Weekly Review May 23 '09

We are all getting a little anxious for school to end. Too bad the boys still have 3 weeks and a couple of days! It will be over soon enough, I guess. We are still having really cool mornings, but the weather warms up nicely during the day. Very beautiful!

This week was not so eventful. Maybe this review will be short, for once! Sunday was busy with my presidency meeting, choir practice, and family night. We had barbecue ribs that we made in the crock pot for dinner—they were yummy! I’ve been going over budget on food so much lately that I decided a few weeks ago to try to use things I already had on hand as much as possible. So I cleaned out both my freezers, and I found all kinds of things in there that I’d forgotten I had—the pork ribs were one of them! My grocery lists have definitely been shorter and it feels good to be resourceful, but I can’t say that I’ve seen a dramatic decrease in the amount I’ve been spending—sigh. I don’t know why that is.

For family night activity on Monday, Frank had us play a game called “add on” where one person does a gesture (say, touches his nose.) Then the next person has to repeat that gesture and add on a new one, and so on…. It was hilarious, because the boys all started making really crazy faces when it was their turn to add on. They were remarkably good at duplicating each other’s faces, too. I stunk at it, mostly because I was laughing so hard that I would forget half the gestures. I wish we had a video tape of that game. Seth had a lot of fun watching us play that game…I think he thought we’d all gone crazy, but in a good way.

On Wednesday for “sewing” we met at the park and had lunch. I didn’t get much visiting done because I was too busy chasing Seth around, but it was a beautiful day so it was nice to be out in the sunshine and fresh air. That evening I had a visiting teaching interview at the church; I brought the boys home from scouts with me when I was done. The interview was nice and I got chocolate afterwards—yum!

I left Seth with Scott on Thursday evening when I took Jared to soccer practice, so I was able to sit in the shade and read David Copperfield in peace for an hour—that was nice! It was another beautiful day—sunny with a gentle breeze—so I really enjoyed that. I figured out that I need to read about 50 pages per day to get the book done in time. It isn’t too hard to read, and the story is quite interesting so it hasn’t been too difficult to get the 50 pages read most days. I’m still not really far into it, but it’s getting more engaging all the time and I suspect it will end up being a really good book.

Scott finished up the reading and cooking merit badges this week. (Tanner finished reading and he’s almost done with cooking.) As we were looking over the merit badges he’s done, we realized that he has enough done now to get his Life rank. That’s pretty exciting! We are starting to see “the light at the end of the tunnel”! (Scott is getting excited, too, which means he is a lot more motivated.) He still has to get 10 more merit badges for his Eagle, but between Frank and I we think we can get him most of the way through the 5 electives this summer, and he should be able to get some of the required ones at scout camp. I think he will be able to get done with all the merit badges by the time he finishes scout camp next year, and then all he’d have left would be the Eagle Scout project. Tanner has a lot more to do, of course, but he is much farther along than Scott was at his age so I think he will be able to finish by the time he’s about 15 also.

Yesterday Frank had a meeting at work and the news wasn’t so good. Because of the downturn in the economy they just aren’t getting as much work to do and the company finances are suffering as a result. Because of that, his boss (the owner) has decided starting in June to put everybody on “hourly” instead of salary. In other words, Frank will only get paid for the hours he works, so if it’s less than 40 hours per week, he won’t get paid as much. They also will no longer be paying for our health insurance. It’s hard to say at this point how much difference all that is going to make. Frank hopes he will be able to get close to 40 hours each week (lately he’s been getting between 34 and 37 hours). For the health insurance, they were only covering Frank’s portion (we were paying the difference between an individual and a family policy already) so hopefully that won’t be a huge difference. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all pans out. I think we are still in a better position than a lot of people we know, who have just received pay cuts—at least Frank has some control over how many hours he gets. He can do some things to try to get more. But if there just isn’t enough work to do, then there’s nothing he can do about that. My bigger concern right now is just that the owners seem so worried about the company. If the company goes under, then of course he will be out of a job. We are hoping for the best, though.

Friday evening Frank and I went to the temple. It had been a few months since we were last able to go, and even longer since we’d been able to go through an endowment session together, so it was really nice to be able to do that again! I felt like I learned a lot, too—just lots of little bursts of inspiration; I love that!

Today has been pretty busy—we had lots of shopping to do (Seth’s birthday; shorts for Scott and Frank…) and this afternoon and evening Frank was helping with the food for a wedding reception. There was also scout stuff and homework to get done, and Scott had to write a talk for tomorrow. Seth took a very short nap and he was crabby when he woke up. I admit I felt pretty crabby all day…I’m blaming it on hormones! I took Seth with me to the wedding reception this evening but all the other boys wanted to stay home. I kind of wish I’d left Seth home too because he just could not sit still for more than a couple of seconds—even to eat! So I was chasing him all over—the life of a mother with a toddler!

Now it’s late and Frank just got home (he brought home a lot of yummy leftover food, though!) I still haven’t read my 50 pages for today, so I’d better go get some reading done, and then get to bed!

I'll finish up with a video we took on Sunday. The boys had gotten into the costume box, and we were laughing because Seth was trying to call Scott "Darth" but it sounded more like "dork". So we videotaped it...enjoy! (Sorry it's sideways...I'm sure there's a way to fix that, but I don't know how and I'm too tired to figure it out right now.)