Weekly Review February 14 '09

We had really nice, warm weather on Sunday. Of course, my new blouse that I FINALLY finished has snowflakes on it! But it also has short sleeves, so it worked. (And lots of people said it looked nice.) Jana, the Primary president, couldn’t be at church that day, so the two “newbies” and I got to handle everything. (We just got a new counselor and a new secretary last week.) It went fine, thankfully. All the teachers showed up, which was very helpful! The new counselor did sharing time and she did a great job!

Here's the picture I promised to post of my blouse:

Can you tell I was feeling self conscious? I don't like getting my picture taken!

After church (and a nap) we all went for a walk, Snickers included. We went quite a ways, and Snickers got tired so he got to ride in the stroller for a while (Seth enjoyed walking)! When we got home we discovered that not only were his feet muddy, he also had two burrs caught in his fur by two of his feet, so he got a bath and Frank held him while I snipped the burrs out.

The wedding reception on Saturday was nice, by the way. They had soup in bread bowls. The bride was very grateful to Frank for helping with the food because her dad got to enjoy the reception. We had a chance to talk to the groom’s mother about their ancestry—we were interested because the groom’s last name is Bracken and Frank’s mom’s maiden name is Bracken. She said they are from Pennsylvania and Delaware, so we’re pretty sure they’re related since we know some of Mom’s family came from Delaware. Small world!

Tanner had a fun field trip on Monday—his class went to the Baltimore Aquarium. They were actually supposed to go a few weeks ago, but that turned out to be a snow day. Tanner was disappointed (one time he actually didn’t want to have a snow day!) but they got lucky because the weather was so much nicer the day that they ended up going.

We took dinner over to a new family in our ward on Tuesday. They just got here about 2-3 weeks ago and they are only going to be here for about 2 months. Their youngest daughter (18 months old) is in John Hopkins Hospital—she’s having liver problems, among other things. They are still trying to figure out exactly what’s wrong. I talked to the mom on Tuesday morning and I could tell she was pretty stressed about having all this happen when they are so far away from all their family. (They are from Idaho.) I really felt for her—I’ve been there! She did say, though, that she was amazed at how much the ward was doing to help them. This family has a 13 year old son, so we gave him a ride to YM on Wednesday evening. I had a cub committee meeting that night, so we got home late.

On Wednesday afternoon when I went out to pick up Jared & Tanner from school, the car wouldn’t start. I quickly figured out what was wrong—I had let Seth play in the car earlier that day while I carried in groceries, and he must have turned on the headlights—the battery was completely dead. Luckily, just then one of my neighbors came home and asked if I needed help. She let me use her van to go pick up the boys, and Frank was able to jump the Expedition after he got home from work.

Scott was tired this week. On Tuesday Frank woke him up right before he left for work, but Scott fell back asleep. I didn’t wake up until nearly 6:00, so I got him up then and took him to seminary a little late. Then on Thursday he said he was too tired to get up, but about 10 minutes later he did get up and was able to get ready in time for his ride. It’s been an “exciting” couple of weeks at his high school. Last week a kid from his high school was shot (not killed, but injured) a few blocks from the school—apparently gang-related. Then this week there were a couple of guys who got in three fights. Scott saw the last one—on Thursday morning before school started. That one involved a metal chair, two vice principals getting injured, and the police getting called. Scott said he saw one of the vice principals trying to intervene, but then he (the vice principal, not Scott) got hit in the face, so he “did this cool wrestling move” and that ended the fight. I hope those two kids are suspended now! What a world we live in….

My friend Starr invited Seth and I to come over on Friday. Seth and her daughter Kate played, Starr and I visited, and we had lunch. It’s been a long time since I’ve had the chance to talk with Starr, so I enjoyed that. She is such a good person; it is always uplifting to talk to her! We are going to try to get together more often than we have been doing. Friday night we had our friends the Becks over for dinner. We made omelettes, hash browns, and OJ. They brought bacon, pancakes, and bagels. It was yummy! We stayed up too late, though.

Here’s what our table looked like this morning:

Lots of Valentine’s cards and treats!

(Earlier this week, Frank got me an early Valentine’s gift—a mouse. The kind for the computer, that is. Not very romantic, I guess, but it’s what I wanted!) Seth woke up early, but I got him to go back to sleep. Frank and I went to the Cracker Barrel for breakfast, which was fun (and yummy!)—we were trying to remember the last time we went on a date together without Seth! (It’s been a long time.) Frank got me another Valentine’s gift, too—some cute salt & pepper shakers that I liked at the Cracker Barrel gift shop. These ones are for Valentine’s Day:

He also got me some for Easter, but I will post a picture of them later.

After breakfast we went to a furniture store to look at couches, just to see what they had. We’re hoping to replace our beat up couches soon. The salesperson that was trying to help us (we didn’t really need any help!) probably thought we were crazy because we have so many stipulations—has to be a dark color that won’t show dirt easily, has to be sturdy so it won’t have holes worn through it in a couple of months, can’t have “flaps” at the bottom or piping around the cushions because the puppy will chew on them, can’t have the back cushions attached because they rip and shed stuffing after kids have climbed over them a few times…. Basically, they have to be kid- and puppy- proof! I don’t know if such a thing exists, but we did see a few things we thought might work. (Our current couches don’t meet any of those stipulations, by the way, which is why we know what we don’t want.) We didn’t buy anything, in spite of the fact that we could have got a free picture of President Obama if we had made a purchase of $50 or more—so tempting! (Can you hear my voice dripping with sarcasm?) Knowing how things go, we will probably end up spending all our tax return on things like dental bills anyway, so the couches will have to wait.

When we got home, we were surprised to find out that Seth hadn’t been awake very long—he slept until about 10:00! This afternoon Scott has a basketball game and this evening we are having the missionaries over for dinner. We hadn’t planned that, but we got a call last night asking if we could feed them because they didn’t have an appointment. We are always happy to do that—both Frank and I remember how much we appreciated dinner appointments when we were missionaries! (A very rare occurrence—for me, anyway. I think Frank fared better than I did.)

Scott had to get his registration for next year in this week. I took him over to the high school on Tuesday evening for a while so that he could ask some questions about some of the classes he was thinking about taking…they had the department heads available that night to answer questions. He has to take English, Science, Math, and History, but he gets to pick 4 other classes. He is looking into taking a Criminal Justice class at the local community college, which would count for 2 classes, but there’s a lot of demand for that, so it’s hard to get in. In the meantime, he has signed up for German, Tech Ed (a required course he has to take sometime in high school), Intro to Business, and Microsoft Certification. If he gets into the other class, he will drop the business classes.

Snickers is doing well with the house training thing—hardly any accidents anymore. (Although he did have one this week. He and Seth “ganged up” on me. First Seth dumped out Snickers’ food bowl on the living room floor. While I was cleaning that up, he dumped Snickers’ water bowl. I ran upstairs to get a towel and Seth dumped out the food bowl again. While I was still coping with the food and the water, Snickers chose that moment to pee on the carpet! Lots of fun!) Now I am working on “watch me” with him. After he learns to do that, we will move on to things like “sit” and “come”. I have a book I’m reading about training small dogs, and that helps. It’s too bad Seth is not old enough to be potty trained yet, because he’s learning a lot about that process right now. We are teaching Snickers to go when we ask him to (so we can have him go before we leave the house, or before bedtime) so we sometimes put him on the puppy pad and say “potty”. Whenever he goes, we say “good potty” and give him lots of praise and attention. Sometimes we give him a treat, also. One time this week, Frank saw Seth tell Snickers to “potty”, and Snickers did. Another time I saw Seth observe Snickers going, then Seth said “good potty!” It’s just really funny to see such a little guy do that, especially one who isn’t potty trained himself!

Seth had some stomach troubles this week, and so did Tanner. I let Tanner stay home from school on Thursday because he was in the bathroom so much that morning. (Tanner’s word for the problem is “sloppy”—I kind of like that better than the medical term!) He still didn’t feel very well on Friday, either, so he stayed home from school that day also.

Frank was really busy this week. He got home really late on Monday because he had to go to a client all the way down in La Plata (about 3 hours from Frederick). He did some work on the computers at the stake center on Tuesday and for some ward members on Thursday. He always has so many projects going on.

I did a lot of reading this week. I finished the book for book chat, which is called The Miracles of Santo Fico by D. L. Smith. It’s a really good book; I enjoyed it a lot! I would recommend it if you want a fairly quick, entertaining, sometimes humorous, and very heart warming read! Once I finished that, I went back to Breaking Dawn. It’s getting pretty interesting; I’ll probably finish it in the next day or two.

The weather was nice for most of the week (it was in the 60’s on Wednesday—loved that!), although it’s back to being colder again now. When the cold front came in on Wednesday evening / Thursday morning, it got extremely windy, and a lot of places lost power, but we didn’t. It kept Frank busy, though, helping clients who did lose power get things running again.

Frank was supposed to have Monday off, but their client down in La Plata needs a new server set up while their office is closed, so Monday is the ideal time to do that. I’m bummed about it because I wanted to do something together as a family, but I can’t really complain since he does have a job! He is going to get a day off another day instead. Maybe in a month or two when it’s warmer!

Everybody have a nice President’s Day week-end and a Happy Valentine's Day! We love you!