Weekly Review March 12 '11

When I put the camera memory card into the computer today to transfer this week's photos onto my computer, I was suprised to discover several images that I did not take, including the following photos:



(Kitchen and living room)

(Back deck)

(Our little garden plot)

(the backyard) It didn't take much imagination to figure out who the culprit was, especially when I got to these pictures:

Hmmm, who do you think took those pictures? I got a good laugh out of this! (And a shudder, also--it's probable that the backyard picture was taken by leaning over the railing a bit!)

We had a fairly busy week; there were a lot of things going on. Our stake conference was held last weekend. Both of the meetings (adult session and general session) were wonderful and inspiring. For the general session they had a youth choir sing two songs. They were fabulous and really brought the spirit into the meeting. Scott and Tanner were both in the choir, so they were sitting up on the stand for the whole meeting. The visiting area authority seventy told a great story about his family traveling from Richmond, Virginia to the Salt Lake temple to be sealed back in the 1950's. The boys were amazed when they heard that this area was in the Salt Lake temple district back in those days! Anyway, you wouldn't believe all the crazy things that went wrong on that trip, but they finally made it. I couldn't help thinking that even though we don't have nearly so far to go to attend the temple these days, it can still be just as hard to get there. So many times when we have planned to go, the kids get sick or the car breaks down!

After the meeting on Sunday, our good friends the Koettings came over; that has become a tradition and we always look forward to having them over! We had a yummy ham dinner. I had to take a picture of Snickers, who was very attentive while Frank was carving the ham. I'm sure he was hoping a few tidbits would drop to the floor!:

The boys hung out together most of the afternoon, but eventually they "paired off" by age. Here's Scott and Joey:

Tanner and Kalvin:

Jared and Brendan:

Seth didn't sleep well the night before, and shortly before the Koettings left, we found him crashed on the living room floor:

He slept for a couple of hours like that, and then, of course, he was up late since he wasn't sleepy at bedtime.

We had a lot of rain on Sunday. One of my windshield wipers broke on the way home from stake conference, so we had to get those replaced this week. The temperatures were fairly mild on Sunday but it got a lot colder that night and the next morning the schools had a 2 hour delayed opening because the roads were a bit icy and in some areas of the county they actually got a couple of inches of snow. We would not have even thought to check if school was delayed except when our alarm went off at 5:00 a guy on the radio was talking about the icy roads. The boys enjoyed sleeping in a little, and Seth is always happy to stay home from school with me. The change in school hours made things a little crazy for me because I had scheduled Snickers's annual check up for 9:30 that morning. Thankfully, Frank was working from home that morning so I didn't feel as rushed to get back home. I did end up getting back from that just in time to take Jared and Javy (our carpool boy) to school, which started at 11:00.

Snickers actually wasn't feeling too well on Monday; I could tell something was going on with his stomach. He was sick for a few days but he's better now. The vet didn't think it was anything serious. His check up went well except that his two very back teeth on top are looking infected. So now he is going in for a teeth cleaning, which is expensive because they have to knock him out. I said I would never have my dog's teeth cleaned, but those teeth do look really bad and I'm afraid if we don't take care of it now the problem will spread to his other teeth and he'll end up having to have a lot of teeth pulled, which will be even more expensive. We now have a toothbrush and toothpaste for him, too. Dogs these days are so pampered!!!

Monday afternoon I went to visit a little boy in our Primary who had his tonsils removed last week. He seems to be doing pretty well, and I had a fun visit with him, his mom, and his visiting grandma. One of my counselors came also, and all the kids (including Seth) enjoyed playing together for a while.

Tuesday I had book club. Wednesday morning I helped at the school. The older kids were taking MSA tests and the teacher who usually helps with the two "Primary" (preschool / kindergarten) classes was helping with that, so she asked for parent volunteers to come in and take her place. My job was mostly to escort kids to the restroom; I also helped with snack time. In between taking kids to the restroom, it was pretty fun to just observe the kids and notice all the different dynamics going on in the class room. Seth ignored me the first couple of hours and was very busy doing various activities, but around 10:30 he came to me and told me he was ready to go home! The last hour he was a little more "clingy", but not too bad. By the time we got home, I had a headache and I actually took a short nap! Seth came down with a cold this week and he hasn't been sleeping great at night, so I've been more tired than usual. Frank took the boys to scouts / YM that night because they had basketball practice before that, and he is in charge of the practices. He also had a scout committee meeting that evening.

Thursday was the busiest day of all. I spent the morning at the school working in the office on pledge drive stuff. I don't know why, but I love doing that! It's fun to do some "real" accounting again. Then I ran to the grocery store with Seth. Scott had an appointment with the dermatologist, which I had to move to 2:00 because we also had dentist appointments (I had forgotten all about them when I made the dermatologist appointment) so I had to pick him up early from school and go to that. Then I had to pick up Jared early from school so that we could all get to the dentist on time. To further complicate matters, Jared has been having trouble with one of his wires coming out of the brace on one of his teeth, so I also wanted to get him in to see the orthodontist, if possible, while we were out that way (the orthodontist and dentist are close to each other, but they are both about 25 minutes from our house). I had called the orthodontist office and they would be closed by the time we finished our dentist appointments, so I dropped Tanner and Scott off at the dentist and took Jared to the orthodontist while they had their teeth cleaned. We got back to the dentist in time for Seth and Jared to be seen (the orthodontist put a new wire on Jared's braces) but the lady who was supposed to clean my teeth had to leave early so they had to re-schedule my appointment. Scott has one cavity to be filled so he will have that done at the same time that I have my cleaning done. Everyone else had no cavities, but they all need to brush their teeth better (with the exception of Seth--his teeth are beautiful).

After we got home from all that, we quickly made dinner and read scriptures because I had signed up for an online video workshop about tips on getting funding for college. I suspected that it was really more of an advertising ploy than anything else, but it seemed worth trying since it was free. I was right--they mostly just gave tidbits of information and then wanted us to sign up for a free one hour consultation in which I'm sure they'd try to get us to hire their company to help us with college funding / planning. Even so, I don't think it was a waste of time because I did learn quite a bit about the college application process that I think will be very helpful. I took notes! But while I'm on the topic, if any of you folks who have already sent kids to college have any words of advice or pointers, I'd be very grateful if you'd share them!

It rained hard almost all day on Thursday so yesterday the river looked like this:

We haven't had any nice warm days this week although the cold is definitely weakening. Even so, I am getting impatient for some more nice spring days!

On Friday morning I got a call from a lady who is moving to this area soon; she wanted information about the schools and neighborhoods. Someone else in the ward gave her my number so that I could give her information about the boys' charter school. She said her husband is the brother of our former bishop's wife (did you follow that?!). It would be nice if they end up in our ward, but they don't know what part of Frederick they are going to live in yet. Anyway, she said the information I gave her was very helpful.

The rest of the morning, as I worked on other tasks, I had the television on so I could keep up with what was going on in Japan / Hawaii / western US coast with the earthquake / tsunami. Pretty frightening stuff! I feel sorry for those who were caught in the middle of all of that.

Both our federal and state tax returns came in last week, so following Cleveland family tradition, we took the whole family out to eat Friday night. We had a good time. That's not something we can do very often anymore, with 3 teenage boys who eat a lot! Afterwards, we dropped Scott and Tanner off at the church so they could help make decorations for a dance that's happening next week. Frank had to go make copies of a flyer for a lawn aeration fundraising project that we are doing with a couple of other families in our ward to help raise funds for scout camp. Jared played video games and I watched Pride and Prejudice (on my computer), which we just got from Netflix on Thursday. Seth interrupted me a lot, but I still enjoyed it. It's the version that was made for the theaters a few years back; I've never seen it since no one else in my household is interested in seeing a movie like that!

We got a letter from Seth's teacher this week letting us know that his class is going to do an "operetta" in May. Seth has been given the part of Neil Armstrong. We need to come up with a costume for him, but I don't think that will be too hard. If anyone has a good idea for the helmet, though, let me know! That is the part I am having a hard time envisioning. He has a speaking part of about 4 lines. I have my serious doubts that we will actually be able to convince him to say it, but I'm hoping for the best.

Seth's quote of the week, speaking to Frank about Frank's new IPad: "Can I borrow that for a minute?" Frank actually doesn't have his IPad right now because he took it back to exchange it for the new IPad 2 that just came out. He won't be getting the new one until sometime next week.

This morning Frank took Tanner and Jared to help pass out the flyers for the aeration project. They were gone about 4 hours. Scott didn't go because he wasn't feeling well. He had a headache and stomachache, and when I took his temperature it was slightly elevated. Tanner came home complaining that his head hurt a lot and his nose is starting to run, also. So it looks like another round of something is going to go through the family. I wish we could all get well and stay well! I've had a lot of headaches this week, too.

I've kept busy today doing various jobs around the house that I've been putting off, like sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor.

We are looking forward to watching the BYU basketball game tonight. Go cougars! And don't forget to "spring ahead" one hour...