During Sacrament Meeting, Tanner was given his certificate of advancement from the Primary and asked to recite an Article of Faith. He chose to do number four. At the end of the meeting, Frank found the bishop and asked if we could take care of Tanner’s ordination right away since he wanted to take Seth home (limit his exposure to other people). The bishop agreed to that, so we met in his office and Frank did the ordination. The bishop also did the setting apart for Scott—he’s 2nd counselor in the Teacher’s Quorum now. The YM president came also, but other than that, it was just our family. It was nice, though. Scott was joking that he had provided a “replacement” for himself in the Deacon’s Quorum. I told him no, actually Frank and I did that!
After that I took Frank and Seth home so that I would have a car at the end of church to bring the other boys home. (I had to find a substitute for some “no show” teachers first, though!) By that time, Seth’s rash looked a little more pronounced, so we thought it was a good idea to take him home. I arranged to meet Frank at the doctor’s office later, since he planned to go right at noon—it was a walk-in clinic.
I got back to church just in time for the second hour of Primary. Because it was a 5th Sunday, they had a special combined RS / Priesthood meeting that included all the youth; they learned all about the new Family Search program. We had a copy of the short video about that, and had arranged to show it to all the Primary teachers during singing times, so I got to see it also.
After church I took the boys home and then went to the doctor’s office. I met Frank there; they were already back in a room waiting to be seen by the doctor. The doctor did not think the rash looked like an allergic rash, but more like a viral rash. But just in case, he changed the antibiotic again. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of starting all over again on a 10 day antibiotic (Seth was on one for 7 days before we switched, and the second one only had to be taken for 5 days) but we do what we have to do to get them well! The new medicine smells terrible, and I’m sure it tastes terrible too since Seth spits half of it out every time we give it to him! We got home from the doctor and put Seth down for a nap; I got to take a nap too! Frank finished dinner—we tried a new crock pot recipe; turkey pot pie with a cornbread crust. It was really good except Frank got a little excited and added too much red pepper, so it had a little too much “kick” to it!
When Seth woke up from his nap, the rash had gotten much darker and more pronounced. Frank was worried, so we called the doctor on call who turned out to be our regular doctor, and the one who saw Seth on Saturday. He recommended that we give him Benadryl, just in case the rash was an allergic reaction to the medicine. Other than that, he said we shouldn’t worry. We didn’t have any Benadryl in the house, so Frank went out to get some. Seth slept better that night, and I had to wake him up when it was time to take the boys to school. But if anything, the rash was worse that day than the day before! It was darker and had progressed from little dots to being blotchy. He also had an incredibly runny nose and cried a little whenever he coughed. I felt so bad for him. Monday and Tuesday nights were both bad nights for Seth; I had to wake him up both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings as well. But the rash did start to fade on Tuesday and Seth’s other symptoms started to abate somewhat as well. By Wednesday he was well enough that I felt I could start taking him out in public again. The rash is still visible on his cheeks in the mornings, though. Here are some pictures of Seth's rash. I 'm not sure how well they will come out, but we tried! The first two were taken Sunday evening; the third one was taken Monday morning.:
So the beginning of the week, we were just in “survival mode”. I admit I was feeling pretty discouraged and exhausted, going into week #4 with a sick baby. But things got better by mid-week, and a few pleasant things happened. On Wednesday evening, for example, we had our Quarterly Enrichment Meeting for RS. They did a short program featuring Mary, the mother of Jesus. One sister portrayed Mary and shared her thoughts, interspersed with scripture readings from Matthew and Luke read by two narrators and lots of Christmas hymns, sung by the audience. I loved it! It was the perfect way to start out the Christmas season, I thought. Afterwards we had lots of yummy appetizers and desserts.
I was also able to get quite a bit of Christmas shopping done, and feel like I have a pretty good handle on Christmas preparations in general. On Wednesday while Seth was napping, I managed to cut out a skirt that I’ve been wanting to make for a long time—I’ve had the fabric for years! It’s a winter / holiday outfit, so I’m hoping to get it finished to wear for Christmas. We’ll see! It’s a simple skirt, and the blouse that goes with it is done except for buttons and buttonholes (also been done for years), so I may be able to pull it off. I also worked on Sharing Time and some other things for Primary that I have been meaning to get to for over a month. So overall, I feel like I checked a lot of things off my “to do” list (or at least made progress in the right direction) and I am always happier when I’m able to do that!
Frank has been busy, too. He is exercising most days. He has also been working on getting all the computers set up for the wards in our stake. He has run into a lot more problems than he anticipated, so it is taking longer than he’d hoped. Tuesday was his really early day at FSA, and that was one of the nights Seth didn’t sleep well, so he was very tired that day and then got home much later than he should have because of an accident on the freeway, but still managed to get some stuff done on the computers.
Frank had to stay late at FSA on Thursday, so he went in a little later than usual. I took Jared to Border’s after school so he could spend a gift card he received for his birthday. He was able to get two books that he really wanted, and actually could have got three, but we didn’t realize how much was on the card. His friend had written $20 on it, but when he checked out we discovered it was actually $25. Pretty generous, I thought! We also stopped at the post office to pick up the package from Tim & Rachelle, which for some reason I didn’t hear the mailman knock when he tried to deliver it. (I know I was home.) Thanks, Tim & Rachelle! I got home and got dinner made and we all ate before Frank got home. Thankfully, Seth entertained himself while I cooked—doesn’t happen very often! I was experimenting with Mom’s potato soup recipe, and I think it turned out pretty good. Frank likes soup kind of thick, so I made a white sauce with the milk instead of just adding the milk by itself, and I also cooked some onions and mushrooms in the bacon grease and added those. Scott and Tanner loved it. Jared didn’t like it, but Jared doesn’t like anything, so that was no surprise. Frank and I enjoyed it, too.
Friday was Tanner’s birthday party. All of the schools in the county had a 2 hour early release, and since Tanner & Jared’s school always get out one hour earlier on Fridays, they were out by 12:45. Frank was able to do work from home which was helpful—I was able to put Seth down for a nap before I had to go pick up the boys.
I’ve decided that I really like the parties for the older kids, because they require so little work on my part! I actually kept forgetting that we were having the party this week! All I had to do was make a cake, buy some paper products and a few snack items. The kids are happier entertaining themselves so I don’t have to plan any activities or anything. I didn’t have to get favors, either—the Primary president mentioned to us about a month ago that we were going to have about 16 extra birthday favors (the ones we give to the Primary kids for their birthdays) and wanted to know if any of us could use some of them. They are little cardboard boxes that look like a piece of cake, and they are full of little toys like bouncy balls and also a few pieces of candy. So I snagged some of those.
Tanner only invited 4 kids (I was surprised he didn’t want more) so it was a smaller group, which was also nice. He invited one friend from church and 3 friends from school, but 2 of the school friends are from previous years and they no longer go to his school. That meant that most of the kids didn’t really know each other, and I was concerned about that, but it turned out that everyone got along great. I brought one school friend home with us when I picked the boys up, and the other 3 boys all arrived by 4:00. It was just a really good group of kids—well behaved and pleasant. They all spent the afternoon and evening mostly playing various video and computer games, and they were all good about taking turns so I think everybody got a turn to do everything they wanted to do. They surprised me and actually chose to go outside to play for a while. That didn’t last long because it was so cold, but I was glad they chose to do that at all!
We ordered pizza for dinner; we also had cake and ice cream sundaes. One boy couldn’t spend the night; his mom came to get him around 10:30. We had the rest of the boys lie down at midnight and told them they could talk until 1:00, but they needed to keep it down since we didn’t want Seth to wake up. Frank and I were both asleep by 12:30, and although I woke up for a while around 1:30, it was quiet and neither of us heard a peep out of any of the boys until about 6:40. We were surprised when they said that they had awakened several times and played some more during the night—they must have done a great job of being quiet! We fed them pancakes and sausages for breakfast, and then they all played some more until their parents came to get them around 10:00. Overall, I was very pleased with how the party turned out. It was a lot less wild than I remember Scott’s party being! (Not that his was bad, just louder.) I told the parents I would have that group of kids back over anytime, because they were so well behaved and seemed to have a lot of fun together. Tanner is good at picking out friends, I guess! Here's a few pictures of the party:
The cake
Matt & Will
Jared & Ryan
Tanner, ready to blow out the candles.
Opening gifts
Brenndon & Scott
Frank is at the church today trying to get more computers set up. The boys are currently playing with a new video game that Tanner got from one of his friends, but I am going to make them stop soon and do some scouts and get a few chores done. I purposely didn’t plan to get a lot done today since I knew we’d all be tired, but I do still need to finish up sharing time and get all the floors cleaned—including vacuuming, since a lot of mulch and dried leaves got dragged in the house on boys’ shoes yesterday.
I guess I will be taking Tanner out shopping some day soon because he got a gift card from one friend for Game Stop (a local store that sells new & used games and gaming systems) and money from another friend. Both were pretty generous amounts, so he has a pretty tidy sum to spend when he puts them together.
I think I mentioned that last week I put up some of the Christmas decorations. We have a long shelf on the upstairs stairwell and I put lots of Christmas trinkets all along the shelf. Seth is very fascinated by them, so now several times a day we go along the shelf and I pick up each object, one by one, so he can see them, and I tell him the name of each one. He tries to say the names, but he gets mixed up and usually calls Santa Claus “Jesus”. He calls baby Jesus “Jesus”, too, though! He likes to sniff the candles, also! It’s very cute.
Seth is getting better at communicating all the time, both verbally and otherwise. His non verbal communication is so cute. If he wants me to sit down beside him, he will look at me and then pat the seat next to him. On Thursday Jared bought some chocolate truffles at Borders. He was sharing them with us in the car on the way home. He gave one to Tanner and one to me (for me to share with Seth) and then started eating his own. I heard Seth making those noises he makes when he wants something. I turned to look at him, and he had his mouth wide open and was vigorously pointing into his mouth with his finger. That really made us all laugh! He is getting to be a handful in some ways, especially at stores (wiggles out of the seatbelt and wants to wander the aisles), but he is also at such a cute age where he is doing so many new things. We are really enjoying him! We are glad he finally seems to be on the road to recovery. We hope all of you are well, too. Let us know how you are doing, please!
1 comment:
Sounds like a busy week--normal right? But good that Seth is doing so much better now! Our kids get those viral rashes too. Enjoy your holiday activities now that the birthday party is over!
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