We watched the movie “Finding Faith in Christ” for family night lesson Sunday evening; Scott picked it out. After the movie was over, Scott told us that the thing he liked the most about the movie was how everywhere he went, Jesus was stopping to help people. Other people would walk right by, but Jesus would always notice, stop, and help. Scott got pretty emotional—I can tell it really touched him. I’ve always liked that about that movie also; I’m glad Scott is noticing things like that! We talked a little bit about how we can try to be more that way ourselves, and help other people more.
It seems that spring has finally got a foothold around here the last couple of days, after it was cold and rainy for most of Monday and all of Tuesday and Wednesday. As I mentioned in a previous post, we put our couches out on the curb Monday evening to be collected in the bulk trash pick up—they sat out there getting soaking wet until the city finally picked them up Thursday morning. I notice no one came along and picked them up before then, so in this case, our trash was no one’s treasure. No surprise to me. Jared said it was kind of sad to see them go, but I disagreed. I was very HAPPY to see them go!
On the painting front, Frank did a lot of painting on Monday. He finished the primer on the downstairs stairwell and did the first coat on most of the trim. Our neighbor came to help him again for a while that evening. He mentioned that he did not have work to do on Thursday of this week, and so Frank talked him into letting us pay him to come paint for us that day. He charges a daily rate which is fairly reasonable, and since he has already helped us so much we feel like we should pay him for at least some of the time he has put in (he insists that he should do it for free because Frank has helped him with his computer over the years). So on Thursday he was here all day painting, and he made a lot of progress. He finished the second coat of paint (primer was the first coat) on the upstairs stairwell and in the living room (except for one small spot) and finished the trim. He painted four doors, also, and he even painted the baseboards in our little powder room. All he left for Frank to finish is a couple of doors, a second coat on some of the trim, and the downstairs stairwell. I admit I miss my “sunny yellow”, but the new paint is looking very nice and I’m excited to see how everything looks after we get the painting done, the pictures back on the walls, the new furniture in, and the rest of the furniture moved back where it goes. The stairwells have not been painted since we moved in (9 years) so you can imagine how grimy they were looking, with all the little hands going up and down those walls! (I did attempt to clean them occasionally, but the original paint was that cheap flat paint that doesn’t really clean.)
Friday evening and this morning Frank shampooed the living room carpet. I am pleased with how much better it looks! I can still see some places where stains didn’t come all the way out, but they are much lighter than before. We’ll have to do the rest of the house soon! (One project at a time, though!)
Seth, Snickers and I took walks on Thursday and Friday mornings. It was nice to get out in the sunshine and warmth! On our Thursday walk, we stopped at the little tot lot in our neighborhood—Seth enjoyed that a lot. Friday after school, Tanner mowed the lawn and I did some weeding, so our lawn doesn’t look like an overgrown jungle anymore. There is some kind of weed with purple flowers that has taken over our lawn this spring. I’ve never seen it before, so I’m wondering where it came from. It seems like we get more weeds and less grass every year!
That brown you can see just above the grass is the river.
Jared had soccer practice Thursday evening. Frank was late getting home that day because of a computer virus that hit right before he was planning to come home. For some reason, I had in my mind that Jared’s practice was at 7:00. At about 10 minutes to 6:00, Frank called and told me that his practice was at 6:00, not 7:00! I had to drop everything (dinner preparations) and get him over there—we were late, but only a little. Frank got stuck making dinner when he got home. If I had been thinking about it, I would have realized that 7:00-8:00 is too late for a practice because it gets dark before 8:00, but I wasn’t really thinking, obviously! The practice went well. They did a scrimmage with another team and Jared’s team won. Jared kicked one goal and assisted with another.
Scott and Tanner had a camp out Friday evening. It was a district “Camporee” and they were gone all day today as well. They came home dirty and tired, but they seemed to have a good time. They did a bunch of orienteering activities, and, according to Scott, have now completed almost all of the requirements for the Orienteering Merit Badge.
Tanner’s class did their science fair this week. He got 100 out of 100 on his project; hooray! Over the break I checked his grade and it said he got 75 out of 100. I was disappointed, because I thought he had done better than that. Well, he did—he just forgot to turn in the journal part of his project! After he turned that in he got 100%. That’s the kind of thing he does that makes me want to get him tested. How could he remember to turn in his display board, but forget the journal? Meanwhile, Jared has started his project. He is going to do a plant related project. (Last year Jared did a chocolate related project and Tanner did a plant related project. This year they have switched!) He is going to have 3 groups of plants and expose two of the groups to two different kinds of music and the third group won’t get any music. He’s going to see which group grows the best.
Seth has asked to “go potty” a few times, so we’ve tried it and been successful once or twice. When he does that, I give him a treat. He knows that Snickers gets a puppy treat when he uses the puppy pad, so when Seth uses the potty he gets a “Seth treat”. I usually give him a few jelly beans or a few M&Ms—there have been a lot of those in the house this week! Seth saw me take them out of the big bowl of Easter candy. The next morning he pointed up at the big bowl and said “Seth treat?” to let me know he wanted some candy. He is repeating practically everything I say. I sing Primary songs to him at night before bed; one night when I finished a song, he said “the scriptures are true.”
This is one of those pictures that he is going to hate when he grows up--definite blackmail material, hee hee!
Snickers has been healing well from his surgery last week. He is back to being his usual spunky self. The incision is barely visible now. He is still supposed to avoid running or jumping for another week, but that has been hard to do. When I take him on walks, he wants to run! I have to keep a firm hold on the leash, and we’ve managed to keep it down to a fast walk.
This morning Jared had his first soccer game of the season. His team won, 5-1. It was a good game—his team is working together a lot better already than I ever saw them do last season. It really makes a difference! There are about 6 kids (half the team) who are the same as last season, but the rest are different. There are a lot of good players on the team. They would have scored about 4 more times except the goalie on the other team was really good and made a number of amazing saves. Jared played offense the first half of the game and defense the second half. He prefers defense, but he did well on both. He is the oldest kid on the team now (because of his late in the year birthday) and he really towers over some of the other kids; it is funny! I took Seth with me to the game so that Frank could finish shampooing the carpet. Seth did really well—I just left him buckled in his stroller, so I didn’t have to chase after him, and he seemed to enjoy watching the game. I brought a couple of snacks with me, and when he got restless a few times I offered him a snack. That helped a lot!
The weather was absolutely perfect today, by the way. Warm, sunny…beautiful!! After I got back from the game I went over to the church to help with an open house we were having at our building today. I was only there for about an hour. Frank got Seth down for a nap while I was gone. While he was sleeping, we went to a couple of furniture stores to do more looking for a love seat / large chair. We found a couple of possibilities, but nothing we got really excited about, and certainly nothing at a price that we thought was really great, so we are keeping the things we saw in mind, but we are going to keep looking.
We did, however, go pick up our couch this evening so we have something to sit on again—nice! The couch is dark brown leather and the two end seats recline. It is certainly very comfortable, and even though I am not wild about the way it looks, I think I am going to like it better than I thought I would. It is definitely a huge improvement over what we had before, and I am thankful for that!
I think we are in for more rain this week, but at least we didn’t get 3 feet of snow like they did in Denver! I am glad I am here and not there. Here are some of the tulips that bloomed in my yard this week.:
I'll end with a couple of cute photos of Seth. Here he is in Scott's shoes (he put them on himself):
And here he is in one of Scott's hats:
Isn't he cute?
1 comment:
I'm going to have to show Ammon the photo of Seth on the toilet. See if I can get him interested--since he is 2 1/2 years older than Seth!!
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