Weekly Review December 23 '11

Winter break or spring break? If it weren't for the Christmas decor everywhere, I would definitely guess spring break! We are having such mild weather--many days this week the temperature was in the high 50's. It even got up to nearly 70 one day--ironically, that was on the 21st; the first day of winter! We've had quite a bit of rain as well. If it were colder, we'd definitely be having a white Christmas this year. The boys have been known to complain, but I don't mind one bit!

The weather was chilly enough that we did wear coats when we went to the temple grounds last Friday, as you can see from the photos. We had some family drama as we were getting ready to leave and Scott and Tanner decided to stay home, but the two younger boys came with Frank and I. The visitor's center is always all decked out with many beautiful trees. All the local stakes are responsible to decorate a tree. Here is Seth standing in front of our stake's tree:

And here is Seth trying out the camel by the nativity:

The lights are so beautiful! I didn't have a tripod with me, though, so unfortunately my pictures are pretty blurry:

Besides enjoying the lights, we also attended a concert done by a handbell choir--it was great! Jared and I saw the nativity set exhibit also. Frank stayed with Seth and let him wander through the visitor's center while we did that because Seth was getting pretty restless. The nativity set exhibit is done every year and includes sets from all over the world. They are always so amazing! (There are different ones every year, too.) Unfortunately I didn't have the camera with me when I was in the exhibit; I left it with Frank. One of my favorites was one that was black and white photographs of people in nativity dress attached to simple wood blocks. I think it would be cool to make one of those using photographs of family members. Another one was hanging on the wall--three framed pictures. One picture was a sillhouette of Mary, Joseph & baby Jesus, another was a sillhouette of the 3 wise men, and the third was a sillhouette of the angel and the shepherds. Behind each sillhouette was a copy of the sheet music for a different Christmas song. I also really loved a set from the Netherlands that was white and blue; it looked like fine china. It's always so interesting to see how the different cultures interpret the nativity.

Saturday was a busy day. Scott had a basketball game at 10:00. His team lost and he tweaked his knee a bit but he still was in good spirits about it. The boys did cleaning and organizing in their rooms. I can't say that their rooms are up to my standards, but they do look a lot better than they did. We cleaned the kitchen floor and cleaned the oven. My visiting teachers had me and the other two women they visit over for lunch; it was very nice!

Sunday was busy too--after church the boys had a practice for a song, then we had tithing settlement, and then I had another song practice. By the time I got home, it was time to start making dinner! We had another family in our ward over for dinner. They brought the dessert. They also brought us a bunch of rolls in a basket made out of bread (it was a work of art; wish I'd taken a picture of it) and this beautiful poinsettia plant:

We had a nice dinner and visit with them. Snickers was looking festive in his Christmas bandana:

He loves to sit on Frank's lap; he is looking up at Frank in adoration! In these pictures he is snuggling:

It is hard to get a good picture of Snickers because his eyes reflect the light from the flash. You'll have to trust me; he looks very cute!

The rest of the week was busy also. I'm really glad I got all my shopping done earlier! Monday morning I went to the church to help watch kids for moms who needed to get shopping or other Christmas projects done. There were a lot of women from the ward there to help so I didn't really end up doing much--most of the time we just visited! I also worked on stuff for YW that day, and of course that evening we had family night.

On Tuesday I went to the used book store again to look for some books for Scott--he is taking an AP Literature class next semester and they gave him a list of about 14 books that they are going to read for the class. He is supposed to read as many as possible before the class even starts. (He did read a few over the summer.) They want him to have his own copy of the books if possible so that he can write notes in them and so forth, so I thought if I could find used copies that would be much more economical. It was a good idea--I found all the books on the list except for two and they were each $3 or less. As usual, I didn't make it out of there without buying a couple of books for myself as well--but I was pretty good this time! I also had choir practice that night, Scott was gone all evening doing the sound for a show, and Frank & Tanner went home teaching. Frank and I also went to look at a house. We are not really ready to begin house searching in earnest yet, but this particular house was a really good deal so Frank wanted to go look at it. I should say look at it again, because we actually looked at it nearly a year ago. Yes, it is still on the market--and the price has dropped over $40,000 since the last time we looked at it. At the new price it would be very "do-able" for us and it still looks good--only needs minor work done--and it's big. Bigger than we need, actually. The catch is that there is already an offer on it, so the chances of us being able to actually buy it are pretty slim. We considered putting in an offer, but because another offer is already under consideration our realtor said they would not even look at an offer with a contingency that we sell our current house. We're not comfortable making an offer without that contingency in the current market so we are just going to wait and see if the other offer works out and then go from there. We aren't feeling ready to put our house on the market yet anyway.

Frank was starting to feel worse again on Tuesday and by Wednesday morning he really felt sick. He went to work that morning but after a couple of hours he was so miserable he decided to come home and go back to the doctor. His cough never did go away and besides that he had chills and his whole face was hurting. Not surprisingly, the doctor diagnosed a massive sinus infection. He put Frank on two different medications--one of them a very powerful antibiotic. Frank was pretty much down flat the rest of the day, but the medicine did it's trick and by Thursday morning he was vastly improved and able to go back to work. He is still coughing a lot, though. Hopefully he will get completely well soon; he has been sick for over 3 weeks now!

Meanwhile, Wednesday was a pretty busy day for everyone else. Scott went home teaching and Tanner made cookies for a school party the following day. That evening we all (even Frank, in spite of how sick he was) went over to the church for Scott's Eagle Court of Honor. His good friend David was also receiving his Eagle scout award. The meeting started a half hour late and Seth could not hold still to save his soul, but it was still a very nice ceremony. Among other things, they had 3 of the men who had worked with the boys in scouts talk about the boys and some of their experiences together, and they had some very nice (and sometimes funny) things to say about Scott and David. Afterwards, we had refreshments. David's family and our family went in together to get a cake:

Happy Eagle Scouts (and yes, that is Jared being crazy in the background):

Our three scouts (don't they look great?):

We let them be crazy for this one. (I said it wasn't a good idea to take the photograph in front of that picture of Christ, but they wouldn't move.):

Scott with Allie:

The two new Eagle scouts feeling giddy:

Sorry, I didn't manage to get a photo without a "fist pound":

Proud parents (see my new mother's pin?):

Seth wanted me to take his picture, too:

We are glad Scott finally reached this milestone! They asked him to say a few words and he thanked a lot of the people there for helping him to reach this goal, but especially his mom who kept pushing him (nagging would probably be a more accurate word, but he was nice enough not to use it) all those times when he wanted to give up. He got that right! ;)

We were tired when we got to bed but a good night's sleep was not on the cards--Seth threw up at about 1:00 in the morning so we were up a while with him and had some cleaning up to do. At least this time when I went in his room to find out why he was crying (and I could tell from the sound of his crying that it was not just a nightmare) and asked him what was wrong his response was "I need a bucket!" So we are getting there--at least he recognized the nauseous feeling and knew that it would be best not to throw up all over his bed even though we still didn't make it to the bathroom (or get a bucket) in time. That's a step in the right direction, right? Thankfully, this was one of those illnesses where they get sick pretty spectacularly just once in the night and then they go back to sleep and by morning you'd never know they were sick at all! By the time we got him cleaned up and settled down, though, I was wide awake and took quite a while to go back to sleep so it was a short night, as far as sleep goes. Seth didn't wake up until nearly 9:00 the next morning so I let him sleep. I took our car pool boy, Javier, to school at the right time but left Jared with Seth until he woke up. He actually woke up while I was gone so when I got home I got Seth in his coat and shoes and we went right back to the school--Jared was only about 15 minutes late. I kept Seth home, of course, but he never had any more problems. He sipped soda and by mid morning was ready for some scrambled eggs. By evening he was bouncing off the walls. Here he is with Tanner and Jared, watching "How to Train Your Dragon" on the touch screen computer. They looked so cute, the three of them together, that I took some photos:

Thursday was the last day of school for the kids, and they got out two hours early. Frank had a dentist appointment after work; his teeth are in great shape, thankfully. I made three batches of candy. Today we all enjoyed sleeping in, except for Frank--he still had to go to work. They shooed him out of there very early, though--he was on his way home by 11:30. I enjoyed grapefruit from Mesa, Arizona for breakfast--thanks to Erick & Liz, who sent us a box of citrus from there! I was a cookie making machine today. I spent all afternoon and into the evening making 4 batches of cookies. I still have one batch to finish tomorrow--I put the dough in the refrigerator. Here are the guys making the traditional paintbrush cookies:

I am now exhausted and every bone in my body aches from being on my feet most of the day. Remind me to never open a bakery! But here are the results of my two days of cookie and candy making:

Paintbrush cookies, spice cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate fudge, butterscotch / peanut butter fudge, and buckeyes...yummy!

I made a lot because we are giving some of it away. The boys helped with the paintbrush cookies and Frank helped me with most of the other batches, which I appreciate! Now we are waiting up for Scott to get home--he went with Allie and some friends on a double date. They went to see the lights at the temple.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a bit more relaxing. Some friends invited us to dinner on Christmas day, so we are not cooking a fancy dinner tomorrow as we normally do. We will have a simple "Bethlehem" meal instead, which is what we normally do on Christmas day. This Christmas is going to be quite different from most since we have church also, but I think it is going to be very nice. I really like it when Christmas falls on Sunday.

We will be thinking of all of you and hope that you have a wonderful Christmas. We love you!