Weekly Review March 8 '13

Last week I was a day early and this week I am a day late!  That's because yesterday I had a nasty stomach flu complete with fever and body aches.  Actually, the worst of it was in the early morning hours.  I spent all day yesterday lying in bed and sipping ginger ale.  It was boring.  Although I did finish reading the book The Princess Bride, which was pretty good.  Today I am keeping food down again but I'm still achy and I feel totally drained, so I don't expect I'll get a lot done today either.  But I'm glad I'm feeling better than I was.

 

Back to last week, now...Friday was a very busy day.  I decided to take Scott down to the temple in the morning to buy garments, because we were going to be on a tight schedule later.  (We couldn't leave for the temple until 3:00--that's when Seth gets home from school and I have to pick up on Fridays.  His session was at 6:00--the latest one they would let him go through--so they wanted him there by 4:30.  But then they added that he needed to get there 30-45 minutes before that if he needed to purchase garments.  Which put us at a 3:45-4:00 arrival time.  That was cutting it closer than I liked, especially since traffic is unpredictable and rush hour starts around 3:30.)  So anyway, after I finished hanging artwork at the school, we headed down.  We stopped at Frank's work and had lunch with him, then traded cars since his gets much better gas milage.  We were able to get what Scott needed and it did take some time to figure everything out (proper size, etc) so I'm glad we did that earlier and weren't feeling quite so rushed.  We got back home with just enough time to change clothes and go pick up Seth. 

 

We left a little after 3:00 and as it turns out the traffic wasn't bad (it was worse when Scott and I went down earlier!) so we got there shortly after 4:00.  Our friend Aaron Schlenz came down with us.  He had a lot of family file names so while Frank went with Scott for the first part, I took some of his family names and did a few initiatories.  Then I met up with Frank and Scott for the endowment session.  It was great, of course!  A few good friends joined us and it was our stake temple day so we saw many, many people that we know while we were in the temple.

 

Here's some pictures we took before:    

 

 The little person Scott is holding in the pictures is Ammon's "Flat Stanley".  I am kind of kicking myself that we forgot to take a picture without him...oh well!

Here are the pictures we took afterwards:

 It was cold and windy.  We had such a nice experience at the temple.  They always make you feel so special the first time you go to the temple...I remember that.  But when you're the parent of a child going through for the first time they treat you really special too.  Everybody smiles and congratulates you!  Oh, and the other thing I loved was how many of the temple workers told me they couldn't believe I was old enough to have a son going on a mission! :)  I mean, they looked genuinely shocked!  (And the funny thing is...I wasn't incredibly young when Scott was born.  Age 26 is not really considered an early start.)  I see a lot of gray hair and wrinkles when I look in the mirror, but apparently no one else does.

Saturday we had a lot going on.  In the morning Frank was helping set up all the audio visual equipment for stake conference.  The older three boys went to a friend's house to watch the newest episode of Psych--someone had recorded it.  (It comes on at 10:00 on Wednesday nights--way too late for kids going to Seminary to stay up to watch it.)  Then they all went over to help set up chairs at the stake center. 

Meanwhile, I took Seth and Ammon's Flat Stanley to visit some places here in Frederick.  (If you haven't read the book Flat Stanley, it's about a boy who gets flattened by a bulletin board falling on him.  It doesn't hurt him, but now he's flat so he can visit places all over the world because he can fit in an envelope.  So for a class project, Ammon's class read the book, made their own "Flat Stanley"s and over the next few months, they are trying to have their Flat Stanley visit as many places as possible.  Ammon sent his Flat Stanley to us first.)  The first place we went was Harry Grove Stadium, home of the Frederick Keys minor leauge baseball team.  (The team is named after Francis Scott Key, who lived in and is buried here in Frederick.):
      

Seth cracked me up...he didn't want to get too close to that baseball topiary.  He thought it was creepy!

We also went to the Monocacy Battlefield:

In between those two stops, we went to Kohl's so I could return three pair of Seth's pants...we bought them in October and they already had big holes in the knees!  Then I realized I had to buy him some new pants because the only other pair he owned was the one he was wearing!  That ended up being more complicated than I would have liked because of course they didn't have any more pants like the ones I'd returned.  As a matter of fact, there were hardly any pants at all...they have already brought in all the shorts for summer.  The problem is, it's still too cold for shorts!  I did manage to find a couple pair of pants...two of them were even on clearance.  And I also got him some pajamas because he has really outgrown his pajamas.  It took a lot of time, though, and Seth wasn't enjoying the process very much.

After everybody got home, Frank went back to the stake center for the priesthood leadership meeting.  Then Scott and I went to the adult session while Frank stayed home with Seth.  Tanner & Jared went to see Sweeney Todd at the high school...that's the play they've been working on the last few weeks.  Somewhere in between, Frank and I also went on a walk and we got the kitchen floor cleaned.  So it was a busy day!

We were up early Sunday.  We had a visiting general authority for conference this time...Elder Christoffel Golden of the 1st Quorm of the Seventy.  He had a meeting at 8:00 for all prospective missionaries which included all YM and YW who wished to attend, so all three of the older boys went to that.  Frank had to be there even earlier to help with set up.  He took a break later on to come pick up Seth and I.  There were a lot of issues going on during the session with sound and so forth, so Frank never did come sit down with us...he was busy the whole time.  (I didn't notice any problems from where I was sitting.)  Elder Golden is a great speaker and the conference was really good. 

I won't give you a play-by-play of the rest of the week, just the highlighs of the unique things that happened.  On Monday I picked up photos from Costco, updated Flat Stanley's journal, and got him sent on to Erin.  While at Costco, we also got socks and some athletic shoes for Scott.  Tuesday I had a presidency meeting (not that unique, I guess--we have a meeting every week) and that evening I went on some visits with one of my counselors.  We visited two sisters.  One of them I didn't know very well so it was fun to get to know her better.  She hasn't been to church in quite a while and I was glad she was willing to talk about that...now I understand what's going on with her. 

Tuesday night / Wednesday morning we were supposed to get a big snow storm.  They were predicting anywhere from 8 to 18 inches!  By the time we got up Wednesday morning there was about an inch and since all the weather stations were still predicting we were going to get very heavy snow off and on all day, school was cancelled.  We enjoyed sleeping in!  However, the big storm never materialized.  We did get some snow off and on...maybe 3 inches total...and some wind and rain.  But somehow a lot more warm air got pulled into the system than any of the meteorologists expected, so all the snow turned to rain.  They easily could have had school.  Oh well!  We enjoyed having a "day off".  Frank worked from home too, so we were all together all day.  That evening I had my monthly meeting with the bishop and Scott and Jared came over to the church to play basketball.

Thursday was super busy, but mostly just normal chores and lots of RS stuff.  I was planning a date for Frank and I for Friday, so I did some research to get ideas of things we could do.  I also did some more online shopping for Scott--ordered him some shoes.  Shortly before we went to bed I noticed my stomach felt kind of funny.  I was able to get a few hours of sleep before the flu hit.  So much for going on a date Friday night!  Frank was able to take the day off, which I really appreciated since I was in no shape to take kids to school.  He did the budget for me too.  He took care of me and ran the household as well.  No one signed up to feed the missionaries, so Frank took them a pizza.

Today, as I said, I am feeling more human, but trying to take it easy.  Tanner is taking the SAT right now...hope he does well on that.  (He did well enough when he took the PSAT that a million colleges are sending him emails, snail mails, and calling him.)  Scott is at a camp out--he is an assistant 11 year old scout leader.  Frank was asked to give a talk at a baptism...it's the husband of the lady who was baptized in January who's getting baptized, so we're all excited about that.  I was planning to go originally, but now I am staying home.  I'll also be missing a memorial service tonight--it's for the mother of a lady who lives in our ward.  Her mother used to live here and she (the mother) was baptized while she was here so she was in our ward for a while.  She is originally from Nigeria and  had moved back there, and that's where she passed away.  So...a lot going on, but I'm not going to be doing much myself.  And that's about it for this week.

Happy Birthday to Tim today!