president—Elder Earl Tingey—was performing a wedding, and he wanted all the temple sealers to observe so they could see how the seventies have been trained to do it. We thought that was kind of interesting! It was nice to just sit and enjoy the quiet of the temple for a while, and we ended up getting home in plenty of time, so it didn’t matter that it took us longer than we’d planned.
This afternoon we did some leaf raking, much to the dismay of the boys, who were tired and just wanted to lie around. It rained a little bit this morning and it’s cooler than yesterday, but still fairly pleasant. We have the sister missionaries coming over for dinner tonight--we're looking forward to that. Frank did get a little bit of work done on the kitchen last week, but it looks like we aren't going to get anything done today; we're running out of time! I just invited two families to join us for Thanksgiving dinner this year, so I am hoping to get the kitchen done and a lot more cleaning / organizing completed by then. We are going to be very busy the next few weeks!
I'm also trying to get a lot of reading done right now. I am reading The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather for book club. It's really good--I'm enjoying it. We've also been wanting to read Three Cups of Tea, but there was quite a wait for copies to become available at the library, so we decided to all put a copy on hold and hope we could read it in the next couple of months. Well, my copy became available this week, so now I am feeling pressure to get that book read, too! I probably only have 3 weeks to read it because you can't renew a book if someone else has it on hold--and I'm pretty sure someone else does!
I feel like the last several months I’ve really been battling back and forth with my better self and my not-so-good self--mainly between the part of me that recognizes and is grateful for all the blessings I have, and the part of me that sees what I don’t have and feels resentful about it. This struggle became apparent to me again on Thursday, when I learned that the family in our stake who lost their son last week had decided to take their daughter (the one who was critically injured in the same accident) off life support because she has suffered a series of strokes and there isn’t any hope that she will ever come out of her coma. Here I had been worrying about dentist bills, and feeling kind of sorry for myself! Suddenly a very large dentist bill seemed like a very small thing! I just can’t imagine the pain this family is going through—they just had the funeral for their son last week, and now they have to go through the same thing all over again for their daughter! I can hardly stand to think about it! I found myself on my knees, feeling very humble and praying for this family, and also trying to repent for my own lack of gratitude. I find myself doing this a lot lately. I just hope the grateful, good part of me prevails permanently someday! I'm going to keep working on it, anyway.
I'll end with a few of my attempts to capture the beauty of fall (these are all views off our back deck):
1 comment:
Beautiful fall photos--I know what you mean that they aren't quite as spectacular as real life!! I hope Scott stays motivated with the scout stuff Taran and Timo are just short of the Eagle by the project, they go through moments of motivation! I can commiserate on your personal struggle with gratitude-- we can always find people better off or worse off. Don't be too hard on yourself, at least you notice!
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