February 15 '13



It was a busy and eventful week for the Cleveland clan! 

 

Saturday we had lots of chores to do and errands to run.  Frank and I met with a sister in the ward to help her with her computer.  (Frank did most of the helping, of course!)  We met her at the church and when we got there we found out there was no one to help the facilities guy clean the church so we had our boys come over to help.  After the church was clean, they went back home while Frank and I ran errands...checked on one of my visiting teaching sisters (Wanda) to see if she wanted to come to church the next day...she did.  (She's in a nursing home so she needs transportation.)  We also went to the library and to Costco to get a few food items as well as some shirts and socks for Frank.  We had lunch there...it was our "date" for the week!  The boys got the kitchen floor cleaned while we were gone.  After we got home, I worked on Personal Progress and did some RS stuff while Frank ran to the bank and he and Scott got both of our cars washed.  (They looked terrible after all our recent small ice / snow storms).  We were really busy all day and didn't even think to check the mail until after Scott left for work (he was doing lighting & sound for a show at the high school).  Tanner went with him.  We were shocked when Jared returned from the mailbox saying "It's here...his mission call is here!"  Scott wasn't supposed to be home for hours but we texted him and he was on a break so he ran home to open it, thankfully--I don't think we could have waited 4 or 5 hours for him to open it!

 

Here's some pictures:

We videotaped it too, but it's on Frank's new video camera and I don't know yet how to transfer files from that to my computer.  But I will try to figure it out and post it for you sometime.  I think most of you already know that he is going to the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission and that he enters the MTC March 27th.  We were very surprised he was sent to Utah; we all laughed pretty hard.  But he is excited about it and we are happy for him.  I can see that he has a lot of strengths that will make him a great missionary in that area.  The next day we were talking about it and he said "you know, every time I visited Salt Lake last semester I found myself really liking it...and I had a strong feeling I'd live there someday."  That happened sooner than he expected! 

For those of you who may be wondering, his mission covers the south part of the Salt Lake valley (including the areas where the Draper, Oquirrh Mountain, and Jordan River Temples are located) and a large area east of the valley, including Park City. 

My friend Jeanine's son, Joey (who is Scott's good friend), got his mission call the day before Scott.  He is going to the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission and he goes into the MTC the same day that Scott does.  Pretty cool!

After Scott went back to work, we spent the rest of the evening working on our income tax return.  It seems like it gets a little more complicated every year.  We worked on it some more on Tuesday and we still aren't done.  It's looking like we'll probably have to pay rather than get a refund--the first time that's ever happened.  But since we've been setting funds aside for that possibility all year, we will be ok.

Sunday morning was busy...we went to pick up Wanda to take her to church.  She enjoyed being there and I'm glad she made it.  The choir sang and one of the speakers was a girl who was about to enter the MTC...she's going to Las Vegas West.  She did a good job.  I'm always busy at church...it seems like someone always needs to talk to me!  I did get a short nap after church, before I went back over for choir practice.  We are singing again this Sunday (not usual...we usually sing once a month).

Frank woke up Monday not feeling well...he had a sore throat and chills, and his voice was mostly gone.  His ear hurt, too, so I told him he'd better go to the doctor.  He took a sick day and stayed home.  At the doctor he found out he didn't have an ear infection...just a virus, so they couldn't help him.  He had lesions in his throat, too.  He hasn't had much of a voice all week and since he is supposed to teach Elder's Quorum this Sunday, he tried to rest his voice by whispering.  (He didn't have much of a voice anyway, even if he had tried to speak out loud.) 

I spent Monday doing the usual housework.  I also tried (fairly unsuccessfully) to set up some visits and visiting teaching appointments.  That afternoon, I got together with my two former Primary counselors, just to visit!  We don't see each other enough anymore.  It was fun to chat and get caught up on each other's lives.  Scott drove out to a place that was hiring temporary workers to see if he could get a job, but they had hired everybody they needed already.  Transportation for that job was going to be difficult anyway, so it's probably for the best.

We had a nice sunset that evening:

Nothing out of the ordinary happened on Tuesday except that the Elder's Quorum president (and one of his counselors and his secretary) came over that evening to set Frank apart as an Elder's Quorum instructor.  Frank had been feeling better enough to go back to work, although as I said--he still couldn't talk.  While the Elder's Quorum president was there, they gave Frank a blessing too.  Scott was able to do the annointing and to assist with the blessing, so that was nice.

Wednesday I had a visiting teaching appointment, followed by a RS visit and then shopping.  That took up the whole morning and the early afternoon.  We had our monthly RS evening meeting that night.  In honor of Valentine's Day we talked about our hearts.  One of the sisters in our ward who is a nurse (she's also my visiting teaching companion) did a presentation on women's heart health.  It was really good and I learned a lot of interesting information.  She also did blood pressure checks for all of us (assisted by one of the young men in our ward--Scott's age--who is studying to become a nurse.)
 

It rained Wednesday afternoon, turning to snow that evening.  The roads were icy Thursday morning, so there was a 2 hour school delay.  Kind of a nice Valentine's gift--two extra hours of sleep! :)  We gave cards and small boxes of chocolates to each of the boys:

Frank also got a card and some chocolate, too:

And I received a card, some chocolate, and these beautiful roses:

After getting all the kids to school, I had a presidency meeting and then went grocery shopping.  By then everyone was coming home again.  It took the rest of the evening to get laundry done and other household chores.  Then I stayed up late waiting to hear about Timo's mission call.  So cool that he's going to San Antonio, Texas!  Amy, Anna, and Erin were all on facebook waiting for the announcement too...so we were having a conversation and it was kind of funny.

This morning Scott and I started looking online for some of the things he needs for his mission.  I measured him and tried to figure out what size suits, pants, and shirts he needs.  I wasn't sure I was measuring right so I had a conversation on the phone with a nice guy from Mr. Mac's.  We haven't purchased anything yet...just trying to get the process started.  This afternoon I went on another RS visit...I was supposed to go with my secretary but she isn't feeling well so I went alone.  It was a fun visit and I stayed longer than I intended.

Seth came home from school shortly after I got back, carrying a bag of Valentines (they postponed their celebration one day because 2/3 of his class wasn't there yesterday--the preschoolers don't have school at all on delay days) and sporting a General George Washington hat.  They've been talking about Chinese New Years and Presidents Day the last week.  He looked really cute in his hat; here he is telling his men to "go that way"!:
   

Later I realized he had the hat on sideways, so I took another picture of him wearing it the correct way:

Doesn't he look cute?  (He's playing a video game; hence the riveted attention!)

I worked on the budget this evening and made Thai Chicken Flatbread for dinner.  (I thought it was pretty good.)  Now it is pretty late.  Frank is doing maintenance for one of his clients and the boys are watching Pirates of the Caribbean.  Seth added a cape to his outfit--I should really take another picture because he looks really good!  Tomorrow will be another busy day, I'm sure.

For those that are wondering if we are planning to come out to Utah with Scott, the answer is--probably not.  We talked about taking a family vacation then instead of waiting until summer but there are a lot of complications.  They really discourage missionaries to arrive in Utah more than a day or two before going into the MTC because they need to be set apart at home before leaving.  We could come out right before he goes in and then stay for a while afterwards...the boys actually have spring break starting the day after he goes into the MTC so that would work well.  But that means they'd miss the last day or two of the term and it's likely they will have tests those days so they'd be bad days to miss.  The real clincher though, is that Frank really can't miss work.  Although he has days off accumulated, he is in the middle of a large project that goes until June.  Plus they are in the middle of the IT outsourcing and he still doesn't know how that's going to affect him.  So it's a good time to be around a lot, and to be seen working hard!  He does know that his boss is recommending him to be rebadged (and he had a great performance review last week) but they have no idea if the new company will listen to their recommendations or not.  We are still hoping to come for a visit this summer, so hopefully that will work out and we will be seeing many of you then.

We are having typical temperamental weather.  Some days have been extremely cold and windy, some days we've had snow, other days rain, and some days (like today) have been pretty nice--temps in the 50's.  I'm seeing a lot more birds around and there are lots of little green spears poking up in my flower beds so I can tell winter is not going to hang around forever.  I think this weekend is supposed to be very cold again, though.

One other thing that happened this week...Jared got a new bag of cereal from downstairs and then discovered it had a hole in it (thankfully, before he ate any of it).  So we suspected a mouse and set some traps.  This evening the boys discovered that we had indeed caught a mouse in one of them.  They were all too squeamish to do anything about it (they are definitely related to me!) so Frank had to dispose of the mouse.  I hope that's the only one, but we are leaving the other trap out a few more days to be sure.  That's about the third or fourth mouse we've caught in this house, plus 2 others we found already dead...not too bad in 13 years' time I guess.  I think we get more of them here because we are right by a river.  With the exception of one place we lived in Provo, we've never seen any mice in any of  the other places we've lived but then...we didn't stay in any of them more than a year or two.  And I'll never forget the night we discovered a BAT in our New York house!  Definitely, I prefer a mouse over a bat.