Weekly Review January 30 '10

We had our Ward Conference this week. Because the other ward that meets in our building also had ward conference, and normally our meeting times overlap, our meetings were moved from 11:00-2:00 to 1:00-4:00. It was not a good time change for Seth. He was tired, but wanted to stay awake which meant that he was constantly crawling under the benches and otherwise being disruptive, and he was crabby besides. I’m glad we don’t meet at that time every week! I really didn’t hear a word of Sacrament Meeting, and since I spent the other 2 hours in Primary, I didn’t really hear any of what the stake leaders prepared for us. I think I got most of the stake president’s talk in Ward Council, though. The choir sang and that went well in spite of the fact that we only had 2 practices (one of which I missed, because it was held at the same time as ward council). I did catch that the theme of the meetings was the importance of families. Well, I’m a firm believer in that concept already!

We had torrential rain and strong winds Monday morning, but the temperatures were in the low 60’s, so it really wasn’t so bad! It was especially nice in the afternoon when the rain stopped and the sun came out. Within a few hours, the temperatures started dropping, though, and they continued to drop a little bit every day so that by Friday we were in the very frigid teens. Brrrrrr!!

Monday evening we made a bunch of cookies—I was making white chocolate & macadamia nut cookies for book club, and Tanner was making chocolate chip cookie bars for family night treat. Frank helped Tanner with his, which I appreciated since I was trying to get laundry folded.

I had book club Tuesday afternoon; we discussed Pilgrim’s Progress, which was not an easy book to read, but it did make for a very interesting discussion. I actually didn’t finish it—the book is written in two parts, and I did finish the first part but I didn’t get very far into the second half. Now we are reading a novel called Eat Cake, which so far is very interesting and easy reading. For our potluck lunch next time, in honor of the book, we all have to bring some kind of cake! (Hopefully there will be some crab cakes or corn cakes or something, as well as the usual kind of cake, or it’s going to be dessert instead of lunch!)

I had visiting teaching appointments on Tuesday morning and Thursday evening, and my last appointment is tomorrow after church. We didn’t really intend to put it off until the last of the month—that’s just what ended up working out best with everybody’s schedules.

I’ve been busy this week with preparations for our baptism fireside, which is tomorrow evening. On Wednesday I took the boys to the church for basketball practice and while I was there I got a whole bunch of copies made for the fireside. After I got back, Frank went to the stake center to do some work on the computers; he picked the boys up from scouts after her was done there, and they all came home together.

I had lunch with my friend Rebecca on Thursday; it was nice getting a little caught up with her, but Seth was uncooperative there, also, and kept trying to escape the booth and run around the restaurant. Two year olds are so much fun!!

Friday morning we went and looked at a couple more houses. Both houses were priced within $5000 of each other, but the second house was MUCH larger. We actually like that house a lot, although the former owners had a thing for weird wallpaper. However, the property taxes on that house are huge! The asking price is the best price we’ve seen for the size of the house, though, and it’s in a neighborhood that we really like (right by our church), so we are trying to figure out if there’s any way we can make it work. So who knows…maybe we will actually take the plunge…but then again, maybe not!!

Frank has been really busy with work this week (don’t I say that every week?). He didn’t get home until 8:30 on Monday, and he’s been doing a lot of work in the evenings even when he’s home. We are thankful he has plenty of work to do, but a little more sleep would be nice! He didn’t have to work many hours on Friday, though, so as soon as the boys got home from school we went to the temple. There was one little hitch—the Prius died after Frank backed it out, and wouldn’t start again. We ended up pushing the car back into the parking space and we took the Expedition instead. After we got home from the temple (we did sealings, since neither one of us had much sleep Wednesday or Thursday nights; that seems to happen to us every time we try to go to the temple lately!), Frank gave the Prius a jump and then this morning he took it to get an oil change, and now it seems to be working fine except he has a brake light warning on still. Since the Prius is a hybrid, it has two batteries and one of them is very, very expensive to replace, so we are glad that it was not that battery that had the problems!

Today has been kind of a crazy day. Jared had a friend come over at 9:30, I had to be at the stake baptism at 10:00, the boys had to be at the stake center at 10:00 also—to help make desserts for our ward dinner tonight, and Frank was supposed to be at the stake center as soon after 10:00 as possible to help cook for the dinner. Frank stayed home with the younger boys (and Jared’s friend) while I took the older two to the stake center with me. We stopped at our church building on the way to pick up some serving carts, trays, and bowls that were needed at the stake center to help with dinner preparations. It started to snow right about the time we arrived at the stake center. The baptism was wonderful—they always are! When it was over, I took the older two boys home and Frank left to help with the cooking. However, the snow kept coming down, and by 1:00 they decided they had to cancel the dinner—again! This was our rescheduled “Christmas” dinner, which was also cancelled because of snow. Frank called me and asked me to come back to the church with the Expedition to help transport food / equipment. It took me a long time to get there because by then the roads were quite nasty and everyone was driving about 20 miles per hour. I ended up bringing home all the desserts that the youth had made (pudding parfaits, in cups on trays) and I am very proud of myself for getting them all home safely! Since there is not a refrigerator big enough to store them all in, we just left them out in the car—they’ll stay plenty cold out there! If church doesn’t get cancelled tomorrow, we’ll probably have a “munch and mingle” after church, and they will get eaten then.

The snow has continued to come down all day (and it’s still coming down). We have a good 6 inches accumulated out there so far. Although the ward dinner would have been nice, I’m kind of glad we don’t have to go anywhere else tonight! All the basketball games got cancelled also. All the cancellations made this day a lot less complicated than it would have been, so I’m grateful for that. Unfortunately, Frank slipped on ice at the church and pulled one of his inner thigh muscles pretty badly, so he is in a lot of pain and has spent all afternoon on the couch. I spent the whole afternoon trying to get the budget done—I got interrupted a lot! Because of the ward dinner, I hadn’t planned to make dinner tonight, but fortunately I cooked a big pot of pulled pork for sandwiches yesterday. It was supposed to be for dinner last night, but it didn’t get done in time so that worked out great—we had dinner all ready for tonight! (Yesterday we had to pick up a pizza for the boys and stopped at Taco Bell on the way home from the temple for us.)

By the way, Frank has lost about 10 pounds in the last few weeks. He’s really been watching what he eats and trying to exercise (not as much as he’d like—his work schedule keeps getting in the way). I’m proud of him for accomplishing that much! It seems to me like every time he makes progress he gets sick or injures himself, though, and that’s happened again today. I’m sure he won’t be able to exercise for a while, but hopefully he’ll be able to get back into the routine soon.

Seth has been pretty stubborn about going to sleep at nights lately. I’ve spent a couple of hours a lot of evenings trying to get him down lately. This week I’ve tried putting him down for a nap every couple of days instead of every day, and that seems to be helping. He is very delightful when he isn’t having one of his stubborn moments. I really see his imagination soaring. He is really funny, though—he imagines things like robots, monsters and dinosaurs all the time. Today he came to me whimpering with fright. I asked him if something scared him, and he said “Yes, the dinosaur scared me!” He also likes to “read” books—I read a book to him, and then he “reads” it to me.

Speaking of Seth, he needs to have a bath and then go to bed (this is one of the days he didn’t have a nap) so I’d better post this and go do that.