Oh So Outnumbered: Weekly Review May 25 '13

I'm getting started on this week's post pretty late, so I'm going to attempt to keep it brief. We'll see how I do!

We had a hot and humid week with some rain a lot of days and a fairly severe thunderstorm on Wednesday evening. Then yesterday we had a complete change--very windy, dry, and highs in the 50's! Today was a titch warmer--probably up to the 60's--but still VERY windy. It's sunny, however, so the world looks beautiful even if it doesn't feel like May. I must say I am not missing the humidity either.

Last Saturday I spent the morning and early afternoon at a conference done by the LDS counselors and psychotherapists in this area. They had several workshops geared towards teaching church leaders how to more effectively help members of their wards. I went to three classes--one on helping people with depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder or grief; one on helping people who have experienced trauma, and one on helping people suffering from addictions. I know those don't sound like very cheery topics, but they were all very interesting, uplifting, and helpful. Hopefully I will be better prepared to help others because I went. The conference was held at the Washington DC stake center; I rode down there and back with our stake RS president, who is also in my ward. She is a great person and I enjoyed visiting with her on the way there and back.

After I got home, I took Seth with me to visit one of the ladies I visit teach--she's in a nursing home and she was with her family last week end for Mother's Day so she missed church. I picked up one of the cards with forget-me-not seeds for her last week so I brought along a little pot with some soil and we planted her seeds with her. She enjoyed that, and she got a kick out of Seth. She can't speak very well and when I told her his name, she said "I can't say that. How about I call you Billy?" She teased Seth the rest of the visit by calling him Billy and then the next day at church when she saw him, she got this big grin on her face and said "How are you doing, Billy boy?" Amazingly, Seth seems to understand and he just laughs. Usually, he gets very indignant if anyone calls him anything except just Seth.

Sunday was super busy. I had Ward Council before church, a missionary committee meeting after church, choir practice, family night, the boys had a fireside, and one of the sisters in the ward was taken to the ER that afternoon because she had a high fever and was disoriented. So I ended up dropping the boys off at their fireside and then going to the hospital to make sure she was ok. By the time I got there she was doing better and much more alert. Right before I left to go pick up the boys, the doctor made it back in with all the test results. They decided it was ok to send her home and put her on an antibiotic, so that was good news. By the time I got home late Sunday evening I was exhausted, though!

This week has been a normal busy week. I got some visiting teaching done, took paper products over to a new family who is moving into our ward (others provided meals for them), and had a presidency meeting on Wednesday evening. I called several sisters in the ward who have needs and set up some appointments to visit a few. Today I visited a sister who is disabled and lives alone. She can't come to church very often because of her health. I picked up some hamburgers at McDonald's and we had lunch together. I had a really nice visit with her--we talked about her mission and about what her favorite talks were from last General Conference. She wasn't feeling really great today because of the change in the weather--every time the weather changes she hurts all over, especially if it's colder. Visiting with her reminds me how fortunate I am to have such good health!

That's all the RS stuff, I think. Besides that I got a lot of errands done like setting up doctor check ups for everyone, picking out Seth's birthday presents, and ordering a cake for Seth's party. I was going to make a cake but Frank talked me into getting one at Costco. So I am really being a lame mom this year! I volunteered at Seth's school and I tried to go to the temple, but that didn't work out. I didn't sleep well the night before and my stomach felt a little upset that morning so I didn't go. I really needed a day to "regroup" though, so that turned out to be a good thing and I got caught up on a lot of things that day that I had been worrying about getting done. One of those was cleaning out Seth's room--he's definitely been accumulating a lot of stuff and I wanted to get his room cleaned up before his birthday so there would be room for the new things he gets. His room looks amazing now--every time I go in there, I let out a huge sigh of contentment! Before I cleaned it, I felt anxious and agitated whenever I had to go in there.

The boys had Board of Reviews for scouts Wednesday night and Jared is going to be a Star scout now. Tanner is already a Life and can't go any further, of course, until he does an Eagle project. I've been making more of an effort to work on scout stuff with them lately so maybe someday they will both be Eagles and I can take a (very short) break before Seth starts the process all over for me! We've been working on the Communications merit badge lately and they are slowly but surely getting through it.

Frank and Tanner went home teaching on Tuesday evening and then Frank went on splits with the missionaries. Tanner and Jared went to a showcase for all the arts and music programs at the high school on Thursday evening--Tanner helped with some of the techie stuff for the concert that was part of that.

Yesterday Frank and I went on a date--we decided to look at furniture. A few weeks ago our only lamp in the living room quit working. This lamp was built into a small side table so we needed a new table as well as a new lamp. (The table was getting pretty rickety anyway--we've had the table / lamp combo since we lived in New York so it's had a long and happy life.) We had talked about it and decided that we couldn't just go out and buy a table. We really need more lighting in that room so two end tables would be nice. Plus, our old entertainment center was outgrown years ago and needs to be replaced and our couches are getting worn and don't provide enough seating. So why not get everything at once so that we could make sure nothing clashed? I know it sounds crazy, but having one lamp quit working was the motivation we needed to go out and buy a whole new set of furniture for our living room!

So anyway, we decided to start looking around. I didn't expect to actually buy anything, but at the first place we went to, we found what we wanted. They were having a big Memorial Day sale so we were able to get what we liked for really great prices. Plus the tables we liked were being discontinued so we got the floor models for a reduced price. We still spent a pretty penny, but I don't think in 21 years of marriage that we have ever purchased solid wood furniture from a furniture store before. All of our other furniture is the synthetic wood stuff that you get at places like Wal-Mart and Target. Hopefully this furniture will last a little longer! This is also the very first time we have purchased a brand new couch. Ever.

We did run into one complication, though. After we got home from the store last night we did some more accurate measuring (we had done some quick & dirty measuring before leaving for the store) and discovered that the couch we had picked out was not going to fit. It was a sectional with three pieces and we thought we had figured out a way to fit it in the room but it turns out we were wrong. So today when we went back to pick up our tables (we didn't have the large car with us last night) we told them we needed to cancel the order for the couch and pick out a new one. We ended up picking out a sofa and a love seat that are about the same sizes as the ones we have because we knew they'd fit. Unfortunately, there just isn't any way we can squeeze more seating options into the room we have. It's a difficult room, actually, because it's long and narrow and one of the long walls is a high traffic area and has to be kept free, the other long wall has a pillar right in the middle of it that we have to work around, and one of the short walls is mostly windows. That does not leave us a lot of options! With the new furniture, I have no idea where the Christmas tree is going to go but I guess we'll deal with that in December. We'll just have to buy a bigger house before then--hahaha!

That didn't turn out to be very brief. After we finished at the furniture store last night, we went to Café Rio to get some dinner and then went to Lowes to get some lamps. It goes down as the most expensive date we've ever been on!

I'll finish with some pictures of the living room with the new lamps and new tables. (The new couches and the entertainment center won't be delivered for 2-6 weeks so it's the old couches for now):

Here's the new floor lamp, next to the love seat.

New coffee table, new end tables, and new table lamps.

Close up of the coffee table--the middle part of the top lifts up so you can use it as a work surface (or eating surface) more conveniently while sitting on the couch. I am really excited to have so many lamps in one room! This room has always had inadequate lighting.

I took a few pictures of the boys tonight, too. They were helping us make dinner.