Weekly Review March 31 '12

I'll start out this post with another picture of the tree out back. It's starting to show some green leaves near the tips of the branches. This picture was taken last Saturday. No doubt it looks a lot greener now, but I couldn't get to my back door very much this week (because of the work being done in the kitchen) to notice if it was changing and today I was so busy I didn't even look!

This week seems like it was really long. That's probably because so much changed in one week--in our house, that is. Plus we were living in a mess!

On Saturday the house was fairly neat, though. The boys' bathroom was done and we hadn't started tearing anything else up yet. It was a busy day with Jared & Scott arriving home from a campout, Seth going to a Primary activity, Jared going to a friend's house for the afternoon, one of Jared's friends coming over that evening, errands to run, and the YW broadcast that evening. Plus, Frank had some wiring to do at our church building (he's getting things set up so that stake conference can be broadcast to our building). He said it would take a couple of hours, but he was gone for nearly eight. Scott and Tanner were helping him, so they were gone that whole time too.

Sunday Jared and I had BYC after our usual meetings. I can't remember what else we did that day other than dinner and family night.

The kids didn't have school on Monday because it was end of term. I got some shopping done and did some cleaning in the kitchen. The work on my bathroom started that day, too. The boys helped me do chores and enjoyed playing some games. When Frank got home that afternoon, we did some more oven shopping and found what we wanted. We also picked out an oven hood and a new faucet for the kitchen sink. After dinner, we moved all of the furniture and appliances out of the kitchen into the living room. (We had to move the living room furniture first.) We actually ran out of room for everything and the kitchen chairs ended up in Jared's room. After all the work, we had family night treat. We ran out of time to do an activity.

The rest of the week we lived in a state of chaos. My schedule was all messed up because most of the housework was an impossibility and I couldn't go shopping on the normal days either since it was pointless to bring more groceries into a house without a usable kitchen. We still kept busy, though. I had book club on Tuesday, a presidency meeting and roadshow practice on Wednesday, took kids to the library at the school on Thursday, and visiting teaching and a baby shower on Friday. In between all that I had stuff to do for YW and we picked out laminate flooring for the living room. On Thursday evening I also listened to part of the YW Auxiliary training meeting via the internet but I didn't make it through the whole thing because in our time zone it went until 11:00 pm and Thursday was the day I woke up at 2:30 am and never went back to sleep. So I just couldn't stay awake that late! Fortunately, I can watch it "on demand" later.

Yesterday I planned to do a lot of cleaning and getting the kitchen put back together but that didn't happen because I came down with the flu. My stomach hurt when I woke up that morning, but I was hoping it was just the effects of eating out three nights in a row (since the kitchen was all torn up). I didn't feel nauseated but I had a lot of painful cramping. If I had realized that I was sick and not just suffering from too much restaurant food, I probably would have stayed home that morning but I didn't so I made myself go ahead with my visiting teaching appointment and then stopped by a baby shower for my friend Tammy. It was supposed to be at a park, but the weather didn't cooperate--temps in the low 40's and raining! So they had to move the event to the church instead. I didn't have time to stay for the actual shower because it was time for me to pick up Seth from school--they were still finishing with the set up when I left but hopefully that means that I didn't expose too many people to my illness. By the time I got back home after picking up Seth I realized that I really was coming down with something. I started feeling a lot worse and then I started to feel feverish and got the chills. I spent the afternoon on the couch and after the workers left for the day I went to bed and stayed there. I slept on and off and later that evening I watched a movie on my computer (although kind of sideways, since I didn't feel well enough to sit up). Everyone else had chinese food for dinner but I didn't feel like eating. I had actually skipped breakfast and lunch for the same reason, so I didn't eat a single thing all day. Frank and I were supposed to go to the marriage class that evening as well, but we had to skip it. Frank got the new oven hooked up and the workers had moved our refrigerator back into the kitchen (nice of them!) but the rest of the work had to wait until today.

I am still not 100% today, but I am much better than yesterday. The fever is gone and I've been able to eat again. There was so much to do today that I really didn't have time to take it easy. Besides watching General Conference, we literally spent the whole day cleaning and putting our house back in order. Everything got moved back into the kitchen, most of the house was vacuumed, all three bathrooms were cleaned (including the floors in two of them), the front steps and walk were swept, and the kitchen floor was swept & mopped. I also had to make trips to Wal-Mart and to the grocery store. Frank took the boys in between conference sessions to pass out flyers for an upcoming lawn aeration fundraiser for scout camp. We all worked hard all day! Frank strained his back yesterday when he was moving the new oven around so his back has been hurting quite a bit today. Since he didn't have the luxury of taking it easy either, his back got more painful as the day went on and by this evening he was feeling so bad that he stayed home from the priesthood session and took a hot bath. The three oldest boys did go to the session, though, and they said it was really good. It was actually really nice to see all three of them paying close attention to both conference sessions today. They all took notes, too.

I finally finished all the work that needed to be done around 9:30 tonight. To finish up, here are the "before, during and after" photos of the kitchen and the master bathroom:

Kitchen "before"

Large hole in the kitchen linoleum

Another big "nick" in the linoleum

Close up of the old kitchen floor. I'm sure it looked nice once, but after 19 years it never looked clean--even right after I cleaned it.

White countertops--they always looked dirty, too.

The ugly oven hood, which was falling down (Frank fixed it more than once).

During renovations--the kitchen occupied half of the living room--fun!

Another shot of the "kitchen"--you can see the old stove, too. It still worked, but never quite recovered fully from the time Seth left his plastic toy pot in there--and I didn't know it and turned the oven on, and the pot melted.... Plus, the lights in the display had gone out so when I set the timer I had to count it out and I could never tell if it had actually worked (sometimes it didn't work). The oven was 19 years old too. People age much nicer than ovens do!

The living room with the "kitchen" behind it. Plus Seth eating a muffin...having him eat in the living room for four days was a "joy"!

Ahhh...after! New sink, faucet, and counter tops. Yes, I know the blue walls don't match. That's one of our next projects!

New oven and hood. The display works on this oven and there are no remnants of melted plastic on the bottom! And as a bonus, the door handle is much "flatter" on this oven than the last one. So now we can open the drawer on the immediate right of the oven without having to open the oven door first! You can see that the counter still looks pretty cluttered. Putting in new countertops did not create any counter space, unfortunately. Eventually, we are going to purchase some storage pieces for the kitchen.

New tile floor--no more white linoleum! Yes, this tile is the same as the bathrooms. Only we had them lay it diagonal instead of square.

New sink & faucet. We have already discovered that crumbs are not visible on these countertops (unless you look VERY close). I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not! :)

Now on to the master bath:

Ugly white linoleum floor. If you ever get the opportunity to pick out floors, I have a word of advice for you: do NOT pick white!

Shower floor. In my defense, I did scrub it. A lot! (Admittedly, not as often I should have, though.) Nothing worked on this floor. Even the magic eraser failed me.

Water damage to the floor by the shower.

During:

The backboard is down and the shower floor (and a few rows of tile) have been removed.

The new shower floor (it doesn't look too great yet since it needs to be cleaned).

The toilet spent the week in a corner of our bedroom; that was lovely! Incidentally, we have discovered that whoever did the plumbing when this house was built did not know what he was doing. Every time our friend did anything that involved plumbing, he found something wrong that he had to fix. (Makes me worry about the rest of the house...) Something under our kitchen sink was so loose that he said he was amazed it hadn't popped off and shot water all over before now. He said "it must be one of the blessings of paying tithing". We've had a lot of those....

After:

New shower floor, after cleaning. My only complaint now is that the old tiles look mighty "dinghy" next to the new ones. I need to clean them better.

Beautiful new floor. (We picked out a new shower curtain too.) The white area in the corner is where we had more sheetrock peeling away so it was repaired. There is going to be a lot of painting in our future!

Now it is late and I'm exhausted. As I said, it's been a long week. We plan to thoroughly enjoy our day of rest, listening to the prophets speak and having our house in order for one day before it gets messed up again. This coming week it will be the living room, entry and dowstairs bath. But once that is done, we will take a break from renovations for a little while.

I still haven't had time to check blogs, but I hope you are all well and happy.

Weekly Review March 23 '12

Before I start talking about our week, I want to mention that I have not been able to check blogs this week and it looks like a few of you have been very busy blogging. So if I haven't left any comments on your blog, it is not because I'm not interested in you! I'm looking forward to getting caught up on all the events in your lives.

So do you recognize that tree up there? You should, because it is the same tree I had at the beginning of my blog post last week. It looks a lot "fluffier" now! All the trees around here do--they're just covered in blosssoms. Scott took all the pictures below for me:

Another view of the same tree.

The beautiful tree I see outside my back door every day.

The backyard tree again, this time close up.

We had a very warm and humid week. The daffodils are mostly gone now, but now the tulips are coming up:

Now here is Seth, being silly. He wanted me to take his picture:

So where did I leave off last week? I think it was Friday afternoon. That evening Frank and I went out to look at tile. We decided to stick with our original choice. Then we went to a marriage and family relations (Sunday School) class. It was pretty fun.

Saturday was a busy day. Our stake had a Relief Society Women's Conference that morning. I was a little late because I slept in and I was also getting dinner in the crock pot--we had corned beef, cabbage, carrots and potatoes in honor of St. Patrick's Day. The conference was really nice with lots of interesting classes to choose from, nice displays, and delicious refreshments. The afternoon was full with errands and chores; I also finished preparing my lesson for YW and finished weeding the flower beds in front, with help from Frank. He had a lot of computer work to do also. That evening Tanner went to a regional dance and Scott went with some friends from school to see a play that was being directed by his theater teacher at school.

Sunday was a bit busy. I was teaching the lesson for the Mia Maids; it was a little crazy because I had an emotional class. One of the girls was very upset by some things that had happened in Sunday School and another girl was upset about something else. So there were waterworks for a while, but we talked about it and then everyone felt better. My lesson time ended up being short because of that, but that's ok. Afterwards they sustained a new class presidency and then we had presidency meeting. Meanwhile, Frank went to a meeting for all the parents of boys going to scout camp / camp Helaman this summer where they planned fundraising, among other things. We finally made it home after all the meetings and had dinner and family night.

Monday morning I went to a RS activity where we sewed bags. I have been wanting to retire my large ugly church bag for a long time and make a new one, so I was pretty happy when I found out an activity had been planned to sew church bags. The activity was fun; in addition to accomplishing something concrete, it was fun to visit too. I didn't finish the bag before it was time for me to go pick up Seth, but I was able to finish it later that day. Here it is:

Frank thinks the fabric I picked out is too wild, but everyone else likes it!

Besides sewing, I also ran several errands, vacuumed, did the laundry, bought groceries, and my visiting teachers came to see me. We had family night, too, and made strawberry ice cream for treat.

So on Tuesday the work on our house finally did start! This week the main project was the boys' bathroom. Our friend was here working 4 or 5 hours each day Tuesday through today. Here are some photos of the boys' bathroom before he started:

Ugly white linoleum floor

Water damage to the floor by the tub (and yes, my feet!)

Water damage to the wall by the tub

Peeling sheetrock tape in a corner

Here's how the bathroom looks now:

Beautiful tile floor

No more water damage on wall and floor (tub nicely caulked too)

Sheetrock tape fixed

We still need to paint the walls (they really look bad now next to the new shoe molding!) but still the whole room looks much better. We'll probably replace the light fixture too. And if I get really ambitious I might paint the vanity. (But not right away.)

Besides the boys' bathroom, he also did some little projects such as repairing the pipe to our water spigot in the back yard--it's been broken for years. Now we can finally powerwash the house and Seth will find out what a wading pool is, without causing a flood inside the basement. This coming week the main projects will be our bathroom and the kitchen.

I spent Tuesday morning at the school working on accounting stuff. Frank and I went out that evening for a little while--we had to pick out a grout color and we also looked at ovens. Frank was very busy with work, clients, and computer work for friends all week but he took a break to go do that.

Wednesday I updated our FAFSA (now that our tax return has been filed we had to replace our estimated tax data with the actual numbers) and hemmed some pants for a friend. I looked online and found this really great method for hemming jeans--it was really easy! That evening was roadshow practices again. I had more to do this week and it was kind of fun.

Thursday was busy too, but just with the ordinary things. Frank and Tanner went home teaching that evening. I worked on Personal Progress and tried to get some ideas for upcoming YW activities.

I'm not sure where today went--I spent most of it working on updating the budget. I had lots of interruptions and there's extra stuff to do whenever Frank earns income from his "business". (Not that I'm complaining about that!) The boys got out of school 2 hours early and Scott and Jared went on a campout. Tanner originally planned to go too but decided not to go when he found out none of the other boys his age were going. Frank and I had originally planned to go to the temple together but the campout and Frank's work schedule complicated things. We still both made it to the temple but not together--as a matter of fact, I met Frank coming out as I was going in! We both did initiatories--I was able to do several family names for a woman in our ward; she was very grateful! (Five of the names she gave me were women with the last name of "Webb", which made me wonder if they were my distant relations somehow as well.) It was our ward temple night, so I saw a number of other people I know too, which is always nice.

Well, it is very late and tomorrow is another busy day (as a matter of fact, now that I look at the time it already is "tomorrow") so I will finish this post and get to bed!

Weekly Review March 16 '12

Last week I had white daffodils so this week I have yellow! We have had record breaking high temperatures most of this week. We have pulled shorts and sandals out of the backs of closets and we even resorted to turning on the air conditioning! We resisted as long as possible (there is something wrong about needing air conditioning in March) but we finally gave in Wednesday night and turned it on for a few hours to cool things down a bit so we could sleep better. We did the same thing last night. Even with the windows open, it was still close to 80 degrees inside. Today is is a lot cooler and cloudy though. It rained a little bit too. Almost overnight, it seems, all the trees in the neighborhood are in bloom:

Last Saturday we took the kids out for lunch. It's kind of a family tradition to do that when we get our annual tax return. We were also celebrating the fact that Frank is now officially working for Marriott.

Scott and Tanner had a party for Seminary that evening. They had fun but Scott got injured. They were playing a game called "Fugitive" where some people are trying to catch others. One of the Seminary teachers was driving Scott's group around looking for some of the fugitives. She spotted some and said "Oh, you guys need to go get them." She was going pretty slow and so Scott thought she had stopped. He opened the door and jumped out--and then realized that the car was actually still moving! He did a "tuck and roll" but he says that doesn't work as well in real life as it does in the movies. He really ripped up the skin on his hands and one knee. The jeans and jacket he was wearing got pretty ripped up too. It could have been worse, though--grateful it wasn't. Scott was feeling pretty nauseous Sunday morning so he didn't go to church. He started to feel better later in the day, though.

I had YW chores this week--I had to call all the Mia Maid girls to find out who is going to camp. I am also teaching this Sunday, so I've been trying to get the lesson ready. Wednesday evening we started roadshow practices. I only have to help with those--I'm not in charge and don't have to plan anything so that is a nice change! As a matter of fact, there wasn't enough for me to do this week and I got kind of bored. The roadshow is going to be great, though. The guy in our ward who is in charge has a lot of professional acting experience, so he knows what to do. It's going to be a lot better than any roadshow I was ever in as a teenager!

Frank went to an employee orientation at Marriott headquarters all day on Monday. He did work at the stake center on Tuesday and did monthly maintenance for a number of clients this week. He spent a lot of time on Saturday setting up a new computer for a client. Today he is buying a computer for a friend and getting that set up this week end. In short, he is keeping busy. We are not getting a lot of work done around the house (such as pulling down wallpaper and painting) but it'll all get done eventually.

My big project this week was weeding. (I planned it this week on purpose since I knew it would be warm.) I spent a couple of hours on both Monday and Tuesday afternoons weeding in the flower bed that runs parallel to the front walk, as well as in the round bed in the middle of the lawn. I tried to be very thorough. It took a long time because we have a lot of wild onions and they have to be painstakingly dug up, one by one. I haven't completely finished with them, actually, but I think I got everything else. I actually didn't mind weeding as much as I normally do. It was nice to be outside. Tuesday was much hotter than Monday, though, so I was pretty wiped out by the time I came in. I've had headaches off and on since then, so I started taking allergy pills again. After being so hot on Tuesday, I got smart and waited until last evening to do the flower bed that runs under the front windows. I should have taken "before" photos so that you could really appreciate how much better the yard looks now, but here are the "after" photos:

Just imagine that everywhere you see dirt, there used to be weeds. I filled two of those large yard waste bags. The entire bed in the top photo had weeds about 8 inches tall! Because of the mild winter we've had, the weeds have grown unchecked all winter long. Now we need to get some mulch down before they all grow back. We also need to figure out what to do about the lawn--I think there are more weeds in the lawn than grass. I'm not exaggerating!

I think the work on our house is going to start on Tuesday. It keeps getting moved back. First it was going to be the end of February, then it was early March, then it was March 12, then March 14, then March 19. Now it's the 20th. I hope that doesn't change again! We went last night to pick out our new countertops. Here's what they are going to look like:

I hope that they will look nice. It's really hard to tell when you are just looking at a slab of rock! (And remember...I have no design sense.) We did take one of our cabinet doors with us so we could hold it up next to the different slabs, and it matched this particular one the best. We have to go pick out tile for the kitchen and bathroom floors today or tomorrow. We actually picked this tile out a few years ago:

I still like it, and we may just go with that, but we wanted to look to make sure. I'm not sure I like it with the countertops we picked out (although obviously the floor and the countertops will not be touching each other) so we may end up with something different for the kitchen. The guy who is doing the work for us came over this morning to measure everything so he can go buy the backboard to go under the tile and get the countertop measurements to the granite place, so hopefully we are on schedule to get started on Tuesday.

On Wednesday evening after dinner and before YM / YW, we went to a "Pi Party". Another family in our ward invited a few friends over to celebrate "Pi Day" (you know, 3.14... and the date was 3/14). Frank made a strawberry pie for our contribution and there were several others to choose from...chocolate chip, mixed berry ice cream, key lime, pumpkin, etc. It was a short party since most of us had to be at the church at 7:00, but it was fun while it lasted! One of the families just moved into the ward this week, so it was nice to get to know them better.

We got to bed late Wednesday night because Tanner had some homework to finish up and while we were at the roadshow practice Scott remembered that he had to have a resume ready for the next day for his "senior interview". This is something they have to do in order to graduate--it's a practice job interview with a business leader in the community. They give them feedback afterwards to help them improve. He had to dress up in his Sunday clothes for it, too.

That's all the happenings around here that are worth reporting. I have to go pick up Jared from school so I'd better be going.

My Childhood Home & Neighborhood, Part 1 (Glendora, California)

 

 Our Glendora home, blurry and black & white!

 

Pew Family in front of our Glendora House, 1968 or 1969

I don't know which baby I am--my mom could tell you, though!

Middle row (l-r): Hans, Erick, Curtis

Front row: Tim, Shellie

"What was the house like that you grew up in? How many bedrooms did it have? Bathrooms? What was your bedroom like? Can you describe the neighborhood you grew up in?

I laughed when I read this series of questions because the assumption is that I only had one childhood home. I don't--I grew up in five different homes. So rather than write an incedibly long post, I decided to break it up and focus on one house at a time. This post will probably be the shortest, since I don't remember a whole lot about my first home.

Annette & Amy in front of 115 N. Lone Hill Ave. Glendora, California 91741

Easter 1971

I was brought home from the hospital to this house, and I lived here until shortly after my third birthday. (I think we moved away in the fall of 1971) In the pictures, you can see a few of the details of this house--it was white with light blue shutters, there was a porch with wrought iron columns in front, and red brick on the garage. As you can see in the first picture, there was a balcony just above the porch.

There was a gazebo in the backyard and an irrigation ditch ran along the back boundary. I do not remember the gazebo at all, but have seen it in photographs (see below). I do remember the ditch--in my memory it was very large and deep but on a later visit I discovered that it is actually pretty average.

 

My memories of the inside of the house are very fuzzy. I don't know how many bedrooms or bathrooms it had, although I would guess that it had at least 3 bedrooms and probably 2 bathrooms. (Parents and siblings--feel free to comment and add details!) I don't remember my own room at all. I'm sure I shared it with Amy and maybe Shellie too.

I have a vague memory that the living room was in the front of the house, with the kitchen behind it. I know from pictures that we had a brick fireplace in one room (the living room?). The only concrete memory I have of the inside of the house is of climbing the stairs (kid fashion, on my hands and knees!). Because of that, I know that the stairs had a landing about halfway up. '

I don't remember ever standing on the balcony, and I am pretty sure that there was a rule that we couldn't go out there without an adult. I remember being scared to go out the front door, though. That's because my brother Tim (I think it was Tim...) made up a story about some "grabby hands" that were up on the roof. I thought they were real and that they were going to grab me!

My memories of the neighborhood are also very vague. I was so young the whole time we lived in this house that I doubt I was allowed to wander the neighborhood unattended. I slightly remember the "hippies" who lived next door, though. (This was the late sixties/ early seventies, remember!) They had a car without any doors. I thought that was very strange!

That's all I remember about our Glendora house.

(Incidentally, this house has changed a lot since we lived in it. We drove by the house when I was about 9 or 10 and discovered that it had been painted brown. No more blue shutters! If you look at the house now on Google maps, you can see that it has been renovated quite a bit. It is hard to recognize it as the same house we used to live in.)

Weekly Review March 9 '12

It is only March 9th, and these daffodils have been blooming in my yard for at least a week. It is actually a bit on the chilly side today, but yesterday was quite warm. That's how it's been around here lately--alternating nice and nasty days. On Sunday it actually snowed a little bit. (Just flakes drifting down...nothing stuck.)

Last Friday Frank & I went to see Jekyll & Hyde at the high school. (Scott was in charge of the sound.) It was pretty good. There are some really great songs in that show and a number of the kids were quite talented singers. Scott's friend Colette played the part of Lucy Harris. The director had a different girl sing one of her songs (called "Bring on the Men") because he said "I can't let a Mormon girl sing that song!"

Saturday was busy although I can't remember now what we were doing all day. Jared was gone to a play practice for most of the day and Scott was gone most of the day as well because there were two more perfomances of Jekyll & Hyde. We got a lot of chores done, Frank & I made a "scouting" trip to Lowe's to look at options and prices of bathroom fixtures, lighting, tile, etc. for upcoming home improvement projects, and we all (except Scott) went to a Chinese buffet place for dinner and then (except for Scott and Seth) watched Breaking Dawn, part 1 which we got on Netflix this week. None of those movies are fantastic, but we did enjoy it. Scott was home fairly late because there was a cast party at Colette's house after the play. At least he could drive himself, although we were slightly nervous since he doesn't have a load of experience driving on the freeway at night. He got there and back safely, though!

Seth had a talk in Primary on Sunday; he did a good job. The rest of the day was relaxing--no extra meetings for anyone!

This week has been busy for Jared--he had play rehearsals every day after school. Last night was the first performance of the play and tonight is their last performance. Frank and I went to see his play last night and really enjoyed it. The play is called "When In Rome". It was quite funny and the kids did a good job.

Snickers had a busy week too.

He looks great because he went to the groomer on Monday. He had his annual check up at the vet on Wednesday. This dog cost me over $300 this week (groomer and vet combined). It's a good thing he is so cute! The annual exam is always expensive because he gets several vaccines and tests done. This time he also needed medicine for his ears because they look red and have some discharge. It may just be that they cleaned them at the groomers (I noticed he's been shaking his head in a funny way since he came back from there) or he may actually have some kind of infection. The medicine is supposed to clean his ears out. If the redness and discharge go away after a couple of cleanings, then he doesn't have to go back. If they don't, then he probably has an infection and they'll have to do a procedure to figure out what is going on and there will likely be more medicine to give him. We are hoping to avoid that! He also needs his teeth cleaned again, but we are going to put that off for a few months; it's also very expensive (they have to knock the dog out completely to do that). We got him some new dog food that is supposed to help prevent tartar build up so that hopefully next year he won't need the teeth cleaned again. It's mostly just his back teeth that need it.

Scott and Tanner have kept busy with school work--they both stayed after to make up work they've missed while sick or while doing the play. We found out this week that Tanner is getting an academic letter at school. A little ironic, since his grades are pretty low right now, but he is getting it for his high GPA for his first 3 semesters of high school.

Here is Seth playing Lego Batman:

He loves playing on the Wii but only gets to play on Fridays and Saturdays (same for the older boys). He asks me most mornings "Is this a day I get to play games?" He has really been into building with his Legos lately too as well as playing with his toy cars, action figures and little people garage. He says cute things all the time but I keep forgetting to write them down. I do remember one time lately though when he said he was going to go get some more Oreos from the storage room downstairs. I asked him if he knew where to find them, and he said "Yes, they're on the cookie aisle". We do have two utility shelves down there that we put at right angles to the wall, so they do kind of make an aisle in between and we have two boxes of cookies on one of those shelves. I never would have thought to call it the cookie aisle, though! Seth loves playing at the park and he was very happy that one day this week was nice enough that we could go there.

Frank is also keeping very busy with his full time job, stake IT calling and his "business". He will be an official Marriott employee starting this coming Monday. (He was originally hired as a contractor and has been working for Marriott through another company called Aetea up until now.) Of course, we are very glad that Marriott has decided they like him enough that they want to keep him! He will be taking on new projects now and he will be busier. He will also qualify for the employee discount at all Marriott hotels now. That will be nice! He can get good rates for friends and family members also (not as good as the employee rate, but still discounted), so let us know if you ever want to use that. Because he had some vacation days accrued with Aetea, he was able to get off early yesterday and today he had the day off. Now that he is finally feeling better, Frank has started exercising again.

I've been busy with all the usual shopping trips and household chores. I've been doing more chores the last few weeks for Scott and for Jared, since they have been gone a lot. YW always keeps me busy too--we had a presidency meeting and another sewing activity this week. Most of the girls were able to finish their skirts for trek and a few who didn't start last week got started on theirs. Some of the girls who completed their first skirt started on a second one. The next several weeks we will be practicing for road shows. I will be helping with that, but I don't have to plan anything so I feel like I'm going to get a bit of a break! I've been exercising too (not as much as Frank) and trying to get motivated to do some clutter control and other home projects. I tried to get some new jeans for Seth this week but discovered that all the stores are selling shorts now! The only jeans were in the clearance racks, but they were out of his size. I did find a bunch of cute baby clothes, though, so I got a package sent to Frank's sister Gladys, who had twins a few weeks ago (a boy and a girl).

I started reading the book Mom & Dad sent me for Christmas, and I am enjoying it a lot so far. I am also reading a book called Hitler's Canary for book club. Other than that, I have been reading a lot of books like this:

We're trying to figure out what color to paint our kitchen, powder room and boys' bedrooms. It's tricky because we don't know if we are staying in this house for years or if we are going to be moving sometime soon. Because there's at least some possibility that we might be moving, we have to keep it fairly neutral but since we might be staying, we want it to be something we like and we don't want everything all white or tan. It is tough for someone like me, who has no designer's sense at all, to make decisions like this!

Now we are taking Tanner to spend the night with his friend Taylor, doing a few errands, and going to pick up the Expedition, which has been in the shop for the third time--still working on problems with the heater. The heater works great, but after we got it back the first time we couldn't get it to turn off--even if we put it on vent or air conditioning, we still got heat! So we took it back and the vent and A/C worked but the heat wouldn't come on unless we really jacked it up. Hopefully this time everything will work correctly. At least we didn't have to pay anything for this last trip.

Frank went out to start the car, so I'd better get this posted and be on my way.