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.)