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!