Weekly Review December 22 '13



It is hard to believe there's only three days until Christmas!  Especially since it's 64 degrees outside!  Yes, I know all you Utahns have snow up to the rafters, but after the last couple of days all the snow we had has melted.  Not that I mind that...the snow we had was getting dirty and ugly, and you know me...I love warm weather!  It's supposed to get cold again on Tuesday and we might even get a little bit of snow.  But for now, it feels like spring and I was awakened this morning by the sounds of rain pounding on the roof.  (And a good thing, too, since my alarm didn't go off and I should have gotten up earlier.  We managed to get to the church in time for our 8:00 choir practice anyway...I was pretty proud of myself.)

 

Besides the weather, I've just been so busy that I haven't had much time to let the Christmas spirit sink in.  I definitely felt it today, though.  Our Sacrament meeting was wonderful, with lots of beautiful uplifting music and great talks.  The choir sang three songs and there were a couple of other musical numbers as well, including a beautiful prelude duet that made me cry.  Besides that, we had a new member confirmed...the father of a part member family (not part member anymore).  He's been coming to church with his wife faithfully for 5 years so everyone in the ward knows him and loves him, and it was a joyful thing to go to his baptism yesterday.  So that added to the great spirit of the meeting as well.

 

I am not going to try to give you a play by play of what we did this week because it would take me forever, and besides...I really don't remember what I did when anymore.  It's all a blur!  It was another extremely busy week with me running from one thing to another from dawn until dusk every day and I have decided that next year I am going to get all our family Christmas shopping and preparations done by the middle of November!  Because Christmas and RS president don't mix very well.  I was talking to one of the other RS presidents in another ward yesterday and she said the same thing, so it's not just me. :)

 

Here are some of the things that we did, though.  I took the boys to the temple Visitor's Center on Monday to hear a concert and to see the lights.  Frank has also had an extremely busy week (same as the last several weeks) and had several things he needed to do for clients that evening so he stayed home to work.  The concert was given by violinist Jenny Oaks Baker (Dallin Oaks's daughter) and it was excellent.  We were on the second row of the auditorium too, so we had a great view and could hear all the music really well.  So glad we took the time to go down there!  After the concert I went in to see the International Creche exhibit while the boys looked at some of the displays in the visitor center.  The exhibit is always good and I'm amazed at the variety they have every year...it's different every year, too.  Here's just a couple of pictures:

 



Loved the cactus in this Native American crèche!  (It's kind of behind the shepherd on the left of the picture.)

I took this picture for Tim. :)

Then we went out to see the lights (it was cold the earlier part of the week).:

 Sorry the picture is blurry...I didn't have a tripod or anything.

In the middle of the week, I finally got the Christmas letter written and the Christmas cards all ready to go and sent off, and I also got the rest of the packages mailed that needed to go out (Mom & Dad, be watching for a padded envelope). 

I got Christmas shopping done and a lot of shopping for RS (more on that later).  On Friday Seth's class had pajama day and a winter party.  I had volunteered to help, so I got to wear my pajamas too.  I spent a couple of hours helping all the kids make marshmallow snowmen like this:
 

Every last one of the 25 kids asked if the black gel frosting we were using for the eyes, mouth and buttons was paint!  They were all relieved to find out it was frosting so they could eat their snowmen!  I really didn't have time to help in Seth's class, but I was richly rewarded for doing it anyway.  While I was there, Seth slipped me this piece of paper:
 

And when I opened it up, this is what I saw:

The boys got out of school 2 hours early that day.  They were all in a party mood!

Besides all of that, one sister in my ward had a baby and another one ended up in the hospital.  (Not life threatening, thankfully, and she's home now.)  Then I also had a couple of big projects to work on.  One of them was assembling 12 baskets for some of the sisters in the ward...you know, the ones who live alone or don't have a lot of family around.  This was something that neither the bishop nor I thought of until the week of the Christmas party and I couldn't do it then so it had to wait until this week.  (Next year we will both be more prepared!)  One of my counselors came up with a good idea of what to put in them and the other one purchased the poinsettias for me, but other than that, I ended up doing all the shopping and assembling myself and that took more time than I expected, of course.  We did have a time planned for all of us to get together to assemble them but a few emergencies got in the way, plus I was waiting to hear back from the bishop about when they were going to be delivered...since we were putting bread in them, I didn't want to put them together until right before they were going to be delivered.  So in the end, I ended up doing more of it than I'd planned.  But they did get done and the ward mission leader picked them all up yesterday morning so that the bishopric and the missionaries could deliver all of them.  Here's a few pictures:

My table wasn't big enough for all of them!

I was really fortunate I found the pretty Christmas baskets at 70% off, the first store I looked.  Saved me tons of shopping time because I didn't have to go all over trying to find baskets for a good price.

 

 Wrapped and ready to go!

My other big project was making about 90 ornaments for the RS sisters.  One of my counselors made 40 of them last week, but we had a bunch more to make because there are 135 sisters in our ward.  My secretary came over one day and helped me make a bunch of them, and then we divided up the ones that were left and she took some of them home to finish and I kept the rest.  I ended up finishing them late last night.  Here's what they look like:

And here's the explanation about the contents of the globes:

See, we had a lot of them!:

Well, I was super busy working on all of the above so when I found out about half way through the week that our ward should have decorated the church, I nearly cried.  Not that it was necessarily the RS's job to do it...but I knew no one had time to do it, including me.  I sent the bishop an email to alert him to the fact that it was our responsibility but also told him I didn't see how I could take on the project.  Then the next morning I sent him another email with an idea of how it might be done.  I guess some of the stress I was feeling came through in the emails, because I got back this response from my wise bishop:

Hi sister Cleveland

I think you and the other adult leaders in our ward are busy enough with the real work of the church. Please don't feel obligated to do one more thing. Getting a few flowers for the chapel is fine. If [RS president in other ward] wants to put up some trees in the foyer would you let her know to go ahead and we thank her.  Be at peace. Trees in the foyer are not going to turn any hearts to Christ. Giving of yourself and loving another might. Thank you for your many hours giving of yourself to the ward. God bless.

 

I can't even explain how much this email helped me to feel better!  And what a relief, not to have to figure out one more thing!  I did buy some poinsettias for the chapel and the foyers, but that was not a big deal, and they looked nice, too.

 

Tanner and Jared have been quite social this week.  They had a drama club party one day, a seminary party last night, and Jared went to a party with a group of friends on Friday.  Tanner babysat Seth for us so that we could go to dinner and then to a friend's house for dessert.  He invited several couples in our ward over, and we had a good time visiting and eating yummy dessert together.

 

Now church is over and we don't have any meetings, firesides, practices, or anything else scheduled for the rest of the day.  So for once we can relax a little!  Seth was playing with his Batcave this afternoon and suddenly I noticed what he was doing: 

Really tickled my funny bone, to see the Nativity mixed up with Batman!  You should have heard the songs he was singing too, all about the birth of Jesus (he made them up himself).  It was so sweet! 

Well, everyone have a Merry Christmas!  We will be thinking about you all.