Weekly Review September 28 '12

Personal History Update:  Before I forget, I added a few pictures to the posts I did about the Glendora house and the Houston house.  I was able to scan a few pictures while I was in Utah.  (There were others I wanted to scan, but I ran out of time.)  So go check them out!  I also spent a lot of time last night cropping all the scans I did so that each picture can stand alone.  (I scanned several pictures at once to save time.)  Now I am ready to add a bunch of awesome pictures to my post about Mom & Dad.  I'll let you know when I get that done.  Also, stay tuned for an upcoming post about my grandparents.  I got some great pictures of them, too!

 

It is officially fall now and it is certainly looking and feeling like fall around here.  The sky was a bit stormy the other night when I took this picture: 

 

(That's the view when we look out to the backyard.)  You can see that the leaves are just starting to turn colors on some of the trees.

 

On Saturday, we spent hours pulling weeds, mowing, edging, and dividing iris plants in the front yard.  It was a lot of work and Frank and I were SO sore afterwards, but the yard looks so much better now.  However, it also looked rather bare, so I got a pumpkin and some chrysanthemums this week to add a little bit of color:

 

 

Here's a view of the whole yard.  All that brown earth used to be covered with weeds.  The plant on the other side of the step from the pumpkin is also a chrysanthemum--a maroon one.  It only has a few blooms so far but as you can see, it's huge!  I bought it from a little girl in our ward who was doing a fundraiser for a choir she's in.  I paid $7 for it and assumed that it was going to be a puny little thing, since it was a fundraiser.  I was pleasantly surprised when it was delivered (ironically, the same day I bought the other chrysanthemums) and I saw how big it was.

 

Besides weeding on Saturday, we also cleaned the kitchen floor and Frank took all the boys to get haircuts (he got one too).  I made chocolate chip cookie bars too--I needed them as part of an object lesson for my YW lesson on Sunday.  We had enough to use for dessert that night, too.  That evening we had the missionaries over for dinner.  One of them just got transferred to our ward this week, and his name is Elder Streuling.  I actually met him at a stake conference earlier this year and discovered that he is the grandson of Bishop Streuling, from the Orem 73rd Ward.  (He's Kent's son, for those of you who know that family.)  Anyway, I was hoping when I met him that someday he'd serve in our ward.  So here he is!  His laugh totally reminds me of his grandpa.  He enjoyed hearing some of the stories I had to tell about his grandma.  She died when he was very young so he doesn't remember her.  I can tell that he wishes he could have known her.

 

Sunday was busy too--I taught my lesson; after church I went to BYC (Jared went too) because the YW president had family visiting.  I had extra cookies leftover from my lesson and everyone in that meeting was happy to finish them off.  After BYC, I went to the end of choir practice.  Then we had to hurry home--our home teachers were coming over.  After they left we finished getting dinner ready and then Erin arrived to have dinner with us.  We enjoyed having her over and look forward to seeing her more often!  She seems to be adjusting to life on the east coast. 

 

While Erin was here, we got on the subject of indexing (family search), which she and I are both doing.  She mentioned that we can search for relatives on the 1940 census (the indexing for that census was recently completed), so we had to go look up my mom and dad, of course!  It was fun to see their names written on the census sheets.  But we discovered errors in the indexing, too.  The same person was the census taker for both the Pew and the Johnson households (not surprising, since they lived around the block from each other) and that person's handwriting was pretty hard to read.  Dad's name was transposed as "Gearld" and Uncle Lee's first name was misspelled as "Earnest", but the most glaring error was Uncle Fred.  His name was indexed as "Ludvest" instead of "Frederick".  And looking at the handwriting, we could see how the indexer came up with that.  It was very hard to read.  The other problem was that instead of writing "Jr", the census taker put "J".  If it had said "Jr" next to his name, the indexer probably would have looked at Grandpa's name and figured out that Uncle Fred's name was Frederick, because Grandpa's name was much more legible.  But instead, his name is indexed as "Ludvest G J Johnson".  Unfortunately, there is not currently a way to notify family search about the errors that we found.  They say they're still working on it.  In the meantime, we figured Uncle Fred is probably getting a good laugh out of it, up in heaven.

 

Erin had just walked out the door when the phone rang--it was Scott, saying he was at an ER in Utah.  Apparently, he and his friends had been in a car wreck on Saturday evening.  It wasn't a bad wreck, and no one was hurt, apparently.  Scott thought he was fine and didn't even bother to call us to tell us about the wreck, but around mid day on Sunday he had started to hurt a little.  After he and his friends headed back up to BYU-Idaho, he started hurting a lot more until he was actually feeling sick to his stomach.  They decided to stop at a hospital on the way to get him checked out.  At the hospital, they gave him pain medication and did an ultrasound to make sure he was ok.  They determined that he was just bruised and told him to take ibuprofen and just take it easy for a few days.  This stop slowed them up, of course, but I was actually pretty impressed with how fast this hospital moved.  He called us right after arriving at the ER and he was taken back, tested, diagnosed, treated, and released within an hour and a half.  We've certainly never had that kind of an experience at Frederick Memorial Hospital!  It usually takes at least an hour just to get out of the waiting room.  Scott reports that they got back to Rexburg around midnight and he has been doing pretty well since then.  He made it to most of his classes on Monday (and was able to contact the teachers of the classes he missed.)  He doesn't have any classes on Tuesdays, so he was able to rest that whole day which helped him a lot.

 

The rest of the week has been pretty busy too.  I had a YW presidency meeting Monday morning.  We did something different this time--met at a restaurant for breakfast while we talked.  That was fun for a change.  We had family night that evening and then took some flyers around to our neighbors about a day of service that the church is doing tomorrow--all the wards in the region are participating.  Our ward decided to gather food for a local food bank, so we are hoping our neighbors will contribute. 

 

I had voluteer work at the school and visiting teaching appointments Tuesday morning and my visiting teachers came to see me that afternoon.  Jared went with the bishop that evening to do visits.  Frank purchased the movie Avengers that day and watched it that evening.  I saw the beginning but I had to leave in the middle to take Tanner to Ryan's house so I gave up on watching it at that point.  I really need to watch Thor and Captain America first, anyway.  Tanner went with Ryan and some friends to get buffalo wings.  They didn't have school on Wednesday so they could stay out late.  Actually, Ryan wanted him to spend the night but we nixed that idea. 

 

There was no school on Wednesday because of Yom Kippur (Jewish holiday).  It was actually kind of nice to have a day off in the middle of the week.  I didn't wake up until about 8:00--guess I was tired!  I had a bad headache most of the day so other than a trip to Wal-Mart, I tried to take it easy.  I worked on Personal Progress too.  There was no YW that night, but Tanner and Jared went to an Eagle Court of Honor for Ryan.  Seth had a "picnic" on the floor that night: 

      

(Notice that Snickers is very interested in what he's eating!)

Yesterday afternoon I had book club.  This morning I went to a baby shower.  This evening was our ward's annual Crab Fest.  (Yep, we live in Maryland.)  Frank went to help cook and Jared went with him but I didn't go because I have a headache again and a slight sore throat, so I'm worried I might be coming down with something.  Besides, Tanner had a party to attend that started an hour after the Crab Fest and someone needed to get him over to that.  He opted to go to the party over the Crab Fest, and I can't say I blame him since it's for a girl in our ward who is absolutely beautiful, not to mention one of the nicest girls I know.  (The party was planned a long time ago and the date of the Crab Fest actually got moved at the last minute because of the funeral last week.)  I kept Seth home with me too since Frank couldn't cook and keep an eye on him at the same time. 

My other project for the week, which took a lot of time, was dying clothespins.  We decided we wanted to use clothespins to hang the artwork at the school and thought it would be fun to color the clothespins.  I ended up with the job and it turned out to be quite a production.  One of the other moms sent me a link to a blog with directions for dying the clothespins.  The lady tried two different methods--fabric dye and food coloring.  She said they worked equally well and the clothespins in the pictures both looked great, so I decided to go the food coloring route since food color is a lot cheaper than fabric dye.  Well, I don't know what's wrong with me--I followed the directions and everything, but my clothespins did not come out looking nice.  Even after leaving them in the dye for a couple of days, they only looked a little "tinted" rather than colored.  The orange and green looked ok, but the purple, yellow, and red looked terrible.  So yesterday I decided to buy the dye and try that method.  It did work better.  Here are the yellow and blue:  

And here's the purple:

Here's the orange, using the food color method:

And here's the green with the food coloring:

The red clothespins were in the dye bath when I took the pictures, so I don't have a picture of them.  After I did some of the other colors, I decided to go ahead and re-dye the orange and green with the fabric dye too.  Of all the colors I did, the blue looks the best.  It's the only color that I didn't attempt to do with food coloring first.  They all look a lot better now, though.  That project took all afternoon and evening--I caught up the budget and worked on this post while the batches were soaking.

Frank's had a busy week, too.  He's had work to do for clients and work to do for his stake calling, too.  A couple of his clients are going to need new servers soon so he had some estimates to get done.  He and Tanner went home teaching last night also.

I've been doing a lot of indexing this week because I set a lofty goal for the month and I didn't have much time to index the first half of the month.  Of course, it's ok if I don't meet my goal, but I wanted to get it done so I've been doing a couple of batches every day.  I think at the rate I'm going I'll get it done.  I haven't done any batches today, though, so I'd better get that done now.  

Weekly Review September 21 '12

I'll start this week out with pictures from Jared & Tanner's trip to the beach.  (Scott's comment about the trip: "Oh sure, as soon as I leave, you turn into cool parents!")  I can't take credit for the photos, of course.  They went to Ocean City, Maryland, which is about 3 hours from here.

 





All the boys on the beach, the evening they arrived.  (This is their "silly" picture.)  Notice the little palm trees!  I had no idea I lived only 3 hours away from palm trees.  Now I am going to have to go down there.

Walking on the boardwalk.

 

The view from their hotel room.

 



Monday morning, they rented bikes and rode them for a couple of hours.

After that, they played in the sand and the surf, and got pretty "roughed up" by the waves, apparently.  There was a kite festival going on also, as you can see behind Tanner.

Playing in the sand

 

Buried Jared

 

Boys in the waves

Jared enjoying the sun

 



Boys on the beach

 



Cool crab kite

 



Tanner snacking

 



Dinner Monday night

 



The beach Tuesday morning

 



Waves coming in

 



Kalvin digging

 



 Last dip in the ocean

 

They had a great time and arrived home with Ocean City shirts & jackets, slight sunburns, and a lot of sand!  Oh, and a bucket of salt water taffy for those of us who had to stay behind.

 

Meanwhile, at home things were pretty quiet, but busy.  I've been busy trying to get back into a normal schedule, although that was challenging since the school schedule was definitely not normal.  With the older boys gone for two days and then back in school all day, I did most of the cleaning jobs that I've been delegating to them all summer.  (Including 2 hours cleaning all three bathrooms thoroughly.)  Needless to say, the house looks much cleaner than it has in a while!  I did the usual shopping and updated the business finances and figured out how to transfer money into Scott's bank account and got back on an exercise schedule.  On Monday late afternoon, Frank needed to fix some computer problems for a family in our stake so he took Seth and I with him to their house.  After we got done there it was past dinner time so we stopped at Wendy's for dinner.  We forgot the Frederick County Fair is going on this week and got caught in some traffic for that.

 

Boy did the rain come down on Tuesday!  It started out just sprinkly and gusty, but soon it started to pour, and it came down like that most of the day, until evening.  There were tornado watches and warnings all over the place, but nothing too extreme happened.  There was some flooding, too--Frederick was even mentioned on the weather channel the next morning.  We went to pick up Tanner & Jared from Jeanine's house on Tuesday evening.  By the time we got them loaded up in the car it was past dinner time (again!) so we ended up stopping at Arby's for dinner.  Fast food two nights in a row--yuck! 

 

On Wednesday I met the other two moms at the school to work on our plans for hanging art work.  One of the moms had some really great ideas--I think it's going to look really nice when we get things set up.  Tanner stayed after school that day because he was helping with a show that evening and there was a lot of work to do to prepare for that.  Frank took some dinner over to him.  The show was at 6:00 and ended right around 7:00, so I picked him up on my way to the church for YM / YW.  We had a combined activity where they divided into teams for a photo scavenger hunt.  They had to find some pretty unique things and photograph them.  There were bonus points for any group that got a picture of the whole group jumping up in the air, with all of their feet off the ground at the same time.  My group was small; here's our picture:    

 

(That's Tanner on the left.)  Frank had a tire low on air yesterday morning, so he decided to go into work a little later to give him time to get the tire checked.  He did the Seminary to school run for me, so I got to sleep in!  Frank ended up working from home that day.  He did get more air put in his tire and it's been fine since then.  I was busy with all the usual things all day--laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming.  I worked on my lesson for YW and did a lot of other errands that wouldn't be interesting to read about.

Today the kids were out of school again--this time for "Fair Day", as well as parent / teacher conferences.  It didn't feel like a day off to me because I had things to do all day, including parent / teacher conferences starting at 7:50 this morning.  I went to all of Tanner's conferences, came home and got the family budget done, then went to Seth's conference, and then to all of Jared's conferences.  After that I went to the church to help prepare food for a funeral luncheon that's happening tomorrow.  Frank was at the stake center helping set up some audio visual stuff for the same funeral.  It's for a man in our stake who passed away on Tuesday.  He was way too young to die--about a year younger than me.  He'd been married 20 years (just like me), has four kids (just like me, although his youngest is a girl), and they are all pretty close to the same ages as my kids.  He's been battling colon cancer for the last 9 months.  Unfortunately, the cancer wasn't discovered until it was stage four and had spread to his liver.  So I guess they knew from the beginning he didn't have much of a chance, but I'm sure they still hoped.  It is so sad!

After I helped with the food, I went to pick up Tanner--he spent the night at his friend Seth's house--and then came home to make dinner for us.  It's been a long day!  Everyone is doing well in school, by the way.  Seth is really happy and the older boys have straight A's so far.

Although this hasn't been a normal week, schedule-wise, I do feel like I'm starting to get back into a routine.  I definitely have more time to get things done with all the boys in school all day.  I spent some time this week moving craft supplies into Scott's empty room.  Hopefully I'll get some time soon to start working on projects again.  It will be nice to have a place to work on them where I can leave things out if I get interrupted, and come back to them when I have the time.

Not a very exciting week, but it was nice to have things calm down a little bit. 

Dollhouses

I love dollhouses.  I'm not sure why, but as long as I can remember I have always loved them.  Maybe it's the idea of everything in miniature--so cute!  Plus, they are fun to play with.  It must be the little homemaker / mother that's always been inside me. 

 

When I was a little girl, we had a Fisher Price dollhouse that looked like this:

 

I'm not sure if it belonged to Shellie or to Amy & I, but I remember spending many long happy hours playing with it.  This dollhouse opened up like this:

 





 

It had four rooms:

 

 

Living room and kids' room

 

Kitchen and master bedroom

(The kitchen in our house looked a little different--it didn't have the "glass" doors in the back wall like this one does.  This is a picture of the interior of a newer "tudor" style dollhouse that was made after our version.  But you still get the idea.  I think everything else looks the same.)

 

The Fisher Price dollhouse came with furniture and people like this:

 

 

You could also buy cute furniture sets like this kitchen set:

 

And this bathroom set:



 And this patio set:

 

I don't remember if we actually had all these sets of furniture, although they all look familiar, especially the patio set.  I'm pretty sure we had the patio set.

 

The Fisher Price dollhouse was great, but it was small and got pretty worn out over the years.  As I got older, I started to long for a "real" dollhouse, with lots of rooms and more sophisticated furniture.  That longing was finally realized on Christmas Day 1979, when Amy and I became the proud owners of this amazing dollhouse:

   



 (My eyes are closed in the picture, of course.  I do that a lot.)

 

This wonderful dollhouse was built for us by our mom and dad.  My dad did most of the construction out in our garage and I remember that by the time Christmas arrived I was dying of curiosity to know what he was doing out there.  Several times during the month or two before Christmas, my mom would tell Amy & I that we had to close our eyes while she brought things from the garage up to her bedroom (she was putting wallpaper on the pieces after my dad cut them).  So we knew they were up to something, but we didn't know what.  I remember hoping that he was building a dollhouse, but I didn't really believe that he was.  I was one happy girl on Christmas morning!

 

The dollhouse had four stories and 8 rooms.  As you can see in the picture above, there was a porch and balcony in front, and the windows had shutters.  The roof shingles were made out of strips of sandpaper.  The dollhouse came with a set of wooden furniture that we had to build ourselves.  We started building the furniture on Christmas day.  I don't remember now how long it took to build, but I don't think it was long, and soon the dollhouse was ready to play with. 

 

The furniture was pretty basic, and soon we decided that we'd like to get higher quality furniture.  So over the next several years, we gradually replaced the original furniture with more expensive pieces.  We acquired a lot of accessories, too.  We often received furniture sets or accessories as birthday or Christmas gifts.  Amy & I decided early on that we wanted to have an "old fashioned" dollhouse instead of a modern one.

 

We loved to make things for our dollhouse, such as "food" out of clay.  I remember spending one school holiday making curtains for most of the windows.  (Minimum sewing required.)  We made the valances out of cardboard, and glued fabric over the top of them.  It was a lot of fun, and the windows looked great when we were done.  Here's how the lower three levels look now:

  

 Here's some close ups:

This is the living room / dining room combination.  My talented cousin Laurel made the professional draperies on this window.  Awesome, right?

Here's the kitchen, complete with wood stove, "ice box", and pump sink.

This is the boy's room.  (He's lying on the bed.)  I can't remember what we named the boy now.  We made the bedding and the pillows ourselves.  (Mom probably helped.)

Here's the bathroom.  Amy purchased the two cabinets more recently.  When we were younger, we just had the sink, tub, and toilet.  We made the rugs ourselves by cutting out pieces of terry cloth.  The curtain is actually strips of lace glued together.  Looks pretty good, though, don't you think?

This is the girl's room.  I think we named her Alice.  Amy purchased most of the furniture in this room in recent years.  The toybox (on the right of the picture) is one of the original cheap wood pieces and we had a wooden "sleigh" bed from that set in here too for a long time.  It was falling apart, though, so Amy purchased the new bed, along with the dresser, wardrobe, and desk.  I cross stitched little pink flowers on the valance for this room.  I think we made the bedspread with help from Mom.

This room is the "nursery".  It's kind of an English style nursery, with toys and a school room.  (Most of the toys are in a toy box to the right, not really visible in the picture.)  Our dollhouse had to have twins, of course--notice the two cradles!  I cross stitched the train for the valance in this room.  I think we made the little quilt (on the floor), too.
 

Here's the master bedroom.  Or course, the dollhouse mom had to have a sewing machine!  Mom made the bedding for us.  The dollhouse mom and dad have permanently bent knees--they look better sitting down!

We used the attic room for the maid's bedroom.  (As you can see, the roof is missing in this picture.  That's because these pictures were taken just a few years ago.  The dollhouse has seen some wear and tear over the years, and the roof eventually came off.  A lot of the porch and balcony railings came off too.)

This dollhouse was well loved by Amy & I.  We spent a lot of hours playing with it, but I think we enjoyed the process of choosing furniture and accessories even more. 

So what happened to the dollhouse after we grew up?  Well, when we both got married, the dollhouse stayed at Mom & Dad's house.  I think the grandkids enjoyed playing with it.  Eventually, Mom decided to give the dollhouse to Amy so her girls could play with it. 

I still love dollhouses, but as the mother of four boys, my life has been filled with cars, trucks, and dinosaurs and I kind of forgot about dollhouses for a while.  But then in June of 2010, we visited Utah and Frank & I stayed at Amy's house.  And right there in the guest room with us was my beloved childhood dollhouse.  I started to remember how much I loved dollhouses.  After we came back home and a few months went by, I realized that I had this nostalgic desire growing within me--I wanted a dollhouse!  And why not?  So last Christmas, this is what "Santa Claus" brought me:
    

Sadly, nearly a year later, the dollhouse is still in the box.  I did get so far as to open the box and read the directions for building it.  But when I read at the beginning of the directions that "to build the house, you'll need a fairly large area that won't be disturbed for exteneded lengths of time", I realized that no such place exists in my current house.  So the dollhouse will have to wait.  But in the meantime, I have fun poring over catalogs of dollhouse furniture and accessories, planning what my dollhouse is going to be like someday.  I can wait.  I'm a big girl now! :)    

Weekly Review Sept 15 '12



Ok, folks...as you can tell I'm late again this week.  My life has been a bit chaotic lately.  Mostly in a good way, but still...disruptive.  My normal schedule is totally disrupted and I'm having a hard time getting back into the groove.  But I'm sure if I persevere, I'll get there eventually. 

 

When I left off last week, I was still in Utah.  I enjoyed attending church with Mom & Dad on Sunday morning.  After church they took naps, and so did I.  That evening, I was happy to get a visit from Uncle Lee & Aunt Diane, who brought Aunt Marjie with them, as well as from Shellie.  We kind of laughed at ourselves as they were leaving because we hadn't talked about the most cheerful topics (appendicitis, scorpion stings, spiders, family trials...) but I really enjoyed visiting with them anyway! 

 

Monday morning Amy and I went to visit with our friend Paula (been friends since high school).  We had a short but pleasant visit; it was nice to see her again.  That afternoon I went to lunch with my friend Marci (she used to live in Frederick but now lives in Layton).  We talked for a long time and then went for a drive up Provo Canyon in Marci's convertible.  Nice!  It was so beautiful up there.  Here's Bridal Veil Falls (we both thought it's looking a bit small):

 

The leaves are starting to turn colors:

This tunnel was not there when I was growing up: 

 

Me enjoying the great outdoors:

 

Beautiful views coming back down the canyon:

A thunderstorm rolled in when we were on our way back to Mom & Dad's house.  We took this quick photo under the shelter of a tree when we got back:

 

 

(Not the most flattering picture of me, but it's good of Marci) 

 

Tuesday morning Mom & I did some shopping at Deseret Book.  I wanted to get a YW bookmark for the Personal Progress ribbons I've earned so far, and I picked up some gifts for the boys too.  We ended up going back later because one of the tie tacks I got didn't end up in my bag (or on my receipt).  Afer we got back from shopping, the rest of the "girls" arrived for lunch:

 

Anna & Rachelle

 

Shellie, Amy & Mom

 

Sisters! (I closed my eyes again)



June plays with Grandpa



June lost her shyness enough to climb on my lap for a few minutes!

 

We had an enjoyable lunch and then Mom & I went to Anna's house to stay with June while she napped so that Anna could go get tires for her car.  Then we made another stop at Wal-Mart on our way back home so I could get fry sauce and check out a line of clothes they carry in Utah but not in Maryland.  (I ended up getting a cardigan and a skirt.)  After dinner, I went through some family photos and Dad showed me how to use their scanner.  I was able to scan several photos, including some awesome heritage photos of grandparents and other ancestors which I plan to share in some future posts.  Amy and Maddie came by for a few minutes while I was working on that project. 

 

Wednesday it was time to return home to Maryland.  I was feeling ready to go back home, but it was sad, too.  I really wish I could be two places at once!  (Or why don't all of you take a cue from Erin and move out this way?  It's so nice here, honest! :) )   Here I am with Mom & Dad before I left:

 



 

Amy was a sweetie and took me to the airport, even though she was feeling pretty sick and she has a busy life.  (And she didn't mind that I sniffled for the first 10 - 15 minutes of the trip, either.)  The plane ride was uneventful.  It seemed to go by a lot faster than the trip out did; not sure why.  I read most of the way and made a lot of headway in my book for book club (The Remains of the Day). 

 

Frank picked me up at the airport, and it was really nice to see him again!  Tanner had been sick while I was away and stayed home from school that day, so he was at home when we got there but Jared was at the church for YM / Scouts.  I had to hurry and eat something and did a little unpacking before going over to the church for choir practice.  We were having a special practice because our ward sang at stake conference today.  Frank came over also (in another car) so he could take Jared home. 

 

Since getting back, I feel like I've been drifting around a bit.  There is a lot to do but I'm not feeling incredibly organized.  I did not have any trouble getting up at 5:00 am on Thursday, but by afternoon I could barely keep my eyes open.  I got laundry done that day, signed up for parent / teacher conferences, made a grocery list, took some clothes over to a friend (clothes Seth has outgrown--she knows someone who can use them), and that evening Frank came with me to get caught up on all the grocery shopping (we went to two different stores).  I was also supposed to give a ride to a friend's son that afternoon, but Frank was a dear and did that for me because that was when the worst of the sleepiness was hitting me.  (He helped me with the grocery list too.) 

 

Friday started out kind of crazy.  Immediately after I left the house to take Seth to school I realized that I had left my purse (with my keys) in the house.  So I had just locked myself out and had no way to drive the car either.  I did have my phone, so called our carpool family and she agreed that I could take their car to get all the kids to school.  (She runs a daycare so can't leave during the day.)  So Seth and I walked over to their house (not very far) and I drove the kids to school.  We were a few minutes late after all of that, so I had to walk in and sign them all in.  Then I stopped on the way home at the high school (with permission from our car pool mom) to get Jared's house key from him so I could get back in the house.  I left the car back at our car pool family's house and walked home.  Of course, this all happened on the day that I decided to wait until after taking the kids to school to shower!  After showering, I worked on the budget.  I thought I would have fewer interruptions than what I've been experiencing all summer with the boys home, but Snickers decided he needed to go out every half hour or so--not sure what was wrong with him that day!  It was frustrating and I didn't get much done but I was still in kind of a drifting state so it didn't bother me as much as it normally would.  I finished up the family budget yesterday, but I still need to update the business finances tomorrow. 

 

I had to leave a bit early to pick up the boys from school (I pick up on Fridays too) because I was meeting with the art teacher at 2:30.  I volunteered to help with hanging up art this year, so she wanted to show me what to do.  She has 2 other moms who have also volunteered, so we got to meet each other and will be working together.  After I got back with the boys, Frank and I left to go to the temple.  In conjuction with stake conference this weekend, our stake had a special meeting in the priesthood room at the temple at 7:00.  (We call them "7th floor sessions" because the priesthood room is on the 7th floor of the temple.)  We wanted to go through a session first, so we left in time to get into the 5:00 session.  A lot of other members of our stake had the same idea, so the session was packed--they even had to bring a few chairs in.  It was nice, though--always great to look around a room in the temple and see one familiar face after the other.  I always imagine that's what the celestial kingdom will be like!  I ended up sitting next to Jolie used-to-be Ridd (now Smith), if any of you remember her; she lives in my stake now.  The session started late, so we barely had time to make it into the 7:00 meeting, but we made it.  The meeting was very nice; the temple president talked to us and shared some great experiences and thoughts.  The part that touched me the most was at the end when he shared his testimony and said "I spend a lot of time here, and I can testify that the Savior has walked these halls and that miracles happen here every day."  I know that, too, because I have felt the Savior's presence there and I have experienced my own miracles while I've been there.  The Washington DC temple will always be a very special place to me.

 

After leaving the temple, we went with another couple in our ward to get some dinner and then came home.  We went to a Mexican / Salvadoran place which we enjoyed.  After we got home, Frank took Tanner over to his friend Ryan's house--he spent the night there and stayed most of Saturday too, until I finally got around to going over there to pick him up.

 

Yesterday I worked on the budget more, as I said, and also cleaned the kitchen floor, gave Seth a bath, and Frank & I cleaned out our large downstairs chest freezer.  It was a gorgeous day and I wish I could have spent more of it outside.  Frank had to be at the stake center by 2:30 to set things up for the 4:00 priesthood leadership meeting.  I went over later for the 7:00 adult meeting.  It was very good.  After we got home we watched the first part of the BYU / Utah game, but did not stay up to watch the whole thing since it went very late.  BYU wasn't playing very well anyway, and we hear they lost the game, so it doesn't sound like it was worth losing a lot of sleep over.  We had to be up pretty early today for stake conference so we didn't want to stay up really late.

 

Frank was over at the stake center pretty early this morning, and I had to be there by 9:00 for one last choir practice.  I think our choir numbers went pretty well.  We sang "Consider the Lilies" for the prelude music and "Come Thou Fount" about 30 minutes into the meeting.  Frank was busy for most of that time and the boys had to sit by themselves; I think they did pretty well.  I went down to sit with them after the two choir songs.  The meeting was good.  There had been a lot of rumors that there were going to be ward boundary changes at this stake conference, but that ended up not happening.  (They were more than rumors, actually--as IT clerk, Frank is in on that kind of planning and they were intending to make some changes this time but they didn't get approved in time.  Probably next time!)  We did get a new counselor in our stake presidency, because one of the counselors has moved out of our stake.  They also released the stake clerk--he's been the clerk since before we moved here 12 1/2 years ago!  He and Frank have become good friends, so I know Frank will miss working with him but Frank is also looking forward to working with the new stake clerk and getting to know him better.

 

After the meeting, our friends the Koettings came over for dinner as usual.  That is our last stake conference dinner with them, though, because they will be moving to California sometime soon.  Jeanine and her boys will be here a while longer until they sell their house.  She and her husband are separating and she wanted to be closer to her family--they all live in Oregon, Washington, California, and Utah.  Her husband wants to be near the kids, so he agreed to find a job out that way.  He did find a job after about 4 1/2 months of searching and he just left yesterday to start the new job.  Because having their dad leave has been hard on her boys (they know they will never live under the same roof with both parents ever again), Jeanine decided to take them on a short trip to the beach and asked if she could take Tanner and Jared also.  So after dinner they all left.  They do not have school tomorrow (Rosh Hashanah) but they will miss school on Tuesday.  We figured it was a once in a lifetime event, and they are not going to miss that much at school anyway!  Yep, we're getting soft in our old age.  

 

It seems pretty quiet in the house this evening with just Seth here; we are missing Scott too!  I guess this is our future, though--more and more often as time goes by we will have just Seth here at home with us.  We are grateful to have our little guy!  At least the quiet has allowed me to get caught up on my blog.  :)