Weekly Reveiw March 27 '10

I have a lot of things written on my calendar this week, also. Life is busy!!

I guess I left off Monday morning. That afternoon (after school) I had a mammogram—I feel like a pro at that now, since I’ve had so many in the last year. This was my “annual” check up and the results came back normal, so I’m good for another year this time.

Tuesday I had book chat; we discussed “The Help”, which I read several months ago. I was assigned to bring a vegetable, and in honor of the book, which takes place in the south, I brought okra. I was surprised how many people had never had it. Most people liked it, though. We had a pretty interesting discussion about prejudice, and ways that we still are prejudice in our society today. Good “food for thought”.

Wednesday the boys had basketball practice and scouts and I had an appointment to meet with the bishop to discuss children I’m concerned about. I dropped the boys off for practice and went to Wal-Mart to get oil for the Expediton (I know it has a leak somewhere—every few months my oil light starts coming on) and a couple of things for Seth’s quiet book, which I was working on earlier that day. When I got back to the church for my appointment, I found out that the bishop wasn’t there because the RS president had been in an accident and he had gone down to help her. (She’s an older single lady with no family close by.) However, one of the den leaders didn’t show up for cubs, so I stayed to help the other den leader. By the time cubs ended, the bishop was back, so I met with him then. We had a lot to discuss, so we got home a lot later than normal. By the way, the RS president is fine—the accident was fairly serious, but she wasn’t injured and it wasn’t her fault.

I took Tanner to the doctor Thursday afternoon and after discussing it for a while, she decided to increase his dose of medicine and we’ll see how he does. Hopefully it will help him focus more without negative side effects! That evening I had a visiting teaching appointment.

Friday was a crazy day. I took Scott to Seminary as usual and Frank took him to school. Frank had work plans that day, but someone was coming to fix the furnace that morning, so he stuck around for that. The furnace guy was still not able to stop the loud noise, but he thinks he’s figured out what the problem is and he ordered a different part. I’m so glad it hasn’t been cold enough for us to need to use the furnace much, or I’d be very frustrated by now with the long, drawn-out process of getting it fixed! While the furnace guy was still here, I went out to take the boys to school, and the Expedition wouldn’t start. Lights would come on and everything, but when I turned the key—nothing! So I had to take Frank’s car instead. Frank tried jumping it, but that didn’t work (and we were pretty sure the battery wasn’t the problem, just had to rule that out) so he called our favorite mechanic and our insurance company, and arranged to have the Expedition towed over there to be fixed. He suspected the problem was the starter. I was working on the budget, but in the meantime I started to feel pretty sick to my stomach and while Frank was out buying a new starter to send to the mechanic with the car, I finally succumbed and lost my breakfast. After that I felt better for a while, as long as I didn’t eat anything! The tow truck arrived and while Frank was out talking to the driver, I got a phone call from the school. It was the principal, letting me know that another boy in Tanner’s class starting hitting Tanner in the arm. Apparently, he wanted to sit in the seat where Tanner was sitting. She said Tanner had not provoked the other boy at all, but after the other boy had hit Tanner several times, Tanner reacted by hitting back (just once, in the arm also). She told me that the school district rule is that if you are in a fight at all, even if you don’t start it, you can be suspended. However, because it was obvious Tanner was not at fault, she was not going to suspend him, but she did have a talk with him and explained that he could be suspended for doing that, so he shouldn’t do it again, and she kept him with her for lunch that day. I’m not sure what happened to the other boy. (I forgot to ask.) Anyway, she said I could talk to Tanner if I wanted (I did) so we chatted for a few minutes. He wasn’t hurt, and he didn’t sound upset or angry. I asked him why he hit back—was it just instinctual?—and he said yes. Hopefully there won’t be any more problems after this. But anyway, at that point I was kind of afraid to know what was going to happen next—what a crazy day!

As the afternoon progressed, I started to feel worse and got sick a couple more times, even though I hadn’t eaten anything. I called one of my counselors that afternoon and asked her to attend the baptism the next morning. I’m glad I did that because although I was able to start keeping drink and small amounts of food down on Saturday, I was still very weak and my kidneys and joints hurt a lot. I didn’t do much at all on Saturday; just lay on the couch reading. Unfortunately, Frank started feeling sick Saturday morning and he got worse as the day went on. He never did throw up, but he was very nauseated all that day and all of Sunday also. Scott ended up making dinner Saturday night, and all of the boys did a lot to help take care of Seth that day.

We had a few really nice days this week, and quite a few chilly, raw spring days. I managed to get some weeding done in the front yard and Scott mowed the lawn so the yard, which was looking pretty scraggly, looks a lot better now.

We are looking forward to Spring Break, Easter and General Conference!

Weekly Review March 20 '10

My calendar for this week has something written on every day; there were a lot of doctor visits and the like going on!

In spite of everything going on, I didn’t get a very early start most days. The time change has really thrown most of us off. Tanner is having a hard time going to sleep, Seth has almost completely stopped napping (he goes to bed earlier but wakes up around midnight a lot of nights), and the rest of us are just tired all the time. Sunday was a bad night—Seth didn’t sleep well and when he woke me up I had trouble going back to sleep. Frank took Scott to Seminary and to school, but then he fell back asleep (not intentional) and didn’t wake up until 8:10, so we had to rush to get the other two boys to school! (They were a few minutes late, actually.) I couldn’t figure out why I hadn’t awakened earlier—even if I don’t sleep well, I always wake up around 7:00—until I remembered that my body thought it was a little after 7:00, not a little after 8:00. Hopefully we will all adjust soon. I don’t know anyone who really likes Daylight Savings Time, and I’m really wondering why we still do it!

Sunday I had visiting teaching right after church, and Frank & Tanner went home teaching. Our home teachers came to see us, as well.

Monday I had another visiting teaching appointment in the morning and I went straight from there to look at a house in Walkersville. The house was ok—pretty good size and the bathrooms were updated—but we’d have to get them to come down quite a bit for it to be affordable, and the bottom line is, it really didn’t excite me too much. Maybe I am just too picky, but if I’m going to go into more debt, it’s not worth it to me unless I get something that I can really feel good about. I’ve looked at enough houses to know now what I really like and what would be best for us, and I’ve decided that what I really want is just still out of our price range—not far out, but still out. So unless we find a phenomenal deal, we are just going to stay here.

On Tuesday after school I took the older 3 boys to get haircuts. Then on Wednesday I got my hair cut and some highlights put in, and Seth got a trim. My friend Kathleen, who lives in my ward, did all the haircuts. She does a great job, and it’s really a nice arrangement because I go to her house and Seth loves playing with Kathleen’s son, Tyler, so I can take him with me and he stays completely occupied the whole time I’m getting my hair done. Frank got his hair cut this week also, but he went to a salon since he doesn’t know from one moment to the next if he’s going to be working. He had some time one day, so he stopped on his way home from work to get it done. So now the entire family looks very nice! I should really take a family picture!

Tanner and Frank both went back to the foot doctor on Wednesday for round #2 of the wart removals. Frank’s foot is as sore now as it was after the first round, unfortunately. Tanner’s is in a better location that doesn’t cause him pain. They both have to go back for round #3 in two weeks. I hope they are done soon!

On Thursday Tanner had a dentist appointment right after school to get a cavity filled. Thankfully, he was in and out in only 20 minutes! They didn’t numb him up, and he said it didn’t hurt at all. That evening the missionaries came over to do a “missionary activity” with us, which basically means that we each have a goal now to do something missionary related with someone we know. These sisters are doing a great job; I’m very impressed with them. We always enjoy the messages they share with us.

Friday afternoon I took Seth and Snickers to the playground for about an hour. It was nice to get outside for a while! Frank and I had planned to go to the temple that evening, but he ended up having to work a lot later than he’d planned and his foot was really hurting him anyway, so we decided to hold off on that.

I was able to go to the temple Saturday morning instead. I don’t feel like I was home much that day since that evening we had the adult session of stake conference. Frank and I had planned to go to dinner, but we left later than we intended, so we didn’t think we had enough time to go to a sit down place. We ended up going to Arby’s instead, which was a good idea since that was quick enough that we got to the meeting early and got a good place to sit. The meeting was good; the speakers were our stake presidency and their wives. I have a feeling we are going to get a new stake presidency next fall.

One thing that made this week a little less hectic is that we didn’t have any church meetings / activities except for stake conference meetings. For us, that meant that no one had to go anywhere on Wednesday night—nice for a change!

In between all those appointments, I did the usual house cleaning / laundry / shopping / Primary stuff. I also worked on Seth’s quiet book a little bit and tried to get some exercise every day. I went online to research plane tickets. Meanwhile, Frank was very busy with work again—he wasn’t around a whole lot. That’s getting to be the “norm”. I think I saw him a little more than last week, though.

Scott and Tanner are both struggling with some of their school classes again, so I’ve been keeping a closer eye on their homework, and trying to help them do better. Tanner has seemed a lot more forgetful and unfocused lately. When I spoke to his teachers at school, they said they’ve noticed the same thing, so he is going back to the doctor next week to see if his medication needs to be adjusted. He’s been growing a lot, so it’s possible that he’s “outgrown” his dosage. Scott is mostly struggling with English—he’s in honors English, and for the first time I see him getting the kind of assignments / work load that I remember getting in advanced English classes. It’s thrown him for a loop—he’s not used to having to work that hard! We / he had a pretty major meltdown on Wednesday, but after everyone cooled down we worked things out and I’ve seen more effort from him the last few days.

Weather wise, it appears that spring is here to stay. We had a very wet / chilly week end, but on Monday the sun came out and it’s been very nice most of the week. (And we are very thankful we haven’t had the flooding that so many places have been having!) The mornings are still quite cold, but the days warm up very nicely. We even had one day that the temperature got up to 70 degrees! Scott is pestering me to buy him some new shorts (he’s outgrown the old ones). Even with the colder night time temperatures, we haven’t needed to use the furnace at all—which is nice, since no one has come back to fix it yet so it would still be very noisy if it were running. My daffodils started blooming this week also.

With the warmer weather, Seth wants to be outside all the time. That’s difficult, since most of the work I have to do is inside, but I’m trying to give him some outside time every day—even if it’s just out on the back deck. He knows how to unlock and open all the doors in the house, which has been challenging for me because he is constantly trying to “escape”!

Now it’s Monday morning and I never got this letter posted, so I’ll finish up. Yesterday we had stake conference—it was a broadcast from Salt Lake City. It’s hard to believe how much the weather has changed since they had to postpone the broadcast 5 weeks ago! We had four speakers—I’ve forgotten the first speaker’s name; he’s a member of the Seventy and from his accent I’d guess he’s from somewhere in Africa. We also had Sister Thompson from the RS General presidency, Elder Jay Jenson of the Seventy, and President Boyd K. Packer. The meeting actually ended about 20 mintues early! President Packer spoke last, and I really enjoyed his talk. He directed most of his remarks to the young people, which I especially appreciated for the boys’ sakes. He really gave them some great counsel! It was nice having the broadcast, but Frank didn’t get to sit down for most of the meeting since he was responsible for setting up all the audio visual equipment and they did have a few technical difficulties (nothing the interrupted the broadcast, thankfully). He got there early, though, and saved us a good seat near the rear of the chapel which was nice for us.

After the meeting our friends, the Koettings, came over for dinner as usual. As always, we enjoyed visiting with them most of the afternoon. About the time they left, my stomach started to bother me and I didn’t feel very well the rest of the evening. I felt achy and cold as well, but I never did get sick and this morning I feel a lot better, thankfully.

It is raining again this morning (hard in spurts), and we even had a few flashes of lightning. One of them startled me a lot because it was very loud and came out of the blue! One of my counselors and I were able to visit a new family with two young Primary kids this morning. It was fun to get to know them better.

I am not happy about the political news this morning, but I’m hopeful that the Supreme Court will rule that the new health care bill is unconstitutional. (Since it really is.) Now I’d better post this letter before another week goes by!

PS to Weekly Review March 13 '10

Sorry about the crazy spacing between paragraphs on my posts lately! For some reason, blogger has stopped putting spaces between my paragraphs, even though I put spaces in when I type. When I post, the paragraph breaks disappear for some inexplicable reason. So this week I put two spaces between paragraphs--and blogger left huge spaces in between paragraphs! I don't get it. At least huge breaks between paragraphs makes it more "readable" than no spaces. Someday I may figure out what's going on, but until I do, please bear with me!

Weekly Review March 13 '10

We'll start this week with photos of the Monocacy River in flood:

The line of trees (behind the larger tree in front) is on an island, which is currently buried under water.

Here's the view from our back deck (without zooming in; I zoomed in on the photo above):

Well, I think the only thing that broke this week was Jared’s glasses frames. He didn’t do anything unusual to them, either—he just folded them up Tuesday evening and one of the arms broke off. When we called to find out how old they were, we discovered that they are almost 2 years old, so I decided it’s about time to take Jared in to have his eyes checked anyway. He had them checked today and his new glasses will hopefully be in some time this week.

The furnace and the dishwasher are both fixed now although someone is still going to come out to look at the furnace again this week—it works, but it’s a lot louder than it used to be. They say the noise is caused by something vibrating, so they are going to replace something else to fix that problem. When the guy came to look at it on Tuesday he replaced the part we’d ordered and then he discovered that the furnace still didn’t work! So he had to replace another part and then it worked. It ended up costing more than we had anticipated because of that, of course, but it was still a lot less than it would have cost with the other company. The dishwasher was fixed late Wednesday afternoon and it runs great now. It is so nice to have a functioning dishwasher again!! I kept thinking, as I spent a half hour or more doing dishes every day how much time that would add up to over a lifetime. I have so much more time to do things I enjoy than my grandmothers or even my mother had, when I look at it that way. I’m grateful for that!

Frank has been insanely busy this week with work. Don’t I say that every week? They really need to hire another person to help keep up with all the work they have. But that’s a good problem to have, at least—beats not having enough work. I do hope they can get some help soon, though, because poor Frank is pretty worn out. We’d like to see him a little bit more, also! Fortunately, his feet are feeling much better this week.

Sunday evening the two older boys had a fireside at the church. There was a teacher development meeting going on at the same time that I was interested in attending, so I took them to the fireside and stayed for the meeting. I’m glad I did—it was a good meeting and I think I learned some things that will help me teach more effectively.

Tanner and Jared had MSA testing this week. Jared seemed to come down with a mild version of the stomach flu that Tanner and Seth had—he was up in the night on Tuesday evening because he didn’t feel well, and then he threw up early Wednesday morning. He was tired that day, and didn’t eat much, but he never threw up again and felt fine by Thursday. That was really lucky because Wednesday was the one day this week that he didn’t have testing! So now he doesn’t have to make anything up.

Monday morning Snickers had his annual check up. He wasn’t too thrilled about it (I don’t think I’ve ever seen his tail tucked between his legs that far!) but he behaved pretty well. He had to get blood drawn and 2 vaccines, poor animal! He’s good for a while now, though. He has to get one more booster next month, and then he’s good for a year. Overall, he’s healthy—he just has some issues with his knee joints popping out which means as he gets older he’ll probably develop arthritis in his knees.

Tuesday my visiting teachers came to see me—for once, none of the kids were home sick! Frank was here, though, although he was downstairs working the whole time. One of my visiting teachers is going to have twins any day now, so they wanted to get their visits done early this month!

Wednesday evening we had a Relief Society Activity to celebrate the RS birthday. (Scott and Tanner came with me because they had volunteered to help in the nursery; I brought Seth also so that Frank could get some work done.) We learned some cool and really easy ways to decorate cupcakes, did a “service exchange”, and talked about giving gifts to ourselves by choosing something we really want to do and then getting it done by doing it in 10 minute increments, if necessary. I liked that idea—I really needed to hear that at my point in life! I never have large blocks of time to do things which is probably why I have a list of projects a mile long that I am not getting done. But if I do 10 minutes at a time I’ll get done eventually, right? I am not the type of person who works very efficiently in small increments of time, but I’m going to try it anyway. Overall, it was a fun evening; I’m glad I got to go.

I was supposed to have lunch with my friend Christine on Thursday, but she forgot about it and scheduled an appointment to get two wisdom teeth pulled. That was ok with me, though, because I woke up with a slightly sore throat. I used the freed up time to work on Seth’s quiet book; it felt good to make a little progress on that project! I worked on it a little more Friday and today.

Thursday evening I went to interview another Primary child who is turning 12. That’s the third interview I’ve done and I feel like maybe I’m starting to get the hang of it. There really isn’t a lot of guidelines on what I’m supposed to do in those interviews, so I feel like I mostly stare at the child wondering what to say. This is especially true if they have not done their Faith in God—if they had been working on that, I could ask them about that!

The weather has warmed up a lot this week. We had a couple of really nice spring-like days—I love it!! (And it’s been nice that we haven’t needed our noisy furnace much.) All the snow has melted from yards and all that is left is the remains of snow banks made by snow plows along the edges of streets and in parking lots. Some of those are still pretty big, and they are unsightly, but I don’t notice them so much now that other things are starting to turn green and come back to life. There are tons of green shoots coming up in my flower beds, and more crocus have appeared on my lawn. (I’m excited to see all the bulbs coming up that Scott & I planted last fall.) I’ve been seeing rabbits and squirrels also, and there is a noticeable increase in the volume of birdsong in the mornings. The last couple of days it’s been raining a lot. I am so glad it’s rain and not snow!!!

Speaking of snow, the state waived one of the snow make up days so it looks like the last day of school is going to be Friday, June 11^th. I’m starting to shop for plane tickets.

I haven’t done much house searching lately, but I did look at one house Thursday afternoon that just came up for sale. It is right across the street from my friend Marci’s house and it’s the same floor plan as hers except it has a bump out for a “morning room” behind the kitchen, so it’s a little bit bigger. The house was in pretty good shape, had all the space we would ever need (they had finished the basement with 3 bedrooms and there are 4 upstairs!), and the yard is huge. The price they’re asking is amazing for the size of house and the area we’re in. The big catch, though—the property taxes are enormous! We keep running into that problem. The principal and interest payment on the house would actually only be about $100 more per month than what we are paying for our total mortgage (including escrow) now. But the property taxes add on another $650 per month, which puts it out of our price range. It’s frustrating! Because of this issue, we’ve decided that we’re going to start focusing more on houses outside of the Frederick city limits. The taxes are much lower for those houses because there’s only county tax, no city tax. Frederick city taxes are just incredibly high.

Frank was at work pretty late last night and then he did some work from here today—they are setting up a new server for a client, which always takes a lot of time and has to be done after hours. Tanner and Scott had a YM activity at the YM president’s house from 7:00-10:00. Frank got home before they had to come home, but they got a ride home with one of the leaders which was nice. I think they had a good time. They were both invited to spend the night with friends, but we said “no”. They weren’t very happy about it, but sometimes we just need to be a family! I don’t think it’s good for them to be up late every week end.

Today has been busy, but I didn’t have a huge list of things that had to be done, for once, and that was a nice change. I worked on Seth’s quiet book (as I mentioned earlier) and finished reading a book called Sweetwater Creek. It was mostly a good book, but I don’t feel like I can recommend it because of a few scenes that happened near the end. There were a lot of strong emotions going on in that book! We had the sister missionaries over for dinner this evening and they gave us a really good message.

Seth fell down earlier this week on one of our walks with Snickers. He scraped up the back of his right hand, near the wrist, pretty good so I put a band aid on it. That turned out to be kind of a pain because the band aid wouldn’t stay on very well and Seth developed the habit, early on, of screaming whenever it came off. We’ve gone through several band aids and my nerves are a bit frayed, but I finally convinced him tonight that he doesn’t need a band aid on it anymore—it’s healing nicely. I can tell he’s trying to figure out what’s going on. At first he kept asking me why he had a hole in his hand! I had to explain that it’s a scab, not a hole. Now that the scab is starting to come off, he’s confused about that, too. Oh, the joys of being two (and being the mother of a two)!

Well, we have to set our clocks forward an hour (I hate that!) so we’re losing time and I’d better get to bed.

Weekly Review March 6 '10

This week was all about illnesses and repairs. Frank wasn’t feeling too well the early part of this week—he had a bad headache, mild stomach upset, and chills.

Tanner started feeling sick on Tuesday morning. He was complaining about his stomach hurting when he got up, and within an hour or so he threw up, so he stayed home from school that day. By evening he was able to keep down liquids and light food, but I kept him home on Wednesday “just to be sure”. He was a lot perkier that day and ate regular food and kept it down, so I let him go to YM that evening. By the time he got home from there, however, he was complaining about his stomach hurting again and before bedtime he threw up again—and again around 2:00 am. So he stayed home Thursday and Friday also.

Meanwhile, Seth threw up Thursday morning around 4:00 am. He immediately fell back asleep, but threw up again at 5:00 am and 6:00 am. Unfortunately, Frank had left for work at 3:45 so I had to take Scott to Seminary (I tried to get him a ride, but that didn’t work out.) Tanner was sick and asleep in the living room (he wanted to be closer to the bathroom) so I woke Jared up and had him stay in my bed next to Seth, who was on the floor in my room. When I got back from taking Scott to Seminary, Seth was throwing up again. He didn’t go back to sleep after that, and for the next 3 hours or so he threw up every couple of minutes. Fortunately, Scott got a ride to school from the church and I found someone who could take Jared to school, so I didn’t have to leave again. I stayed on the couch holding Seth and a bucket! The poor little guy was so miserable for those couple of hours, until he finally fell back asleep around 9:45. He slept for over an hour; when he woke back up I started giving him a tablespoon of soda every 10 minutes. He threw up again about 40 minutes later, so I waited for an hour and then started the doses of soda again. This time he kept the soda down for 2 hours and by later in the day he was able to eat a few crackers and a little bit of egg. He started to get some of his energy back that evening, also. He slept solid all night long Thursday night, and by Friday he seemed to be mostly his old self again although I was very careful what I gave him to eat and he really didn’t eat much of anything I gave him. Today he seems to be completely recovered, though.

On Wednesday Tanner and Frank had appointments with a podiatrist to have plantar warts removed from their feet. That wasn’t a big deal except for one of Frank’s warts was actually under his toenail, so they had to grind down through the toenail to get to remove the wart. The podiatrist said that one would be very sore—and she was right! He has been hobbling around on that foot ever since and it has caused him a lot of pain. Today it started to look red and swollen, so he called the doctor and they called in an antibiotic for him. I hope he feels better soon! In spite of his painful toes and not feeling well, he has put in a lot of hours at work.

The dishwasher would not start on Sunday. We had trouble getting it started one day last week also, but were finally successful in getting it to start. This time we couldn’t get it to start at all so on Monday we called about having someone come look at it. No one could come until Wednesday. The repairman came to look at it Wednesday morning and he figured out what’s wrong, but the new part won’t be in until this Wednesday! In the meantime, we’ve been “enjoying” lots of family “togetherness” while washing dishes. We’ve only had the dishwasher since last June, so at least it is still under warranty and we don’t have to pay to get it fixed.

The heater is not under warranty, though, and that’s the other thing that broke this week. I think it was around Tuesday or Wednesday that I noticed that although the heater seemed to be running almost constantly, I was still cold. I mentioned it to Frank, but he was too busy to check it out. On Friday he looked at the furnace and determined that something was definitely wrong, but he didn’t know what exactly so he called a repairman. The repairman was able to come right away and he was able to figure out what was wrong, but the part we need was not in stock anywhere in the whole region. He said we could pay extra to have it sent “over night”—which meant it would get here on Monday. Oh, and the cost to have it fixed was going to be $475, not counting the $100 we already paid him to diagnose the problem. We asked him to order the part (what else could we do?) but then Frank decided to call a client he has who does HVAC stuff to see if they could get the part in sooner. They couldn’t, but they offered to fix the furnace at cost in exchange for Frank doing some computer work for them. Frank checked with his boss, who said it was ok, so that’s what we’re going to do (we cancelled the order with the other place). It’s only going to cost about $150 instead of $475—big help! We have still been without heat, though, but fortunately the weather hasn’t been terribly cold—50’s during the day and 30’s at nights. It is still very chilly in the house but it could be a lot worse!

I’m wondering what is going to happen next—it seems like we’ve had to deal with far too many expensive repairs around here lately!! That, and medical bills….

Let’s see, what else happened this week? Sunday I had ward council before church and I was very late because I got the time messed up in my head and thought it started at 10:00 instead of 9:30! I was waiting outside the bishop’s office by 9:45 for bishopric meeting to get out (I thought) but by 5 after 10:00 when no one else had showed up, I realized something was wrong…boy, I felt dumb!! I forgot to mention that 2 Sundays ago Scott gave a talk in church and he did a very good job. I still remember his first talk as a 12 year old, when he spoke for about 30 seconds! He’s come a long way since then.

The earlier part of the week I managed to get some organizing done. The month of March is my month to do the kitchen. I cleaned up my desk, the console table, and the pantry. The corner of the kitchen where my desk is located looks much neater now. I still have a lot of work to do, though. I also did some organizing in Seth’s room—went through his toys and clothes to weed out things he’s grown out of and things that are broken. His room is looking much nicer now, also.

I finished reading Return of the King. I thought the ending was a bit anti-climatic, but it is a great series—really enjoyed it, and I can appreciate the genius of the author! I’m still working my way through the appendices at the back, but I don’t feel as driven to finish those—I’ve finished the stories, at least! On Thursday when I was sitting on the couch holding Seth for hours, I decided I might as well start watching the movies (I refused to watch the movies until I had read the books.) I watched the first movie, which I’ve actually seen already (watched it after I finished the first book years ago). Tanner didn’t want to watch the second movie, and I kind of wanted to refresh my memory about how the first movie went anyway. We have the extended versions of the other two movies, so I’m not sure I’m going to have time to watch them anytime soon! I might have to watch them in installments.

Wednesday evening I had a Primary presidency meeting and afterwards I interviewed a Primary girl who is about to turn 12. Friday I had my annual GYN check up. Frank and I went out to eat last night; on the way home we stopped by the Blue & Gold Banquet. This is the first year in a long time that we haven’t had a Cub Scout age boy, but I still felt the need to stop by to do the “Primary president thing”—that is, support the boys! We got there just in time to see the awards and enjoy the cakes the boys made for dessert. The cakes, as always, were very impressive! Very cleverly decorated and they tasted good, too.

Jared went home from school with his friend Sage Friday afternoon to help celebrate Sage’s birthday. They played laser tag and went to a restaurant for pizza and cake. Scott and Jared both went to spend the night with their friends Ryan and Bryson. Tanner was invited also, but I wouldn’t let him go since he didn’t go to school and was still getting over being sick.

I’ve been trying to work on Seth’s quiet book all week but other things kept taking precedence, so I only managed to work on it for a few minutes today. My back has been hurting today (feels like I strained it just a little) so I didn’t get the floors swept and mopped either. (I’m sure Frank would do it for me if he wasn’t having the trouble with his feet.) One thing I did do today was fill out a letter of recommendation for our friends, the Becks, who are applying to adopt through LDS family services. They called us last week to tell us the good news and ask us if we would do a letter of recommendation for them. We are very excited for them!! They are great parents and any baby would be lucky to go to their home, so we hope they get a baby soon. (And if you know a baby who needs a good home…please consider them!)

Now it’s quite late and I’m very tired, so off to bed I go!

PS to Weekly Review February 27 '10

I forgot to mention that I went back to the ENT last week and he was successful in getting my other ear clear, so I can hear a lot better now! When I mentioned to the doctor that my dad was having the same problems, he asked where my dad lives. When I said "Utah", he got a big smile on his face and asked what part of Utah. One of his daughters lived in Park City for a number of years, and he said they loved to visit her there; it was such a nice place and so beautiful. His daughter and family moved from there to Miami and they really hated Miami for a while! He says she goes back to visit because they have a lot of good friends in Utah still.