Weekly Review March 2 '12

When I left off last week, we were going to the temple. It was very nice! We saw a lot of people from our ward there, too. No one got sick in the night, but Friday evening (after we got back) and Saturday did turn out to be quite busy so we are glad we took the chance to go to the temple while we had it.

We were on our way home from the temple when Frank got a call that the satellite dish at the stake center was not working. This was a great concern since our stake conference was being broadcast from Salt Lake City on Sunday. So as soon as we got home, Frank changed and went to the stake center. He was gone for a couple of hours, but they were able to locate the problem and do a quick fix. Believe it or not, the problem turned out to be that the cover over the plug had been taken off (who knows why) and the cord / plug had corroded from the elements. I'm not sure what they did to fix it, but they figured something out. Frank says it was not very fun to be up on a ladder in high winds and cold (we had very high winds that night) but he was the hero because we were able to receive the stake conference broadcast without any problems.

Originally, Frank had planned to go to the stake center Friday evening to set up all the other equipment for stake conference but since he spent the whole evening fixing the satellite instead, that still needed to be done on Saturday. So he spent most of Saturday morning getting that done. Jared and Scott also went over, to help set up chairs with several other members of our ward. I let Tanner stay in bed because he still wasn't feeling very well.

Meanwhile, we had to make a decision about our offer on the house, so there were a few phone calls going back and forth. It was difficult to come to a decision, but we finally put in our best offer and immediately felt relief / peace. Our realtor called us on Monday to say that the seller is currently working with the other offer. He thinks we actually put in a higher offer, but the other buyer offered cash. Well, that's not something we can compete with. It's a little disappointing but I still feel good about it. Either it's not right for us or it's going to work out somewhere up the road. I am especially relieved that most of the pressure is off now to get our house on the market. The repairs / improvements we have contracted to get done are not going to be started until March 12 and take about 3 weeks to complete, and that doesn't count all the other things that we need to do ourselves. So we are glad to have some more time! We can work at a little more leisurely pace and put our house on the market later, if we find another house we are interested in buying.

I spent a lot of time on Saturday working on our tax return, but I did get both of them done and filed. (And the state refund has already come in.) Because of self employment tax, our refunds are a lot smaller this year but anticipating that very thing, we set aside a percentage of all the self employment income that came in. That wasn't easy to do when our income was so low, but now we can use that money we set aside for something else so we are glad we were so disciplined.

Saturday afternoon Frank had stake priesthood leadership meeting, and then we both attended the adult session of stake conference. It was excellent, as always. The stake RS presidency provided a stew and rolls supper for the stake presidency, all the stake clerks, and their wives right before the adult session so I got to go to that. It was very good. I thought that was a very thoughtful thing to do. Afterwards, we were invited to another ward member's house for brownies and ice cream. We enjoyed that and the visiting--got home much later than we had planned! All the boys were up pretty late also. Jared was babysitting for a family in our ward and Scott & Tanner were watching Seth for us.

Sunday started early since Frank had to be over at the stake center early to make sure everything was working properly. (I made a quick trip over there to take him some equipment he discovered he needed.) The boys and I got there about 40 minutes early but got a good seat because Frank had saved us a place. While we were waiting for the meeting to start, I noticed that one of the missionaries sitting right in front of us had a tag that said "Elder Streuling". So I questioned him about it and discovered that he is Kent Streuling's son! He was really thrilled to discover that I knew his grandparents well. In particular, he wanted to know what his grandma was like--he was very young when she died and can barely remember her. I could just see the longing in his eyes when he asked about her--it almost made me cry! Of course, I had nothing but good to say about his grandma (and grandpa too); they are fabulous people! Anyway, small world. I told him my maiden name and told him to tell his family hello from the Pew family.

After stake conference, our good friends the Koettings came over for dinner and visiting. Always one of the highlights of our stake conference weekends--we look forward to it!

Wow, it took me 8 paragraphs just to get through the weekend. The rest of the week has been pretty eventful also. Scott has been very busy this week because the play he is helping with at school, Jekyll & Hyde, opened last night. He stayed after school most days to get things ready for that. He was particularly late on Tuesday evening, not leaving the school until about 9:30, when he had a little "incident". He called me in a state of pretty high agitation shortly after he left because he ran into a curb and popped one of the front tires of the Prius. There had been a somewhat questionable man hanging around the school all evening, trying to get into the building so when he left the school he was feeling unnerved about that and in his anxiety he was checking his mirrors a lot, on the look out for this man and he didn't pay as close attention to his driving as he should have! So now here he was, in a disabled vehicle all alone at the school--everyone else had left! Frank went over to rescue him and I stayed on the phone with him until Frank got there. They put on the spare tire and came home. The next day Frank and I took the Prius in and got the tire replaced--thankfully, it didn't cost very much because the tire was under warranty. Scott learned he needs to be more careful and I have to say I'm glad he learned it by hitting a curb instead of something else--we didn't have to report anything to our insurance and no one was hurt!

Tuesday was somewhat eventful for me as well. I had book club and we had our annual fondue lunch, as we do every February. After we had finished eating and were passing books around, I reached for a book and managed to hit the end of one of my fondue forks, which was resting across my plate. It flipped up into the air and I'm not sure what happened next--I think I must have put out my hand to try to catch it or shield myself--but the end result is that the fondue fork ended up embedded in the palm of my right hand, just below my thumb. Both prongs went all the way in and stuck there! They went in at an angle, not straight in, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I pulled it out (ouch!), expecting a lot of blood, but it barely bled at all. We bandaged it up and Wednesday morning I went in to get a tetanus booster because I hadn't had one for about 11 years. So now my right hand is sore (but it isn't too bad and healing fast) and my left arm is sore (from the shot, but again--not too bad).

Other events this week included having lunch with the former Primary presidency (we like to get together occasionally to get caught up on what's happening in each other's lives), an orthodontist appointment for Jared (he lost his last baby tooth this week, too), meeting at the Middle School to help plan the 8th grade trip, YW on Wednesday night (of course) and parent / teacher conferences. I've been doing a lot of running around to various appointments and meetings this week.

For YW this week we helped the girls start making their pioneer skirts for this summer's Youth Conference Trek. We invited any women in the ward who wished to come help, and it went really well. We had about 8 or 9 girls making skirts and all of them got the skirt cut out, the ruffle cut out and sewed, and the ruffle attached to the skirt as well as the bottom edge serged. Pretty good for about an hour of work! All they have left to do is sew a casing at the top for the elastic, put in the elastic, and sew up a side seam. We are planning to sew again next Wednesday, so I think they will all be able to finish. We had a lot of women show up with machines to help so every girl had an adult helping her. My friend Kathleen had this really cool "ruffling" foot on her machine which she used to prepare the ruffles for all the skirts; it eliminated the need to sew the gathering stitches and then pull them--the foot did all of that in one step. So she did that part for each girl's skirt and my friend Rebecca came with her serger and did all the serging, which helped a lot too. The other girls (who aren't going to youth conference) did an easy sewing activity and helped watch the kids of some of the women who came to help.

Parent teacher conferences were today and yesterday, which means the school schedule was all messed up too. Everyone went in 4 hours late on Thursday and got out 3 1/2 hours early today. That meant Seth didn't have school at all yesterday, since he only goes in the mornings. Scott had a rehearsal Thursday morning before school and that was also the morning Jared had his orthodontist appointment and I had the Middle School meeting, so we didn't exactly get to sleep in. Well, actually we sort of did, since there wasn't any Seminary that morning! The principal at Seth's school had pity on us and planned a special activity today for all the 3 and 4 year olds who had older siblings at the school, so they were allowed to stay a little later, eliminating the need to make two trips to the school for pick up that would have been only 45 minutes apart. Seth thought it was pretty cool that he got to stay until the "big kids" got out! I actually didn't have to pick up Jared because he went home with his friend Sage to celebrate his birthday, but I still had to pick up our carpool boy, Javier, so it was really nice to only make one trip.

I went to parent teacher conferences for Seth and Jared last night and for Scott and Tanner this afternoon. All of their teachers have very good things to say about their behavior and most of their work is good, too. Tanner is struggling with a couple of classes, mostly due to all the absences he's had, but he's been neglecting a few things too. We had to have a talk about that when I got home. Hopefully with a little work he'll be able to improve his grades a lot. Scott is actually doing quite well in his AP English class--well, his grade isn't fantastic because he's missing a few assignments, but his teacher feels like he is writing very well for so early in the term and that he definitely is on track to pass the test if he chooses to take it. So I'm going to make him take it! :)

Jared has had a busy week also. He is also helping with the technical aspects of a play at his school, which will be performed next week. He had rehearsals until late on Wednesday and Thursday and another long rehearsal tomorrow. He will have more rehearsals nearly every day next week.

The weather out here has been typical spring-like: some cold days and some quite pleasant. We had frost again this morning and it is raining now, but yesterday it got up to 60. We had thunderstorms Wednesday night. Our power went out last evening for a minute or two; it went out at the high school also, right in the middle of the play! Overall, we can't complain about the weather, especially with all the blizzards and tornadoes that we are hearing about elsewhere. In spite of the frequent frosts we are still having, the daffodils in our yard have begun to bloom and there are several crocuses also. We need to do a LOT of weeding--the weather has been mild enough this winter that the weeds have still been growing.

Frank has been keeping very busy with his regular job, work for clients, and helping several friends as well. He has also decided to try his hand at fixing iPods, and has acquired 3 or 4 used ones from eBay for low prices. He's been fixing whatever is wrong with them and plans to re-sell them. I think Jared got him going on this--Jared saved up his money and bought himself a pretty nice used iPod from eBay a few weeks ago. Frank is planning to give one iPod to Tanner--Scott already has one he purchased from a friend a while back.

Tonight Frank and I are going to see Jekyll & Hyde; that should be fun. Scott has two play performances tomorrow, Jared has rehearsal for most of the day, Frank has a lot of computer work to do, I have to help Seth prepare a talk for Primary, and Tanner has homework so I'm sure we'll keep busy.

Sorry no pictures again this week--I'll try to do better next week.