Weekly Review May 2 '09

Let’s see, Sunday Frank stayed home with Seth while I took the older 3 boys to church. (I was sitting in Sacrament Meeting being completely amused by the fact that I had Scott on one side of me and Jared on the other, and they were both sitting as close to me as they possibly could—almost on top of me! They never completely outgrow their mom, do they?) Seth woke up early but went back to sleep and then didn’t wake up until after we left for church, so it’s a good thing we had decided to keep him home. He was starting to feel better that day and thankfully started sleeping better again also but he still has a runny nose. After church I had choir, then our home teachers came to see us, then Frank & Scott went to home teach two families, then Frank had to go set up some computer stuff for a meeting at the stake center, then we had family night. Scott & Tanner had a fireside that evening also but we just ran out of time (I wonder why?!) so they didn’t make it to that.

Meanwhile, Frank started getting a sore throat and head ache on Sunday and by Monday morning he felt terrible. He had a sore throat (he nearly lost his voice), chills, head ache, aches all over, and lots of congestion /sinus pain. He is still getting better. He stayed home from work Monday and Tuesday although he still got some work done both of those days from here. He went to work for about 4 hours on Wednesday (and did more work from here) and put in a full day on Thursday. He didn’t have to go anywhere on Friday but he had plenty of work to do remotely.

I had a slight sore throat and head ache off and on all week, but thankfully never got really sick. Tanner and Jared have both had some congestion also, but didn’t miss any school. Scott seems to be healthy as a horse!

I also had some trouble with my right eye—the eyelid was red, swollen and tender for a few days. I have no idea why! I didn’t wear my contacts for a few days and that seemed to help clear it up.

On Tuesday we got our other new chair. Everybody likes it; it is very comfortable!

Here is Scott & Seth enjoying the rocking chair, too.

I am still fussing around trying to figure out the best way to arrange the new furniture. The walls were still bare until today because Frank wasn’t well enough to hang all the pictures back up, and I am too inept to do it myself! I did move the book case back into the living room all by myself, though, and I put a shoe rack back together also (we had to take it down to paint the door—it hangs behind the door of the coat closet.) The room looks a lot more “home like” now with the new curtains hung and some pictures on the walls.

What do you think?

The beginning of the week was very warm (hot, even) but then a cold front came through and it rained. It was nice to wear shorts for a few days! We’ve had a lot of rain the last few days, though. We haven’t been able to mow the lawn (the boys who are responsible for doing that are not heartbroken!) but Jared still had soccer practice on Thursday and a game today. It rained pretty hard for a while this morning, but there was a break in the rain in time for his game, which was at 11:00. The game didn’t go so well—his team lost 4-1. They just didn’t look like the same team this week—not really working together like they usually do. Oh, well. I guess they have to lose sometimes. Jared still played well. He was goalie for the second half and only let one goal through. He blocked several other goal attempts.

Seth has been acting like a two year old this week even though he has a month to go before he is officially two. For example, he is getting very independent. He wanted to pour his cereal into his bowl all by himself (a huge bag—I don’t think so!). I got around that one by pouring some cereal into a cup and then letting him pour the cup into his bowl. It worked the first time, but I’m sure he’ll wise up soon. He is also starting to protest more when he doesn’t get his way. He was being so difficult at the store Thursday morning that I just gave up and came home. (He wanted a different cart, but I knew there wasn’t enough space in the cart he wanted for all the groceries I needed to buy. He refused to sit down in the cart I got instead. He wanted me to carry him and / or let him push the cart all by himself.) I decided to give him a bath when we got home and he liked that, but then he came unglued after I got him out and wouldn’t let me put clothes on him. I had to wrestle him into a diaper (after he’d already wet on the floor). It was at this point that I decided it was nap time. (It was only 10:00, but he woke up before 6:00 that morning.) He took a long nap, so he must have been tired. There is a part of me that wonders if I have the stamina to handle a two year old again!

Then again, Seth does so many sweet and cute things. He has started to repeat the words of prayers when we say them. One day this week when I was watching a conference talk online he sat beside me and listened to about half of it. Then he looked at me and said “Jesus Christ, Amen.” I think he was letting me know he thought it was time for the talk to end! He is still fascinated by trucks so I have started teaching him the names of different kinds of trucks. He picks up on that very quickly and now as I am driving around town I hear “dump truck”, “cement truck”, “mail truck” in addition to “big truck” (what he used to call all trucks) coming from the back seat. Seth is also learning all about possession. At the dinner table he will point and say “Daddy’s plate.” “Scott’s plate.” And so on—then last of all he will smile big, pat his chest and say “Seth’s plate!” He has also learned to say “Seth’s turn” when he wants to do something someone else is doing. I’m not sure how he figured that out! One day this week when we were eating breakfast he looked at me and said “Hear bird, Mommy?” There was a bird singing outside—I hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out.

Yesterday evening was the Blue & Gold Banquet (finally—we’ve had to reschedule 2 or 3 times). I think everyone who attended had a good time. The theme this year was dinosaurs. We have a father / son cake bake every year and tell the boys they can decorate a cake to fit the theme, or they can decorate it any way they want. Well, dinosaurs must be very popular with all the boys because almost all the cakes were dinosaurs. That made it very difficult to come up with a unique award for each cake, but I had to do it because I was one of the people who ended up doing the awards.

Jared’s cake was one of the more unique ones—he made a cave. I have photographs, but unfortunately I can’t share them because I took out the memory card and forgot to put it back in, so they are on the camera’s internal memory. Frank can’t find the right cable to get the photos off the camera. Hopefully we will find the cable or get a new one soon, so I can post the pictures. In the meantime, you will just have to make do with a few descriptions. One of my favorites was one that had several plastic dinosaurs on one side of the cake, several Book of Mormon figures on the other side, and a frosting “river” flowing in between. I came up with “Best Alternate Ending to the Book of Mormon” for this one, but that was kind of long, so we decided to simplify and gave it the Man vs. Wild Award. We were all laughing over the other idea, though! Another one, which had plastic dinosaurs of various sizes covering every square inch of the cake, got the “Most Populated Dinosaur Island” award. Jared received three more activity badges--Scholar, Fitness, and Geologist--and 4 beltloops (citizen, chess, basketball, and soccer.)

After the banquet was over, Tanner went to a Deacon’s activity—a sleep over at the YM president’s house. It was a farewell party for one of the deacons who is moving this week. Jared also went to a sleep over with his friend Bryson, so we were down to two boys for the evening. We let Scott stay up to watch a movie, but I went to bed before he was done!

I’ve been doing more reading this week—I got the book for book chat on Thursday and read it in two days (it was pretty short). It’s called A Separate Peace by John Knowles. It was a good book; I enjoyed it. The author writes beautifully and he has a way of putting feelings into words. Now I am reading a book called London Refrain, which is a book in a series. I read the rest of the series years ago and I thought the series had ended, but I stumbled across three additional books in the series recently, so I’m reading them. (This is the first of the 3 books that I haven’t read yet.) I’m enjoying it so far; it’s nice to learn even more details about what happens to the main characters.

I'll end with a few more photos of our tulips out front. They are blooming in shifts this year!

Here is another photo of the apple trees right outside our front windows.

Remember the photo of the apple blossoms a few weeks ago? There weren't any leaves on the trees then, but now they are covered with a ton of green leaves! All the trees around here have sprouted leaves in the last week; now we can't see the river anymore. That's the result of all this rain we've been getting.

I hope the rest of you are getting some nice spring weather!