Weekly Review December 7 '12

When I wrote last week, Tanner was on a date.  He says he had fun--they did some shopping / browsing in downtown Frederick (where there are lots of restaurants and cute specialty shops) and then they went to her house to watch a movie.  At home, we got out a lot of the Christmas decorations.  Frank and I did some shopping for some new decorations--I wanted to get something to put outside since our big candy canes broke last year and I also decided to have pity on the guys and not ask them to put up the lights again this year.  (The trees in front have grown so tall that they make hanging the lights very difficult and the lights are partially obscured by the trees anyway.)  In lieu of lights, I wanted to get something else to put out front.  (Pictures of what we got are at the end of the post.)

 

Saturday was pretty busy.  Frank and I went on an early morning walk.  Then I baked Tanner's cake and cleaned the kitchen floor.  Jared had two basketball games--one at 1:00 and one at 3:00 but we weren't able to go watch.  He's on the older team now (instead of the Deacon's team) and he reports that they lost both games.  But he had fun so oh well.  Tanner invited two friends over to share his birthday cake and they arrived around 3:00.  They played games and then we had dinner (Tanner chose gyros instead of pizza--yummy!) and after that we had his cake:

 

Tanner's friends--Ryan and Taylor--went in together and got him a ukelele.  I neglected to get a picture of it but it's yellow with a big smiley face on it.  Tanner has dubbed it "Wal-Mart".  Hopefully he will actually learn to play it!

After cake, we had his friends help us bring up the Christmas tree before they left.  We set the tree up that evening but saved the decorating until Sunday evening.  Sunday was the usual church, with choir practice afterwards for me.  We had family night and got the tree decorated, finishing up just in time for the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.  The tree looks nice:

(I was experimenting with different camera settings to see which would get the best picture.  The lighting was definitely the best in this one, although if I had a tripod to keep the camera still it would be much better because it wouldn't be all blurry.  This was the "fireworks" setting!)

Anyway, we tried to listen to the devotional but things were a bit chaotic--the boys (particularly Seth) were not in a quiet, contemplative mood and Jared was driving Seth crazy, as usual (all with the best intentions).  In the middle of it, Seth broke one of my pepper shakers--he loves this set and has been playing with them ever since I got them out on Friday and I have told him more than once not to play with them because they'll get broken.  Well, I was right!  He dropped it on the floor and it was no match for the tile (it may have survived if we still had linoleum in the kitchen--one of the disadvantages of tile!) so now I have a lonely little salt shaker snowman:

I'm a little bummed about it because this was my nicest Christmas set and I doubt I'll find another one like it (my mother in law gave it to me) but it's just a thing, right?  Hopefully Seth also learned that I'm not just making things up when I say something could get broken.  He usually doesn't believe me when I tell him that! 

So the devotional wasn't the super uplifting and sweet exeperience I would have liked it to be, but I've watched most of it again this week when the house has been quiet!  And the music was so beautiful that I cried, even in the midst of all the chaos!

Most of you have probably heard that we've been having unusually warm weather out here.  Monday was quite pleasant; I think it was in the high 50's or low 60's.  I exercised, bought groceries, did laundry, vacuumed, went to the bookstore (I needed a used book for a gift exchange and I am proud of myself for making it out of the store with only that one book!), and had lunch with my friend Christine.  By the time the boys got home from school, the temperatures were so nice that I decided we needed to take advantage of it and rake the leaves in the front yard.  It's amazing how many leaves a couple of little apple trees can produce!  Seth loved the pile:
 

We enjoyed the sunset while we finished up:

We filled three big yard waste bags and when we were done, the yard looked like this:

We had family night after that.  Originally, we had planned to go to the Visitor's Center at the temple for a violin concert (which I really wanted to see) but Tanner had to stay late to work on the current high school play and we didn't know when he was going to need a ride home, so I decided it would be better to go to the visitor's center another night.  Instead, we played Scattergories, which Frank won (he always wins) and we also enjoyed pumpkin pie for treat, which Frank had made.  (And Tanner got home earlier than he expected so he was here for family night.)

Tuesday was even nicer.  The temperature got up to 70 degrees!  Seriously, I love weather like that!  I don't mind a good snowstorm at Christmas time, but the Christmas tree / warm weather combination really works for me, too!  I had lots of errands to run and house work to do; I also had book club that afternoon.  That evening  we were working out in the yard again--this time, we were pulling up all the weeds that became very obvious after we raked all the leaves.  We didn't get all of the weeds pulled, but we did get a large amount and the yard looks much nicer.  Maybe it will be covered up by snow before the weeds grow back!

On Wednesday I exercised and went to the temple--my friend Susie came with me.  Frank worked from home that day so I was able to leave earlier than usual (he took Seth to school for me) so we got there in time for the 10:00 endowment session.  Susie has lots of family file names so I was able to be a proxy for one of her family members, which was cool.  I really enjoyed visiting with Susie on the way there and back.  The weather was still fairly nice but not as warm and a bit windy.  It was colder when we left the temple than it was when we got there.  After I got back from the temple, I went to Wal Mart to do the weekly shopping.  It took a while because in addition to the weekly groceries I also bought items for our annual 12 Days of Christmas service project.  I barely got home in time to make dinner and then leave again (I actually had to take my dinner with me--didn't have time to eat it!).  Jared was supposed to take brownies to YM and he had forgotten--of course I didn't have a brownie mix in the house although I almost always keep one on hand--so I had to stop at the store (again!) on the way to the church to buy some brownies.  For YW we visited single sisters in our ward--took them plates of cookies.  I took some girls to visit two women and we had a good time.  The YM were doing the same thing--they were visiting single men / less active YM. 

Yesterday I took kids from Seth's class to the school library.  Then I got a little bit of Christmas shopping done.  Frank worked from home again--he started to drive to work but the traffic was so bad he just decided to come back home.  I did laundry, vacuumed, finished up the grocery shopping for the week (our Wal-Mart doesn't have produce and meat), worked on Personal Progress, and picked Jared up early from school for an orthodontist appointment.  They took x-rays and said he's going to probably need his bottom wisdom teeth out soon--the dentist said the same thing about Tanner last time we visited so I foresee all three boys needing at least some of their wisdom teeth out early next year (Scott still has his top ones and will probably need them out before his mission).  That'll be fun--can't wait to see how much that's going to cost us!  (NOT!)  Last night I took Jared and Seth to see the play Tanner has been helping with--The Little Mermaid.  (Tanner ran the spotlight.)  It was quite good--most of the kids were great actors and good singers.  I was particularly impressed with Ariel, Sebastian, Flounder, Ursula, the chef, and Flotsam & Jetsam.  The costumes were great and they had some cool special effects.  I wasn't terribly impressed with the set, but Tanner says they have almost no budget for that (the football team gets all the money at their school, apparently).  Anyway, we enjoyed the play.  Seth liked it too although he got quite wiggly.  He was really difficult during intermisison and kept running off--of all my kids, he is the one who has the most trouble staying with me.  He just takes off if he sees something interesting, no matter how often I talk to him about not doing that.  It can be quite trying at times.

Today I exercised and got the budget caught up.  It is raining and quite chilly today (although still a bit warmer than usual for this time of year.)  Frank went to the temple right after work and now he is doing work for a client--he's been quite busy all week because he is getting a new server set up for one of his clients.  He's trying to get it done this week because next week he has monthly maintenance for all of his clients.  Tanner is gone to the high school again--they have another performance tonight and three tomorrow.  I had contemplated taking Jared and Seth to the visitor's center tonight--there is a bell choir concert scheduled for tonight--but since Frank can't go and I didn't have a great experience with Seth last night I decided not to go.  Jared had expressed interest in the bell choir (we saw them a previous year and all really enjoyed them) but we are going to be going to the visitor's center in two weeks for YM / YW and he said it would be fine with him if we just waited to go down until then.  I would have liked for Seth to see the lights but it's really packed down there this time of year and I'm afraid it would just be too stressful trying not to lose him.  Maybe we will all be able to go down together sometime after Scott gets back.

I'll finish up with pictures of some of our new Christmas decorations.  Here's a new doorknob hanger for the front door: 

 This is the 3rd one we've had--not sure why they wear out so fast!

Here's one of the lights we got to go outside:

Some holographic signs for outside:

Ok, I admit I'm not a big fan of the stop sign.  I've always considered "Santa stop here" signs to be a little on the tacky side.  But I needed another sign and there weren't any others to choose from.  Seth loves it, too!

We also got a snowman.

And a snowflake.  (Will it be the only one we see this year?!)

Another light (we got two blue ones and two red ones)  They look nice when they are lit up, but they are harder to photograph then.  Unless you are talented, like Anna!

A new candy cane to replace one of the ones that broke--we got two of these, too.

We also purchased some battery operated candles to put in the windows.  Seth has already broken two of those (yes, he's been on a roll this week!) and when I tried to get replacements the store was all out.  We still have two of them, though.  They actually flicker, so they look kind of like real candles.

The month is racing by and the amount of Christmas shopping I haven't got done is a bit alarming!  I've done a little here and there, though, and no one wants much this year so hopefully I don't have much left to do.  We feel fortunate to have so much--to not be in need at all and to have so much of what we want.  I'm glad to see my kids starting to grow out of wanting "things" so much.  I haven't given the present side of Christmas a whole lot of thought this year and it is nice not to focus on that part! 

I did get myself one early Christmas present this week.  I got a cassette player (yes, they still make those!) because our stereo that included our only cassette players died sometime this year and we got rid of it.  I didn't miss it until December came and I realized that a lot of my favorite Christmas music is still on cassette tapes!  Hopefully we will find a way to convert the tapes over to CD, but in the meantime, the cassette player works nicely.  I enjoyed lots of beautiful music while I got my work done today.  Love Christmas music! :)