Weekly Review February 17 '12

Happy Valentine's Day! Above is a picture of our table the morning of Valentine's Day--with all the goodies. We had a nice day with lots of chocolate, cards, and love--oh, and chocolate covered strawberries too!

So guess what? All four boys made it to school every day this week! I don't think anyone even has a sniffle, either. We are all feeling well all at once--and we've stayed that way for a solid five days. Miracles never cease! It has certainly been nice for a change. I'm not sure if I have anything to write about, though. :)

Last Friday night you may remember that Frank & I weren't feeling too great so we didn't make it to the temple. I did feel well enough to make it to the Leadership Training Broadcast, though, and it was very inspiring. Frank got a call shortly before it started; they were having technical difficulties so he had to run over there and save the day (even though he was feeling pretty nasty). They showed the broadcast two more times on Saturday morning and he went over to help with set up again, and then later in the afternoon on Saturday he and I went back to the church to take down all the equipment and put it away.

When I came out of the broadcast Friday evening, it was snowing lightly. It snowed more on Saturday--off and on, sometimes quite heavily for short periods of time. We only ended up with an inch of two of accumulation and not enough for anything to get cancelled. (Around here, it doesn't take much!) So we had three different snow "storms" in the last week which is more snow than we've seen around these parts in a long time. We might get more snow this weekend, but I doubt the boys are going to get out of school since it's a long week end. The timing of the few storms we've had has been just perfect, so that there have been no snow days or even delayed openings this whole school year. I don't think that's ever happened since we moved here. (But now that I said that, we'll get a huge freak spring storm that cancels school for a week. Jinx!)

Besides the Leadership Training Broadcast, Saturday was busy with other chores such as taking Frank's car in to get the windshield replaced (it had two large cracks; the insurance covered all but a reasonable deductible), some house cleaning, and Scott had a band show he helped with that night (for pay). Frank also started pulling wallpaper off the walls in our powder room--I've been wanting to pull it down and paint for years now. Right now about a third of the wallpaper is off so it doesn't look too great but I'm sure it will be nice when the project is done.

Everyone made it to Ward Conference on Sunday, which was nice. Frank and I were still feeling slightly queasy, but not too bad. Because the other ward that meets in our building was also having ward conference that day and our meetings usually overlap, our meetings were moved from an 11:00 start time to a 1:00 start time. It was strange going in that late, but at least we got to sleep in!

The rest of the week went by quickly and we stayed busy, mostly with the usual things. I went visiting teaching on Tuesday so I could take some flowers to one of the sisters I visit--she lives in a nursing home so I thought it would be nice to take her something. She really seemed to appreciate it. There was not YW on Wednesday night because we had a temple trip on Thursday evening, but the boys still had activities--the younger boys were planning a camp out and all of the boys needed to get temple recommend interviews as well. Frank took our boys over to the church and it was nice for me to stay home for a change.

Thursday it rained most of the day. That afternoon I had a meeting at Jared's school--I'm on the committee to help plan the 8th grade trip. It's a tradition that the 8th graders get to do a fun field trip at the end of the year, since it's their last year at the school. (Tanner's class went on a dinner cruise.) They always do something in Washington DC (an attempt to make it fair) but they try to pick something unique for each class, based on what the kids want to do. Thursday evening I went with the youth to do baptisms at the temple. It was great--I loved being at the temple again, after trying so hard for the last month to get there. They kept me very busy helping the girls (I was the only YW leader who ended up being able to go) but there was such a great feeling there. One of the sisters in our ward had a lot of family names and so most of the kids did baptisms for her family, which made it extra special. She came with us and it was great to sit next to her and watch her face as they read the names--she knew several of the people personally, so it meant a lot to her. I also enjoyed watching all three of my older boys as they were proxies for baptisms. We got to the temple early, so we went over to the visitor's center for a while and they showed us a short movie. Our session didn't start until 8:00, so we were up very late and getting up for Seminary this morning was not very fun. It was worth it, though.

Today the boys got out of school two hours early. I spent the morning at the school updating pledge drive information--I always enjoy doing that, but it made the day a bit hectic. After all the boys got home, Jared had to pack for his camp out. I left Frank in charge of that while I went to get my hair done. Seth came with me so he could play with his buddy Tyler (Tyler's mom cuts my hair). I got home just in time to take Jared to the church where they were meeting for the camp out. A few hours later, he called to say he forgot his contact lens case and fluid, so Frank and I drove that out to him (along with his toothbrush, which he also forgot, and some warmer gloves). Tanner has his friend Seth over to spend the night tonight. Sleep overs have been pretty sparse the last 3 or 4 months; I'm not complaining about that, though.

I think those are the main things that have been going on this week. There's been some interesting developments with the house we put the offer on--our realtor called to say that he's been trying to contact the listing agent all week to confirm that she got our offer and she hasn't responded. So Frank called the bank that owns the house and they told him that there are no offers on the house. To make a long story short, it looks like something fishy might be going on and the bank asked Frank to send an email to them with information on what we've done so far and what we've been told so far and they are going to do an investigation. There's no telling what the result will be, but I am not too worried about it. I don't mind the delay since we have so much to do to get our house ready to sell and we haven't been able to do much yet. Hopefully we'll make some progress on that this week.