Weekly Review September 11 '15

This week was somewhat eventful, although a few of our adventures are going to have to wait until next week's post. Hahaha...now you will definitely be reading next week's post, right?

Anyway, Saturday was just busy. Seth had a den meeting for cub scouts (it was postponed from earlier in the week because of rain). They went to a place called Fountain Rock Nature Center (a favorite place of mine) and went on a hike and learned about local animals. Jared had a rehearsal for Legally Blonde. While he was gone, we had the three carpool boys over to play with Seth for a few hours...they wanted to play Minecraft together. Jared went to a movie with some friends after his rehearsal and the rest of us went to a friends' house to watch the BYU football game. We had dinner there...stew and bread sticks, plus other yummy snacks (we contributed pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and mini cheesecakes that we had made that morning). Of course most of you, being BYU fans, know all about how the game went with that exciting last-play-of-the-game-Hail-Mary-touchdown-pass-to-win-the-game. Those kinds of endings are spectacular and so worth it, but you have to suffer through a lot of tension and frustration before the pay off comes! Of course, like everyone, we are bummed by Taysom Hill's injury that takes him out for the season again...our hearts really go out to him because he's the one that's going to suffer the most from that. But we are hopeful for the team and for Tanner Mangum...he was certainly looking pretty good on Saturday!

I picked up Jared after his movie and grilled him on whether or not there might be a particular girl in this "group of friends" that he's interested in, since they've been making a lot of effort to get together, and he admitted that there was. This group met each other at youth conference this summer. So anyway, yes...a girl named Jessie and he are mutually interested in each other and wanting to date. He further admitted that they've been holding hands for a while, and had even kissed each other once. What?!! I told him hand holding was nice but he should avoid kissing. We'll see if he listens to me on that one. Interesting fact: this girl's last name is Hatch. She is probably a distant cousin. 

I can't think of anything out of the ordinary that happened on Sunday. One of my counselors was teaching the lesson and she also had some outpatient surgery two days before. I tried to talk her into switching with me but she insisted that she'd had a feeling that she would be fine. So I told her she could change her mind if she needed to, even last minute, and then worried all week that I should be better prepared just in case! (I meant to prepare a back up lesson, but never got to it.) Thankfully, she was just fine and did a good job on her lesson.

Monday the kids were out of school and Frank was off work for Labor Day. We had wanted to go away for the weekend actually, but it didn't really work out for a number of reasons. So instead, we took the boys to Medieval Times for dinner on Monday. I think they enjoyed it. Here are a couple of not very good pictures that I took on my phone (the lighting was terrible):   

We were rooting for the green knight this time, and he actually won the tournament so that was cool!

Everything looks green because we were sitting under green lights. The green knight, you know...

The bowls and plates were pewter. The cups looked pewter, but they were actually plastic.

All the knights at the beginning of the show.

The king!

Seth acquired another sword. Because he doesn't own enough weapons already, you know! This one is pretty cool because it lights up.

Tuesday was back to the regular work and school routine. I had an RS visit that morning. The rest of the day was just the usual chores and errands.

Wednesday was a lot busier. I had a visiting teaching appointment in the morning. In the afternoon a couple of other sisters in the ward met me at another sister's house so we could "heart attack" her door because it was her birthday. (And we love her!) She was at work so we knew we wouldn't get caught.That evening we had our monthly RS meeting. We had a panel discussion on ways to spiritually prepare ourselves and our families, and it went really well.

On Thursday it rained very hard. Seth had a field trip at school...they went to a place at a nearby school called the Earth, Space, and Science Lab. It was near his school and they were supposed to walk but Seth said when he came home that they went on a bus so I guess they decided it was too wet to walk. He said the field trip was fun. After school, Jared had an orthodontist appointment. It was just a check on his retainer and now he doesn't have to go back for 9 months so he is happy about that (and me too...it's a bit of a drive). After dinner Jared was supposed to have his first in car driving lesson through the driver's ed school but he didn't because the instructor never showed up. It turns out that she got mixed up and thought we were supposed to meet at the driving school instead of at the high school (you have a couple of choices for start locations when you sign up for sessions, and those are both possible locations). Frank communicated with them today and they got him set up for another session on Monday to make up for the one he missed, so thankfully this won't slow him down at all.

Meanwhile, I went to the church to watch kids for another ward's RS activity. The RS president of that ward had emailed me earlier that day feeling desperate because the child care they had arranged for their meeting that evening had fallen through at the last minute. She wondered if any sisters in our ward would be willing to help out. I sent out an email to see if anyone could help but only got one response. To my surprise, however, the one who responded was the new sister I visited a few weeks ago...who told me honestly that she will never come back to church. But she was totally willing to help when needed. I thought that was pretty cool! And since I didn't have a million things to do that night (for once) and I also had a desire to help out the RS president in the other ward (I can be totally empathetic to her predicament!) I decided to help too. Besides that, it gave me a chance to talk some more with this sister. It turns out that the only kids that showed up were the 5 children of the RS president. They were lovely well behaved children so we didn't really have to do much. So I did get to talk quite a bit with this sister and enjoyed getting to know her better.

Today I got the budget caught up while pausing periodically to watch news coverage and to observe moments of silence in memory of the victims of 9/11. Frank worked from home today but he was very busy between Marriott stuff and clients for his business. Plus he went to lunch with a friend in the ward. So I didn't see him much. I wrote to Tanner and then I had an appointment to get my hair done...it looks so much better now! After I got home from that, I mowed the lawn...which is kind of significant because I don't think I've mowed a lawn since I got married. (Well I tried to a few months ago, but the lawnmower quit working almost immediately.)  Frank has always said that lawn mowing is his job or the boys. But Jared was at work, Seth is still a bit young for lawn mowing, and I won't let Frank do stuff like that anymore since it is likely to cause him more problems with his back. It really needed to be done today because we had the opportunity to borrow our neighbor's lawnmower. Since our lawnmower quit working a few months ago, we haven't had a chance to get it fixed or buy a new one. (Actually, Frank doesn't want to buy a new one until we install a shed because all our other lawnmowers have deteriorated pretty rapidly and we think it's because they get wet when it rains.) So our lawn had not been mowed in a long time. Luckily, because we've had a really dry summer the lawn has not been growing very fast but at this point it still looked bad enough that we got a letter from the HOA saying we need to mow it. Well, it looks a lot better now.

Tonight we had pack meeting. Jared was still at work so he didn't go and Frank had to leave early to pick up Jared from work and then to go do some work for a client. As a matter of fact, he is still doing that. I stayed with Seth for the remainder of pack meeting. They had a lady who works at the Frederick County Sheriff's Office come talk to the kids and explain what they do there. It was pretty interesting and I learned quite a bit too. The kids were hilarious with the questions they asked and the comments they made. After that they wrote thank you notes to police officers and firemen, learned how to fold a flag, and played a game where they tried to get across the gym without getting hit by soft darts or marshmallows which we (the adults) were shooting at them.

Seth and I finished reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe early this week. Seth wanted to read The Magician's Nephew next so that is what we are reading now. I have also started reading two other books. One is the book I was supposed to read last month for book chat (Mountains Beyond Mountains--I wasn't able to get a copy until after book chat met) and the other is the book we are reading this month, which is called The Elephant Company. I haven't been able to get a hard copy of that one yet either so I gave up and bought a copy for my tablet. I haven't got very far into it yet (I just purchased it a day or two ago) but I think it's going to be really good.

Most of this week has been miserable, with 100% humidity and temperatures in the 90s. But since the rain yesterday the humidity has gone down a bit and temperatures are in the 80s, so much more pleasant.

We got a letter from Tanner's mission president a few days ago. You may have heard about the sniper shootings that are happening along I-10, south of Phoenix. The mission president wanted all the parents to know that all the missionaries were safe and accounted for. He also said that most of the missionaries don't use that road at all but that he had asked the ones who do to find alternate routes and not use that road until the situation was resolved. I wasn't overly alarmed about the situation, but still it was nice to know that!

I think that is everything for this week, other than that I tried to get some things done for RS but didn't make much progress. I will hopefully get some of that done tomorrow.