Weekly Review April 24 '15

This week I will back track a bit to start out.  Frank took his GoPro camera with him on our trip to NC, but I didn't realize that he took a bunch of pictures with it while we were on the boat.  He got some pretty good pictures, so here they are:

(Lindsey obviously didn't want her picture taken!  But I love how the world looks curved in the background!

Ok, so on to this week.  If I can type with my stiff fingers, that is.  It is cold in here!  That's because it got down to the 30's last night and hasn't got above the 50's today.  Plus it's windy.  And since the weather has been bipolar, we switched the heat off and turned the A/C on last week.  I could switch it back, of course, but it involves a few steps and I'm not confident I remember them all.  So the house is pretty chilly!  At least I can be happy about all the money I'm not spending on natural gas or electricity!

We still didn't get an illness-free week.  Seth started throwing up Saturday morning!  He was quite sick all day Saturday.  The Elders came for dinner that evening and Seth slept on the couch through the whole thing.  Jared was at his play and Tanner and Scott were both at a YSA Luau, so it was just Frank and I with the Elders!  Shortly after the Elders left, Seth woke up and finally perked up.  He started keeping down liquids and in a few hours tried crackers and kept those down too.  However, since he'd been throwing up most of the day, we knew we should keep him away from people on Sunday.  This complicated our life quite a bit since Tanner was scheduled to be ordained an Elder on Sunday, so of course we both wanted to be there for that.  Plus Frank teaches Sunday school and I should really be in RS if at all possible.  Oh, and I was singing in the choir and Jared was directing the choir.  What is it with Sundays lately?!  This was the fourth Sunday in a row that someone was either sick, injured, or had an infection.  We finally ended up taking Seth to Sacrament Meeting (but keeping him away from people) and after I sang with the choir, I took him home.  Then we arranged to have Tanner's ordination done at the beginning of the 3rd hour, so I took Seth back for that, then Frank took him home.  I was able to stay for the rest of RS and for my meeting after church.  In the end, it all worked out and the ordination went well and we're very happy Tanner has taken this step.  It was just complicated getting it all figured out!  But that seems to be the norm rather than the exception in our lives these days.

Sunday evening Frank and the oldest 3 boys had a stake priesthood meeting so I stayed home with Seth.  Back to Saturday...Frank and I got a walk in that morning, before Seth got sick.  Jared took the ACT and then was at the play.  I ended up helping the family of the sister who passed away...I found someone who needed the two twin beds they wanted to donate, and helped them get them over to their house.  I also picked up some things they didn't know what to do with...temple clothes & garments, and a bunch of church books.  I helped make a huge pot of rice and got Scott over to the Luau...Tanner had to be there early because he was dancing in a dance for the Luau.  It's a dance called the Haka...apparently a dance the  Maori men would dance right before a battle so it is loud and intimidating!  He was the leader of the dance and he's been practicing for months.  I hear it went really well and was very impressive!  Here are some pictures:

Skipping ahead to Monday now (since I already talked about Sunday)--Scott flew to Utah on Monday afternoon.  I found that having him leave this time was harder for me than when he went on his mission.  I think that is for several reasons. First, even though I know I can communicate with him more often and we'll be able to visit him, this time he was leaving home for good.  He will be back for visits, but he'll never live with us again (or it's very unlikely that he will).  It just felt so final!  Second, we just got him back--didn't feel like we had enough time with him.  Third, I'm realizing that all of my boys are going to do the same thing, probably.  They want to be out west to get their educations and to have the chance to meet their future wives, not here.  There's a part of me that just feels rebellious sometimes at the fact that I seem to be destined to spend most of my life living far away from the people I really want to spend my life with!  Now my children are starting to join the ranks of all the family members that I miss all the time.  Finally, Seth had a much harder time with Scott leaving this time as well.  He cried & cried Monday morning when it was time to go to school!  So that ripped out my mother heart, too.

Now that I spent a whole paragraph talking about how hard it was to have Scott leave, I should mention that I tried not to dwell too much on what I was feeling and we all (except Seth) kept it pretty upbeat.  Frank couldn't get off work but he worked from home so he could see Scott a little more, and Tanner and I took him to the airport.  I think he's been enjoying his trip so far and he'll be back in Utah Sunday night so those of you who live in Utah should be seeing him soon.

On Monday I also did a food order and went to the library, besides the usual cleaning and grocery shopping.  Seth has been going to a little gardening club at the library after school on Mondays.  He goes with our carpool boys and their mom.  He seems to be enjoying it.  I went visiting teaching, took Tanner to work and back, and took Jared to the orthodontist on Tuesday, besides the usual chores.  Good news for Jared...now that his bottom wisdom teeth are out, his bottom teeth have straightened out and he can get his bottom braces off at his next appointment, which is in about 2 weeks.  Of course he is very happy about that!

On Tuesday evening I also found out that my schedule for the rest of the week was going to need some adjusting.  I can't remember if I mentioned this is another post, but I don't think I did.  As I think you do know, we have been looking for a bigger house off and on for years.  I think it's been about 6 years or so!  We haven't really looked at all the last couple of years, though.  Anyway, our very patient realtor (he's a friend of ours, too) called us about a week ago and asked if we had any interest in selling our house right now.  He's helping a young couple who are getting married later this year find a house.  They really like our neighborhood and have looked at a few houses in this area.  He remembered our house and knows we have some of the features they really like, such as a walk out basement and updated kitchen counters and floors.  So he wondered if there was any chance that we would be interested in selling if this couple looked at our house and liked it.  We talked it over and decided we are willing to sell now if a buyer is interested.  As a matter of fact, trying to get our house sold is one of the major reasons we haven't made the plunge and actually moved yet.  Anyway, on Tuesday he contacted us and asked if he could show our house to this couple on Thursday evening.  Yikes!  Even though they know it isn't on the market so it's not really ready to be shown, I still knew that our house needed to look a lot cleaner and less cluttered than it did at that time.  (No chance to paint or make repairs, but at least it could be clean and neat!)

So, Tuesday evening and every chance I got on Wednesday and Thursday I was cleaning things or organizing things or throwing things out!  The older boys were responsible for cleaning their rooms and Frank spent a lot of time cleaning his office.  He also helped with a lot of other things like vacuuming and taking out trash and so did Tanner.  After those couple of days I was utterly exhausted but it really did make a significant difference.  Our house is cleaner and less cluttered than it has been in YEARS!  I am so happy to have a neat house again and I am committed to maintaining it this way.  I've been wanting to get it much less cluttered for a long, long time but couldn't seem to motivate myself to do it.  It felt impossible.  So I'm really glad this happened because it finally provided the motivation I (and everyone else) needed to actually dig in and do it.  We certainly didn't get everything done.  As a matter of fact, the storage room / laundry area was pretty much untouched and we didn't have time to do a thorough cleaning out of drawers and cabinets.  But I was very encouraged by how much we were able to accomplish in just two days and what a big difference it made, and now I'm feeling motivated to keep going.  As a matter of fact, Frank spent most of today doing more work in his office.

So what did the potential buyers think of the house?  They liked it.  Our realtor feels that there is definitely a possibility that we could get an offer.  He gave us a list of things they mentioned they would like to see changed, and I was surprised at how short the list was...like four things!  (I can think of a lot more than four things that I'd like to change.)  I think the biggest negative for them is the layout of the basement, and I can't blame them...I've always thought it was somewhat awkward.  That's mainly because there's a fourth bedroom down there, which most people don't want (but we did, since we had three kids when we moved here and were planning to have more.)  So we'll just wait and see what happens.  If they don't want to buy it, then we are that much closer to getting the house ready to sell later.  If they do want to buy it, they don't need to move in until October, so we have some time to find another house.

By the way, if I hadn't been so busy cleaning and organizing, I would have taken some "before" photos.  I wish I could have done that because then you could appreciate how much better it looks now.  I breath a huge sigh of contentment whenever I look around.  That's mostly opposition in all things...I've spent the last several years living in a state of perpetual anxiety / discontent whenever I looked around my house.  I've been a neat freak most of my life and I've been really good at keeping my houses clean, organized, and uncluttered but the last several years I have just had to let it go.  I couldn't keep up with it.  But I've never been happy about it.  Jared hasn't been home much this week since he still had the play going on this weekend (tonight is the last performance) but he did take the time to clean up his side of the bedroom he and Tanner share.  However, I can't say that he did as thorough of a job as I would have.  While Jared was gone on Thursday,  Tanner cleaned up his stuff and went down and helped him with the closet and we found a lot of other things that belonged to Jared (and Scott) down there and cleaned all of that up.  When Jared came home from the play late Thursday night he said he didn't even recognize his room as being the same room!  (In the process of all the cleaning, Tanner also moved his stuff upstairs to Scott's room so that is his room now.)

Well, enough of all that.  I said that I was cleaning and organizing and such every chance I got those two days.  I did have other things I had to do, like shopping, taking Tanner to work and back, and a presidency meeting.  That was actually tricky since he worked the same day as my meeting.  I picked the meeting day and time before I knew Tanner's work schedule and the meeting was only an hour before I was supposed to pick him up, which I knew wouldn't be enough time (it takes about 20 minutes to get to his work).  So I asked him if there was any chance they'd have more work for him to do and he said he'd ask.  As it turned out, someone else had called in sick for their shift, so he was able to stay 3 hours longer than scheduled.  Which was, of course, even more time than I needed to get through my meeting!

Jared had YM Wednesday evening and they had a court of honor.  They asked Tanner to come too so that they could take a few minutes to recognize that he had received his Eagle scout award (he was adamant that he didn't want an Eagle court of honor, so we never had one.)  I'm glad that they did that for him.

Thursday was our 23rd anniversary, but in the hustle and bustle of all the cleaning and organizing, we didn't really get to celebrate.  We thought we were going to have to wait until next week sometime because the older boys had lots of activities going on this weekend but then we realized that Seth had a birthday party last night so he'd be gone too.  Jared had his play and Tanner went to see it too.  (Scott saw it last weekend.  I wish we could have seen it.)  We decided having all of them gone at once was a chance too good to pass up, so even though I had lots of other things I should have been doing, we took the time to go to dinner and then we went to see the new Disney Cinderella movie, because I've been wanting to see it.  That was fun.

Today has been busy too.  This morning I had an auxiliary training meeting at the church down by the temple.  One of my counselors and the secretary and I all went together.  Sister Reeves, 2nd counselor in the Gerneral RS presidency, came from Salt Lake City for the training.  It was really good and I have some things to think about.  Sometime this week Jared reminded me that he had promised a friend that he would take her to Prom which is next weekend.  So after I got home from the meeting, I took him to buy a lavender tie (to match her dress) and we tried to order a corsage too but no one at the place we went to knew what they were doing, so that will have to wait until Monday.  Jared had a picnic for the cast of the play this afternoon (not the best weather for a picnic...pretty chilly!)  I went to the memorial service for the sister in my ward who passed away two weeks ago.  Her family decided they didn't want to do a service at all, but as a ward we wanted to do one and we did invite them and a few of them came.  That was the right thing to do...the service turned out to be very sweet and I know her family really appreciated it.  I sang in a small group that sang "Each Life that Touches Ours for Good".  There were many wonderful memories shared of her, and I think the service was a perfect representation of who she was.  I'm sure she was pleased about it!

That wraps it up for this week.  I will add some of the pictures that Frank took last Friday when he was down in Washington DC.  Some of them turned out really nice, I think!

This last picture was not taken in Washington DC.  It was taken of the view out our back windows, and maybe you can understand why our backyard views is one of the things I love most about our house!:

       
Oh, and here's one last picture to tickle your funny bone.  When I was going through the schoolwork Seth brought home this week, I found this:

If you can't read it, the instructions say "How are a kangaroo and a butterfly alike?  How are they different?  Write your answers in the chart."  I got a big kick out of his large question mark in the "alike" column!  Tanner and I were both trying to think of ways that a butterfly and a kangaroo are alike, and all we could think of was that they both eat vegetation.  So it really was a challenging question, (I thought so, anyway).  Seth is never afraid to say what he is thinking!

Weekly Review April 17 '15

I'm sorry there are not going to be any pictures with this post.  Frank had meetings in DC today and he has been wanting to get pictures of the cherry blossoms so he took the camera with him.  I don't think I took any pictures this week anyway, but since he has the camera I can't check.

After last week's marathon, this week's post will at least be fairly short.  We have still been really busy, though.  Doesn't ever seem to be a slow down in our schedules.  Jared's play started last night...it will be this weekend and next weekend too.  He had rehearsals until late every day until yesterday.  He did get to come home after school for a while yesterday but had to be back to the school by 5:00 to get ready for the performance.  It went well, in spite of the fire alarm that went off shortly before the show was supposed to start.  That set them back a bit, so the show started late and therefore he was home later last night than planned.  He does not have to go tonight, though, because he is taking the ACT tomorrow morning.  So we told him they were going to have to get someone else to do that show since we didn't want him up really late.

Anyway, on Monday through Wednesday they had meals provided for the cast and crew.  I contributed water bottles and brownies for the dinner on Monday evening.  Also on Monday I took Scott to the doctor for a check up.  His health checked out fine, other than the cyst I already mentioned.  I also took Scott & Tanner to get haircuts that day, and Scott signed up for an online class through BYU-I.

On Tuesday Scott, Tanner and I went to the temple.  I had a one female and one male family name that both needed the initiatory done, so we both did initiatories (did a few temple names too) while Tanner did baptisms.  There was a big group in the baptistry so we got done first.  I was able to watch Tanner's baptisms but Scott just missed that part.  However, they asked Scott if he would like to help with the confirmations, so he got to do all the confirmations for Tanner...plus a bunch of others.  It was really nice to be in the temple together!  That is also the first time I've done a temple ordinance for a blood relative (I've done a few ordinances for Frank's family, but never one for mine) and I have to say that it really did add a dimension of meaning that I've never felt before, even though I don't personally know this relative.  The temple was really pretty with lots of flowers finally blooming, but we didn't take any pictures because it was raining.  So we just ran to the car!

When I got home from the temple, one of my counselors called me with sad news...she had just found out that a sister in our ward passed away on Saturday evening.  My counselor was this sister's visiting teacher and she had been trying to get in touch with her for days.  This sister had open heart surgery last week and was still in the hospital, but she was recovering well, so it was still a big shock.  She was a lovely lady and we will really miss her!  She joined the church about 10 years ago and is the only member in her family.  It turns out that she had told her family that she didn't want them to have the trouble and expense of planning a large funeral, but she thought her church "family" would want to have a memorial service of some kind and that would be ok.  So we are in the process now of working with her family to plan a memorial service.

Wednesday was ridiculously busy and I spent most of the day in the car.  First I went to Walmart to get some groceries etc.  Then Tanner had to be at work at 11:00 and then Scott had an appointment at 11:30 with the specialist to look at the cyst.  The specialist said it wasn't the kind of cyst the doctor thought it was, it is just an ingrown hair.  He said 50% of the time it will clear up with an antibiotic so he prescribed one.  He doesn't want to do anything else unless they have to because if they open it up it takes a really long time to heal.  It's very low on his back, so whenever he sits down there is a good chance it will split open.  So we're hoping Scott is in the 50% where the antibiotic clears it all up.  We went right from the doctor to drop off the prescription at the pharmacy.  Then I needed to put gas in the car and it's right next to the grocery store, so I got the rest of the groceries I needed.  Then Scott reminded me that Jared had an oral surgeon appointment, which I had completely forgotten...it was only a half hour from then!  So I rushed home & dropped off Scott with the groceries and then went to the school to pick up Jared.  We were only a few minutes late to his appointment!  The good news is that Jared's infection is all cleared up and his mouth looks great so hopefully he won't be going back to the oral surgeon.  Anyway, Jared had to be back at the school for rehearsal so after stopping by the specialist Scott had seen that morning (so they could get a copy of his photo ID, which he forgot to take to the appointment), I had just enough time to take Jared back to the school before I had to leave to pick up Tanner from work.  By this time it was 3:00 and I hadn't had lunch!  Thank heavens after that I didn't have to go anywhere else.  Frank went to the church to help with board of reviews for scouts, but I was happy to stay home.

Yesterday Tanner worked again, Scott helped a family in our ward who are moving, and I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah.  We sat outside in the sun because it was finally pleasant enough to do that (although a bit nippy in the shade) and last night I realized that my arms had gotten a bit sunburned.  Tanner and Scott went to Institute and they picked up Jared from his play on their way home.  They were up pretty late.

Today I totally forgot I was supposed to do a food order...can't believe I did that, but they were nice about it and I've rescheduled.  I got the budget updated in a short amount of time, for once, and so now it isn't even quite noon yet.  My plans for the rest of the day are to exercise and do RS stuff.

Now that Scott knows he doesn't have to have a cyst removed (at least not yet) he can go ahead with his plans.  He leaves on Monday for a trip to Utah / Las Vegas / Disneyland--he's doing that with a couple of former missionaries from his mission, along with one of the members he got to know really well while he was out there.  He'll be on the trip for a week.  Then he plans to return to Utah; he's not coming back to Maryland.  He has a job lined up and a place to live too (with the same member).  His plan is to work full time and save money so that he can go back to school in a year (after getting his Utah residency).  So he won't be back in school until fall 2016.  He's not sure yet which school he'll be going to or what major he'll be doing, but he has some time to figure that out.  In the meantime, he will take a few online classes from BYU-I.  His ultimate goal is to be a Seminary teacher, but he has to get a degree to do that.  Apparently, it is really competitive so he needs to have a degree to fall back on in case he's not accepted to be a Seminary teacher.  We're sorry to see him go away so soon but know he needs to get on with his life.  At least a lot of you will get to see him soon and hopefully we'll be out there frequently and get to see him (and all of you) also.  Plus I keep reminding myself that I can call him, text him, or Skype him whenever I want!

For those of you who are wondering about his social life, he did break up with the girl he was dating before his mission--they stopped writing over a year ago.  She is actually at BYU-I now, ironic!  I really like her and I'm sorry things didn't work out but I'm sure she'll find a great husband.  In the meantime, Scott has been communicating a lot with a sister from his mission who went home the same day that he did.  Home is California for her.  She will be at BYU this summer so he is hoping to pursue that possibility and he has a few other possibilities in mind as well.  So we'll see how that goes.  No rush, of course!

My cell phone quit working this week.  The texting part still works fine, but when anyone calls me I can't hear anything...not even static.  So I guess I will have to break down and get a new phone.  I've had this one forever.  The trouble is, they don't even have "dumb" phones available.  I have to get a smart phone, along with a data plan that costs more than what I'm paying, of course.  That totally bugs me!  It's going to take a while to figure out what I'm doing so for now if you need to get in touch with me, call my home phone...or text me!

I have this uncomfortable feeling that I'm forgetting something important, but that's all I can think of for now.  We are enjoying warmer weather (still kind of chilly some days, but most days are nice) and the trees are finally in bloom.  That makes me happy!  When we figure out our summer plans, we'll let you know.  For now, that has to wait until we know when Tanner is leaving on his mission (and where he's going).  But the Alaska trip is looking less and less likely since we were on a tight schedule already and they have added two days onto the end of the school year.  We are hoping we'll make it out to Utah sometime this summer, though.        

Weekly Reviews April 3 and April 10 '15

This post is going to be crazy and mixed up.  That's because all the pictures are mixed up and I don't have the time or energy to fix them.  Plus I have two weeks to cover.  Besides that, the last two weeks have been ridiculously crazy anyway.  So I guess this post will be a fitting representation of what our life has been like.

So let's start with the pictures I promised you from Jared's Eagle project work day from a few weeks ago.  These pictures were taken on Saturday, March 28th.  Everyone is coloring pictures that are going to go on some of the signs: 

Jared found black and white pictures of the animals we needed on his computer.  Then he projected the images onto the wall, where we had put up large pieces of white paper, and traced them:

And that's all of those pictures.  Today we met again and finished up the coloring.  We wanted to start putting letters and pictures onto the signs, but we had a number of complications come up so we didn't get any of that done.  It wasn't worthless...we learned what not to do, and got some ideas of what we might do instead...but we still have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to figure out and decisions to make.  This project is becoming a lot more complicated than we anticipated, and we are learning as we go.  Some good news, though...a ward member heard about Jared's project and he had a lot of scrap birch plywood and scrap PVC which are the materials we need for the signs so he not only donated what he has (saving us a lot of money) but he even cut all the pieces the sizes we need (saving us a lot of time).  So that is very much appreciated!!  Note to self, though:  when Seth gets old enough to do his project, make sure he picks something that we already know how to do!  With preferably no building involved.  And also make sure he gets started on it earlier--like age 14--before he gets really busy with a lot of other activities.  You would think I would have learned that the first 2 projects we did.

That week end was really busy.  I attended the General Women's meeting that evening.  A sister in my ward invited me and a number of other women to watch it together at her house, which was really nice.  I was up late, though, since the meeting doesn't end until close to 10:00 in our time zone.

Sunday always starts out early for me and is packed full of meetings, but just to liven things up a bit more, Seth woke up in the night complaining that his ear hurt.  We warmed up our rice filled sock for him and got him settled on our floor with blankets & pillows and then he started to throw up!  This was distressing not only because we didn't want Seth to be sick, but as you may remember, Scott had just returned home from his mission that Wednesday and he was scheduled to speak in Sacrament Meeting.  And since you don't have a child return home from a mission and speak in Sacrament Meeting everyday, naturally we both wanted to be at church to hear him speak.  I went to my ward council meeting but skipped choir practice.  Frank took Seth to the Sunday walk in clinic at the doctor's office (second week in a row...the Sunday before that we were there having Frank's foot checked) while I took everyone else to church.  The doctor confirmed that Seth had a very nasty ear infection.  Frank got done with the doctor in time to hear Scott's talk.  I sat out in the foyer with Seth because we weren't comfortable taking him into the meeting since he might throw up again.  Although there were a few people from another ward sitting out in the foyer talking through the whole meeting, I was still able to hear most of what Scott said.  And miraculously, when the other ward got out of their meetings they didn't make a lot of noise then.  As soon as Scott finished speaking, I took Seth home.  Frank stayed to teach his Sunday school class.  Because it was a fifth Sunday, we had a combined priesthood / RS class so I wasn't needed as much as usual.  Seth was pretty miserable all day.  He couldn't keep anything down and later on--while the rest of us were at the Easter musical fireside and Frank was staying with him--he started crying that his other ear hurt too.  The doctor had given him two medications--one for nausea and the other an antibiotic--but the antibiotic takes a while to work, of course.

The musical fireside was really good...you may remember that Jared and I were singing in the choir for our stake.  Another choir from the community came and sang a couple of songs too.  They were really good.  After the fireside ended, a couple of the members of that choir came up to us and were raving about how great our choir was.  They couldn't believe we'd sung 3 songs from Handel's Messiah so well, and with only 4 practices!  They said our harmony and everything was perfect.  That was nice to hear.  I did really enjoy singing in that choir.

Seth was a pretty sick boy for a couple of days.  Although the ear pain started to resolve on Monday and he also started keeping food down, he was feverish and quite weak and he didn't have much of an appetite:      

The good news is, both of the medications the doctor prescribed for him were pills and he was able to get those down without any trouble!  He must have his dad's genes in that regard and not mine.  And it was much easier to take pills on our trip than it would have been to take liquid medicine (that would have had to be refrigerated, no doubt) so that was a real blessing.  Unfortunately, he missed the whole week of school because he was too sick to go on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday we left for our trip.  You've probably forgotten by now that he missed 3 days of school the previous week (for a nasty cold, which is very likely why he got the ear infection) so that is a lot of school to miss so close together.  I did send an email to his teacher and she gave me a few ideas of some things we could do with him while we were on vacation.

The few days before we left were crazy...along with taking care of Seth, we had packing to do.  Scott had a dental check up, Jared met with a couple of men in the ward to talk about ideas for his Eagle project, and I had a meeting with the bishop because he had some concerns about a particular family that he wanted to share with me before I left.  We somehow got everything done and Seth got well enough that we could leave as scheduled on Wednesday the 1st.

The pictures from vacation are not in order so I will just explain quickly what we did each day and then you can scroll through the pictures and try to figure out what picture goes with what day!  Wednesday was spent just driving down to the Charlotte area.  We got almost to our destination and all of the sudden we noticed that there were flowers on the trees!  We finally got far enough south that spring had arrived!  That was a nice change.  The first night we got checked into our hotel, went to a little barbecue place for dinner (very yummy) and then swam in the hotel pool.

We spent Tuesday at an amusement park called Carowinds.  Frank's brother James and his family live in the Charlotte area now and they met us at the park.  We enjoyed spending the day with them.  I spent most of the day taking Seth on all the little kid rides.  I did get to go on a few of the more adult rides that I wanted a few times.  I'm not much of a daredevil anyway.  Jared is like me...he didn't want to go on the huge roller coasters.  Frank and Scott were game for anything and went on all the incredibly insane looking rides, including the newest roller coaster (called The Fury) which is apparently the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world at this point.  Tanner wouldn't get on that one, but he did get on several others (the Vortex, Afterburn, the Intimidator) that I would not get on, even if you paid me a million dollars!  (My big problem is long steep plunges.  I am pretty good with anything else...upside down, incredibly fast, turns, twists, smaller dips...you name it!  As a matter of fact, I love all those things.  But long steep plunges are my nemesis.  I like to breath, that's my problem.)  Seth was willing to try all kinds of crazy rides last year at Lagoon, but this year he got chicken about everything and even refused to get on some of the kiddie rides that I thought looked really fun.  Hopefully he'll grow out of that some day.  We talked him into trying a few things...one of them was a kiddie roller coaster.  As our cars were climbing up the first "big" hill, Seth turned to me and said "Um, why is this ride in the kid section?!"  That made me laugh!  We stayed at the park until it closed, then went to our hotel and collapsed.

On Friday (the 3rd) we went to the lake with Frank's brother James and his family.  They have a boat so we rode on the boat out to a little island on the lake, cooked hamburgers, and just hung out.  The kids enjoyed playing in the sand and skipping rocks.  The weather was a bit iffy...we kept worrying that a storm was going to blow in because it was windy and clouds kept rolling in, but thankfully that never happened.  However, it was a bit on the cool side.  We all wore swim suits to the lake but after dipping our toes in the water, all of decided that it was way too cold to go swimming!  We also got a  bit cold riding on the boat to the island and back because the wind would really blow through the boat when we got up to speed.  But it was still a nice outing and a fun day.  We drove that evening to Brevard and checked into a hotel there.

Saturday morning we hung out at the hotel getting laundry done and listening to the first session of General Conference.  Scott had been sick in the night (stomach) so he was able to get some more rest too.  Thankfully, he didn't get sick again and later in the day was able to eat and didn't have any more problems--and no one else got sick either (although Tanner felt rather ill on Sunday evening, but he never threw up).  Jared got up that morning with a swollen right cheek.  His cheeks never did swell up right after he got his wisdom teeth pulled, but now all of the sudden he had a chipmunk cheek and that side of his mouth was sore.  So I had to make a call to the oral surgeon that morning too.  He said that some food had probably got lodged in the socket back there and caused an infection, so he called in an antibiotic as well as a rinse that helps with swelling.

When Frank called his parents that morning, we found out that his sister Becky was in the hospital because she had just had a stroke.  At that point, she wasn't doing too well...slurred speech and whole left side was paralyzed.  We were able to visit her Sunday evening and by then her speech was clear and she was able to move her left arm and fingers a bit.  We don't know what the long term effects are going to be but she does seem to be improving...she has been able to walk with the aid of a walker since we got home.  I'm sure she has a lot of rehab ahead of her, though, and it is troubling that she had a stroke at such a young age.  (She's only 41.)

We joined Frank's parents at the local chapel to watch the second session of General Conference on Sunday.  They had a nice meal of ham, potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw, rolls, and cake for us too.  We also watched both Sunday sessions of conference with them at the chapel.  The missionaries serving in the area came to the chapel to watch most of the sessions too, but other than that, we were the only ones there.  I guess everyone else stays home and watches from there--that's what we usually do.  Frank, his dad, and the older 3 boys went to the Priesthood session too.  As always, General Conference was pretty amazing.

We checked out of our hotel in Brevard Sunday morning and checked into a hotel in Ashville that evening.  On Monday we drove home  The trip was pretty uneventful.  We were able to get home, unpack, and go to dinner in time for Scott and Tanner to attend the YSA FHE.  I guess that description of our trip wasn't very quick!  Believe it or not, I left out a lot of details.

Jared's mouth continued to bother him quite a bit and the swelling didn't really go down, even after he had been on the antibiotic for a few days, so I took him in to the oral surgeon on Tuesday.  (He wanted to check him anyway.)  Jared felt pretty yucky Tuesday and stayed home from school.  The oral surgeon cleaned out all the food debris and that has helped the swelling to go back down and he's feeling a lot better.  He will be going back in for another check up this week.

Meanwhile, since being back home life hasn't slowed down any.  We've been trying to get caught up on all the things that we got behind in and trying to get back into a normal routine.  I had my monthly meeting with the bishop Tuesday evening, we had our monthly RS meeting Wednesday evening (we worked on family history), and on Thursday I had a presidency meeting.  I got caught up on budget and bills, picked up books at the library, filed out income taxes, and got the personal property tax return for the business filed too.

Scott went to the doctor on Wednesday...while we were on our trip he informed me that he had a bump on his lower back that was bleeding a little, and by the way...it had been there and bleeding off and on since about November.  Not sure why he didn't do anything about it before!  On Monday evening it bled quite a lot, so I got him an appointment to have it looked at.  It turns out that he has a cyst and it needs to be removed.  He has an appointment with a specialist to have it looked at this week.

On Thursday Snickers had his teeth cleaned.  He also had two growths on his back and one on his tail removed at the same time, since they already had him knocked out.  (It still cost a small fortune.)  The one on his tail turned out to be quite deep.  He has five stitches on his tail and two stitches on each of the spots on his back.  He hasn't been a very happy dog the last couple of days.  He's on an antibiotic and a pain medicine and unfortunately since we caught him chewing on his tail, he's had to wear an e-collar (the boys call it the "cone of shame") unless someone is able to keep a close eye on him.  For some reason he doesn't think he can walk when he has the e-collar on, so you can imagine how fun that has been.  Plus, he can't fit in his crate with it on and we don't dare let him go in there with it off so he is banished from his crate and that is his favorite spot.  He usually sleeps in his crate too...instead, he's been sleeping in a dog bed we have on the floor in our room.  Thankfully, he has been pretty quiet and hasn't got up and walked around or anything (although we have to put the e-collar on at night, so he thinks he can't walk...I guess that's to our advantage at night!).  It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks until all his incision sites heal up.  And by the way, you don't truly understand the word "reproachful" until you see your dog looking at you from the depths of an e-collar!

In between everything else we were trying to get things ready for Jared's Eagle project which was challenging since Jared has barely been home.  Yes, another play begins next week and he had rehearsals after school every day this week.  All of these things have added up to more than a little bit of stress and I have felt on the verge of  a nervous break down more than once, but we're surviving.

Today after the Eagle project, we came home and weeded the front flower beds and the boys mowed the lawns.  Then this evening Frank went and bought some sod to spread over some bare spots in the front lawn.  We also put sod over the front flower bed that runs along the front walk because we want that to be grass now instead of a flower bed.  We still have a smaller flower bed right under the front windows of the house.  It already looks a lot better.  Then we did some (not nearly enough, but it's a start) cleaning in the basement to make room to store all the wood and PVC pieces for Jared's project.  So it's been a busy day and I feel pretty sore.  It feels good that we got so much done, though.

If you have managed to stick with me this long, you can now look at a bunch of pictures if you wish!

From our day at Carowinds:

Me, pretending that the carousel is a really thrilling ride:

Seth refused to ride on a horse!  He sat in a carriage that didn't go up and down.  He did love this plane ride, though:

Waiting in line for the Scrambler, which is one of my favorite rides:

Dippin' dots!:

On the train:

And a boat:

All the boys got hats for souvenirs:

Collapsing at the hotel after Carowinds:

Our room at this hotel was really interesting.  The bathroom was in two parts, and each part had a sliding frosted glass door, which didn't even lock.  Kind of strange, but it worked ok.  This part of the bathroom had the shower on one side:

And a sink and mirror on the other:

That mirror was annoying to someone my height since the bottom of the circle piece went right through my face!

The other part of the bathroom had a tiny sink and a toilet:

Driving to the lake...all the boys are still wiped out from the day before:

I had another picture with Scott asleep (I couldn't get all four of them in one picture) but for some reason that picture didn't come out.  All the boys were really tired the whole trip and complained that they couldn't sleep at nights because Frank snores.  I can usually sleep through his snores, but they aren't used to it.  I think we finally convinced him that he needs to get a sleep study done, though.  Scott had a companion on his mission with sleep apnea, and he says Dad sounds like his companion.  I think I actually (for the first time) heard him stop breathing a few times one night.  I've been telling him for years I think he should get checked for sleep apnea but he doesn't want to do it.  But after this trip I think he will.

Here's the cake that Frank's parents had for us on Saturday.  Their anniversary is the 18th of this month and ours is the 23rd:

Frank's mom gave us these little chocolate bunnies; I thought they were so cute:

Now to be really out of order, this picture was taken before we left home.  I just thought it was funny that all four boys are staring at a screen of some kind.  And I'm also still enjoying having all four of them together again.  It won't last long:

These pictures were taken on the way to North Carolina:

At a rest stop, Scott and Tanner:

This was the first real warmth we'd felt in a LONG time!  (It's been mostly cloudy and pretty cold since we got back home, too, although today was pretty nice.)

The boys were playing around with the camera and took a lot of pictures at the rest stop.  You'll see as you scroll down that they even tried some special effects:

When we were almost to Charlotte, we took a short detour so I could visit one of my former areas from my mission (Cornelius, NC...my second area).  Here I am in front of my old apartment:

It looks almost exactly the same except that it's been painted another color. It was actually a really odd feeling because it had changed so little (it's been 25 years since I served here!).  Still the same circular gravel drive around the building with lots of potholes in it, still the same wooden beam along the edge of the parking spaces where we used to park our little white VW Golf, still the dumpster next to the apartment in the same spot.  This was actually one of the worst apartments I was in...it was very tiny, all one room with a little kitchenette in one corner.  The only other room was the bathroom.  I could swear that this building used to be a cheap motel!  Anyway, it was a fun jaunt down memory lane.  The town has grown and changed so much that it was hard to recognize it at all until we got onto the historic main street...then it looked like the cute little town that I remember.

Here are Jared & Scott, ready to go swimming at the hotel the first night:
 

A whole bunch of lake pictures:

(James's step son and step daughter):

At the church with Frank's parents:

Another special effect experiment:

At Frank's parent's house:

After we got home, we found out that three of the four Elders in our ward were getting transferred.  They came by on Tuesday to say goodbye.  We will miss them:

Tanner went out with the Elders yesterday for a while, by the way.

And that is FINALLY it, folks!!