Weekly Review September 20 '09

This week has felt long to me, for some reason. We have Stake Conference this week end, so we didn’t have any of the normal meetings. We were just supposed to go to the temple as much as possible during the week. For us, that means once! I went on Thursday evening. Of course, there were all these reasons why it was hard for me to go that day. For starters, Seth woke up around 3:00 am that morning—he went back to sleep; I didn’t. Then my neck and left shoulder were hurting—must have pinched something; it hurt to turn my head to the left. Frank and I were going to go together, but Frank had a bad headache so he wasn’t feeling up to going and I hate making that drive at night. Luckily, I did get about an hour nap that afternoon and I am stubborn—I decided I was going to go no matter what! I’m glad I persevered. I knew if I didn’t go then I wouldn’t get to go at all—Jared had soccer practice Friday evening and a game Saturday afternoon, and Frank had committed to help cook food for a wedding on Saturday which meant he’d be gone most of the day. So anyway, I went and it was wonderful. The traffic was amazingly good—there was no back up on I-495 at about 5:40 when I got on. No back up on I-495 during rush hour?!! It is not unusual for that part of the trip (only a couple of miles) to take up to a half hour. It was great—I was able to get into the 6:30 session and made it home by 9:30. Frank had all the kids in bed and the kitchen and living room were cleaned up—even better!

Frank was able to go to the temple on Friday on his way home from work. He didn’t have to work a lot of hours that day, so he got home in time to go with me to pick up Jared from school.

Tuesday was a busy day, also. My friend Marci was cleaning out her sewing room and giving things away so I went over there for a little while to try to help her. And I didn’t bring any of her sewing stuff home with me because I am trying to pare down my possessions, not add to them! I had book chat that day also. We had a small group show up—only 5 of us. (There are usually 10+, so I guess it was a busy day for a lot of people.) We had a nice pot luck lunch and a good discussion although I had to keep leaving to track Seth down, who loves to explore other people’s houses without permission. We were meeting at a different house than we usually do, so he was worse than usual! By the time I left book chat, Scott was already home from school. I took Seth home, put him down for a nap, and then went over to the church to vote before I went to pick up Jared & Tanner from school. It was the primaries for mayor and alderman. One of our neighbors was actually running for mayor; we voted for him but then found out the next day that he had pulled out of the race for health reasons. Oh well! I haven’t heard any of the other results of the election. Frank had his class that night so he got home late. (He voted when he went to pick up Scott from Seminary.)

Frank worked from home on Wednesday, so we went on our (what is becoming traditional) weekly lunch date. Just Burger King this time, though! My friend Marci is getting really stressed out about getting her house ready to sell, especially because her husband is gone a lot (making trips to the new job location to do some work) so I tried to go help her on Wednesday afternoon while Seth was napping, but she didn’t answer her door.

All these people around us moving has got us thinking about the possibility of trying to move to a bigger house. We have toyed with the idea more than once over the years, but never thought about it too seriously. I’ve been looking online lately to get a feel for what prices are like, and it does look like we may be able to pull it off, but it would be a challenge to find something in our price range that would be worth it to go to all the trouble of trying to sell our house. We also wanted to have a clearer idea of what our house would sell for these days, so we asked a friend in our ward who is a realtor to come look at our house. Frank talked to him on Sunday and set it up for Wednesday evening, which caused me to have a melt down on Monday at the thought of anyone I know seeing my cluttered house. But then I “got a grip” and reminded myself that most people have cluttered basements. I knew there was no time to get things in better shape, so I did the smart thing—I didn’t kill myself trying! Then when the realtor came over, he was not nearly as critical as I thought he’d be. He said overall we have a really nice house. The market value he quoted was about what we’d expected. So now we are just thinking about it some more and trying to decide if we want to do anything about it right now. I don’t feel in a hurry about it. Even if we decide we want to try selling, we will probably wait at least until spring. I really like our house; especially the location. Part of me would rather stay here and just fix it up. But since we are in a townhouse, there is no way to add space (just try to use the space we have more efficiently). I admit that the idea of having another 900 square feet or so makes me drool!

Tanner came home from school early on Thursday with stomach issues. He stayed home Friday, also. He never seemed to be that sick, but he was having enough trouble that it was interfering with his ability to get any work done at school. By Saturday he seemed to be doing a lot better.

One of my visiting teachers came to see me Friday afternoon (the other one had a sick child). She told me that she is pregnant with twins! She has an 8 year old and a 6 year old, but since then has had a miscarriage and then just couldn’t seem to have any more. (Sounds familiar; I know how that feels!) So she is glad to be having two, but mostly she is very nervous about all the things that could go wrong. I know how that feels, too! Hopefully everything will go all right for her, though. I am really excited for her.

Jared had soccer practice Friday evening. Frank and I took him to that. We left for a few minutes to go pick up something to eat; then we took our food back to the park and watched the practice while we ate. It was nice to sit on a bench by a creek and talk while we ate. After we got home I took Scott to his friend Ryan’s house to spend the night—they are sleeping outside and they are in the same scout troop so we count that for one of his camping nights! (We’re desperate—they don’t get to go on nearly enough “real” camp outs!) Tanner was invited to go too, but he couldn’t go since he was sick.

Saturday Frank was helping cook food for a wedding reception; he was gone from about 9:45 to about 4:00. Jared had his first soccer game at 1:00. I got Seth down for a nap right before I had to leave to take Jared to his game; Tanner stayed home with him. Right as we were leaving, I remembered that Frank had told the coach the evening before that we would bring the snack—yikes! Of course, I had nothing in the house that would work. So I dropped Jared off at his game and ran to the store to buy the snack. I missed the first 10 minutes of the game. Apparently, the other team kicked one goal before I got there. Then there was no scoring until almost the end of the game, when the other team scored two more goals. So the final score was 3-0. In spite of that, I think Jared’s team played quite well. Jared made some really great defensive plays. Hopefully they will get better at offense before the season is over!

We stopped on the way home to pick up Scott from Ryan’s house, but he wanted to stay longer and they were fine with having him stay and offered to drop him off later. He had actually spent the whole day with them working—helped them cover a pool, set up chairs at the stake center, and when I arrived he was helping them dig up some stumps in their yard. Why do kids help so readily at someone else’s house but not their own?! Jared wanted to stay also, so I ended up coming home with no kids instead of two! Ryan’s parents dropped them both off at our house later, on their way to the adult session of Stake Conference.

I went to the adult session of Stake Conference last night, but Frank stayed home; since he was on his feet most of the day, he was pretty tired. The meeting was really good. When I got home, everyone was still up watching the BYU game. Unfortunately, it was not a good game, as many of you know. BYU was playing a lot like Tulane played last week, in my opinion. It’s disappointing to see them have such a big set back, but hopefully they will shake it off and go back to being the great team I know that they are! This makes 3 games in a row that were actually on television out here on the east coast. That is a record! We usually get one game every 3-4 years or so. I hope we will get to see more games before the season is over.

Today we all went to the general session of Stake Conference together. Afterwards, our friends the Koettings came over for dinner, as usual. They didn’t get to stay as long as usual this time, though, because Jeanine’s brother was flying in this afternoon for a visit. So we only had a short visit, but the boys and I will be going to see them next week. After the Koettings left, I had some appointments to visit a couple of Primary kids. The visits both took longer than I expected and Frank didn’t hear me say that we were going to visit a second family, so by the time I got home he was really worried and had actually gone out looking for me. I felt bad about that. The visits were quite productive, though. One of the girls we visited has not been wanting to come to Primary, and we got some insights on why she might be feeling that way. Hopefully we will be able to do some things to help.

After I got home we had some supper and then had family night. Then we got everybody to bed. Seth didn’t get a nap, so he was half asleep by the time I got through a couple of songs and said a prayer with him; poor tired monkey! I was reading “The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge” with him tonight, which has become a favorite of his. I probably read it to him 3-4 times per day. Tonight I started stopping in random places and he would fill in the right word / words almost every time! I didn’t realize he had memorized it already, but I guess he has.

For book chat I am reading a book called Triangle. It’s about one of the survivors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1907. So far it is quite fascinating, although I’m not sure how everything is going to tie in together.

It’s getting late, so I will get this posted. Maybe some day I will have some time to post something besides weekly reviews. But don’t hold your breath!