Weekly Review July 31 '10

Where did July go? I am always kind of sad to see July end. August is not one of my favorite months, because it is usually miserably hot and humid around here during that month. But it's already been miserably hot and humid for most of July, so maybe August will be nicer for a change!

This week was not quite as busy. I definitely enjoyed the fact that Scott was done with driving school--he did too! Sunday I had ward council and the choir sang. We are done with choir practices now until September. After church our home teachers came to see us, and Frank & Tanner went home teaching. That, along with family night, filled up our day. I forgot to mention that Jared gave a talk in Primary a couple of weeks ago. It was the first time that he wrote the whole talk himself (without help from me, except for suggestions) and I was really impressed--he did a great job!


Sunday afternoon we had a brief but fairly violent thunderstorm come through. The worst of it went south of us, apparently, because in the Gaithersburg / Rockville area the power was out for about 3-4 days. That meant that on Monday Frank couldn't connect with Griffin's server and many of his clients were also without power, so that limited the amount of work he could do. However, one of his clients who was without power decided it was high time to move their server from their Rockville location to their Frederick location--something they've been planning to do for a while--so he started that project in the late afternoon and ended up working until about 1:00 am. The rest of the week he has been very busy, as usual. In addition to long hours at work, he helped with the cooking for Youth Conference. He went straight from work on both Thursday and Friday to help with that, and didn't get home until pretty late in the evening both days. He also helped with cooking breakfast this morning, so we haven't seen him much for the last 3 days.


The temple was also affected by the power outage. The temple has been closed most of July for summer maintenance and was supposed to re-open on Tuesday. Because of the power outage, it didn't re-open until Friday. We have been very grateful that we didn't lose power up here, since it's continued to be pretty hot. (Although not so hot as it was last week.)


I had book chat on Tuesday, Seth had a doctor appointment on Wednesday, and I had visiting teaching on Thursday. I was supposed to visit teach Friday as well, but the sister we were scheduled to visit wasn't feeling well so that got postponed. The doctor appointment for Seth was his 3 year old check up. He is in the 90th percentile for both weight and height--38 pounds and 3 1/2 feet tall. What a big boy! For my visiting teaching appointment, we met at a restaurant for lunch; I enjoyed that!


Scott had a driving mishap this week which will probably cost us a pretty penny. He was parking the car at Wal-Mart and he swung too wide and hit the back of the van next to us on the passenger side. I realized he was going to hit it, and told him to stop, but not quite in time. We assessed the damage and it wasn't too bad, but there was a dent / crack right under the tail light, so we wrote a note and left it on the windshield of the van. This was on Wednesday afternoon; the driver of the van didn't contact me until Thursday morning. She actually didn't notice the damage and although she saw the paper under her wiper, she thought it was just an advertisement! Thankfully, she was very gracious and understanding about it. She is going to get an estimate for us and then we'll decide whether or not we need to involve the insurance. She can't get the estimate until Monday, though, so we will wait until then to find out how bad the damage to our wallet is going to be. Scott felt really bad about it, but at least I think this will be a good learning experience for him and it could have been much worse!

Unfortunately, Frank also had a driving mishap yesterday. He ran over something (he's not sure what) that flipped up and did some damage to his car. He's not sure what got damaged yet, but he thinks it might be the catalytic converter or the muffler; the car is making a lot more noise now. So he'll have to get it in soon to assess the damage and get it fixed. At least the car still runs!


I got a call from a very good friend on Tuesday morning. She called around 6:45, so I knew whatever she had to say it wasn't going to be good, and I was right. Her marriage is ending and the circumstances are pretty awful. It was a real shock, and I have been hurting for her all week. Things like this seem to be happening to a lot of my friends lately; it's really hard not to feel discouraged sometimes. I can certainly see that the family is under attack!


Scott had youth conference the last three days this week. Youth conference began on Thursday morning. He had his friend Jordan over to spend the night Wednesday night, and I took both of them over to their advisor's house Thursday morning. They did service, went to a place with outdoor challenges, had a dance, and attended workshops. He arrived home this morning and said he had a really good time. (They spent the nights at their advisors' houses.)


Seth is doing really well with potty training. He is getting much more independent about it and I think he's only had about 3 or 4 minor accidents all week. (Mostly because he "waits" too long--typical!) He has even started removing his diaper by himself every morning so he can go (I still put a diaper on him at night, just to be safe). The diapers have been dry, too, so actually he's probably ready to go to underwear 24/7. We're still working on bowel movements, but he's doing better with those also. It is very exciting to see the end of diapers in the very near future!!!

Yesterday the area around my right eye started to feel pretty tender, and by evening was hurting quite a bit. This morning it was worse and it's red and swollen, so I went to the doctor. The doctor started me on an antibiotic so hopefully it will be feeling better soon. However, now I'm feeling motivated to get my right eye's tear duct fixed. It's been watering for several months, with all the same symptoms I had in my left eye a couple of years ago, so I've known for a while that I would probably have to have the same surgery on my right eye that I had 2 years ago on my left eye (creating a new tear duct). I've just been putting it off, but I guess I'd better get it over with. The doctor I saw today said that it is not unusual for someone who has needed this surgery on one eye to have to have it on the other eye, too. She says there's not really any underlying treatable cause that leads to the tear ducts getting blocked, it's more about how the tear ducts themselves are "built". I just got unlucky.

Frank has been bringing home lots of "goodies" from his cooking experiences, so we have a refrigerator full of grilled chicken, hot dogs, lasagne, spaghetti sauce, green salad, cold cuts, potato salad, etc. I don't think I'm going to be cooking for a few days! That's good timing, since I really don't feel so well--my whole head is throbbing and I have a low grade fever because of the infection. I hope I am feeling a lot better by tomorrow because I'm supposed to do sharing time.

Seth is really enamored by sticks lately. He is always picking them up when we go on walks with Snickers, so we have a large collection by the front door now. He brings one in the house occasionally, but usually I make him leave them outside. He likes big sticks, so most of them are 2-3 feet long. It's amazing how much he can entertain himself with a stick!

Other projects I worked on this week: Jared and I worked together to clean up / better organize his room. We're not done yet, but the parts we've done look quite a bit better. As soon as we finish his room, I'm moving on to Scott & Tanner's room. I also worked more on Seth's quiet book; it is getting close to being finished. Just another week or two more and it should be done--finally!

That brings you up to date on all our happenings, so I think I'll go lie down now!