Weekly Review December 18 '10

Before I forget--because I forgot last week--Happy Birthday to Hans! I did think about you last Saturday, but forgot to mention that here.



The photo above is a picture of the other project I made at our last RS meeting (besides the advent calendar). It looks better in real life--it's hard to photograph in the dark! If you can't see it very well, it's a sillouhette of a nativity scene on a glass block, lighted by white Christmas lights. I tied that bow on top myself--I'm proud of that because I stink at tying bows and crafty things like that. Anyway, it looks great and adds a beautiful glowing touch to our holiday decor.

We started out this week with a really nice event--a Christmas concert given by the Mormon Choir of Washington DC, held at our stake center. Frank stayed home to get Seth to bed, but the three older boys surprised me when they announced that they wanted to come with me to the concert. It turns out that this choir is really good--comparable to the Tabernacle Choir, I thought. The music was so beautiful that I was in tears more than once. After the first song, Jared looked at me and said "Wow!" In addition to the music, they also had a narrator that shared some great thoughts and stories and the director had the audience join in on two songs, which made it really fun. It was an awesome way to feel the spirit of the Christmas season!

The rest of Sunday was really busy--for me, it started with a 7:00 am Ward Council meeting followed by regular church meetings (I had sharing time), choir practice, and a visit to a Primary child. Then dinner and family night before leaving for the concert. I was tired and it was miserably cold, so it was tempting to just stay home but I'm really glad I made the effort to go to that concert!

I am convinced that I am stuck in some kind of a time warp. When school started this fall, I would take Seth to school and then have plenty of time to get things done before it was time to pick him up. Then we would have a lot more time before Tanner and Scott arrived home. Now I take Seth to school and before I've had time to turn around, it's time to pick him up! We come home, eat lunch, I read him a story or two, and before I even get really started on whatever work I need to get done that afternoon, Scott and Tanner show up. It is crazy!!!

Scott had an upset stomach on Monday so he stayed home from school. I had a visiting teaching appointment in the morning. The dishwasher repairman showed up that afternoon and lucky us--not only did he figure out what was wrong, but he actually had the part we needed on his truck!! (Last time the part had to be ordered and took another week or so to arrive.) So he was able to fix it right then. As I suspected, it was the same part as last time. This part seems to have a life span of only about 7-9 months--not too good! Monday afternoon / evening was busy because I made dinner for another family in our ward; the mom just had back surgery. I got that delivered (took longer than we planned because we had just got to an intersection when a couple of fire trucks pulled up and blocked the entire intersection for about 15 minutes while they cleaned up after an accident) and then came home to make dinner for our family. I usually just make enough for us when I take dinner to someone else so that I don't have to make two complete meals, but this time I was asked to do it last minute, so had to go with what I had on hand.

We got a small ice / snow storm Monday night, and the wind was howling. I woke up in the night (for a couple of hours, unfortunately) and could hear the wind blowing and small pellets of ice knocking on the windows. I felt so grateful to be sheltered in a warm house! I wasn't too surprised when school was delayed two hours the next morning. That meant Seth didn't have school at all. I had book club that day. We discussed the book The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder. I managed to finish the book late Monday night--not because I didn't like it, just because I've been too busy lately to do much reading. It was actually a pretty short book and an easy read, and although I didn't love it, I think it is well worth reading. Pretty profound and very well written.

I went shopping and worked on Christmas cards on Wednesday (I'm hoping to get the cards sent out on Monday). That evening was busy--the boys had YM, we all had tithing settlement, and I had visiting teaching appointments. We also started our annual secret service. Instead of doing 12 Days of Christmas, we decided to focus on a different family each of the 12 days, which has allowed us to focus on some families that we normally wouldn't pick because they live too far away to make a trip to their house every night for 12 days running.

On Thursday we got another small snow storm similar to the one we had last Friday, only we got a little more snow from this one. It started mid morning again, and by the time Seth was out (at 11:30) they had decided to release school 2 hours early. My car pool boy, Javvy, had gone home sick, so this time when I went to pick up Seth I decided to just pick up Jared also. I didn't really want to go back again an hour and a half later, and it looked like the roads were going to get worse instead of better. (They did.) The boys were thrilled to get out of school early, of course, and I know they were all hoping that school would be cancelled Friday also, but it wasn't. They did have another 2 hour delay, though, so Seth didn't have school again and all of us got to sleep in!

Friday I had a presidency meeting /project session. We dipped pretzels to give to all the teachers for Christmas gifts and planned how we are going to do our bulletin board for next year. Actually, it was just me and one of my counselors--the other had sick kids. Friday evening Frank and I went to the temple. We did sealings, since Frank has a cough and didn't want to cough through a whole endowment session. It was very nice. The sealer took the time to share a lot of thoughts and scriptures with us, which doesn't happen all that often. We really enjoyed that! We stopped at a mexican restaurant on the way home.

Scott had been watching Seth for us; the other two boys had gone to spend the night with Ryan & Bryson. After we got home, Scott went to spend the night with his friend David.

Today Frank is working because he had a project he had to do when no one else was at the workplace. All the boys have arrived home now and I need to take Jared to buy some new shoes, so I'd better get this review posted and get out the door.

One final note: Shellie sent us a link to the news story about the Provo Tabernacle burning down; we were really sorry to hear about that! I have a lot of good memories of singing in concerts there. It was a beautiful building and a historical treasure also. However, Frank and I were also remembering one stake conference we attended in that building (while we were in a married student ward at BYU) where we were unable to focus on the meeting because of the hordes of wasps flying around us. So our one consolation is that maybe all the wasp's nests burned up, too! We hope the tabernacle can be rebuilt or replaced with a building that looks the same. Downtown Provo just wouldn't be the same without it!