Weekly Review June 4 '11

This week started out with a busy Sunday. I had Ward Council before church; choir and a Primary visit after church. We were "one man down" during Primary because one of my counselors (Michelle) had a baby Saturday evening (yes, we were expecting that to happen any day). My secretary was also out of town, but we have an assistant secretary now and she did a good job of filling in, even though she is very new and still learning. In between choir and the Primary visit, my other counselor (Tammy) and I went to visit Michelle and her new baby. It was very sweet to hold such a new little one. He is beautiful! Michelle has 3 girls; this is her first boy. We had a very nice (although short) visit with her. We were excited that Michelle had her baby on the 28th. That means he shares a birthday with Seth as well as Tammy. As Tammy says "Now we are all connected forever!"

Our ward had a picnic at the park to celebrate Memorial Day. Frank helped with the cooking, as usual--we had hamburgers and hot dogs. The food was very yummy and it was pleasant to visit with other ward members, but it was very, very hot and humid so no one hung around long after we ate. We all came home and kind of collapsed for the rest of the day--and felt very thankful for air conditioning!

The extremely hot temperatures continued into Tuesday and Wednesday, but after that we got some relief. As a matter of fact, Thursday was perfect--sunny, dry, and temperatures in the 80's. By a very happy chance, Thursday was also the day that was scheduled for Field Day at Jared and Seth's school. They really hit the weather jackpot with that one! A few weeks ago I was wondering if they would ever get a day without rain. Jared was very involved with Field Day because the Middle School kids plan and run all the stations. Seth didn't participate in Field Day at the park with the rest of the school--they have the preschoolers stay at the school and do activities in the courtyard, since they are only there for a few hours. He came home very enthusiastic about all the fun activities he had done. Jared came home tired!

The rest of the week has been blessedly uneventful. It has been so nice to have a little bit of "down time"! The boys had YM Wednesday evening as usual, I had a routine doctor appointment that morning, and I worked on pledge drive stuff at the school on Thursday. We got our copies of the new family cookbook on Thursday and I'm enjoying looking through it. Erin did such a great job putting it together--it looks fantastic! And I'm looking forward to trying out the recipes!

Seth kept busy playing with new toys. Here he is trying out his new "Moon Sand":

Another exciting event for him was the arrival of the ice cream truck on our street!:

(Tanner and Jared both bought ice cream, too.)

Frank had his last day at FSA on Thursday. He's been working there either full time or as a contractor for nearly 7 years; it seems strange that he won't be going there anymore. (Although I suspect he will still get a phone call or two from them, at least at first.) He went in really early on Thursday, but that is the last time he'll have to do that. Next week we'll see how things go with his hours. Hopefully, his time will be filled up with other things.

One other thing that kept me busy this week was planning for a Primary activity that we are going to have next week. We're having it as sort of a "reward"--to celebrate how well the kids are doing on reading their scriptures.

Last night Frank and I escaped for a quick date. We picked up some Mexican food at Chipotle and took it to a nearby park / nature center to eat. Then we walked around the pond at the nature center. We saw lots of turtles and fish! The weather was beautiful again so we really enjoyed that.

Tanner and Jared went to spend the night with Ryan and Bryson last night, but Scott stayed home and went to bed at a reasonable hour because he had to take the SAT this morning. After Scott got done with that, we got some shopping done. We had a lot of different things we needed to get--a few groceries, sandals for me, shorts for Scott and Frank, and so forth. We were unsuccessful in finding a Sunday suit for Scott--nothing in his size, as usual! We didn't find any shorts for him, either. We started looking at lawnmowers and weed eaters because ours are not working anymore and when we looked into getting them fixed, it was going to cost more to fix them than to replace them. (One of our nice neighbors edged our lawn for us today, and although it could use some mowing, it's not looking too bad so mowing can wait a bit longer.) We were tired after all that shopping!

This evening we are looking forward to a visit from Frank's cousin, Phil, who is here at the Frederick airport with the MetLife blimp--he's one of the mechanics. He was here last fall also--we got to see the blimp up close that time.

Only 1 1/2 more weeks of school!