Weekly Review May 9 '09

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day….

It’s been all rain this week, seems like. I guess we got a little bit of sunshine now and then, but not much! All the rain has sure turned things green, though. Here’s the view off the back deck (taken Thursday afternoon during the hour or so that it actually wasn’t raining!):

Jared’s soccer practice and his game were both cancelled this week because the field was too wet and muddy. We did manage to get the lawn mowed—we had Tanner do it after he got home from school on Wednesday—about an hour before it started raining again!

Seth is really expressing himself in words these days. He is starting to really let his wishes be known! One day when I picked him up to put him down for his nap, he was playing with a fire truck. He said “want play fire truck”. A month or two ago he would have just cried and fussed when I picked him up! Another day when Jared was taking Snickers out for a walk, Seth came to me and said “Put on shoes. Seth walk.” He is saying stuff like that all the time now.

On Monday we played “hide the button” for family night activity. Seth really liked playing this game. He wandered around while the rest of us hunted saying “Where button?” After the rest of us found it, we would give him big hints to help him find it—he was always so excited to find the button! One time he found it before a few of the rest of us did. We let him have a turn hiding it, too. First he tried to hide it under the television, but he ran over there to hide it before everyone had their eyes closed, so I told him to hide it somewhere else. (I was helping him.) Then he tried to hide it in his diaper! We all laughed when he went looking for it himself, walked right over to where it was, looked, and then said “Nope!” and walked away.

Tanner and Scott are both struggling with some school classes right now, so they were both banned from television, computers, and games in order to give them more time to focus on school work. It was a lot quieter around here this week! In addition to getting their school work done, they have developed a whole new interest in reading! We returned the questionnaires about Tanner to the doctor and received a phone call back the same day saying he definitely “met the criteria” (of what, I’m not sure…) and they want me to schedule a visit to talk about what options are available to help him. I wasn’t too surprised by the call—I looked over the questionnaires and noticed we had all answered them very similar, and we all reported a lot of problems in the first section of the questionnaire. I guess I’ll understand it all better after I go talk to the doctor, which we’re doing on Monday. I’m just glad that we are working toward a solution!

I wasn’t feeling very well on Wednesday, so Frank handled all the runs to the church and back for scouts that evening. He also took Seth with him and went to the store to buy milk, so I had some quiet time to rest. I really appreciated that! I’ve had some trouble off and on with congestion, slight sore throat, and headache all week (kind of like last week), but Wednesday night was the worst. Again, it’s never turned into anything major, and I’m glad of that.

Jared was finishing his science fair project this week. Unfortunately, none of his plants sprouted! We even checked the dirt and found the seeds, but no roots or anything. I’m not sure what went wrong, but I suspect we over watered them at first and the seeds rotted. Besides that, there has been so much rain and so little sunlight the last two weeks that I don’t think they got enough warmth and sunlight. It’s been a little tricky for Jared to finish up his report when he doesn’t have any results to talk about. Next week he has to put his display board together and then we will be done with science fair projects until next year…hooray!

Here’s our amazing story for the week. I got Jared some little sunglasses last week. (He looks so cute in them, by the way!) He was wearing them Thursday morning when I took the boys to school and then to the grocery store. Later when we went out again he asked for his sunglasses, but I couldn’t find them. After making two different trips around town, I found the sunglasses on the back bumper of the car! Seth must have put them there when we were unloading the groceries, but I can’t believe they didn’t fall off sometime during those other two trips! I am glad we didn’t lose them, though.

Frank went to a Symantec presentation on Friday. As part of their presentation, they also rented out a theater so all attending could see the new Star Trek movie. Frank says the movie is great! He really enjoyed it. He says he learned a lot of useful information about Symantec’s products also.

Last evening we had the Beck kids over here so that Scott could watch them while their parents went out (it was Jana’s birthday). When they came back they took Scott back to their house with them so he could put their kids to bed while they went to get something to eat. (They had gone to a movie and it took longer than they expected so they hadn’t had a chance to eat yet.) I waited up for Scott, but Frank was too tired so he went to bed.

This was not a good week for dental news at our house. Frank went to the dentist for his check up on Tuesday and found out he needs another crown done. That’s two he needs now at over $500 each (our part of the cost)—ouch! Then I took Snickers to the vet on Friday to have his teeth checked and they said he has two baby teeth that haven’t come out yet which are blocking the adult teeth from coming in in the right place. They say the teeth need to be pulled and for dogs they have to knock them out to do that. The estimate they gave me was between $400-500 for that. Frank says absolutely no way is he going to pay that much for a dog’s teeth!! So we decided to hold off on that for a while and I am praying those teeth will just fall out! We are trying to save up so we can go to Utah next year, and between Frank’s extra crown and Snickers’ teeth, that would pretty much wipe out everything we’ve saved so far. It’s discouraging, but I can’t really complain too much. I feel like we are much better off than a lot of other people are right now.

Today we went to a Celtic Festival. Tanner and Scott needed to go to an ethnic festival to pass off one of their pre-requisites for their Citizenship in the World merit badge. (Well, that was one of their choices. All the other choices sounded soooo boring!) We thought it was pretty interesting, but not worth the price ($15 each for anyone over 12—at least Tanner, Jared, and Seth got in free). I’d say 95% of the booths were vendors selling stuff. (A lot of cool stuff, too—but expensive!) They did have some Irish & Scottish dancing, Scottish & Irish bands, and some Highlands games competitions, which were all very fun to see. We just wish they’d had more of that kind of stuff. There was a children’s tent also, but it was mostly crafts and none of my boys are the crafty type, so that didn’t interest them. We did watch some of the Open Stone and Scottish Hammer competitions, which basically involves throwing heavy objects as far as you can. That looked pretty difficult! We also really enjoyed watching the dancers and seeing the bag pipe bands march (and hearing their music). Frank and Scott have gone back now to watch the Caber competition (throwing big logs) and a Gaelic football demonstration (I think they are doing some Mother’s Day shopping also). I stayed home so that Seth could take a nap and Tanner and Jared could work on their homework—they both have a lot of that to do.

Scottish dancers. We watched Irish dancers later, but no photos because the camera batteries died!

Scottish band marching by

Scott and Jared watching the Open Stone competition (do you see me pushing Seth in the stroller back there also?)

Open Stone competition (sorry--you can't see much in the photo; much more exciting in real life!)

All of us watching

The last few days have really warmed up (in spite of the rain)—we’ve even had the A/C on a few times. That means the weather is right for popsicles! Here is Seth enjoying a fudge pop:

We are looking forward to the summer days ahead!