Weekly Review July 16 '11

So we did a few fun things this week. Yesterday we took Seth to the National Zoo. (Did you know that admission to the National Zoo is free? Well, it is. Your taxpayer dollars are paying for our free entertainment. The parking isn't free, though.) Poor deprived Seth has never been to a zoo before now! He seemed to have a good time. He says the tiger was his favorite animal. He is looking at the map of the zoo in the photo above.

I do not like this photo of me (I have a funny look on my face because Frank didn't give me a chance to smile), but pictures of me are hard to come by, so I included it so that someday my great grandkids will know that I really existed!

One of the cheetahs. We really enjoyed watching them. We also liked the lion cubs.

Seth is watching the zebras. He loved the noises that they made!

Only Seth, Frank and I went to the zoo. The oldest two boys were at Youth Conference and Jared had spent the night with a friend from the ward on Thursday--they had invited him to go with them to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7, part 2. (He enjoyed that a lot, by the way.) We figured it was a good day to go since we knew the older boys weren't interested in going to the zoo anyway, and Frank and I needed a break from the harsh realities of life when unemployed. Thankfully, it wasn't a super hot day, but we did get pretty tired and hot anyway. I don't think we will be doing that again for a while!

Other fun things about this week:

Scott had his friend Abbie over on Tuesday morning to "hang out". She was arriving early, so Scott was up early too. (Frank's comment: "We should let him invite a girl over every day!") They spent quite a bit of time down by the river talking--I admit there is sadly no place in this house to entertain a guest with any semblance of privacy!

On Wednesday the women in my book club got together to celebrate all the July / August birthdays since there are quite a few of us with birthdays in those months. We met at a park that I've never been to before. It was a bit of a drive--it was way up by the Pennsylvania border--but it was a beautiful drive and the view from the park was fantastic. It's located on the edge of a mountain. A long time ago it was a major tourist spot with hotels and an amusement park but all of that disappeared around World War II. Now it's just a really nice community park. The weather was nice and cool up there and I really enjoyed visiting with friends.

That evening my friend Jeanine and her boys came over. Jeanine had asked if we could have her two oldest boys, Joey and Kalvin, spend the night with us since they all had to be at the stake center at 5:00 am for Youth Conference. They live in Westminster, which is about an hour away from the stake center but it is only about 10 minutes away from our house. We were glad to have them stay, of course. Jeanine insisted that they bring us dinner that evening, and she did--along with several other bags of assorted groceries that she thought we could use. That was really thoughtful of her, and it really cheered me up!

On Thursday I enjoyed going to Barnes & Noble to spend the gift card Mom & Dad sent me for my birthday. Frank came too--he still had some of his gift card from his birthday left! I have a weakness for children's books so that's what I ended up getting. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite series of books was the Betsy-Tacy series. The author wrote 3 other books that were not officially part of that series but that included some of the same characters that appeared in that series. Those books were out of print for a long time but now they have been reissued, so I got two of them. (I already own the other one.) I've been wanting to read them for a long time, so it was fun to do that this week. I'm looking forward to reading the other two books that I got, too.

Tanner and Scott were at Youth Conference from early Thursday morning until this evening. They went to Kirtland, Ohio this year. I think it is really great that they got to do that! I haven't heard a whole lot about their experiences yet since they've only been home a few hours but I think they had a really good time. They were not allowed to take any electronics of any kind--even their phones. Before they left, they were moaning about how boring the bus ride there and back was going to be, but now they admit that the bus rides were a lot of fun. (I told them so!) They both met lots of cute new girls, too! They had a testimony meeting this morning in the Kirtland Temple before they left and they both admit that they (and everyone else, apparently) cried through the whole thing because there was such a strong spirit there. Scott's bus was in a very minor (thankfully) accident on the way home; no one was hurt but it delayed them a bit so they got back about an hour later than planned. I am looking forward to hearing more about their experiences over the next few days.

I think that covers the fun things we did this week. We did all the more ordinary things such as cleaning house and buying groceries, of course. Jared mowed the lawn and Frank trimmed the apple trees in our front yard. I met with one of my counselors to talk about the Cub Scout program. Frank did some work on computers in the stake. Snickers got a haircut. I worked on Sharing Time. Frank kept looking for a job. He had another very interested recruiter call him this week but so far most of the positions they are trying to fill are temporary and too far away to commute. He would be willing to do something temporary if it were nearby, of course, but if it isn't commuting distance it doesn't make sense to move. This is just not a great economy for looking for a job and I'm afraid it's going to take some time to find something. Some days I feel ok about that and other days I panic. On a good note, though, we are definitely seeing some of the blessings of paying tithing including the fact that the little that has been coming in is stretching a lot farther than expected.

Update on Seth: the last month or so he has begun to dress himself. He's known how to do it for a while, but now he goes to his room most mornings after breakfast and gets dressed without me asking him to. Very nice! I've had some interesting conversations with him lately, like the time he told me that when "you and Daddy got married, I watched you through a window. Scott and Tanner and Jared were there, too." He also told me once recently that Jesus loves him all the time and that He wants him to be nice. Even if Jared is mean to him (Seth), Jesus wants him to be nice back. What do you know--he really is listening in Primary! Hard to tell, because he rarely sits in his seat for more than a minute. And last week when we were talking about families being sealed in the temple and I showed them a picture of a sealing room and asked them if they would like to go to a place like that, he loudly proclaimed that he did NOT want to go there and that he did NOT want to be sealed to his family! Tough luck for him, since he already is. :)

I have finally succeeded in getting all the boys to bed, and it is my bedtime, too, so I'd better post this and get to sleep!