Weekly Review January 23 '10

This has been kind of a strange week because the boys were out of school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I don’t know why they plan these long breaks in the middle of the winter! I’d rather have them when the weather warms up. The break was supposed to coincide with the end of the 2^nd term, but since they had all those extra snow days in December, the end of term was moved back a day. That means Scott started new classes on Friday. Now he has Foundations of Technology, Biology, German 2, and English.

I’m glad in some ways that we had those days off because Tanner still wasn’t feeling his best, so that gave him more time to get better. The boys helped me with chores and played with friends—didn’t get a lot accomplished, although we did do some work on the weather merit badge. I don’t feel like I got much accomplished this week, either, although I did do a little bit more organizing and cleaning in my closet. I also took all the boys to get haircuts on Wednesday morning—they all look great now!

Scott hasn’t been feeling great the last few days—his throat is hurting and he has a tooth coming in that is also bothering him a lot. It’s actually one of his 12 year molars, believe it or not! It’s very late coming in.

Scott was supposed to get his patriarchal blessing on Thursday, but once again, the patriarch had to cancel. His wife is still in the hospital and they don’t know what is wrong with her. So we are feeling bad for him! We didn’t re-schedule an appointment yet; he is going to call us when his wife gets better. It’s been a bit disappointing to have it put off so many times, but Scott has handled it well.

Frank has been very busy with work this week again. I don’t feel like I’ve seen him much! Neither of us have been getting much sleep, either. Seth is not going to sleep until around 11:00 most nights (we put him to bed MUCH earlier) and he is waking up most nights, also. I’ve been trying to get him down for a nap earlier, but that hasn’t worked out most days. We’ve been waking him up from his naps, also, if he sleeps more than 2 hours. I know he’s not ready to give up naps completely yet, or I’d just do that. There are a few days this week that I would have skipped the nap except that we had evening plans and I didn’t want him to be crabby for that. So we’re just trying to work with it, but in the meantime, our sleep schedules are suffering!

Thursday morning I got my hair done and Friday morning I had a Primary presidency meeting. That was fun for Seth because both of those things took place at houses with little boys his age, so he got to play with cool new toys with friends both days. Thursday evening I took Tanner, Scott and Seth to the library—Tanner needed to get a biography for a school assignment, and the other two wanted to come along. By the time we got done there and headed home, it was sleeting but luckily the roads were not slippery. The sleet / freezing rain continued throughout the night, but the roads still weren’t bad, so school started at the regular time Friday morning (thank goodness!) It was pretty humid and cold, but the week end is supposed to be nicer.

Frank and I had planned to go to the temple Friday night, but since neither of us had much sleep the night before, we decided to try next week instead. We did go on a date, though—we went to eat at the Olive Garden (thanks again for the gift card, Mom & Dad!) and then we did some shopping—we got a few storage things for our bathroom and a copy of Turbo Tax. We also looked at tile and at wood stain because we are thinking about replacing the floor in our bathroom and re-staining the vanity. We did find some tile we like so we brought one tile home to see how it looks in our bathroom. We also saw a couple of stain colors that look nice with the tile, so if we decide to go ahead with that project, we know what stain to buy.

Today has been busy with basketball games (Scott in the morning, Jared in the afternoon; Tanner could have played in both games but chose not to play at all), lots of phone calls and e-mails for Primary, and more cleaning / organizing. Frank and I finished cleaning out our closet and the bathroom is mostly done also. Frank and I were looking at the floor in the boys’ bathroom and decided we need to replace it also—there’s quite a bit of water damage from the water the boys have splashed on the floor over the years. We might as well do both of them at the same time! Everywhere I look in the house, I see things that need to be organized—it’s hard not to get side tracked. But I’m trying to focus on my “one room a month”. I did get some things done in our bedroom today also, though. I’m planning to do that room next month, so I’m not getting too far ahead of myself.

Seth gave me a scare today. Earlier this afternoon Scott & Tanner took him over to the little playground in our neighborhood to play for a while. Later on, I was upstairs working in our room when I heard the front door open. I thought it was Frank and Jared coming back from Jared’s game, but after a few minutes I realized that I wasn’t hearing any noise downstairs at all. That’s when it occurred to me that the noise could have been Seth going out, not someone else coming in! Sure enough, when I went downstairs I couldn’t find Seth. I looked outside and called, but didn’t see him. I decided I’d better get my shoes and coat on so I could do a more thorough search, and while I was doing that I was combing my mind trying to think where he’d go. I thought of the playground, and I instantly knew that was probably where he’d gone. When I went back outside, I instantly spotted Seth across the street on the path leading to the playground. I’m not sure how I missed him the first time. There was a couple out walking their dog who had spotted him and were standing next to him. I’m pretty sure he crossed the street all by himself, though, and that is frightening to think about! I’m just glad he made it safely.

Tonight we realized we’d never had the chance to do the activity / treat part of family night this week since Frank was working late a lot of nights, so we all got in the car and went to Wendy’s for frosties. Frank took some photos on his cell phone while we were there; if I remember I will have him put them on the computer so I can post them.

Seth is starting to use the word “Tuesday” as well as Wednesday. Another new word for him in the last couple of weeks is “huge”, which he pronounces mostly without the “y” sound. “There’s a big truck…a huge truck!!” he’ll say. He also used the word “huge” to describe a certain part of Frank’s anatomy this week, which gave us a big laugh, although it wasn’t very complimentary!

Enjoy the last week of January! (I’m mostly glad it’s almost over…)

Weekly Review January 16 '10

Frank has one candle for each decade!!

Seth wants to serve the cake!

Anxious to "help"



First phase of "project organize 2010"--bathroom vanity!

Where did this week go? Time flies when you’re having fun…or just when you have a lot to do!

I did get a little bit of organizing done in the master bathroom on Saturday. I had to take Scott to get some new Sunday clothes (Scott’s outgrown clothes fit Tanner almost perfectly, so I didn’t need to get any for Tanner) that afternoon, so I was also able to get some small storage pieces to go in the vanity under the sink. It looks much better in there now—I should have taken a “before” photo! I also started working on the master closet, but I haven’t made a whole lot of progress on that yet. By the way, Scott looks very stylish in his new clothes! I couldn’t find a suit to fit him, so he got a sweater vest instead to go with his new pants and white shirt.

Primary went well on Sunday, although not quite as well as I would have liked. I guess some of the “newness” has already worn off. The Primary president in the other ward saw me before church and she told me how great our bulletin board looks—nice to hear! Frank ended up being up until 3:00 am Sunday morning (working) and then had to go back in before church to fix something else. He met us at the church, but only made it through taking the sacrament. He was so tired that he went home after that—but he didn’t get much sleep because he got several phone calls. One of them was from the stake patriarch, cancelling Scott’s appointment to get a blessing because he was sick. He re-scheduled that for this Sunday, but then on Saturday he called and had to cancel again, so now it’s supposed to happen on Thursday.

Our home teachers came that afternoon and then we had a guest for dinner—my friend Marci’s husband, David, who was here working this week. He was staying at their house (still hasn’t sold) and getting some work done on the house as well. He forgot I was planning to come over with laundry on Monday, which caused me a little bit of trouble because he changed the code on their keyless entry system, so I couldn’t get in. I was able to get in touch with him later in the day, so I was able to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Frank was able to get home early enough that day to buy a new thermostat and install it, so I was able to finish up the rest of the laundry at home. The dryer has worked fine since, so that must have been the problem. It is VERY nice to have a functioning dryer again!!

Tanner came home from school on Tuesday complaining that his throat hurt. Wednesday morning he said it still hurt and his stomach hurt, too. He didn’t have a fever, but he did look sick, so I kept him home even though my usual rule is they have to go if they don’t have a fever and are not throwing up! I just had a hunch that he really was sick, and I was right…by afternoon his temperature was 100. He ended up staying home the rest of the week, although his temperature was back down to 99.4 on Thursday. He just wasn’t feeling his best—his stomach was bothering him and he got congested and has a cough also. He did go in to school for a couple of hours on Friday afternoon to take an Algebra test, though. It was one of those “benchmark” kind of tests that all the kids have to pass at some point, so I didn’t want him to miss it, and his teachers didn’t want him to miss it, either! He passed the test, by the way.

One nice thing about having Tanner home was that while Seth was napping I could get some errands done. Actually, Seth didn’t get a nap on Sunday or Monday and he did well and then went to sleep early those nights, which was nice. So on Tuesday I decided to let him skip the nap again—he’s kind of in that “in between” stage where he’s starting to grow out of needing a nap. Well, I discovered that 3 days in a row was too much!! By 3:30, he was very crabby and by 7:00 he was coming completely unglued! I got him to bed shortly after that, though. So anyway, I was able to go out and get all the food and paper products for the Primary activity without Seth in tow, which was nice. I also did a little bit of birthday shopping for Frank, but gave up—he didn’t give me many suggestions for presents and the ones he did give me I decided he needed to pick out himself!

His birthday was on Thursday. The big 40!!! He got a “hoodie” and a couple of coupons—one for a trip to the movies, and another to pick out something else he wants. We also went out to eat—took the whole family this time—at a buffet place. Tanner was feeling well enough to go, but while we were at the restaurant I noticed that Jared wasn’t eating much. I asked him why not, and he said he didn’t feel very well! So he stayed home on Friday, as well as Tanner. He had a fever, but not a very high one. I made Frank a birthday cake on Thursday but by the time we got back from the buffet place, no one was hungry! So we did the cake part on Friday instead. Frank also got a gift card to his favorite restaurant from my parents and his parents called him that evening, so I think he had a nice day.

I went on a quest this week to try to find a replacement toy pot for the one Seth melted. I didn’t have any luck, though. Even E-bay and Amazon failed me! I did, however, find a really cool website dedicated to Fisher Price toys. It’s found at www.thisoldtoy.com. You can search for toys by model number, category, or year. For example, you can click on a year and get a list of all (or most—the lists aren’t complete) Fisher Price toys that were available that year. There are photos of most of the toys. Maybe that doesn’t sound too exciting to most of you, but to a person like me who loves toys, is into details, and is particularly nostalgic about old toys from childhood, this is a great site! I should warn you, however, that if you are like me, you can spend HOURS on this website. Incidentally, we had a lot of Fisher Price toys at our house when we were growing up—I’d say at least half of the toys for any given year (in the 60’s and 70’s) were toys I recognized as ones we had at home!

Frank had a lot of work to do this week—by Thursday he had worked 91 hours for the pay period, and it’s only an 80 hour pay period. On his way home from work on Friday he stopped at Barnes & Noble to spend the gift card he got for Christmas. I also had him get a book for me—a copy of the organizing book I read a few months ago and really liked. I intend to use it a lot, over an extended period of time, so checking it out of the library wasn’t too feasible. My visiting teachers came Friday also, so I had to banish Tanner and Jared to their rooms. It seems like every time my visiting teachers come, at least one of my kids is sick! They must think I have sick kids all the time, but really I don’t.

Tanner had a doctor appointment Friday afternoon to have a wart on his foot looked at. I set the appointment last week, not knowing that he would be sick, but since he was there anyway, we asked them to swab his throat. The strep test came back negative, though. They think he just has a virus. Frank took him to the appointment because Frank also had a wart he wanted the doctor to look at. The doctor is wrote out referrals for both of them to go see a podiatrist, but I haven’t made those appointments yet.

I was busy on Friday getting a few things finished up for the Primary activity, like making menus. The activity was Saturday morning. I got to the church about an hour before to help get things set up. The activity turned out great, I thought! When the kids arrived, we had a game for them to play—they had to guess which childhood photo went with which teacher. They also wrote thank you notes on the back of paper flowers which we put in vases to give to the teachers. Then we had brunch—fruit, muffins, yogurt, etc. The teachers got menus; they circled their choices and then the kids brought them up to us and we got the plates ready. After all the kids had served their teachers, then they got to eat, too. The teachers all brought several items representing their interests and hobbies to put on the center of their table for a centerpiece. While they were eating, the teachers talked about the objects they brought. We also had lists for the teachers and the kids of suggested questions to ask each other so they could get to know each other better. After everyone ate, we did a short little lesson on gratitude and then played a game with fun facts about the teachers—once again, the kids had to guess which teacher did what! Then we had a balloon relay with the classes and their teachers and then played “Do You Love Your Neighbor?” until parents came to pick up their kids. We had several parents help us put up tables and chairs, which helped a lot! Jared was feeling fine, so he came to the activity and he helped a lot with set up and clean up also.

On the way home, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get some things for Primary. I wasn’t home very long because I was going to a baby shower that afternoon for one of my visiting teachers, who is having twins. It was a bit of a drive to the shower location, so I got a ride with the Relief Society president, which was nice because we enjoyed visiting, but I also got home really late because after the shower she had to stop to visit a sister in the ward who’s been having some health problems. It was a longer visit than anticipated, but I enjoyed it anyways. This sister and her husband are both deaf, so another sister in the ward who knows sign language (actually, she’s one of my counselors) came along to interpret. Because of the “language barrier”, I’ve never been able to get to know this sister very well, so it was fun to see her on her “own turf” and find out more what she has to say, with an interpreter there. I’d never met her husband, either, but I found that they are both delightful people. Anyway, the shower was fun, with lots of yummy food, but it was long, so between that and the visit afterwards, I didn’t get home until about 7:30. I still had some Primary things to get done (print some labels, make invitations for the baptism fireside), so I spent the rest of the evening getting those things done.

While I was gone all day, Frank held down the fort at home. Scott had a basketball game (YM), but he got a ride to that since it was during Seth’s nap time. Our ward team is not very good, and true to form they lost their game by a lot. Scott didn’t mind except he felt frustrated that the other team fouled them a lot. They also have a deacon’s team this year, but Tanner was not well enough to play. They are letting the 11 year olds play with the deacons, but their game was at the same time as the Primary activity, so Jared couldn’t play either.

Now it’s Monday afternoon; I never got a chance to finish this up and post it! Seth didn’t sleep well on Saturday night; he sounded really “croupy”. We ended up putting him in a soft chair to sleep the rest of the night, so he was more upright and could breathe better, but he was still pretty restless and none of us got a lot of sleep. In the morning he was pretty perky, but he had an incredibly runny nose, so we decided he’d better stay home. Tanner also wasn’t sounding very well, so the two of them stayed home together. Frank came to Sacrament Meeting and then went home to stay with them. After church we didn’t have a lot going on, but we were all tired so we just relaxed. It rained a lot on Sunday and then it was really cold, but today it has warmed up a lot—feels like spring thaw! I’m sure it won’t last long, but it was nice to take Snickers on a longer walk today.

I hope you are all enjoying your Martin Luther King Day!

Weekly Review January 9 '10

If the whole year is like this week, then I’d say this year isn’t going to be too bad. Mostly, it was a good week, with a few not-so-great things sprinkled into the mix.

Sunday had the potential to be pretty chaotic at church, since all the kids were moving to new classes and most had new teachers and were meeting in new classrooms. But it didn’t turn out that way—actually, Primary went very smoothly and the children were probably the best behaved I’ve ever seen them! And our new little Sunbeams (all boys!) were little angels. It was really amazing, actually. We had them all stay in the chapel after Sacrament Meeting to match up all the kids with their teachers. I sent the Senior Primary kids off first, since they had class time first, and then I did the Junior Primary, starting with the youngest, and had their teachers take them down to the Primary room. That left me in the chapel until the last class went down to the Primary room, and I expected things to be noisy and chaotic when I got there, but everyone was sitting quietly in their seats waiting—it was so awesome!!! Besides that, we had a lot of new things to explain, like the new bulletin board, what we’re doing for spotlights this year, etc. so the kids had to do a lot of listening but they were so attentive and I felt like they were all really understanding what we are trying to accomplish this year. I am so excited about the theme for the year (I Know My Savior Lives) and I think they were catching on to some of that excitement. Anyway, I was absolutely thrilled with how everything went on Sunday. I’m sure we’ll have our difficult moments this year, but it was a great start!

After church was busy—Frank and Tanner went to collect fast offerings, Seth needed a nap, and people were dropping by. One of the fathers in the ward brought back our bowl (we took dinner to his family last week) and he said “By the way, can I pay you for the selection of my kids’ Primary teachers this year? We are more than thrilled with their teachers!” We do have a lot of really good teachers; I am very thankful! Besides, my counselors and secretary are awesome! Anyway, Seth took a long nap and we had family night before Scott and Tanner left for a fireside. I’m glad Frank took them and picked them up, because the weather was very cold and windy still. We had a yummy dinner that night, by the way, thanks to the Honey baked Ham gift certificate Frank got from a client!

Monday it was back to school and back to work for everybody. I wasn’t too thrilled when I spent a half hour looking for gloves and hats for everybody (it was still extremely cold); I still haven’t located Tanner’s hat and one set of gloves. Scott and Frank were disagreeing because Scott refused to wear a coat. Crazy boy! Apparently, it is totally not cool to wear a coat, or to use your locker either. Whatever! I talked to him later when he had calmed down and he admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea to use his locker to just drop off a coat in the morning and pick it up before leaving. However, since he hasn’t used his locker all year, he doesn’t remember his combination or even exactly where his locker is. So he’s supposed to try to find that out, but he keeps forgetting to ask. In the meantime, he usually wears a hoodie and jacket, and I’m sure he’s cold but I figure he’s old enough to make his own decision about that.

The other thing that happened on Monday is the dryer quit working. Actually, it still runs fine, but the clothes don’t get dry and they don’t even feel warm. Frank has been too busy until today to look at it and figure out what might be wrong. After doing some tests on it today, he thinks it’s just the thermostat. However, the store that carries the part closed at 1:00 today, so we’ll have to call about that on Monday. In the meantime, my friend Marci offered to let me use her dryer. She lives in Kentucky now, but her house has not sold yet and the dryer is just sitting there, so she said I could use it. It’s not the most convenient thing to make 4-5 trips over to her house on laundry days, but it beats going to a creepy Laundromat. I am grateful that I have a functioning washer and dryer in my own home most of the time—that’s a blessing I’m sure I take for granted!

For family night activity on Monday night we played a couple of rounds of bowling on the Wii. I had treat, but I refused to bring anything else sweet or fattening into the house—I just told everybody to take their pick from the abundance of sweets still sitting around. No one complained!

The rest of the week has not been quite as eventful. I’ve been really busy with Primary stuff; we are having an activity in a week. (The hardest part was scheduling the date—I’m not kidding! We had it on the calendar for January 30^th, and then the ward Christmas party got re-scheduled for that date. Then we found out the stake baptism was that morning also. I still haven’t figured that out yet—I’m not sure why it’s not on February 6^th.) Anyway, I’ve spent a lot of time on the computer and on Wednesday evening we had a presidency meeting.

While I’ve been busy, Seth has been getting into trouble—he put a button in the Wii, and he also ejected the Wii Fit disc and smeared fudge all over the back of it. Thankfully, Frank got the button out and I was able to clean the disc without destroying it! He also put his plastic toy pot in the oven—which he’s done before—but this time I forgot to take it out later, so the next day when I went to put biscuits in the oven for dinner, I discovered a melted toy pot! The sad thing about it was that Seth was there when I opened the oven and saw it—and he was very traumatized! It was like a friend had died; his little two year old heart was broken, and he was inconsolable for quite some time. I told him I would try to find a new one, but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible—we actually bought that toy for Scott when he was a baby. It was actually kind of a significant little toy in our family history, because it is one of the only toys we’ve ever purchased that was NOT for a birthday or Christmas. We bought it for Scott because, other than rattles, we really didn’t have any toys for him to play with. Imagine that! It’s hard to believe now, with toys overflowing drawers and baskets all over the house, that we ever had a house without toys! Seth also discovered the fudge and it’s gone now—Seth probably ate 80% of it while the rest of us ate the other 20%! Scott discovered him sitting on the couch with the bag of fudge yesterday. He looked at Scott and said “I like fudge!” (Yes, don’t we all!) Then just today I found Seth sitting calmly on the couch in his room, looking at a book with his discarded (messy) diaper sitting on the floor! He’s been tugging at his diapers a lot lately; I guess it is time to try potty training. I keep putting it off because he seems resistant to the idea, but if he is going to be taking his diaper off, then I might as well give it a try.

The boys were banned from computers all week and television one night, and it’s always interesting when that happens because they don’t quite know what to do with themselves. They usually spend the first hour or so making a lot of noise and generally picking at each other because they have nothing else to do. But by evening I had Tanner reading on my bed and Scott in Jared’s room teaching him how to fold paper stars. Seth was sleeping peacefully (the one night he went to bed at a decent hour). It was quiet…I thought “Somebody…freeze…time…now!” It was great!

It’s been a challenge getting Seth back on a normal schedule. We don’t usually party so much, but we were terrible this vacation, and he was up late almost every night! We’ve made some progress this week, though, and hopefully we’ll get him back to normal soon. He is growing so much and still surprises me all the time with things he says that show how observant he is. Like one day this week he said to me “bats and spiders scare people”. I have no idea where he picked up that information!! Then today I overheard him saying this while playing: “Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to my…” (I didn’t catch the last word.) He has been talking about monsters and robots a lot lately, and sometimes he pretends that there is a robot or a monster upstairs or in another room in the house. There seems to be a level of anxiety there, but when I ask him if he is scared of robots or monsters, he says no. Another cute thing he does is he uses the word “Wednesday” a lot. As in “I ate that on Wednesday” or “We’ll read that book on Wednesday”. I don’t know why that particular day of the week has stuck in his head above all the others.

It was really cold the beginning of the week, a little milder (highs in the 30’s) the middle of week, and on Thursday night / Friday morning it snowed. We only got an inch or two, but they still cancelled school on Friday. That means we’ve had 4 snow days now, and they only built 5 into the school year. If we have more than 5, they start taking away holidays and adding days on to the end of the school year, so I’m not too thrilled about that! With the snow, the weather has become very frigid again. I am not a winter person!

Jared went to spend the night with his friend Jack last night. Then Tanner was invited to Ryan’s house and Scott was invited to Joey’s, so it was just Frank, Seth and I here last night. Frank got home from work very late, actually. So we just watched some of the bonus features on the newest Harry Potter movie, and then went to bed.

Frank has been very busy with work all week. His boss told him on Friday that he is getting a raise. We don’t know any details about that yet, but we are just grateful that all his hard work is being rewarded; especially when things are so hard for so many people. I think I’ve said it many times already, but I will say it again—we are very thankful for the job he has now!!! He has had some difficult jobs over the years with bosses that are hard to work with, but working for Griffin has been a totally different experience. I also keep remembering that this was a job that just fell in our laps. What a blessing!

Tanner and I have been working on his science fair project yesterday and today. He is doing a project to see which temperature of water freezes the fastest—hot, room temperature, or cold. Frank had to go to work this afternoon and he won’t be home until late—he has to do some work at a place while they aren’t there. This afternoon I need to take the older two boys to get some new Sunday clothes. I noticed last week when they were passing sacrament that their pants look too short and their shirts look too tight. I was giggling about it, actually—they look so awkward sometimes!

I am embarking on a year-long project to de-clutter and fix up the house. My plan is to work on one room each month. Even breaking it down like that, it looks overwhelming to me, but I figure even if I can’t do it all (likely!) I will have at least made some progress by the end of the year, right? I think one of the things that is going to be the most challenging is finding time that Frank and I can both work on it together. Frank is so busy most of the time, and I can do a lot of things myself, but I really need his help when it comes to lifting heavy objects and making decisions about what to give away / throw away / keep. This month I’m working on the master bathroom, though, and I do think I can do a lot of that without him, so I’d better get this posted and get busy!

Weekly Review January 2 '10

Pictures first, since I still haven't figured out why blogger won't let me move them anymore!

First, Happy New Year photos:

Seth
Making noise!

Frank

Jared

Tanner

Scott

Annette

The puzzle

The week started out with church—hooray; it didn’t get cancelled!! We had our belated Christmas program and it was wonderful, with lots of beautiful musical numbers. The meeting did go long, though, so Primary was a bit rushed. I was busy getting the new lesson binders handed out to all the teachers.

The rest of the week is kind of a blur in my mind. When the kids aren’t in school, I lose track of the days. I do remember that I spent quite a bit of time shopping. Besides the usual grocery shopping, I was getting some things for Primary and returning some pajamas I bought for Seth that were too small, and so on.

The boys were still in party mode. The older two spent the night with their friend Brian on Monday night and their friend Ryan on Wednesday night. Brian was here playing most of the day on Monday, and Ryan and Bryson came over to play on Thursday. They didn’t have scouts / YM as usual on Wednesday, but the YM had an impromptu movie night at the YM president’s house that evening, and Jared had a stake 11 year old scout swimming activity Wednesday afternoon. (Indoors!) They worked on all the swimming requirements for 2^nd and 1^st Class scouts. Nice idea—I appreciated that, since we don’t have access to a pool. (Tanner still hasn’t passed off all the swimming requirements for 1^st Class! I wish I had thought to ask if he could go, too!)

I was busy Wednesday evening, also—the Primary presidency met at the church to put together our new bulletin board for the year. We got most of it done, and it is looking really good, I think. The theme for this year is “I Know My Savior Lives”. I am so excited about this theme—it is going to be awesome!!! We really want the kids to understand that everything we do in Primary and all the teachings of the gospel are intended to bring us closer to Christ, so we are going to focus all year on getting them to think about how gospel principles bring us closer to the Savior. We have our bulletin board set up with a picture of Christ with children in the center, and the rest of the board is a path of stepping stones winding all around to the picture in the center, with a sheep at the beginning of the path. (We used a sheep because Christ is our shepherd.) Every week, at the end of sharing time, we are going to ask them to answer the question “How will living this principle (whatever we just talked about) help you get closer to the Savior?” or a similar question. If they can give us a good answer, then we are going to move the sheep up the path. By good answer, I mean “thoughtful”, because we have had a lot of trouble with the kids (older ones especially) giving silly answers all the time. Anyway, our goal is to get to the picture in the middle by the end of the year. Periodically along the path we have little clumps of grass. When we get to one of those, we are going to do a special sharing time as a reward for getting that far.

Another thing we are going to do—we bought little notebooks for all the kids, and we are going to give them time about once a month to write or draw about what they’ve been learning. I found a bunch of really cute little notebooks at the dollar store so hopefully they will be excited to use them!

Frank worked Monday through Wednesday, but he had the rest of the week off. Thursday morning we got about an inch of snow. That day we took down the Christmas decorations. For New Year’s Eve, we just hung out. We had our traditional New Year’s Eve dinner of appetizers. This year we had mini quiches, pizza bites, shrimp, and mozzarella sticks. We also had some chips and dips. Everybody ate what they wanted; the boys played video games, and Frank and I mostly worked on our new jigsaw puzzle. I chose a good puzzle this year—by midnight, we were almost done! It usually takes us a few days to get the puzzle made. I always get a 1000 piece puzzle, and I always try to choose pictures with a lot of variety in pattern and color, which makes it easier to put together. This one was just easier than most of the others, I guess, because it went together quicker. Everybody stayed up until midnight—even Seth!! That was mainly because I was too engrossed in the puzzle to take the time to put him to bed, and besides he wasn’t acting crabby. However, I’m still surprised that he didn’t just conk out on his own.

Remember last week I said we did some secret service on Christmas Eve, but we got caught? Well, the reason we got caught is because one of the teen age boys in the family chased Jared & Tanner all the way down the street! On Sunday, he and his parents apologized for his behavior and on New Year’s Eve, he brought over some brownies and a bunch of New Year’s hats and horns for us. I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but they felt bad that he had chased them and scared them (and that they could have tripped and got hurt) when they were trying to do something nice, so they wanted to do something concrete to say they were sorry. So as a result, we all had fun hats to wear and horns to blow at midnight, which made it a little more fun than usual.

After midnight, all the boys went to bed immediately. It took Seth a little while to settle down so he didn’t go to sleep until nearly 1:00 am. Frank and I wanted to finish up the last few pieces of the puzzle (mainly because we thought it was a very real possibility that Seth would wake up in the morning and destroy the puzzle before we got a chance to finish it) so we did that and by the time we got to bed it was around 2:00 am.

We have all been enjoying the Wii. The boys play the games, and Frank and I have tried to do at least 30 minutes of aerobic / balance exercises each day. We have all found “favorite” things to do. I really like the running and biking activities because they are a lot more interesting than a treadmill or stationary bike would be, but I’m still indoors—not dealing with the elements!! Actually, the boys have been doing a lot of the exercise things as well because they are fun! Who can resist things like ski jumping, skateboarding, and a Segway course? Very cool.

I didn’t sleep all that well this week—I’ve noticed that when I don’t get to bed early and up early that I sleep poorly. I’m not sure if it was the tossing and turning, the extra exercise, or what, but I was very achy the first couple of days of the week and by Tuesday evening I had a tension headache and just hurt all over. Frank gave me a great back massage, though, and I took some Advil and I’ve been better since then. In other health news, I sadly fear that my right eye is going to need the same surgery that I had to get on my left eye a year ago. I’ve noticed my right eye watering a lot lately and the area by the tear duct is all swollen. I guess I’m going to have to see a doctor about that soon. It leads me to wonder, though, why both my eyes would have the same problem, and why it’s happening now when I’m an adult. It makes me think that there is some underlying cause for my tear ducts to be getting blocked. If we could figure that out, maybe we could resolve the underlying cause instead of having to do surgery on the other eye. My left eye has not given me trouble since the surgery, but I have noticed in the colder weather that it is watering a little bit also.

New Year’s Day was, thankfully, very low key. We all did our exercising and the boys played with their friend Joey in the afternoon. Today it is so very cold and windy! Frank was gone most of the day helping to cook food for a wedding. I went to a baptism for one of the little girls in our ward. It was very nice, except that it was very cold in the building. On the way back, I stopped at the Honeybaked Ham store to pick up a (yes, you guessed it) ham as well as some sides and a cheesecake—one of Frank’s clients gave him a generous gift certificate for that place. We are going to have a very yummy dinner tomorrow!

The boys and I worked on some homework and scouts (we are almost done with the Weather Merit Badge). I also worked on getting some things ready for Primary tomorrow. This evening was the Griffin Networks party. We weren’t sure we were going to make it since Frank was cooking all day and he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get away. But it turned out that they had enough help that he was able to leave early. We were a bit late to the party, but actually timed it well—we got there just in time to order our food. The party was held at a really nice restaurant here in Frederick—the kind that we never go to because it costs about $35-50 a plate. Actually, we’ve been there about 4 times for other company parties or to use gift certificates we’ve been given, so we know how good the food is, and we were really looking forward to it! We weren’t disappointed—the food was delicious, as always. Frank’s boss and his wife always get little toys for everybody—this year we got little wind up robots which have been a great hit with the boys! This was a good year for the company, so they also did a drawing with some really nice gifts. We didn’t get the television or the Blue Ray player, but we did get a very nice GPS. I am glad because Frank always has the GPS so now I get to use the old one! Frank’s boss also gave a short speech commending everyone for the work they did this year and he said some very complimentary things about Frank, which was nice to hear.

A friend / business associate of Frank’s boss who has been working as a contractor just got a full time job with Lockheed Martin, so he handed over all his clients to Frank’s company. That means there will be plenty of work to do this year, which is a great blessing. We feel very fortunate that things are going so well for his company, especially in the current economy. Of course, some of that is due to the hard work of Frank and others, but a lot of it is just being blessed, and we are grateful.

We got home from the party pretty late, and I’ve been having some difficulties printing some things for tomorrow, so now it’s really late—time for bed!! As I’m listening to the wind howling out there, I am very grateful for a warm house!