Weekly Review August 14 '15

One more week until school starts. I would like summer to be longer! This week kind of flew by. 

Last Saturday Jared and I went to the temple to help with some baptisms and confirmations. My 2nd Counselor had some family names she wanted to do and we also took one of the sisters in our ward to the temple for the first time. I've mentioned Wanda in my blog before...she's a lady who is in a nursing home because she was in a bad accident many years ago. (She's only a few years older than me.) She couldn't be a proxy for baptisms, but she was able to be a proxy for some of the confirmations. She loved it! Because she's in a wheelchair, I had to take her to the outside entrance to the baptistery (the elevators in the temple don't go down that far) instead of the usual route across a "bridge" and past a large mural of Christ's second coming. But I really wanted Wanda to see the mural, so I asked if I could take her that far first, and the temple workers agreed. It was a very sweet moment, pushing her in her wheelchair down that long passage towards the big mural of Christ. It felt suddenly symbolic to me, that in a small way I've been helping her "come unto Christ". It was a really great feeling! For the baptism part, I didn't actually participate in the ordinances...I was just there to help Wanda. And getting her in and out of her white clothing was a bit of an adventure! But we figured it out. :) 

Saturday was the last day that the temple was open for a while. It's now closed for maintenance, and they must be planning some bigger projects because it won't open again until October 5th. As a result, the temple was PACKED that day. The parking lot (which is substantial) was totally full and we saw a lot of brides and grooms. I'm glad we were able to go to the temple one more time before it closed.

The weekdays this week have been broken up, time-wise, by Jared's Driver's Ed class, which was from 11:15 to 2;30 every day. Kind of a pain, but a necessary "hoop" he needs to jump through. He will have the same schedule next week also, but then he'll be done with the classroom portion. He will still have to complete three 2-hour in car driving sessions with an instructor. We have that part scheduled for late October / early November, which were the earliest dates available. After he finishes all that, he can take the driver's test to get his license. I tried to schedule that this week, too, but the website was having problems. They are always really booked up so they are scheduling at least 2 months out, so I want to do that before he finishes the in car sessions. It would be nice if he could have his license before all the craziness with plays begins at school, but unfortunately that's not going to happen. 

As a matter of fact, the plays may start even earlier than I thought because Jared just auditioned for a play on Monday It's for a local theater company who are doing a production of Legally Blonde. He's doesn't know if he got a part yet, though. Jared also had another job interview this week. One of the other places he applied for called this week to schedule and interview. Even though he has a job already, he decided it was worth interviewing for this one too...maybe this one will be better than the job he has. That interview went well enough that they are going to have him come in and work a shift to see how he does. (It's a place that does kids' parties, so they want to see him actually interact with the kids.) 

Jared had a song practice for a song he'll be singing on Sunday and he has also been working on his Eagle project this week. He planned to have people over to help, but he and I got so ambitious that we got the project to a point where no one can help for a while. We were successful in getting half of the pictures attached to the signs. (The signs are two-sided, with a picture on each side, so we can only do one side at a time.) We figured out a method to attach the pictures that is similar to putting on a screen saver, and it worked a lot better...the pictures have a few wrinkles, but not very many. Today we got the words onto those sides of the signs (which is tricky and wouldn't work well for a group). Now those sides just need several layers of polyacrylic put on them. After that part is finished, we can switch to the other side of the signs. I think those sides will go a lot quicker since we've finally figured out what we're doing. Here are some pictures of the signs now:

I guess that is the update on Jared! I've been busy with the usual RS stuff. We had our monthly activity on Wednesday evening and on Thursday we had a presidency meeting. I also did some visiting teaching this week. I have a new route and my companion is out of town, but I decided I ought to try making some appointments or it might not happen before the month is over. I called intending to make appointments for next week or the week after, but two of my people said that this week was better for them than the next two weeks, so I ended up seeing them this week Which was fine!

For our RS activity, the theme was "Christmas in August". We talked about getting organized for Christmas:

Made these cool "essentials kits" that can be given as gifts:

And did a matching game where we tried to guess which country each nativity set came from. We also had milk and cookies...because we are Santa's helpers, you know! We had a good sized group of sisters show up and everyone seemed to have fun, so I was happy about that.

On Sunday evening I noticed my right eye was hurting and also tearing up more than usual. It got a little swollen and infected:

(Kind of hard to tell in the picture. And I totally stink at taking "selfies".) So I haven't worn my contact lenses all week. By Thursday my eye felt better and looked back to normal but I'm giving it a rest.

Meanwhile, Seth had a strange case of hives this week. He woke up Wednesday morning with a patch on his leg. I gave him Benadryl that morning and again late in the afternoon. He had  a few hives on his trunk, and arms as well. While I was at the RS activity that evening, he broke out all over with large patches on his face, legs, arms, shoulders, neck, back, and tummy. We decided to call the doctor, just to make sure he shouldn't be seen but the doctor said not to worry unless he had trouble breathing. He said to keep giving him Benadryl and that he probably didn't need to be seen unless they weren't clearing up by Friday. Thursday morning he had a few stray hives here and there (including a patch under his left eye that made it look like he was getting a bruise) but they were a lot better than the day before. I gave him a few doses of Benadryl that day as well. By Friday they had disappeared as mysteriously as they came. His body was definitely having an allergic reaction to something, but we have no idea what.

Other things we did this week:

We had the Elders over for dinner on Tuesday. The Elder on the left of the picture (Elder Carlson) got transferred this week so this was his last visit to our home:

Seth went with our carpool family on Wednesday to play at a park up in the "mountains". They played on the play equipment, had nerf gun wars, and even waded in a creek. 

On Friday evening we all went to Pack Meeting. We had a campfire night with the Cubs performing skits and cooking food. A few pictures:

Seth gives the fire building a "thumbs up"!

Frank borrowed a baby to hold.

Seth's den doing their skit. Seth really didn't need to go to the bathroom, although it certainly looks that way!

For dessert, they made "banana boats". We also had quesadillas, spaghetti, hot dogs, corn on the cob, and veggies with ranch dressing. It was all quite good!

Earlier this week I realized that Scott's birthday was nearly here, so Frank and I did some shopping and had a couple of things shipped out to him. Hopefully he'll like what we picked...he has had a hard time coming up with ideas of things he wants.

This has been a bit hodge podge (you have no idea how many times I've been interrupted while trying to write this!) but I think that is mostly what we did this week.