Weekly Review December 21 '12

Once again, I am starting this post much later than usual.  This week has been ridiculously eventful, but I'll try to stick to the basics.  Saturday was our ward Christmas dinner.  Frank helped do the cooking for that and he was gone literally all day--from 9:00 am until about 9:00 pm.  Meanwhile, I was Jared's personal chauffeur for the day--he had a basketball game at noon, a birthday party from 1:00-3:00, and a practice for the ward Christmas party program at 3:30.  (He had to go home in between the game and the party to shower--so yes, he was late to the party.)  I stayed to watch his game and they played pretty well.  It was a very close game, with our ward ahead by a few points for most of the game.  When the buzzer went off, though, the game was tied.  To my surprise, they did a two minute overtime and unfortunately the other team got ahead by one point, so they won the game.  It is fun to see how many of the boys are improving, though.  Besides all the driving around, I also went on a walk (Seth came with me), cleaned the kitchen floor, and finished up my lesson preparations.

 

The ward dinner was very nice--beautifully decorated, yummy food, and a fun program.  Frank ended up serving food as well as cooking so he didn't get to join us for the meal at all (he ate in the kitchen, in snatches, whenever he could fit it in).  Seth got restless during the program so I can't say I enjoyed it as much as I would have, but it was pretty good.  (Jared was helping with some of the technical aspects). 

 

Sunday was also busy--besides church, Tanner recieved his patriarchal blessing and Erin joined us for dinner.  Tanner's blessing was beautiful (I wished I'd thought to get a tissue out of my purse before it started).  He already has the written copy--it came in the mail on Tuesday.  I thought that was a pretty impressive turn around time!  As always, we enjoyed visiting with Erin!

 

Monday I had a phone meeting with the YW presidency in the morning.  I intended to wrap presents while talking, but I'm not very good at doing two things at once so I didn't get much done.  I continued the wrapping after the meeting ended and spending that much time sitting on the floor wasn't so great for my back.  Luckily, I didn't completely take it out but it bothered me for the next couple of days so I had to be careful.  We were all looking forward to Scott's return that evening, but as many of you know he didn't make it home on Monday because his flight was cancelled.  This was a big surprise to us since the weather here was fine--apparently there was fog in Baltimore, though.  He was able to book a flight for very early Tuesday morning and after some debate we decided to get him a hotel room near the airport rather than have him stay with Mom & Dad.  We did that for two reasons--so that no one would have to get up at a terribly early hour to get him back to the airport and also because a winter storm was forecast for Utah on Tuesday morning and we weren't sure if the roads would be bad or not.  Many thanks to Mom & Dad for getting Scott to the airport (and then turning around to go pick him up again) and to Amy for driving Scott back up to the hotel!  Fortunately, his flight Tuesday morning got on it's way before the storm hit.

 

Meanwhile, at home we were really disappointed with the delay but we coped.  I had a complicated grocery list to make and we had lots of errands to run Monday evening and with all the phone calls back and forth with Scott, we ended up having dinner VERY late.  Tuesday morning I got some cleaning done and made some cookies before going to pick up Scott at the airport.  Frank worked from home so I was able to take his car (plus Frank got to see Scott as soon as we got home).  When he got home, Scott went over to the high school for a little while--there was a drama club party after school and Tanner and Jared had stayed after for that so he wanted to see them (plus several friends were there too).  They got back a few minutes after Seth arrived home from school and Seth was very excited to see Scott!  We took all the boys shopping to get Christmas presents for each other, had dinner late again, and then had family night.  Scott thanked us for making dinner and told Tanner and Jared that you really come to appreciate having someone cook for you after you've had to do it for yourself.  See, he learned something! :)

 

I didn't exercise Wednesday morning because my back was still bothering me and I decided I should be careful.  I had visiting teaching appointments that morning.  After that I had errands--I took Scott out to Allie's house first and then got my errands done, including grocery shopping at Wal Mart.  That evening for YM / YW we took the youth down to see the Christmas lights at the temple.  We met earlier than usual since it takes a while to get down there.  I had kind of a crazy trip--when we were leaving, one of the parents told us that there was a bad wreck on the spur getting on to I-495 so we decided we should get off the freeway before we got to that point and take an alternate route the rest of the way to the temple.  I've never gone any other way, though, so I was supposed to be following someone else, with a GPS for back up.  Well, I got separated from the rest of the group and the GPS took me some crazy way that took a long time.  Meanwhile, everyone else decided to take their chances with the usual route and it turned out the accident was cleared up so they all got there about a half hour before my group did!  By the time we got there we only had about a half hour until we had to start back home.  The kids didn't seem to mind, though.  They had a fun time singing and playing in the car.  I got to see the international nativity exhibit, which I always enjoy.  Here's a few pictures:  

 

Love the eskimo nativity in the center, complete with igloo and arctic animals!

I wanted to zoom in as well as take more pictures, but my camera's batteries were dying and it kept shutting down when I tried to zoom in.  Then it died completely so I didn't get any pictures of the lights (except with my iPod, but I have no idea how to get the pictures off of there onto my computer).  I barely had time to look at the lights anyway but they did look absolutely beautiful as we drove onto the temple grounds.  The trip back home went much quicker.  We all met at a restaurant (Chipotle) in Frederick to have dinner.  (I was the second car to arrive this time!)  It was yummy, but we didn't get home until nearly 10:00.  Scott & Allie went to a party so they were even later than we were.  (I was actually asleep before he got home and didn't even hear him come in!)

Yesterday I helped take kids to the library at Seth's school, got my hair done, grocery shopped, and did laundry.  Scott kept the laundry going for me while I was out and he also vacuumed the whole house--nice!  I did some cleaning in the kitchen, worked on Personal Progress, finished wrapping presents, made some phone calls, and made dinner for another family in our ward (the dad recently had back surgery). Scott and Allie went to a concert at Allie's high school; they had dinner at our house first.  Tanner and Frank went home teaching.  It was a very busy day.

Today started out pretty crazy.  Seth had pajama day at school.  He only has one pair of pajamas that still fit him and after getting up (at 8:00) he informed me that he had wet his pants in the night!  There was not enough time to wash & dry his pajamas before school but luckily Scott was up and offered to feed Seth and make his lunch so I could run to the store and buy him some pajamas.  Our car pool boys' dad had also offered to take the boys in this morning so I didn't have to pick them up.  (I told him I would take Seth in myself since we were running late.)  We managed to barely get to school on time!  Here is Seth after returning from school, in his new pajamas:

I've been meaning to get him another pair of pajamas; wish I'd done it sooner!  Scott went to the high school this morning to see friends and help set up some lights.  I made one quick stop at the store and then came home and worked on the budget for most of the day.  This evening Scott & Allie are out on a date (they stopped by here for a while) and Tanner & Jared are at an "End of the World" party at their friend Taylor's house.  It doesn't look like the world is going to end after all--I can't say that I'm surprised by that!  It is really, really cold today though.  We had mild tempertures earlier this week but today is super cold and windy too.  We even saw some snowflakes drifting down for a while.

Everyone is glad that school is out and that Frank doesn't have to go back to work until January 2nd.  We are looking forward to Frank's parents joining us for Christmas!  They left this afternoon and arrived safely at their hotel this evening.  They will drive the rest of the way here tomorrow.  We invited them to come for Christmas when we were in NC for Thanksgiving but they weren't sure if they would be able to come.  Last Saturday morning Frank said to me "Oh, I forgot to tell you...my parents are coming for Christmas.  They're coming on Saturday and they'll be here for a week."  I had to give him a hard time about that...how do you forget something like that?!  He had just found out the night before that they were coming, so at least he didn't forget for very long.  It will be nice to have them here and we are grateful they are making the effort to come.

We hope you all have a beautiful Christmas--we love you all!