Weekly Review August 22 '09

This weekly review will probably be a short one without photos—we can’t be on vacation every week (rats)!

We had an interesting Sacrament Meeting on Sunday. I won’t go into details; let me just say that if the high council speaker starts out his talk by saying “I’m going to read a story from the Bible that has probably never been shared in Sacrament Meeting before…”, think of a reason to make a hasty exit from the chapel, and shepherd all your age 8 and above children with you! (Ok, since I know you’re all curious now, go read Numbers chapter 22 and imagine that being read over the pulpit, and what effect a certain word is going to have on teen age kids.) Good grief! I had to send Jared out to get a drink of water to compose himself and I was in mortal terror that one of the other two was going to lose it and laugh out loud. I thought it was just my kids until our home teachers came over that afternoon and started talking about what a hard time they were having, as well as their kids. We were all in hysterics for a while, just talking about it. Then our friends the Becks came over for dinner. They said they were sitting in the back, and they could see all the shoulders shaking in front of them. So it wasn’t just my immature kids, after all. The really funny thing about the whole thing is that the speaker was oblivious to the havoc he was causing.

Anyway, we had a nice Sunday. We had our friends the Becks over for dinner because it was our last chance for all of us to get together. Brody Beck was laid off from his job last week and on Wednesday he went to Arizona to stay with his parents and look for a new job (both of their families are out west and the cost of living is higher here, so they don’t see much point in staying here when he doesn’t have a job out here). Jana and the kids are staying here until he gets a job. For their sakes, I hope it isn’t a long time. But we are very sorry to see them go—they have been such good friends! We did have a fun time visiting with them and playing games, though. Frank had some chocolate fondue he was given at youth conference—we defrosted that and dipped cookies, pretzels, marshmallows, and bananas—yummy! We stopped by the Becks Tuesday evening to take Brody some “driving treats” and we visited a little bit more then.

It seems like I usually start out the week feeling stressed about all the things I need to do for Primary. So I work on Primary stuff like crazy for a couple of days, and usually I get most of it done and the rest of my week is a little more relaxed. Monday was a stressful day anyway—several things went wrong so I wasn’t too happy, but most of those things have worked themselves out now. I still have a couple of projects going for Primary—I’m trying to finish up the “thank you” album for the last president (Costco messed up the prints and cut off several heads, so I have to get them re-printed!) and I’m also putting together a little treat for all the teachers.

By Wednesday I had mostly “unburied” myself from Primary stuff, so that was shopping day. I had the usual groceries to get, but Jared also needed to get a gift for a friend’s birthday party and it’s a medieval themed party where he’s encouraged to dress up, so he wanted to get some “weapons” also! Besides that, Tanner and Jared both needed shoes and back packs for school, I needed to pick up prints from Costco, and the car was almost out of gas. All of that added up to 3 ½ hours of shopping—not much fun! The boys handled it all well, though, and thank goodness I thought to put Seth in his stroller while we were at Wal-Mart (he can get out of the seat belts on the carts) since I had someone to help me push him around. Otherwise, it probably would have been a nightmare!

On Thursday I pulled out Seth’s quiet book and started working on it again. I have a goal to get two pages done per week—if I do that, I will get it done in plenty of time for Christmas! Wish me luck. If I get it done, I can start working on the photo albums that I promised everybody LAST Christmas. See how behind I am on projects?

Another project I’ve been needing to work on—weeding the garden! It hasn’t been weeded all summer and the weeds are probably almost as tall as I am—I kid you not! (We didn’t try to grow anything this year.) I’m really surprised the neighbors haven’t “sicked” the HOA on us yet. The problem is, the weather is not cooperating at all. We’ve had really nice weather all summer, but since we’ve been back from vacation we’ve had typical Maryland August weather with a vengeance. That means high temperatures combined with high humidity with occasional thunderstorms = going outside feels like being wrapped up in a wet blanket! I mean seriously melting, here. One day this week when I checked the weather it said the humidity was 100%. Can you have 100% humidity when it’s not raining? Apparently so. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to work up enough courage to go out there. We haven’t figured out what to do about the lawn mower, either—get it fixed or buy a new one—so the lawn is looking pretty bad also. (Frank has been swamped with work this week—no time to go together to look into our options.) Maybe the reason the neighbors haven’t been complaining is because none of them have been going outside, either. This is the time of year where everybody stays holed up in their air conditioned houses as much as possible.

I took Tanner to his school’s open house on Friday; I wanted him to meet his new teacher-- one of them is new; the rest will be the same as last year. By some stroke of luck, the teacher who left was the one who was not a good personality fit for Tanner. I hope the new one will be a better fit for him. I also wanted to ask about the calculator they said he needed for Algebra. His math teacher said that the one we bought for Scott last year would work just fine, but when I mentioned that Scott was taking Geometry this year, she said he would definitely need his calculator for that. Since they can’t both use the calculator at the same time, we went ahead and bought a new calculator for Tanner. (Frank and I managed to make it through all our high school math classes without a $100 calculator, but whatever! These days they say they “need” one.)

Scott had a friend from church (Brian) over that afternoon. Jared went ice skating with his friend Joey. Frank and I were trying to figure out how both of us could get to the temple this week end. Frank had to go down to Rockville to buy a computer for a client, so we just decided to both go right then and buy the computer on the way back home. Because we didn’t have a lot of time, I did initiatories and Frank helped with sealings. I had a wonderful experience; I always enjoy initiatories, but there was a particularly beautiful spirit there that time. I’m so glad we just “dropped everything” and decided to go to the temple!

When we left the temple, it looked like a storm might be approaching from the west; by the time we made it to the computer store, the sky looked really black and ominous. We checked the weather (Frank has internet access on his phone) and found out there was a tornado warning and a severe thunderstorm warning for the county we were in. I called home and found out the storm had already passed by there, which was a relief. By the time we got out of the computer store, it was raining really hard but we never saw any lightning and the wind didn’t seem to be bad, either. The rain continued to come down pretty hard all the way home, though, and we did see some branches down in some places. We got home and found that everything was fine (except for the milkshake that got spilled on the living room carpet.)

Today we’ve been busy with a lot of different things. I did scouts with the boys—Jared finished his Athlete activity badge and Scott & Tanner transferred some logos they designed onto t-shirts (part of the Artist merit badge). The only thing they have left to do for the Artist merit badge is to visit an art museum, gallery, exhibit, or workshop. I was planning to do that for one of our Friday “field trips”, but that’s one area where we didn’t do so well this summer. I think we only made it on one or two trips—having a child who needs to nap in the afternoon made it difficult! Next summer will probably be better.

Frank went this morning to fix some computers for some people in our stake. He brought home a bunch of tomatoes & peppers from their garden—yum!!! I’ve been wishing for some fresh tomatoes! Now Frank is setting up the computer we bought last night for a client. The work never ends for him, it seems! He’s put in a lot of overtime this week.

We’ve been trying to get everybody on a more decent schedule since school is starting on Monday (we haven’t done too bad this summer), but Tanner has been really struggling with that. He’s had a couple of nights where he couldn’t get to sleep until really late. Then of course he didn’t want to get up the next morning. It’s discouraging (for him and us) but we will just keep working on it!

The boys have spent a lot of time playing with Legos this week. I find that ironic—the last week of summer vacation, and they finally figure out something fun to do that doesn’t involve a screen! The rest of the summer, they’ve just been picking on each other during the times I wouldn’t let them play games or watch television (which is a lot, since they only get 2 hours of game time per day). I’m glad they finally found something productive to do!

I started reading All Quiet on the Western Front this week. So far, I’d say it’s excellent. Hopefully nothing will happen later in the book to change my mind!

School is starting Monday, ready or not. I’m not ready, and I’ve figured out why. Consider this: No schedule—stay up late and sleep in if we feel like it. No school work to worry about. No papers to sign or other clutter coming home from school. Three older kids around who help me with chores every morning, babysit whenever I need it, and help keep the 2 year old happy and entertained. A couple of hours of “down time” nearly every afternoon while the little one naps and the older ones go to a friend’s house to play. Plus, nice weather and fun things to do. I mean, does it get any better than that?! I have never felt less excited for school to start. We’ll see how it goes this week! Scott doesn’t start Seminary until next week, so at least I have a week to get “broken in”.

This post ended up being longer than I expected!