Weekly Review September 4 '10

We are settling into our fall routine, and it's going well. I feel like I get a lot more done these days! I especially enjoy the new carpooling arrangements we have set up--I don't have to pick Jared up after school and it's amazing how much of a difference that makes! Seth seems to be loving school. He comes home almost every day covered in dust (the yard where they play doesn't have grass); one day his shorts were wet and when I questioned him about it he said he had spilled his water at snack time and then sat in the spilled water. Another day he had on a different shirt when I picked him up (one of his shirts--I had to provide a complete set of extra clothes to be kept at school) and the one he had worn that morning was in a ziploc bag, quite wet. I guess he spilled his water again! It cracks me up how messy he gets; quite the little BOY. I remember that Tanner was the same way at his age.

Speaking of Tanner, he and Scott have continued to get up on their own every morning for Seminary, and still come home and get their homework done every afternoon. It's been wonderful! It's amazing how much of a difference that makes for us, as parents, to have them be so responsible. I am particularly proud of Tanner, who is NOT a morning person. I've been asking him for years how he was going to manage to get up for Seminary when he got old enough, and he's always replied "I'll just have to do it." And that's exactly what he's doing. I suspect it will be harder to get up when winter comes along and the mornings are cold, but maybe he will surprise us again.

I can't remember much about Sunday except that it was busy. Frank and the boys had a fireside that evening for all the Aaronic priesthood holders and their fathers. Frank decided that Jared was close enough to being 12 to go to that, which left me home alone with Seth--who was already asleep; he fell asleep at 6:30 while sitting at the dinner table! He slept the whole night through, too--until about 6:30 the next morning. He must have been tired. He usually takes one or two naps per week lately. Anyway, I enjoyed the quiet time Sunday evening--spent it reading the new BFJ family book.

Monday was very busy with Primary stuff--I literally spent hours sending e-mails and making phone calls! There just seemed to be a lot of issues to resolve. Tuesday I had book club. I was not able to get a copy of the book we were reading, so I couldn't really participate in the discussion much, but I still enjoyed it. My interest is really piqued now, so I will have to read the book some day. It's called Quo Vardis; set in Roman times after Christ's death. Hopefully I'll have better luck getting the book for this month, which is called La's Orchestra Saves the World.

Wednesday was a busy day--busier than usual, I guess I should say! I had an appointment scheduled to see the eye doctor who did the surgery on my left eye a couple of years ago. Frank ended up needing to do some work for a client nearby, so he drove me down, which was really nice! I enjoyed having him along for company, and he drove, which is something I don't really enjoy doing, especially in busy areas that I'm not very familiar with. We picked up Seth from school and headed right down. Frank dropped me off at the doctor's office and took Seth with him to his client. He had finished with the client and was headed back my direction when I got done, so that worked out perfect--I only had to wait a few minutes. The doctor confirmed my suspicion that I am going to need the same surgery on my right eye that I had done on my left eye two years ago. He also said that the swelling in the corner of my eye is actually an infection, but when I told him I had just finished an antibiotic a couple of weeks ago, he decided not to put me back on an antibiotic unless it gets worse. I'm scheduled for surgery on November 11th. I would have liked to do it sooner, but there weren't many days available in September and I had to work around a number of things in October (including the Primary program--I learned from last time that doing surgery 3 days before the Primary program is not a good idea!) I also had to make sure I scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist within 30 days before the surgery, because I have to have cardio clearance from him. I just hope I don't have a lot of trouble with infection between now and then, but I'm afraid I might have another infection brewing right now--my eyelid is a little bit red and sore this morning.

After the eye doctor appointment, we made two more stops--at the scout store to get a merit badge sash for Jared & some mother's pins for me, and at the LDS bookstore so I could see if they had Faith in God books for girls--I found out earlier this week that we were out, and I was hoping to get some before today since there was a baptism this morning where 3 little girls in our ward got baptized. The bookstore didn't have any, though--they carry very few of the church distribution items. There's a new emergency preparedness store right upstairs, though, so Frank decided to check it out while I was checking the bookstore. He bought a couple of MREs, so we could test them out and see if we want to get some for our 72 hour kits. We also got a big bucket to hold our flour--we needed to replace the one that Mom gave us years ago. The lid on that one wouldn't seal anymore and we recently discovered that some of the ants from our ant invasion a few weeks ago had chosen the flour bucket as a place to curl up and die--yuck!

While we were driving from the doctor's office to the scout store, we started hearing on the news the reports about the hostage situation at the Discovery building in Silver Springs, not far from where we were. What a crazy world we live in!! I'm glad no one got hurt (besides the gunman). Frank had a scout committee meeting Wednesday evening, so he took the boys to the church for their scout activities while I got Seth to bed.

One of the things I've been having a hard time fitting into my schedule is exercise. I haven't figured out yet where it will best fit into my routine. I finally got some time to do that Thursday morning while Seth was at school, so I did a 30 minute bike ride on the Wii. It felt good to do that. Hopefully I'll figure out a way to fit it into my routine on a more regular basis!


I got a lot done on Thursday which turned out to be a good thing since I didn't get so much done yesterday. I had a bad headache for most of the day, so other than going to breakfast with my friend Rebecca, I didn't do much. Seth had a little bit of diarrhea Thursday evening, but he seemed fine yesterday morning so I sent him to school--but I put a pull up on him, just in case! He didn't have any problems, but later on in the afternoon he did, so whatever it is, it hasn't gone away completely. He seems fine otherwise. In the late evening Frank and I escaped for a few minutes to get some ice cream--that was nice!

The skies were pretty gray Friday morning--we were getting some of the outermost bands from Hurricane Earl--but that's all we got from that storm. Not a drop of rain or a single gust of wind--we can't complain about that, although we could have used some of the rain. We're glad the storm didn't end up causing much damage anywhere. Our weather did change later in the day yesterday, though--some sort of cold front came in because it was cooler and breezy last night, and it has continued to be that way today. After all the heat and humidity of the summer, this dry, cool breeze feels really nice! It's sunny besides, so perfect weather, really!

As I mentioned before, there was a baptism this morning. Scott was asked to help set up and to be a witness, so we got there an hour early. There were 10 children getting baptized (4 from our ward) so there was a very large crowd of people attending the baptism, and it the service lasted longer than usual. It was beautiful, though--I'm very glad I could be there, and I think Scott was too. In between baptisms, while we're waiting for the kids and their dads to change out of their wet clothes, they have us all sing songs and they call on people to share their testimonies. I got asked to do that today, which surprised me, but I was grateful for the opportunity to do that.

Since getting home, I have been busy with other Primary tasks, but I think I'm done now, so hopefully I'll get a little relaxing time. We are looking forward to having a quiet week end together as a family! Now Seth is waiting for me to read him a book, so I'd better post this review and read to him!

Enjoy your week end!