Weekly Review November 28 '14

Here's some pictures Frank took in downtown Frederick the Saturday before last (while I was shopping):

Something I forgot to mention about my trip to the American Girl store last week--the best part about being in the store was being totally amused by all the men who were there.  Heaven only knows why the poor guys were there in the first place...dragged along with their wives, daughters, granddaughters, etc...but every last one of them had the same dazed, bored look on his face!  Really tickled my funny bone,

Anyway, on to this week.  Saturday was super busy.  We had a big RS activity that morning.  So between set up, the actual activity and clean up, that took up all morning and a few hours into the afternoon.  It was a very successful activity, though, and I loved seeing all the women having fun...learning how to do new things, creating things, and visiting with one another.  So it was worth all the work that went into it (and I didn't have to do a lot of the work).  That afternoon we went to a friend's house to watch the BYU football game.  Of course, that was a good game since BYU won by so much.  Although maybe a little boring, since we were ahead by so much.  Not that I'm complaining about that!

Jared was supposed to get his patriarchal blessing on Sunday, but that morning the patriarch's wife called to let us know that he had had a bad allergic reaction to some medication so the blessing was postponed to this Sunday.  (The patriarch is ok, though, thankfully!)

This week was busy with all the usual things we have to do, plus preparations for Thanksgiving.  Originally, I planned to do all the shopping on Wednesday, but they were predicting a big snowstorm for Wednesday, so I moved all the shopping to Tuesday which made that day super busy but somehow everything got done.  (And imagine what a madhouse the stores were...Thanksgiving and a big snowstorm in the same week!  People go nuts around here when a snowstorm is predicted.)

Seth had half days on both Monday and Tuesday...Monday he went in late and Tuesday he got out early.  Jared had regular school days.  Then both of them had Wednesday through Friday off.  On Monday I went to a friend's house for lunch.  When I got back, Frank had come home from work and his parents had arrived.  They have been here visiting all week and it has been nice to have them here.  The weather on Monday was warm and sunny...we enjoyed that while it lasted!  On Tuesday I went to a parent teacher conference for Seth.  He is doing pretty well but still has a lot of focus issues.  I'm afraid we are going to have to intervene with some kind of medication for him before he gets much older.  He is keeping up pretty well academically because he's pretty intelligent, but if he could focus more he would be able to excel and learn a lot more than he is.  Plus, we don't want him to get frustrated.  So we'll have to do some thinking and praying about what to do for him.

Also on Tuesday we all went out to dinner at a Chinese buffet place, and Jared went to a movie with some friends after that.

Anyway, those two days were quite busy, trying to get a lot of things done.  We managed to get everything done that we would need to leave the house to do, so Wednesday we were able to stay home in our warm house!  (Well, actually, I think Frank did run to the store a couple of times for little items we forgot, but he is always happy for an excuse to go out in snow.)  At one point, they were predicting we could get up to 10 inches of snow, but the models kept shifting, and in the end we only got about 2 inches.  It was actually raining in the morning, but then it switched to snow and it did come down really heavily for a while:
  

Seth was excited to go out and play in the snow, and I even braved the cold for a little while to help him build a snow man and to have a short snow ball fight:

Frank tried to get some pictures of some cardinals and squirrels that we could see in the neighbor's yard:

Other than that, we spent the day visiting with Frank's parents and baking pies and such.  Oh, and I talked to Tanner since it was his birthday.

On Thursday Frank and I spent the whole morning cooking.  Besides Frank's parents, we also had the Elders serving in our ward over for Thanksgiving dinner.  We enjoyed having them, and I think they enjoyed playing games with us and eating dinner.

Here's the table:

I didn't take pictures of the food, but we had a LOT of it.

Today we have been resting and catching up on a few chores that need to be done.  Frank's parents came over this evening for dinner, but they spent the day doing genealogy at the local library and doing some shopping so we didn't see them much.  We were all happy to skip the chaos of Black Friday sales, and just stayed home.  I'm actually not feeling terrific...have a slight sore throat and headache.  I've had that for the last 3 or 4 days, but thankfully it hasn't turned into anything significant.  Besides that, I haven't had enough sleep this week.  Snickers has been sick...something going on with his stomach.  He's been making noise in the middle of the night almost every night and Frank has been getting up to see if he needs to go out..and he has taken him out a few times.  His worst day seemed to be Tuesday.  That day I ended up cleaning up a big mess in his crate AND giving him a bath (this was after I came back from taking Jared from Seminary to school) and later that evening we had another mess to clean up on the kitchen floor after we got back from going out to dinner.  He seems to be doing a little bit better now although he didn't eat his dinner last night and didn't want to eat this morning either.  He finally did eat something this afternoon.  If he doesn't get better soon we will take him to the vet, but so far he is still acting fairly perky...or like himself, anyway--not lethargic or anything.

I got a text message with a picture of Scott this morning from one of the members in Utah...the family they live with, I think.  She said that he had 5 dinner appointments yesterday!  So he is certainly not starving out there.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something important, but that's all I can think of right now.  I've done a little bit of reading and watched more Downton Abbey in between everything else.  (I just finished season 3, so only one more season to go and then I am caught up.)

Weekly Review November 21 '14

I feel shocked every time I realize that Thanksgiving is next week!  Starting to feel a little panicked about how soon the holidays are going to be here.

Most of this week has been super cold although yesterday when it got up to the mid 40s it felt almost balmy to me!  Today it's colder again but it's supposed to warm up this weekend / early next week.  Can't really complain about the cold here when I see how frigid it's been all over the country!  Plus, we didn't have 6 feet of snow dumped on us like Buffalo.  (Although that would be a reason TO complain, as far as Frank is concerned.)

Last Saturday was pretty busy for me.  In the morning, Frank and I went to an Eagle Court of Honor for a boy in our ward (one of Tanner's friends).  After that, I went shopping.  I had some birthday shopping for Tanner to do, plus I wanted to get started on some Christmas shopping.  There were a number of items I wanted to get from the LDS bookstore and the distribution center by the temple, so I planned to go down there.  And as long as I was going down that far anyway, I decided to go to the American Girl store in Tyson's Corner Virginia too.  I had some money to spend from sewing jobs I've done and I've been wanting to see what the store was like.  Well, I satisfied my curiosity but I will probably never go again because they didn't have anything at the store that I can't get from the catalog or online and the parking at that place was CRAZY!!!  I actually thought I was going to have to give up and go home without ever being able to get out of my car.  The parking garage I went into had a sign listing the number of open parking spots...it was over 200, so that didn't sound too bad.  Most of the open spaces were on the 4th level.  Trouble was, I entered the garage on the 3rd level and although there were signs pointing to the exits and to the bridge to go to the stores (not to mention a really sophisticated system letting me know which aisles had empty parking spaces...that is, none of them), there were no signs telling how to get to the next level.  So I drove around in what seemed to be circles for a while and then noticed I was on level 2, even farther from level 4 and the empty parking spaces!  The garage was very crowded, by the way, with lots of other cars circling the garage with drivers that I suspect were just as confused as I was.  So I was left to circle around and around, trying to find a direction to go that looked different from any of the directions I had already gone, and complaining out loud to no one in particular about the lack of helpful signs!  This literally went on for at l  FINALLY I realized that I had found my way to the 4th level and I was so happy until I realized that the 200+ empty parking spaces actually didn't exist.  That level was just as packed as all the other ones, and there were still another couple hundred people like me circling the lot, hoping to find an empty space.  I had just decided to make my way to the exit and try another parking garage when I turned down an aisle and miraculously a couple of people came walking over to get in their car.  And even more miraculously, there were no cars coming the other way with people looking for a parking spot on that particular aisle, so I stopped, put on my signal to claim my spot, and waited for the car to pull out.  So I did get to go into the store after all!  It was pretty cool and I got some fun stuff, but I think I will be an online shopper from now on!

After I got back from shopping, the Elders came over for dinner.  Then Frank swept & mopped the kitchen floor for me while I gave Seth a bath.  Jared was at his play.

On Sunday evening Frank and I went to a teacher training class held by the stake Sunday school presidency.  It was pretty good. Shortly after church on Sunday I went in my room and discovered that the bed was made:

Apparently, Seth had a lesson in Primary on secret service.  I thought it was so cute that he made our bed for us!  As you can see, not the most neat job, but still...pretty good for a 7 year old who hasn't had much practice.

The rest of this week has flown by, although apparently not fast enough for my inner clock...I kept thinking it was a day later than it really was.  For RS, I did two food orders, visited two other sisters (one with the missionaries) and also went visiting teaching.  I had a few random emails to send and phone calls to make as well...pretty typical.  Also this morning I made 2 cakes for our meeting tomorrow.  (We're having a Super Saturday activity with several craft classes, plus a luncheon.)  One of the sisters I visited this week is a less active sister that I had never met, so it was nice to meet her finally and she is a really nice person.  The other sister I visited has been having lots of health problems and she's on an all liquid diet.  She asked me to bring her a mango pineapple smoothie, so I did.  That particular day was in the low 20's with strong winds, so I'm sure the McDonald's employees all thought I was crazy when I came through their drive thru and ordered nothing but a smoothie!  The guy that gave it to me had a big smile on his face and said "Stay warm!"  I had to laugh!

Other things I did this week...went to the library, set up hair appointments for the boys and I (they got theirs on Tuesday; I get mine done tonight), tried to figure out what to do about the fact that Tanner lost his debit card, went to book club, got a package put together for Tanner's birthday (and Frank mailed it for me), and took Seth to a play at his school.  Plus all the other stuff I do every week, and in between I read some books and watched Downton Abbey.

I was not planning to go to the play at Seth's school, but he begged me to take him.  It was done by the 4th, 5th and 6th graders and it was a cute musical called Kokonut Kapers.  They did a pretty good job, although it was hard to understand the lines a lot of times...either they weren't talking very loud or very clearly.  There were a few kids that were quite talented and the main thing was...Seth LOVED it.

Jared wasn't feeling well the beginning of the week and he stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday.  He mostly just had a bad cold I think...sore throat and lots of congestion.  Seth sounded congested to me on Saturday as well, but fortunately that never turned into anything serious.  Jared went back to school on Wednesday and he seems to be feeling a lot better now.  He has the play again this week end (actually had it last night) and then that play is done.  But he'll be helping with sound for the next play (Shrek the musical) which starts in 2 weeks so I doubt we'll be seeing much of him still.  We have had him start driving whenever we have to take him somewhere, so he is starting to get some driving hours and he is doing pretty well so far.

Frank was busy doing maintenance for most of his clients this week and he's had a few projects like setting up computers.  Plus a couple of clients want him to get them quotes on getting new servers, so it sounds like he may have a few large projects coming up soon.  He went to lunch with some guy friends today but I didn't go with him this time because the boys got out of school two hours early...so someone needed to be home when they got home.

We're expecting Frank's parents for Thanksgiving next week.  They will be here most of the week so it will be nice to spend a lot of time with them.  We hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving; we are most thankful for all of you, our wonderful family!!      

Weekly Review November 14 '14

Another busy week has gone by.  This week was nice because although we kept pretty busy, it wasn't overwhelmingly busy.  It was actually a nice mixture of work and play...plenty of work to do, but some free time mixed in.

Neither Frank nor I had a long list of things to do on Saturday, so Frank decided to work on the bathroom.  He put together the storage cabinet we bought, hung the new mirror, towel racks, and tp holder, and installed a new toilet seat & handle.  That took longer than you'd think, so he actually spent most of the day doing those things.  The bathroom is still not completely done, but it's almost done.  So here are a few pictures.  It's hard to get good pictures of a small place like that, but hopefully you kind of get the idea:

The box on the floor in the corner is the new faucet...still need to install that.

And here is the new storage cabinet:

The towel rack doesn't have a towel on it because when I put a towel there, people with wet hands drip water down the wall when they reach for the towel.  And below the towel rack is the vent, so the old vent cover got all rusty from the water that ran down onto it constantly.  That's why we decided to put a hook next to the sink on the other side (see the picture below) instead.  Plus boys in a hurry are maybe more likely to put the towel back on the hook than they would be to fold up the towel and hang it neatly on the rack.  I was always finding the towels in a heap on the floor before!

Besides replacing the faucet, we also need to hang this picture (and the coordinating one behind it):

 And the one other thing left to do is to put in a new vent cover...haven't found one we like yet.

Anyway, it is looking much nicer and it is usable again, which is nice!

I couldn't help Frank with the bathroom much but needed to stay nearby to get tools for him and help make decisions about where to hang things.  So I watched a lot of Downton Abbey, and finished the 2nd disc.  Jared helped sort food for Scouting for Food and that evening we had the sister missionaries over for dinner.

On Sunday I was fasting again because I had a friend who asked me to fast for her family.  She called me on Monday to let me know our prayers had been answered...some hopeful things had happened that day.  (Sorry to be cryptic...very personal stuff for her and her family.)  I was really grateful to hear that, and humbled that the outcome was much better than I had hoped for.

There were a number of events going on this week.  On Monday, Seth's school had a thing called "Muffins with Mom".  Basically, all the moms were invited to come in for an hour to see some of the work that their child(ren) is doing.  I enjoyed spending that time with Seth.  We did a geometry work and looked at some fossils together.  And yes, they had muffins for the moms too.  I guess they are going to do a similar event for dads sometime soon.  After leaving the school I ran a bunch of errands and that afternoon I took drinks and cookies over to the high school because I had signed up to help with the cast dinner for the play Jared is working on right now.  Their opening night was last night and this was tech week and final rehearsals, so we barely saw Jared all week.  They had dinner at the school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Tuesday I had lots of RS phone calls, plus I was trying to set up VT appointments.  That evening I went on visits with the sister missionaries.

I went to see another sister in my ward on Wednesday afternoon.  I had asked her to teach a class on card making for our next RS meeting but she suffers from anxiety so she didn't want to teach a class.  But she offered to provide an example of a card to make, and to donate some supplies so we could have a card making station instead of a class.  I went over on Wednesday to pick up the card and supplies.  I didn't expect her to make several cards and to donate 9 boxes worth of decorative paper, embellishments, glue, cards & envelopes etc to use plus stamps, paper cutters, punches, and decorative scissors to borrow!  But she insisted she wanted to do it.  She said she has so much stuff that she's never going to use it all before she dies anyway!  It's too bad she has anxiety because she would teach a great class, plus she is just a lovely person so it would be nice if more ward members could get to know her.  But I appreciate so much that she is willing to help so generously in any way she can.

Thursday morning I had RS presidency meeting and we had the Elders over for dinner that evening.  We got gyros for them and one of them had never had one before.  He took one bite and said "this is amazing!!!"  We love them too and don't have the opportunity to eat them much.  There's a Greek Orthodox church that sells them for a fundraiser a couple times a year, so whenever we see their stand set up, we have to get some!  That's why we did that last night.

Today I met with a boy in my ward to sign him off on the Art merit badge...I'm a merit badge counselor for that badge.  I know...I'm not artistic at all!  But I do appreciate art, and it is one of the simpler merit badges to do so I decided to be a counselor so I could do it with my boys.  After meeting with him, I took a bag of clothes to another less active sister in my ward...her room mate needs clothes for his kids.  I had a nice visit with her and she is also a lovely person.  I wish she could make it to church more often.

The earlier part of this week was actually pretty pleasant with somewhat mild temperatures and sunshine.  Today is still sunny, but it's cold.  Yesterday it even snowed / sleeted a little, although nothing stuck.  I guess winter is finally here.

Frank has worked from home a couple of times this week, including today.  He's not feeling his best today...has a bad headache.  His knee has been feeling better, though.

That's about all for this week...we squished all the regular chores in between everything else.  I also built a few more Lego sets for Seth.  And I stayed up really late last Friday finishing Unbroken...definitely well worth reading!

Frank continues to experiment with the camera regularly so I'll finish with a few pictures he took this last week that I like:
 

PS to Weekly Review November 7 '14

I forgot a couple of things:

• Last Sunday (November 2nd) Jared was ordained a Priest and yesterday (November 9th) he blessed the sacrament for the first time.  He did a good job...didn't fumble any words!  It is great to see our boys grow in the gospel. :)
• I received a funny phone call on Thursday evening.  A probation officer called me.  Why?  Well, remember that experience I had nearly 8 years ago when a guy who was trying to get away from the police backed into my van?  Apparently, this guy just got out of prison.  As part of his probation agreement, he is supposed to pay me $81 (and some change; I can't remember the exact amount).  That is the amount of the damage to the van, according to the insurance assessment.  So the probation officer is going to have this guy pay me $20 a month for 4 months or something like that.  He wanted to make sure he had my current address so I can get paid.  (I asked him if the guy who backed into me would get my personal information and he said absolutely not.  The payment will come through the state.)  Before he hung up, he said "Now this is a criminal we are talking about.  So just realize that they don't always come through on their promises."  I laughed and assured him that I would not spend the money until I actually received it!  I had honestly forgotten about the whole incident, and I don't really need the money.  I was kind of tempted to tell the probation officer not to worry about it, but I guess it's good for this guy to have to take some responsibility for his actions.  It will be interesting to see if he comes through with the payments or not.    

Weekly Review November 7 '14

Did you know that the liquid inside glow sticks will strip paint off of furniture?  We learned the hard way:

We gave Seth some glow sticks on Halloween so he'd be more visible while trick or treating.  We put them down on the coffee table that evening and Saturday morning we discovered that they had leaked.  Rats!  We've only had the table a little over a year.  So learn from our mistake!

Seth has been really into building with Legos lately and one night he wanted me to look at what he had built on my bedroom floor.  I started to walk around my bed but he stopped me and said "No!  It looks better if you look at it from above, over the edge of the bed!"  So I did, and this is what I saw:  

Haha, pretty clever I thought!  The arrow is pointing at a little General Grievous Lego figure, if you can't see it.

This week was not terribly eventful (although still busy) so I don't think I have a lot to write about.  On Saturday Frank and I did some more shopping for the half bath that we've been working on.  It's amazing how many things we need for one little bathroom, but we are basically replacing everything except for the toilet and sink (and even the sink is getting a new faucet and the toilet a new lid & seat).  Our neighbor came over on Wednesday evening and painted the trim, so the painting is all done and we just need to find the time to install the new towel racks, faucet etc.  I will get pictures when we finally get it all done, but for now, a sneak peak.  Here's the new light fixture:

And here is a picture of the wall.

As you can see, the color of the wall looks different depending on the light.  The paint chip says it's slate gray, but most people say it looks blue.  It's definitely a bluish gray.  In the picture of the light, it looks more blue.  In the picture above, I think it looks gray.

Frank and I also went to the temple on Saturday.  It was our ward temple night.  We enjoyed that a lot.  We took one of the sisters he home teaches with us.  She isn't able to make it to church very often but she did make it the next day--we were happy about that.

The boys didn't have school on Monday or Tuesday.  Friday was the end of the term, so Monday was a teacher work day and Tuesday was election day, of course.  On Monday I got some things sent off to Tanner to help with his mission papers and I also visited a sister in the hospital.  She had surgery last week and had gone home but ended up back in the next day.  When I visited her, she was feeling very down and discouraged so I basically held her hand for an hour while she cried and talked.  I think it helped her to do that, though.  She got to go home last night, thankfully, so she's doing a little better.

On Tuesday Frank and I voted and I had my monthly meeting with the bishop.  I had lots of other chores and things to do those days, so they went by fast.

Everyone went back to school on Wednesday.  We were cheered up by the election results--much better than two years ago!  Besides the Republicans regaining control of Congress, a lot of local Republicans won their races as well and Maryland has a Republican governor again too.  I'm sure that won't solve everything, but it's hopeful at least.  I did two food orders that day.  Frank worked from home because he needed to go to the doctor.  His cough has never gone away and besides that his knee started hurting a lot on Tuesday.  The doctor prescribed an inhaler for the cough and sent him to get his knee x-rayed.  He thought it was possible that Frank had cut a ligament or something when he injured his knee last month.  The x-rays didn't show anything, though, so we have no idea why it is hurting.  Hopefully it will stop hurting just as mysteriously as it started.  I went to pick up his inhaler yesterday but it turns out the insurance company has to pre-approve that particular medication and they hadn't done it yet so we haven't been able to get his medicine yet either.  Kind of frustrating!

Yesterday I had a stake RS auxiliary training meeting to attend.  It was really good.  Today I've been busy with the budget, writing to Scott, RS phone calls, and exercising.  I haven't even taken a shower yet and it's after 5:00!  

Besides all those things, I was squeezing in some reading whenever I could this week.  We are reading a book for book chat called Unbroken.  It's a true WWII survival story and it is very compelling...hard to put the book down!  (Mom, we decided to save the books I suggested until next month because someone mentioned they were reading Unbroken and everyone was interested in reading it.)  I also watched some Downton Abbey...I saw season 1 on Netflix over a year ago and I was finally able to get season 2 on DVD from Netflix.  It's been in the queue for a long time, but kept getting bumped to the bottom!  I didn't mind because I've been too busy to watch it anyway.  At any rate, I enjoyed the 3 episodes I got and sent that disc back.  The next disc probably arrived today but I haven't checked the mail yet.

Frank has been playing with the camera some more this week and here are a few pictures he took:
  

It's definitely feeling more like November...and looking like it too.  Gray skies and lots of leaves blowing around!  But it's still not terribly cold and we've even had a few sunny days that were reasonably pleasant.  When the sun shines, it still looks beautiful outside, even though the fall colors are fading somewhat.  It's kind of a mellow beauty, but beauty nonetheless.  Frank is hoping it will snow soon, of course!  Today it has been really windy...I've been listening to it howl all day.

Can't think of anything else to report and it's time to make dinner so I'll sign off.

Weekly Review October 31 '14

This week we kept pretty busy and there were a number of events going on.  Before I hit the major things, here is a summary of the things we did in between all the bigger things.  

For RS I had a list of things I was working through all week--haven't finished all of them yet.  I also did a food order, had a presidency meeting, checked on a sister who had surgery, and figured out visiting teaching changes.  

I had lots of errands to run, took Jared to the orthodontist, and took a friend to lunch.  I exercised, cleaned, did laundry, shopped, went to the library, gave the dog a bath (and gave him his monthly treatments for heart worm prevention and flea & ticks), and did some things to help Tanner with his mission papers.

The Elders came for dinner last night and Jared went over to a friend's house for the afternoon / evening.  The boys got out of school two hours early yesterday.

Now on to the bigger events!  (That didn't sound like enough, right?)  Last Saturday we finally cut down the two trees in our front yard.  I was nervous about Frank using the chain saw again, but no stitches this time, thankfully!  Cutting the trees down didn't turn out to take too long, but combine that with hauling away all the wood afterwards, raking leaves, and weeding and it turned into a mostly all day event.  At least the weather was perfectly beautiful, so it was a nice day to be out all day.  Here are a bunch of pictures that I took during the process:  

(Notice how different the two trees are.  They used to be the same size, but the one on the right of the picture caught some kind of disease which really stunted its growth.)

First tree is down!

Seth was a great helper...helped me carry all the branches over to the curb so we could load them on a trailer later.  (He has gardening gloves on.)

Both trees down!

Hey, there's a house behind those trees!

After we cut down the trees we noticed a lot of things...like the shutters need to be painted, the house needs to be washed, and the screens need to be replaced.  Actually, we already knew about the screens.  The birds liked to use pieces of them to build their nests.  The two screens on the top right were practically all gone!

It took two trips to haul away all the branches.

This is how the house looked at the end of the day.

That evening, after getting cleaned up, Frank and I went out to dinner (we went to Noodle & Co...the first time I've been there; I liked it a lot) and we also went shopping and purchased a few things for the bathroom makeover.  On the way to dinner, we stopped to take a picture of the airplane that crashed last week.  They were actually in the process of removing it from the trees that it crashed into:

See the building behind the trees?  That's where one of Frank's clients has their business.

On Monday Frank and I bought a few flowers and another pumpkin for the front of the house, which was looking a little bare:

(But overall, I like the way it looks without the trees much better.)

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were also perfectly beautiful days.  Sunny, warm, sparkly, fall days!:

Close up pictures of the flowers (well, closer anyway):

After Tuesday, it started to get cloudy and cool down.  By Friday it definitely felt more like the end of October is supposed to feel, although it was not bad...chilly, not downright cold.

Tuesday was Jared's 16th birthday.  These pictures were taken on the previous Friday, though...he had friends over for pizza and cake that evening:

On Tuesday morning we had a nice sunrise.  Frank called me and told me to get some pictures.  I was confused because I didn't think the sky was exceptionally beautiful but then I saw some of the pictures that Frank took at I understood...it was pretty spectacular where he was at!  Here are some of the ones I took, though:

Jared opened his presents after Seth got home from school.  We skyped Tanner so that he could participate also:

On Wednesday our ward had a Trunk or Treat.  I talked Seth into being a Jedi this year because we already had an awesome Jedi cloak that Grandma made him (So easy!  I didn't have to make or buy anything!)  I totally forgot that we also had two Jedi costumes in our costume box, but Jared remembered and one of them fit Seth perfectly:

Frank wasn't feeling well at all on Wednesday.  He actually took a sick day from work.  His stomach really hurt all day.  So I took the boys to the Trunk or Treat by myself.

I didn't get a very good picture of them, but this is one of my former Primary presidency counselors and her family.  She always comes up with the cutest theme costumes for her whole family every year.  This year, as you can hopefully see, they were all Winnie the Pooh characters.  She is about 6 months pregnant so she was Kanga...so clever!  She had a little stuffed kangaroo that she carried around to be Roo.  Her husband is Eyeore, her oldest daughter is Tigger, her son is Owl, her next daughter is Winnie the Pooh, and her youngest daughter is Piglet.  The costumes looked so professional, and then when you looked closer you realized they were really very simple; not even a lot of sewing involved.  I wish my mind worked like that!

More Trunk or Treat pictures:

New Elders...we got both of them last week, plus a new Sister too.

Seth and his friend Camilla.  They are two of kind...these two were made for each other! :)

The view out the back of our house is always beautiful, but especially in autumn...and in the morning:

Here it is again, in the evening this time.  I loved the color of the blue / grey sky against the yellow / gold of the tree:

On Friday Seth had International Children's Day at his school.  He had to do a small report on a country, create a costume representing that country (or its flag) and create a "culture box" with items representing that country.  I spent quite a bit of time with him this week helping him get his report done and figuring out what to do for his costume and culture box.  Seth chose England for his country.  Here he is with his culture box and wearing his costume:

Did you know that England's flag is white with a red cross on it?  I didn't know that until this week.  I thought it was blue with an intersecting red & white cross and red & white X.  It turns out that flag is the United Kingdom flag.  See, I learned something new!

Anyway, the culture box was the most challenging because we haven't visited any foreign countries ourselves besides Canada.  He was supposed to have things like money, clothing, toys, postcards, pictures, etc.  Not easy to track down if you have not actually been to another country!  Dan was going to send us some pictures from England, but I was trying to figure out what else to put in the box.  Then I woke up in the middle of the night one night and remembered that I actually have a platter and a coaster set from England...Mom  & Dad got them for me when they went there after Ben's mission.  Can't believe I forgot that!  I also decided to go to a party supply store to see if they would have a flag or something like that.  They didn't...but I ran into a friend there and when I explained to her why I was there, she told me she'd been to England and she had postcards and money she could loan us!  Total tender mercy!!!  So it all worked out well.  I went to the little program they had at the school that morning, which was very nice and Seth came home very happy saying that he had a great day.

Friday night he got back in his Jedi costume for trick or treating, of course.  Frank took Seth out while I stayed home to answer the door.  Frank definitely had that harder job; especially since we had very few trick or treaters come to our house.  We didn't even go through a whole bowl of candy this year, and I was giving 3 or 4 pieces of candy to every one who came by.  Thankfully, we did not buy a lot of candy this year so we don't have a huge amount left over, but still more than I would like to have lying around the house, tempting me to eat it.

Seth is my only child who doesn't care how much candy he gets.  Every year he decides he doesn't want to walk very far so he doesn't even fill up his little pumpkin.  It's strange, but I am not complaining!  Here he is after trick or treating:

And that is all for this week, folks!