Weekly Review December 4 '10

This week's review is coming to you from Frank's computer; hence no photographs. My computer quite working this week, which has really cramped my style. Frank is working on getting it fixed, but no luck so far. He has tried a couple of things but hasn't figured out the problem yet. In the meantime, I am checking email online but I don't have access to any of our photos, our budget spreadsheet, or any of my Primary documents, which is making my life difficult. I didn't realize how much I depend on my computer until now!

My planner can attest to the fact that I had another busy week. There was some fun mixed with all the work, though. Besides my computer quitting, I had a couple of other unexpected things happen that complicated my life and / or took up a lot of time. The first was that on Monday a pen left in someone's jeans pocket "blew up" in the dryer. Of course, all three of my new pair of jeans were in that batch, along with jeans belonging to just about everyone else in the family. At least it was jeans and not whites or light colors, though. Even though all the jeans had several small ink spots scattered all over them, the spots didn't show up too much. I checked the internet and found a lot of ideas for getting ink off of clothes as well as ink off of the inside of the dryer, and tried more than one. After two attempts at cleaning the jeans, I can still see spots on them, but they have faded a lot. I tried a couple of different things on the dryer drum (I made a special trip to the store to pick up different cleaning items for both the dryer and the clothes) and finally had some success with a product designed to clean graffiti off of different surfaces. Then putting bleach and water soaked towels in the dryer and running them through the spin cycle a couple of times seemed to get rid of the remaining ink. I can still see some ink spots on the drum, but after running a batch of towels and another batch of jeans through the dryer without any spots appearing, I felt safe doing lights and whites and they all came out without a single spot. Another thing that took more time than it should have was getting Tanner's ADD medicine refilled. I'll spare you the details, but after a couple of phone calls, a couple of trips to the pharmacy, and a trip to the doctor, I was finally successful. The Expedition's oil light came on this week also, so we had to get it in for an oil change.

Sunday could have been very complicated, but thankfully turned out fine. One of my counselors was out of town and then the other one called me Sunday morning because she had a sick child and wasn't going to be able to come to church. It was my secretary's last Sunday (she just moved to another ward--I will really miss her!); thankfully she made it to church, though! My new secretary was supposed to be called that day but wasn't for some mysterious reason (hopefully that will happen tomorrow). I didn't make it out of the Primary room since I was conducting and doing sharing time, but my secretary was great and took care of any problems that arose (such as none of the Senior nursery workers showing up) and all the teachers that were out of town had called substitutes before they left, so things went pretty smoothly. Oh, and I also had two teachers and one activity days leader let me know that they needed to be released either immediately or at the beginning of the year. Yes, three people "quit on me" in one day! The fact that this news did not phase me too much nor the fact that I did not go into complete panic mode when my counselor called that morning goes to show that I have been in Primary a long time, and have changed a lot since I first started serving in Primary!

We were busy the beginning part of the week getting caught up on things from vacation, and the later part of the week starting Christmas preparations. Add in all the normal errands / shopping / housecleaning to that as well as Christmas shopping (I got a lot done) and we were going all day long every day.

Scott stayed after school nearly every day--most days he was getting some tutoring for math and one day he was helping with a project for his business class. Tanner also stayed after one day to make up some work he missed on the days he was sick right before Thanksgiving.

Tuesday we had the missionaries over for dinner, Wednesday I had a long presidency meeting, Thursday I helped at the school library and Frank had a dentist appointment, and yesterday we put up the Christmas tree and all the other decorations. I also kept very busy with Primary tasks--did some shopping for bulletin board supplies (we're planning a new one for the new year), sent a lot of emails, and made phone calls to some teachers. I am trying to plan next year's "line up"--who is going to teach which class--and figuring out what callings need to be filled. One thing that has been cool about that--my counselors and I sat down and discussed who we thought needed to go where and who might need to be released and so forth, and so far as I have talked to the teachers the feelings that they have expressed to me have been right in line with the feelings that we have had. So we must be on the right track, and we are grateful for the inspiration!

Last night Frank and I were invited by one of my counselors and her husband (Tammy & Alvin Van Orden) to come to their house to play some games. We had a lot of fun, and after our busy, stressful week it was really great to get out of the house for a few hours and enjoy the company of some other adults! The game we played took longer than we expected, though, so we didn't leave their house until nearly midnight! We got home to discover that the boys had put Seth to bed and all gone to bed themselves, just like we asked them to--nice! Everyone was sound asleep. Alvin is Tanner's Seminary teacher, and he told us that Tanner gave a very nice devotional last week and that Tanner is trying to encourage others to take devotionals more seriously when it is their turn (Tanner is in charge of assigning the devotionals). It is nice to hear that he is taking this responsibility seriously!

Last night we drew names for our secret family service and today we took everyone to the store to get a few treats for their secret person. The boys also shopped for gifts for us and for each other. This afternoon Tanner met at the YM secretary's house to make some brownies for a YM activity next week. I had arranged ahead of time to pick up the other boys from there (there were only three of them) along with Tanner and bring them back to our house to play games, eat pizza, and have Tanner's birthday cake. They all seemed to have a fun time. Now Scott is at a party for his Seminary class at his teacher's house.

Seth has still been struggling with separation anxiety. He did ok on Tuesday because he had show & tell (which he always gets excited about) and on Thursday because I was staying to help take him and some other kids to the library, but the other three mornings he cried. It's very perplexing! We are just hoping he works his way through this stage soon. Please keep praying for him.

That sums up our week. We hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and that you are enjoying the Christmas season now!