Weekly Review September 12 '14

This week was not nearly as busy as last week, thank goodness.  I actually had some free time now and again but I'm afraid that when I get free time these days I just collapse instead of doing something useful like painting the bathroom.

Sunday was the usual marathon meetings craziness for me.  I enjoyed the meetings, though.  We had a couple in our ward bless their new baby and it was sweet.  This couple couldn't have any kids so they adopted two little boys.  Then they did an embryo transplant (or something like that...not sure exactly) so the mom gave birth to their third child (a girl) but she still isn't their biological child.  They did this all rather quickly so they had 3 kids age 4 and under.  Then out of the blue, the mom got pregnant!  So this was their fourth child but their first biological child.  When the dad blessed her, he blessed her that she would feel the love of her family...especially the love of her older siblings, who are all grateful to her for waiting to come to earth so that they could be a part of the family.

Also on Sunday, an older couple in our ward who have been serving a church service mission for the last 2+ years got released.  For their mission, they were the caretakers for all the buildings in our stake.  They made sure they were all kept clean and maintained, and locked up at night and so on.  One of the counselors in the stake presidency came to our Sacrament Meeting to officially release them, and in the process he thanked them for so faithfully serving "in one of the most menial jobs in the church"...something like that.  Well, later on in RS we had time for testimonies and this sister who had just been released from her mission got up to bear her testimony.  She referred to what the counselor in the stake presidency had said (but she wasn't mad about it or anything) and then she said in this firm voice full of conviction "I just want to testify that there are no low jobs in this church.  Every single one is important and helps build up the kingdom of God."  Wow, it was powerful!  Such a great example of serving with dignity and humility!

So on with our week...here are the out of the ordinary things that we did.  On Monday I took Snickers to the groomer and he looks all cute again.  On Tuesday I had a check up at the cardiologist.  He decided after hearing my history and the more recent episode I had (plus I've felt my heart fluttering quite a bit more often since then) that he wants me to have an echo done to make sure my leaky valve isn't any worse and he also wants me to wear a halter monitor for 22 hours to see if they pick up any irregular rhythms.  I told him they probably wouldn't get anything unusual since I rarely have problems but he wants to try it anyway.  So I have appointments to get both of those things later in the month or early next month.  Then I go back for a follow up visit.  In the meantime, my heart seems to have calmed back down.

Also on Tuesday I took Jared out to meet with a lady about a possible Eagle Scout project.  It's actually at the same place Tanner did his project and we met with the same lady that he worked with.  You may remember Tanner did his project for a place called Circle of Hope, which does therapeutic horseback riding lessons.  For this project, she wants someone to make new signs for their arena.  I guess all arenas have signs with letters spaced around the outside of the arena that the teacher and riders can use as reference points.  (For example, the teacher can say ride to "K" and then stop.")  Because they work with children a lot, each of their signs also has a picture of an animal that begins with the letter on the sign, to help the kids learn the letters.  Their current signs are made out of poster board that's been laminated and they're attached to wood with velcro.  Well, the velcro gets full of dirt so it stops working and the signs fall off.  Plus the signs get exposed to all kinds of weather so even though they are laminated, eventually moisture leaks into the seal and they don't look very good anymore.  So for this project she wants new, weatherproof signs, out of sealed wood or some other durable material.  She'd also like the signs to be interchangable...so that more than one set of pictures can be used with the signs...either another set of animals, or a set of different foods or something else that kids would like.  It sounds like a good project and fun (although I'm sure a lot of work too) so Jared has decided to go ahead with it...as long as he can get it approved.

We had our monthly RS evening meeting on Wednesday.  For this meeting, we had a panel discussion about preparing ourselves and our daughters to serve missions.  We invited the YW to come as well.  On our panel we had an older couple who had served a mission, a mother of a daughter who is currently serving, the sister missionaries serving in our ward, and two sisters who had served missions earlier in life.  I ended up being one of those because one of the sisters we asked to do it had to back out last minute.  We had a great discussion so I felt good about it.

Yesterday Frank and I went to lunch with another couple in our ward.  They also brought along a friend of theirs who is an inactive member.  We enjoyed visiting with all of them.  Last night we stayed up really late to watch the BYU football game.  I think if we had been way ahead at the half we would have gone to bed, but then most of you know that Houston came back right at the end of the first half and scored twice so even though we were still ahead, we weren't certain enough about the outcome of the game to go to bed.  So we were up until nearly 1:00 am.  I am more and more impressed with our quarterback all the time.  I thought Houston's quarterback did a good job, too.  Glad we hung onto our lead and triumphed in the end!!

In between everything else I finished sewing the baseball uniform stuff that needed to be done for next week and I got a good start on the book we are reading for book club.  It's called Cutting for Stone and it's quite good so far although there's a few spots that need to be skipped.  I also had RS stuff to do too, of course, but not a lot this week.  Yesterday I watched a lot more television than usual (the usual is nothing) because I watched some 9 / 11 commemorative stuff.

That's it for this week except I should mention that I didn't send Scott's letter out this week because I didn't get one.  For some reason that I can't understand, he didn't get my letter to him.  (I did write one, and double checked and I did send it and sent it to the correct address so I don't know why he didn't get it.)  At any rate, the only thing we got from him was an email that said "You didn't email me!!!!"  I was so disappointed not to get anything else from him that I cried and Frank admitted the next day that he sent Scott and email and chewed him out for not writing to me.  So hopefully he won't do that again!  (And hopefully he'll get this week's letter as well as the one I sent last week...I forwarded it again.)

Until next week then!