Weekly Review April 3 '10

I love spring!!! Here are a few examples of how spring is looking around our house:

Tree in bloom behind our house--these trees are all over Frederick!

The tulips are coming up now, too!

I forgot to mention in last week’s post that Jared went on a camp out Friday night. Actually, the older two boys were supposed to go on a camp out also. They were packed and everything, but then they had some kind of a disagreement with Frank while packing everything in the car, and they both got upset and decided not to go. Teenagers—you’ve got to love them!! Jared went, though, and he had a good time in spite of the fact that it was wet and very cold (got down into the 20’s that night). He is my child that is unruffled by a lot of things. After he got home, he only mentioned the frigid temperatures after I specifically asked him about it. “Oh, yeah, it was freezing…” he responded, in a very off hand way. I’m sure I would have heard all about it—in loud complaints—from the other two!

Thankfully, I was feeling a lot better on Sunday, so I was able to go to church. I still felt achy and had a slight headache, and I got dizzy every so often, but still—that was a big improvement over the previous 2 days! Frank had hit the worst part of the illness that day, so he stayed home from church. I had Ward Council before church, so a helpful member of our ward picked up the boys and brought them to church in our car, and drove them back home afterwards (he left his car at our house). We had a lot of fun in Primary—we were doing a special Sharing Time as a reward for the kids. One of my counselors put the whole thing together—a take on “Jeopardy” where we reviewed all the things we’ve been learning about the last 3 months, including the songs. She did a fabulous job, and I think all the kids had a fun time. Since we didn’t have buzzers, each team was assigned an animal sound to make if they thought they knew the answer to the question, which made for some funny moments. My favorite moment: when 3 Sunbeams were up, and the question was “name 2 prophets”. They all stared for a while, then one of them rang in and said “Thomas…”; he hesitated. My counselor, thinking he was going to say “Thomas S. Monson”, was trying to prompt him, when he finally remembered what he wanted to say and cried “Thomas the Tank Engine”!

After church I got dinner ready for everybody and then went to visit some Primary kids. After that, Scott and Tanner had a fireside at the stake center. Since the fireside was also for adults, I attended with them. Our stake president was supposed to be the speaker, but he was ill so the mission president filled in at the last second. He did a great job, though—he has a gift for speaking. Every time I’ve heard him speak, it’s the same—he can relate long stories, throwing in scriptures and quotes word for word, without any notes whatsoever. Scott asked “does he ever take a breath?!” I keep meaning to ask Erick & Liz if they know him—President Belliston—he’s from Meridian.

At the fireside I saw Jolie Ridd Smith, who moved into our stake with her family last summer. I saw her at stake conference last fall, and she recognized me before I recognized her. I forgot to mention a few weeks ago that at this most recent stake conference, Marne was visiting Jolie with her family, so I saw her, also, and chatted with her briefly. She lives in the Austin, Texas area. She asked about Tim, Amy, and Ben.

On Monday I went to a little birthday celebration for my friend Kathleen (the one who cuts my hair) at my friend Starr’s house. We had a taco salad lunch and enjoyed visiting. About 10 women came, along with kids. The funny thing about the kids is that there were about 9 preschool age kids—all but one were boys, and about 9 babies—all but one were girls. We finished up with a very yummy chocolate / raspberry cake. That afternoon I took Scott to the doctor for a check up / physical for scout camp. It was a little stressful because Frank was supposed to pick up the other boys from school, but he got stuck in Virginia and couldn’t get there in time. I was stuck at the doctor’s office with Scott—they wouldn’t let me leave him there to go get the boys because he has to be over 16. I ended up calling the school and asking them to send Tanner & Jared to after care. I don’t know yet how much that is going to cost me! The check up went well, though. Scott is 5 ft, 11 ½ inches tall. The nurse measured him, but the doctor kept saying that had to be wrong—he must be over 6 feet! We got a referral for him to go see a dermatologist, which made Scott happy. He also had to get 4 shots, which didn’t make him happy, but he was brave about it.

Tanner and Frank also went to the doctor this week—the foot doctor. Frank has to go back in 2 weeks to have the remainder of his warts removed, and Tanner goes back in 6 weeks just to make sure everything is completely cleared up. The boys had YM / scouts Wednesday evening after the doctor appointments, so that was a busy day.

Frank went to work at 4:00 am on Thursday. The beginning of the week was cold—Tuesday was particularly windy and chilly—but by Thursday temperatures were in the 80’s. Thursday was the last school day this week; the shortened spring break began on Friday. (Originally, they were supposed to be out on Wednesday.) To celebrate the beginning of spring break, we took the kids out for ice cream Thursday after dinner.

Friday was busy with lots of errands. I had the boys go through their drawers to figure out who needs new clothes for summer. As usual, Jared has plenty of everything due to hand me downs, but Tanner and Scott both need new swimming trunks and shorts. I took them shopping and we found one pair of shorts for Scott and two for Tanner, but we didn’t have any luck finding swimming trunks. It is so incredibly hard to find shorts that fit them, also! Tanner is ok now, with the two pair of shorts we found and two more that Scott passed down to him, but Scott has only 2 pair right now, including the new ones. So I hope we can find more for him soon.

The boys played outside with friends until after dark, and I took Seth to the park for a while also. Later, after Seth was already asleep, their friends Brian and Andrew came over to spend the night. They were all watching Star Wars when Frank and I went to bed.

This morning all the boys and I went to plant flowers at my friend Marci’s house (they are still trying to sell their house) while Frank got some work done. Brian & Andrew’s sister came to pick them up after we got back. Frank had to drive down to his boss’s house to pick up a computer and do some work. While he was gone, the boys and I dyed Easter eggs. Then we all listened to the first session of General Conference (Frank got back home part way through). We lost reception 4 or 5 times, so we missed bits of it, but what we heard was really good. The boys played some Conference bingo, and I worked on Seth’s quiet book while we listened.

I kept busy this week with reading, cleaning, and working on Seth’s quiet book. For book chat, we’re reading Man’s Search for Meaning. I got that from the library on Thursday. It looks like it’s going to be an easy read—pretty short, and very interesting and profound so far. Besides that, I’ve been reading the Harry Potter series again. Since I read most of the books as they came out, it’s been a long time since I’ve read most of them. I’ve been wanting to go back and read the whole series from the beginning for a while, so when I was sick last week end, I read all of the first book and most of the second. I finished the second and read all of the third this week, so I’m ready to start the fourth book. I’m enjoying them a lot—there are lots of good and funny parts that I’d forgotten because they got left out of the movies. I was supposed to clean the kitchen in March, but I didn’t get much done on it so this week I worked on that a lot. I see improvement already, which is encouraging. My plan is to clean out a cupboard or two each day. Since I don’t have many cupboards, I will be done soon! This month’s project is Frank’s office area in the basement, which will be a BIG job. We were planning to work on that while listening to Conference, but since Frank had to go down to his boss’s house, that didn’t happen.

We bought plane tickets for our Utah trip this week. I’m excited and a little relieved—now we are going for sure, no matter what else breaks!! I’m also glad that we are going to get to stay a while. We are flying out on June 12^th (the day after school gets out) and coming back on June 28^th. We were able to get non-stop flights both ways also, which is going to be a nice luxury. We are really, really looking forward to this trip and getting to see so many of you. We love you all!