Weekly Review July 17 '10

I love July!

He's in underwear!

I said we were going to be busy, and I was right. Sunday was fairly restful, though--no extra meetings or anything. I think my talk went pretty well, and I was less nervous than I've been in the past. Don't get me wrong--I was nervous--just not as much as usual. I'm glad to have that done; hopefully I won't be speaking again for a couple of years! By the way, I was asked to talk about Elder Neil L. Andersen's talk "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus" from last General Conference. It was a great talk--read it, if you haven't already! I forgot to mention last week that Tanner was ordained as the Deacon's Quorum President last Sunday. Since Scott is currently the Teacher's Quorum President also, that means that half the priesthood keys for our ward are currently held by members of our household. That's a little frightening!

The rest of the week has been very busy with various appointments nearly every day. Scott had an appointment with the dermatologist on Monday, Snickers had a grooming appointment Wednesday morning, Tanner had an appointment with the foot doctor to get his orthotics fitted on Wednesday also, and Scott had an appointment Thursday morning to discuss his Eagle scout project with the park ranger at the aviary where he's doing his project. In addition to all that, Scott had driving school every day from 11:00-2:00. Tanner and Jared spent the night Monday night with their friends Ryan & Bryson (they went over late, after family night), Tanner & Jared had a party at a ward friend's house (Joseph) Tuesday afternoon, Tanner had a birthday party for a friend on Wednesday evening (he only went to the beginning, before scouts), Tanner had a summer party with his class from school Friday evening, the boys had scouts / YM Wednesday evening, and I had a Relief Society activity Tuesday evening. Add in all the normal chores to that, and I'd say I felt like I was running from one thing to another most of the week!

Just a few notes about some of those activities. The dermatologist put Scott on four different medications to see if that will clear him up. This is the "less agressive" form of treatment--if we don't see improvement after 3 months, then he will try him on acutane. (Not sure how to spell that.) I'm not thrilled with how expensive the medications are, but I know how much I hated having acne at his age, so I'm willing to deal with the expense if it helps. The dermatologist also said that the red lines on his back are stretch marks from growing so fast. Crazy! He really did shoot up quickly a couple of years ago, so I'm not too surprised. The party Tanner went to Wednesday night was for a girl in his school class. She lives right across the street from our church, so that was convenient--he just left the party at 7:00 and walked over to the church for scouts. All three boys helped with a service project that night.

The Relief Society activity was a spiritual geocaching activity. We divided up into groups and each group had three separate cannisters to find. The cannisters contained scriptures to read and questions to answer. (There was a little bit of candy in a couple of them, also.) The whole activity was relating our search for the cannisters to receiving personal revelation. We were supposed to write the answers to the questions in our journals at each stop, but we didn't do that part because...well, we were still searching for the first cannister when we started to feel a few raindrops. Then a really big rainstorm blew in. We were under cover of trees part of the time, but we still got absolutely soaking wet! I don't think I've ever been that wet in my life, apart from being in the shower or a swimming pool. So our journals would have turned into pulpy messes if we'd tried to write in them. We still had a lot of fun, though. My group got the wettest because our cannisters were the hardest to find (there were different "intensity" levels for the different groups) so we took the longest to finish. After we found our cannisters, we all congregated at a pavilion (we were at a park) for a short devotional. We also had popsicles and talked about our experiences. The whole time, the rain kept coming down hard--torrentially, at times! It was still very inspirational and everybody was a good sport about being so wet. When we finished, we all had to run for our cars! In spite of getting soaked, I had a great time and would like to do something like that again someday. We were in a large park. I've been there before, but I didn't know all those paths were up there. We were up in hills and the views were incredible; it was very beautiful.

We continued our potty training efforts this week, and I am pleased with how much progress Seth has made. Sunday was kind of tricky since we didn't want to risk an accident while at church. Seth ended up in a pull up most of that day, so then on Monday he had a lot of set backs. With all the activities going on this week, it has continued to be challenging to keep him in underwear all day, but on Wednesday he started telling me when he needed to go--even when he had a pull up on--so that was a big step. It's like everything finally "clicked" in his head! He's still having accidents occasionally, but he's well on his way now--hooray!!

Scott has been doing most of the driving as we've gone about all our activities, so he is getting lots of practice. Overall, he does pretty well. Driving school has been a bit boring for him, but he did run into a friend from school the first day, so that has helped. It's just one of those "hoops" he has to jump through to get his license. Oh, and of course he immediately began telling me all the things I do wrong when I'm driving--funny how they think they know more after a couple of days of driving school than you've learned in over 20 years of driving!

You may have heard that we had a minor earthquake (3.6) here on Friday morning just after 5:00. Frank and I both felt it--Seth had been awake and Frank had just come back to bed when it hit, so we were both sort of awake. The boys all slept right through it. It definitely startled us--we heard a noise and then the house shook and the windows rattled for a few seconds. Then a few seconds later (we hadn't had time to react yet) the same thing happened again. Frank and I both said "What was that?!" It felt like a minor explosion had happened nearby, and we'd felt the shockwave. Or else something large had hit the house. Frank got up and looked around the house and outside, but didn't see anything unusual. It made me pretty nervous, mostly because it had felt like an explosion so I wasn't sure if it was going to happen again. (I was thinking terrorist attack of some sort--call me paranoid!) It did occur to me after a few minutes that maybe it had been an earthquake, but I really didn't think that's what it was. So we got up and turned on the television, and after a few minutes we found someone on a local station who said "If you just felt the earth move, you're not alone. We've been getting lots of calls. We're trying to confirm with the US Geological Survey if there was a minor earthquake." Then a few minutes later they confirmed that there really had been a 3.6 earthquake, centered in Rockville. So we went back to bed!

Tanner got a call this week from the school principal at his former school, letting him know that he passed the Algebra HSA (high school level test) so he will be able to take Geometry this year. We also got a big packet of information for Seth for preschool, and I am seeing school supplies in all the stores. Already!! I'm not ready for school to start yet.

Frank has been very busy with work this week again. We are grateful that he has so much work to do, although we wouldn't mind having him around a little bit more. Today he didn't have as much to do as usual, so he managed to do a little bit of cleaning in his office--but there's still a ton of work to be done there.

I sat down with the oldest two boys today and figured out what they each need to do to finish their Duty to God requirements. They are both almost done (Tanner with Deacons and Scott with Teachers); they only have a few activities left to do. The most challenging part is going to be coming up with their service projects, which have to involve their quorums. Scott could count his Eagle Scout project, except I'm sure he's not going to get it completed before his birthday (less than a month away). He'll be able to count that for his Priest's project, though. He is checking with the bishop to see if there is anything he can do for the church instead. I'm proud of them for working so hard on these awards. It's a lot of work and they don't really get any recognition for doing it. It's great to see them sticking with something and finishing it.

In between all of those other activities, I've been doing a lot of summer reading. That's been fun! Next week looks like it's going to be just as busy as this one was. I'm still waiting for the lazy days of summer (and school starts in 5 weeks...)