Weekly Review February 27 '10

Valentine's gifts from last week:

All the boys got cards and treat sacks.

I got lots of chocolate and a digital photo frame.

Look what popped up in the front yard this week!

I was getting ready for bed last night when Seth walked in the bathroom looking like this. I had to get a picture! Isn't he cute?

Right now (as I'm writing) he's taking a nap!

Wow! February is almost over! I'm glad, because that means we are just that much closer to spring! We had two different storms predicted for our area this week, but both of them mostly missed us--we got a dusting of snow on both Thursday and this morning. Guess what? I didn't hear a single person complain about those storms missing us!! We did get very strong winds on Thursday / Friday, and a couple of schools had to close early on Thursday because of power outages, but thankfully that didn't effect us. In spite of the fact that temperatures have been very cold, I discovered crocus blooming in the front yard this week as the snow receded (see photo above). I am also seeing lots of green spears poking up in the flower beds. So winter is going to have to give up soon!

Update on the last day of school: The school board has applied for a waiver of the 180 day school year, and they expect to get it. Because adding two days on to the end of the year puts the last day of school on a Monday, they asked for that day to be included in the waiver. If it's granted, that means the last day of school will be Friday, June 11th instead of Monday, June 14th. I'm hoping that works out! As soon as we find out for sure, we will buy plane tickets. At this point, we are hoping to get tickets to arrive in Utah sometime around June 15th and we hope to stay about 2 weeks, so we'd leave to come home around the 29th. Mom, we haven't discussed all your other questions as a family yet, but we plan to do that tomorrow and we'll e-mail you all our responses as soon as we do.

On Sunday while we were at church, Seth was struggling to get off Frank's lap (he likes to crawl under the pews and run down the aisles, if he can escape) when the back of his head hit Frank really hard in the nose. Frank said he "saw stars". His nose has been very painful all week. At first we thought it might be broken--it was so tender that he couldn't breath through his nose--but now we're pretty sure that it was just badly bruised. It's feeling a lot better now, although it's still very sore.

Sunday afternoon Scott was finally able to get his patriarchal blessing. (If you lost count, that was the 5th appointment we made to get that done!) It was worth the wait; he received a beautiful blessing. I know it meant a lot to him; he was visibly emotional when the patriarch finished the blessing. As his mom, I am really grateful for all the counsel he received. Of course, we are looking forward to getting the typed copy of his blessing so we can remember more details.

The rest of the week has been busy--we finally had a full week of school with no snow days, early releases, or delayed openings! We got to bed pretty late Monday night because Tanner had forgotten / procrastinated a school project. I had to take him to go get some supplies from the store and then we helped him get his project put together. The project was part of an assignment he had to read a biography. (He was done with the reading.) He had to create an image of the person he read about, using an empty bottle. The biography he read was about Shaquille O'Neal. I think the Shaquille we created out of an empty juice bottle was pretty cool, but I forgot to take pictures. Maybe when he gets it back I'll take some and post them. He did say that when he turned it in, he thought that his person looked a lot better than most of the others.

My friend Marci, who moved to Kentucky in November, was here visiting this week. Her husband had to come back to Frederick to work this week so she came with him. I got to see her on Monday and Tuesday; we did some shopping together which was very fun. I love going clothes shopping with Marci! She's good at finding deals and has a good sense of what will look good on me. I was looking for jeans and long sleeve shirts, since nearly all the jeans and long sleeve shirts I own are getting very worn out. We were successful in finding me three shirts that were only $3.50 each (normally $34 each) so that was great. I got one pair of jeans also, but I'm not positive I'm going to keep them since they don't fit as well as I'd like. Marci was supposed to be here until this morning, but her two oldest kids got sick, so they decided to go home early--left Thursday afternoon. I'm glad I got to see her and hope she'll get to visit again. I've really missed her!!

Scott wasn't feeling very well on Sunday and by Monday morning he was really not doing well. He had a sore throat, head ache, and a lot of congestion. He went to Seminary Monday morning but then he came home and went back to bed. He slept for several hours. He missed school on Tuesday also, but he was feeling better that day so on Wednesday he went back to school. One thing that was convenient about him being home those two days--I could leave Seth at home napping while I went out with Marci.

I took Snickers to the groomer on Tuesday. That turned out to be really convenient because my visiting teachers came that morning while he was gone, and one of them has a son who is terrified of Snickers. Marci was with me when I picked Snickers up. The groomer said to me "I just have to tell you that he is the most beautiful Maltese I've ever seen." I think that pleased Marci (the breeder) even more than it did me! Snickers is going to have another new set of siblings, by the way. They were actually going to get his mom "fixed" because she had such a large litter last time (7 puppies) but she went into heat earlier than they expected, so I guess she's going to have one more litter.

Book chat was on Wednesday. I was late because I had a busy morning so I was still making my contribution for the potluck lunch when I should have been leaving. (I had a visiting teaching appointment and had to go shopping that morning also.) I tried a new recipe--corn cakes. They were a kind of pancake made with fresh corn and chopped onions. You put salsa and sour cream on top. They were actually pretty good--I'll probably make that recipe again. We were discussing the book "Eat Cake" so we had decided that for the potluck, we should all bring some kind of cake. Our lunch was mostly dessert, as you can imagine, but we did have some potato cakes as well as my corn cakes along with all the more traditional cakes such as cheesecake, chocolate cherry cake, and pound cake. It was yummy!! Now my group is reading The Help, which I already read a few months back. I am thrilled about that because that means I will have time to finish the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I read Return of the King a lot this week, and I only have 3 or 4 chapters left. I am really enjoying it. When I get done with that, I will read the book I just bought at the LDS book store last night.

The boys had YM / Scouts Wednesday evening. When I went to pick them up, all the young men and young women were eating these huge hunks of vanilla ice cream. I found out that they had done a "Winter Olympics" and had finished up with a "sculpture" contest, using vanilla ice cream. So after they were done making the sculptures, they let the kids eat them. I guess they each received about half a box of ice cream to make their sculpture, so they got to eat a lot.

Frank and I were able to go to the temple last night; we did initiatories. I got finished about a half hour before Frank did (they only gave me 6 names, for some reason) so I had to wait a while, but that turned out to be great because while I was waiting in the main hallway, I got to see several people from our former ward in Delaware. There was a meeting at the temple for the high priests & wives in their ward that evening, so many of them came early to go through an endowment session first. I saw my good friends Yvette Hadley & Linda Moyes(and their husbands) as well as our former bishop and his wife. There were others who looked familiar to me, but I didn't know them well enough to remember their names! Anyway, it was fun to visit briefly with the ones I did know. After we left the temple, we went to the bookstore (quick visit) and then we found a restaurant to eat dinner. It was very crowded by then, so we had to wait a long time, but if we had driven home right then we would have been stuck in rush hour traffic anyway so that was a more pleasant way to spend that time. After we had dinner (Mexican food--it was yummy!) we went to Frank's boss's house to pick up some things Frank needed for work he's doing. We ended up staying there a long time talking, so we didn't get home until 10:00. It was a nice evening, though, to be out alone together.

Jared spent the night with his friend Jack last night (went home from school with him) so he wasn't home but when we got home Tanner was watching a movie with Seth and Scott was fast asleep on the couch!

Frank has been very busy with work again this week. Ever since the snow storms cleared out, he has been innundated with work. He has spent a good part of today doing work, and he still has a 4 hour project to do tonight. He has been working from here most evenings this week, also, after putting in a full day during the day. I hope things settle down a little for him soon!

I've had a busy day running errands, helping Scott with a big school project (yes, he procrastinated also), and doing Primary stuff. Now we are watching the news coverage in Hawaii of the anticipated Tsunami caused by the earthquake in Chile. We are glad that Juan was not in Chile when that happened, and we hope that his family is ok.