Weekly Review April 17 '10

I'll start this week with a couple of photos of the same tree. This one was taken on April 2nd.

I took this one on April 5th, because all of the sudden the tree had green leaves as well as flowers:

One of the benefits of getting up really early to take Scott to Seminary is that the world is beautiful at that time of the morning. I've seen a lot of gorgeous sunrises this last year. The photo below was taken a little later in the morning, after I dropped him off at school. I just thought the early sunlight looked beautiful!

My irises started blooming last week; now I have a lot of them.

All of the daffodils and most of the tulips are wilting or completely dead now, but a few late bloomers showed up this week, like this dark pink one:

And these four peach ones:

Here is Jared in his new soccer shirt. I'm glad he got a color this year that he hasn't had yet, and I think it's a nice color, too:

I made him do a more normal pose after the first photo:

And here's Seth, who saw me taking pictures of Jared and cried "my turn next!" He tried to make a silly pose like he'd seen Jared doing!

Now, on with this week's events....

I was really happy with the way Sharing Time went for the older kids this Sunday. We were talking about the 1^st Vision, so for a change of pace I asked the missionaries to come in to teach the kids. They did a great job! After they were done I asked the kids a couple of questions and I got such wonderful, thoughtful answers. It was obvious they had felt the spirit and that they were having a meaningful experience. Then the child who said the closing prayer gave this beautiful prayer, referring back to the lesson—not the usual help-us-get-home-safely 20 second prayer! I really love it when that happens!

Frank was working from home all day Monday, so he took me to lunch. We went to a Mexican restaurant—Frank had been there before, but I hadn’t. It was yummy! For family night we went for a walk, stopping at the park to play. Seth loved that!

We are still having a temperamental spring—we had several chilly and / or wet days and a couple of beautiful days. Tuesday was one of the wet and chilly days. One of my visiting teachers came to see me that afternoon. (The other one had twins one month ago, so she didn’t come this time!) Seth enjoyed playing with my visiting teacher’s two boys who are both close to his age—one a little older, the other a little younger than him. Jared’s soccer practice was cancelled that evening because of the rain.

I did a lot of shopping on Wednesday—besides the usual Wal-Mart trip, I also went to JoAnn’s to get some things for Seth’s quiet book and to the grocery store, since I knew I was going to be busy on Thursday (that’s when I usually go to the grocery store). Seth prefers to walk around stores these days instead of riding in the cart, and since he is getting a lot better at staying with me and not getting into things, I usually let him walk. When I was checking out at the grocery store, though, I was in the self check out line, and in the middle of my transaction the lane started to shut down. I couldn’t figure it out until I noticed Seth was opening up a panel that said “Emergency Shut Down Switch”! That little monkey! I was almost done checking out, but I had to start over.

Frank had surgery on his feet on Wednesday afternoon to get both warts removed completely. They really had to cut deep, so he’s been pretty sore since then. I really hope they got rid of them completely and that he’s done with this process! Not just so he won’t be in pain anymore, but also because all these visits to a specialist, plus medication (he’s on a pain killer and an antibiotic now), have been very expensive! Thankfully, he has been able to work in spite of the discomfort. I made the scout / YM run that night, though.

On Thursday I met with my two counselors to finish filling eggs for our Primary Easter egg hunt. Because rain was in the forecast again for Friday evening / Saturday morning, we decided we were going to have to move our activity to the church (we were going to have it at a farm if the weather had cooperated). That meant we had to adjust plans a bit, so I spent a lot of the afternoon sending e-mails back and forth and making phone calls, but we got it all worked out.

Last year I got some black jelly beans for Easter and Seth actually liked them! This year I couldn’t find any black jelly beans, much to my great disappointment. But Frank, being the wonderful husband that he is, heard me lamenting the lack of black jelly beans and surprised me on Easter with a bag of black licorice twists. I wasn’t sure if Seth would still like black licorice, but I tried him, and he does. I was getting a piece out the other day, and Seth said “I want one of those black things.” Smart boy!

I’m not sure if it’s the increased dosage of his medication, or just becoming a teenager, but Tanner has been a lot more irritable lately. I’ve really noticed because he is usually patient and a peace maker. It has really made a difference in the level of contention in our home, I’m afraid. I hope this phase doesn’t last long, but I guess he has the right to be a grumpy teenager once in a while! He had an exciting week at school—his math / science teacher had a baby girl, and his language arts / social studies teacher got a call that her mom was dying and she needed to come right away—both on the same day!

Yesterday was warm, sunny, breezy, and beautiful. I spent most of the day catching up the budget and doing last minute preparations for the Easter activity. The evening ended up being pretty hectic because Frank didn’t get home from work until after 6:30, Jared had a make up soccer practice at 6:00, Scott had been invited to spend the night with his friend Ryan, and Tanner had a sleep over party for his friend Ari (from church) at 7:00 and we still needed to buy a gift. I packed everyone in the car, dropped Jared off at his practice, took Scott to Ryan’s, and then went back to the practice to wait for it to end. I tried to read (I’ve finished Harry Potter 4 and have moved on to 5 now) while Seth climbed happily all over inside the car and Tanner played on the Nintendo DS. The weather was threatening thunderstorm the whole time (we had one go through earlier that afternoon), but in spite of pretty high winds and a few distant rumbles of thunder, the rain held off, and the practice went on. (We had more rain later in the evening.) As a matter of fact, the practice ended late, much to the annoyance of Tanner, who was late to his party. Frank was home by then, so I dropped Seth and Jared off at home, and Tanner and I went on to Ari’s party, stopping at Wal-Mart on the way to get a card and gift. They also had Easter stuff on clearance for 75% off, so we scored a solid Dove chocolate Easter bunny for 94 cents (I gave it to Frank as consolation for his hurt feet) and next year’s egg dye kit for 10 cents. After I dropped Tanner off, I stopped to talk to my friend Rebecca, who was out working in her yard when I drove by, so I got home later than I’d planned. By then, Seth had fallen asleep on Frank’s lap, and I was tired too!

Today has also been very busy. The Easter egg hunt was at 10:00. I got to the church about 8:45 to help set up. That went smoothly—we got all the eggs hidden and everything else set up with over 20 minutes to spare. Some kids actually showed up early and by starting time we had a good crowd—one of the advantages of holding an egg hunt is that everyone knows they need to be on time or they won’t get any eggs! We had a fairly small crowd, for us—I think about 40 kids showed up. We divided into groups according to age and went to classrooms to hold short Easter lessons. I got the Nursery & Sunbeam age group. After the lesson, we moved to another room where the eggs were hidden. We had different rooms for hunting for each age group, also. It was funny to watch the little kids hunt for eggs. Some of them figured out what to do immediately—started scooping eggs into their baskets at top rate! Others (like Seth) meandered around, distracted by the amazing sight of all those colorful eggs, and picking up an egg only now and again. I think Seth’s friend from nursery, Camilla, had 10 eggs in her basket before Seth had even picked up one! There were plenty of eggs, however, so even the slow ones got a nice amount. After finding all the eggs (I helped them find a few stragglers), we went back to the gym where the kids emptied the contents of their eggs into their baskets and returned the plastic eggs, since we use them every year. They also redeemed all their “prize” coupons. We had purchased a few toys and pieces of candy that were too big for eggs and put prize coupons in eggs instead. The coupons were color-coded so depending on the color of the coupon, they got to pick out a prize out of a certain basket. Most of the kids really seemed to like that. After that, we were done—everyone went home! We were completely cleaned up and out of there by 11:30. One thing that really helped me was that Scott came to help out with Seth. Frank wasn’t feeling up to it with his sore feet, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on Seth, so Scott came along as a “surrogate parent”.

By the way, at the activity I had a chance to meet a new family who just moved into our ward from Boston. I was particularly interested in meeting them since their last name is Hatch. I found out that his name is Steve and he’s from Utah, not Arizona, but that’s as far as we got. I’ll have to find out his father’s and grandfather’s names someday. We agreed that we are probably related somehow, although probably pretty distantly. Anyway, they are a nice little family with two young boys.

After we got home, I took Seth to the park for a little while until it was time to take Jared to his 1:00 soccer game. Seth stayed at the park with Scott, but I took Snickers with us to the game. We ended up being there longer than expected because somewhere along the line they had got really behind, so the game before us didn’t end until 1:30. I took Snickers on a long walk around the park while we waited for the game to start. It was very windy and not very warm, so it was too chilly to just sit there. When the sun came out, it wasn’t too bad, but when the clouds covered the sun it got pretty cold. The game went well, however. Jared’s team won, 4-0, with Jared kicking one of the goals. He is on the same team as last season; his coach and most of the kids on the team are the same. However, they looked like a completely different set of kids. Last season they really struggled and never seemed to get the hang of playing together, but today they showed remarkable team work, with lots of good passes to each other, and it paid off. Hopefully, the rest of the season will go just as well.

By the time we got home from the game, Tanner was home also. He had a deacon’s quorum service project at the same house as the party, and they fed them lunch, so he didn’t get home until about 1:30. Now Scott is at a stake youth dinner / dance activity. He has never chosen to go to a dance before, so I was surprised when he decided to go to this one. I hope he will have a fun time and will be more social in the future.

This evening I plan to make cookies to give to the ladies in our ward who usually host the Easter egg hunt at their farm, as a thank you. It didn’t end up raining this morning as predicted, so I feel kind of bad that we moved the activity to the church, especially since I know they look forward to having the Primary kids over every year and I know they were really disappointed when we made the decision to move it. I don’t regret doing the activity indoors—I think it still would have been pretty windy and chilly at the farm—but I would have felt a lot better about it if it had poured down rain! It’s really hard to predict these things, though. Besides making cookies, I also need to give baths to Seth and Snickers (NOT together!) and sweep & mop all the floors, so I have a lot to do before I can go to bed and I’d better get going.

Only 8 more weeks until we will be in Utah!