Weekly Reveiw October 31 '09

Happy Halloween!

When I left off last week, we were on our way to the chili cook off. We had a good time visiting, and when it came time to eat, there were lots of yummy choices! And yes, we did win an award for our chili. We didn’t win all around best, but they also had several category awards, and we won “Best Chili Like Mom Used to Make”, which is funny since Frank is the one who made it! After dinner, there was a story told by the father of the host family—The Green Gorilla Story—it’s a family tradition of sorts. I really wish I could have taken a picture of some of the kids’ faces while he told that story! He had them riveted!

Sunday was the long awaited Primary program. I had to be there early for ward council; by the time I got out of that meeting my counselors, with help from Frank and the boys, already had all the chairs set up and things ready to go. I guess I’ve gotten used to doing Primary programs, because I was only a little bit anxious—I still remember being a nervous wreck the first couple of times I had to do one of these! (Although I had to laugh when I woke up Sunday morning—I realized I’d been having “disaster program” dreams all night!) I think I’ve learned over the years that everything always comes together and the congregation always loves it no matter what. I was very pleased with how things worked out this time. Not a single child “chickened out”, everybody spoke their parts loud and clear, the kids were mostly reverent (especially for the sacrament), and the songs were all really good also. Everything moved along smoothly and we only went over about 10 minutes, which is what was expected—much to my relief! We had included an insert in the program asking for comments to share with the children, and we received a lot of really nice feedback, which I enjoyed reading to the kids. The children were pretty wired during Primary, but we planned a very laid back sharing time—we watched a church movie and ate snacks! The older kids got to see “Together Forever”, and my secretary had me laughing—she was mouthing all the words because she saw it so many times while she was on her mission, and so did I!

The rest of the week has been pretty busy. My visiting teachers came on Monday and I did some visiting teaching on Thursday. On Tuesday evening I went to Marci’s to help her paint. (She’s still getting her house ready to sell.) We got a lot done, and I also got to see and hold all of Snickers’ new siblings—so cute! It’s hard to believe he was ever that small; he’s grown up a lot!

Wednesday evening we had a Primary / Ward Halloween activity. We didn’t do Trunk or Treat this year; we just had games, a costume parade with prizes, and refreshments. We were going to visit the nursing home across the street from the church to show off costumes, visit, and deliver some warm socks, but all the nursing homes around here have stopped allowing large groups of children to come in because of all the flu (swine or otherwise) going around, so we couldn’t do that. We wrote notes to tuck into the socks instead. I think all the kids had a good time. I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures because I was helping run our game all evening, which was a fish pond. The kids all seemed to really enjoy that one. The YW had two games also, I heard, and the YM did a spook alley. I helped to judge the costumes; we gave awards in lots of different categories and it was fun. Scott and his friend Ricardo won the award for “best group costume”—they dressed up as missionaries complete with black name tags, pass along cards, and back packs full of copies of the Book of Mormon. They went around all night trying to give away BOMs and make appointments! I wish I had got a picture of them.

Wednesday was also Jared’s 11th birthday, so it was a busy day. Jared was actually home from school that day because he was sick, but luckily he was on the tail end of the illness so he really wasn’t feeling too bad. So staying home from school and watching television all day is not such a bad way to spend your birthday! He complained on Monday of a headache, and by evening he had a pretty high temperature (102.4, I think.) On Tuesday he hovered in the lower 99s all day and seemed to feel much better. By Wednesday, he was close to normal again, so although I kept him home from school, he did get to go to the Halloween activity that night. He opened his presents after everyone got home from school—all he asked for was two games for the Nintendo DS—so that’s what he got, along with 3 books from us and 2 books from Grandpa & Grandma Pew. He seemed happy with everything. He wanted to wait to have his cake when he was well enough to invite a couple of friends over, but I did make a bunch of Halloween sugar cookies (pumpkins, ghosts, and black cats) instead. We also ordered pizza for dinner, which worked well for me because I had to get through dinner fast in order to get over to the church by 6:30 to set up for the activity.

Jared was feeling better on Wednesday, but Frank started to feel pretty sick and he has been miserable ever since. I think he has the same thing Jared did—just a more severe case of it. Since Frank wasn’t feeling well enough to go to the activity on Wednesday evening, and I knew I was going to be busy all evening, I left Seth home with Frank. Seth didn’t know he was missing anything, so it didn’t really matter.

The boys got out of school early on Friday. It was also the last day of the term, so we were busy this week making sure everybody was caught up with school work. Scott had to stay after nearly every day to make up tests and quizzes he missed while he was sick, but he got everything done and I think both he and Tanner have managed to pull off all A’s and B’s. We’ll see for sure when the report cards come home! Jared had soccer practice Friday evening and Tanner went to spend the night with his friend Ryan. We rented a couple of movies for the other boys—the newest X-Men movie and Monsters vs. Aliens. I didn’t really watch either of them that night—I was too busy with other stuff—but I did watch the second one on Saturday afternoon. It was pretty good, but not anything to get too excited about.

Jared had a soccer game Saturday afternoon; his team lost again. I didn’t actually keep track of the score, but it was about 4-0. His team just has never pulled it together this season. It hasn’t helped that so many practices have been cancelled because of rain or other games interfering. Thankfully, Jared has still been having fun, so it doesn’t really matter.

For trick or treating that evening, Jared had his friend Evan come over to go with him. His friend Sage also came, but he was later, so he hooked up with us while we were already out. Tanner passed out candy at our house; Scott helped and both of them also spent a lot of time outdoors playing with their friend Joey. Since Frank was still feeling terrible, I took Seth and Jared (and friends) trick or treating. I just took Seth around our part of the court and then dropped him off at home and continued through the rest of the neighborhood with Jared. Seth was Batman this year—mainly because by the time I was able to get to the store to get him a costume (this Tuesday) that’s all that was left in his size. I like to pick cute things for them to wear their first couple of years before they get all opinionated and start picking super heroes, but this year I just didn’t have time to figure anything else out. He looked adorable in the Batman costume anyway, although he refused to wear the hat/mask. Jared wanted to be Aragorn (from Lord of the Rings) and so he just wore part of the Legolas costume I made for Scott a few years ago—that worked for me!!

It rained a little bit during the late afternoon on Saturday, but it cleared up in time for trick or treating and it was mild enough outside that we didn’t need to wear coats or jackets, which was nice. Even so, we had VERY FEW trick or treaters come to our house, which means we have lots of extra candy in the house—which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it! I got back home with Jared by about 8:30, and we only had one small group of kids come by after that. We visited with Sage’s dad for a while and Evan’s parents didn’t come get him until after 10:00, so we were up pretty late and glad that we got to set the clocks back an hour!

We’ve had quite a bit more rain this week, but it’s mostly been warmer so it hasn’t been too unpleasant. We are glad for every nice day we have from here on out!

Now it is Tuesday afternoon and I really need to get this posted before another week goes by. The last few days have been pretty busy and eventful, but I’ll save all that for this week’s post!