Weekly Review July 29 '11

When I got the photos off the camera this week, I found several pictures that Seth took himself, apparently--like the little "gem" above. He looks like an alien with no mouth!

And this one, where at least you can see his mouth!

And this one, where he has the cutest cheesy grin (although he's still washed out).

He took this one of me, which is much better than the one Frank took at the zoo (I don't always wear that shirt, by the way). Not bad for a four year old!:

And here is one that I took of Seth--you can see his new haircut! (All four boys got haircuts last Saturday evening.)

That's all the pictures for this week; we didn't do anything very exciting, obviously! It was a very quiet week. The boys kept busy hanging out with friends, Frank looked for a job, and I kept the house in order. That mostly sums it up!

I had a presidency meeting Tuesday evening, the boys had YM Wednesday evening, and our home teachers came to visit us on Thursday evening. Scott had an orthodontist appointment Thursday morning and Seth had his yearly check up this morning. Scott goes back to the orthodontist in October for an x-ray to see how how his top wisdom teeth are doing; I hope he is not going to need to get them out yet--it's expensive. He also gets an impression for a new retainer because his 12 year molars have finally come in all the way (now that he is nearly 17 years old)! Seth had to get 3 shots at the doctor; he was pretty traumatized by that but he's recovered now. At least he got cool band-aids, a lollipop, and a little frog toy. He doesn't have to get shots again until he's 11, thank goodness! He remembers the older boys getting shots earlier this summer and he tried to convince the doctor that he is "not big enough to get shots yet"! He's obviously forgotten all those shots he got when he was a baby.

The boys enjoyed sleepovers and swimming outings with various friends. The weather cooled off a little bit the beginning of this week, so it was actually nice enough to do things outside like play basketball. It has gotten super hot again the last few days, though. We've been trying to let them have as much fun with friends as possible this summer since they are not going to get a vacation at all.

Frank has been trying to convince me to take the boys and drive out to Utah for a few weeks. As much as I would like to see everyone out there, I don't think we'll be doing that. Besides the obvious expense involved, the boys are not enthusiastic about a long drive like that, and I know I'd be miserable thinking of Frank all alone out here, trying to find a job and most likely feeling down. This has really not been a good week for him although he doesn't complain.

Frank has done a little bit of work this week, but the job search is pretty much at a standstill. After 7 weeks of being unemployed, applying for tons of jobs and only having one interview, it's hard to feel optimistic. Besides that, he found out that his former employers are not being honest with prospective employers who call them--they are telling them that he was laid off for financial and "other" reasons, which leaves them wondering what those "other" reasons might be. It's really frustrating that they would do that, when the only real reason he was laid off was because they couldn't pay him. I have a lot of very angry thoughts about all that, but I will keep them to myself! Considering that the job market is so slow right now and his former employer is trying to sabotage his ability to find employment, we have started to think a lot about starting our own business. This week we talked to an accountant who gave us a good idea of how we should set that up and what kinds of things we would need to do. Of course, the key part of making a business run would be getting clients, though--and that could be very difficult to do. So we haven't decided what to do yet, but we are keeping it in mind.

We did have some fun last week--on Saturday Frank and I were able to go see Harry Potter 7, part 2. We had some complimentary tickets to the local movie theater that we have been saving for several months--we're glad now that we didn't use them sooner! It was really nice to get out of the house and do something just for fun. We really enjoyed the movie, too. We mostly liked it, although we didn't like some of the things they changed from the book. But overall, it was really good and I was surprised at how emotional I got at some parts! Tanner got to see it with his friend last Friday, so Scott is the only one who hasn't seen it yet. He's not all that anxious about it though--he actually says he'd rather see Captain America! (What's wrong with that boy?!) I guess Seth hasn't seen it, either, but he's too young to see it.

Tonight Scott is hanging out with the girl he met at Youth Conference again. Her name is Ally. I met her when I dropped him off tonight, and she is definitely a cute girl and seems really nice. The bad news for Scott (but maybe good news for us?!) is that although she is his age, she skipped a grade in school so she just graduated from high school in June. She'll be going to LDS Business College in Salt Lake City this fall. So I guess he'd better spend time with her while he can!

Seth made a large purchase this week--he decided he was tired of trying to convince the older boys to let him play with their nerf dart guns so he got one of his own. I found him dumping out his piggy bank--I didn't even know he remembered he had one! But he did, and since he's never spent anything before he had a pretty decent amount accumulated in there. Now he has his own dart gun, but I've noticed he still plays with the older boys' guns!

That brings you all up to date on us, until next week....