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
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 30th, 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 6th.) 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
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!
1 comment:
Taran and Timo also refuse to wear coats, they mostly wear their hoodies too. Taran also doesn't remember his locker combo! Related? I too want to de-clutter. I read that book you suggested and was all gung-ho but then the holidays came...Now I am wondering how I am going to do it since I need to plan it first right? To be successful... maybe the master bath is the way to go first! Good luck with it!
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