Weekly Review October 30 '15

I'll start this week with some sunrise pictures from my Saturday morning walk:

Saturday was mostly dominated by our ward activity—either getting ready for it or actually going to it. Frank and I made some chili in the morning. We also picked up the donuts (13 dozen!) and cider (8 gallons) and took them over to the church. I was back at the church at 3:00 to help get all the tables and chairs set up. One couple and I were basically the only ones there so we set up about 20 tables and about 136 chairs all by ourselves. Plus put on tablecloths and set up centerpieces. We got everything done right about the time people started showing up for the trunk or treat. The activity had 3 parts…first, trunk or treat, then the chili cook off (dinner, basically) and the last part was square dancing. A lot of people came and there was a lot of yummy chili. A lot of people didn’t stay for the square dancing part but those of us that did had a lot of fun. Even people like me who have no dancing ability whatsoever. We had a professional square dance caller come in for the dance and he spent some time on instruction and then led us through different dances. I actually missed most of it because I was washing the dishes but I did get in at the end for the last dance and it was really fun. Jared did the same. He was at work for some of the activity and I had to pick him up during the dinner part of it. Those of us that stayed decided we should do it again and convince more people to stay next time because it would be even more fun with a larger group of people.

I taught Seth’s Primary class on Sunday and it actually went better than I expected. (It's a large and very energetic class.) I kept them pretty under control and they participated in the lesson and I think they actually learned something! We loved having Tim and Rachelle over for dinner that evening! We wish they could have stayed longer. It is always a treat for us to have family visit!! 

We love our street in fall! I think I take pictures of these beautiful trees that I can see from my front window every year:

The rest of the week has been a typical busy week with all the usual chores that need to be done, plus some extras. We got Jared’s Hill Cumorah work crew application in the mail on Monday. (The deadline to get it postmarked is tomorrow so we’re good!). Jared got accepted to NHS so we got his dues and information sheet in. He won’t be able to go to the induction ceremony because it’s this Thursday which is opening night for the play he’s in.  Jared’s birthday was on Wednesday, of course, so I had things to do to get ready for that. I finally got a list from him the end of last week so I got shopping done on Monday. On Wednesday I wrapped presents and made his cake. I had a visiting teaching appointment Wednesday morning and I went to lunch with a friend on Thursday. I helped with Seth’s class on Monday and yesterday I went back in for part of the morning for International Children’s Day. Seth picked Egypt for his country this year. (He says he picked that because he likes mummies and pyramids are cool). I remembered that a friend's daughter has been to Egypt so I asked my friend if her daughter had any objects Seth could borrow to share and she did, so he was able to share them. But since I didn’t want anything to happen to them, I took them with us in the morning, watched his presentation and then took them home with me. I didn’t stay for the parade or the assembly because I had the lunch appointment. (Plus I've been to the parade and assembly almost every year for the last 13 years. You can only go to so many of those!)

Besides International Children’s Day, Seth also had Minecraft Club this week (it’s at the library and he goes with our carpool family). Jared had a pretty eventful week because not only did he turn 17, he also had play rehearsals and yesterday he got his driver’s license! I took him up to Hagerstown to take the test. It’s a very pretty drive this time of year. The trees are beautiful colors right now. Jared got a nice lady for his tester. She talked to him the whole time and said it was her goal to help him feel comfortable. Isn't that nice? Anyway, I am glad Jared got his license because he was able to drive himself to rehearsal and back last night. Whoo!! He’s pretty happy about it too of course.

For Jared’s birthday we invited his girl friend Jessie over for dinner. She was here for him to open his presents and have cake too. Then they both went to the stake center for her YW / YM activities because our ward didn’t have any YM / YW on Wednesday (there’s a party at a family's house tonight instead). Plus, one of their friends in Jessie’s ward is moving to Utah this weekend so it was their last chance to do something all together. It rained a lot on Jared’s birthday. When we got in the car so I could take Seth to Cub Scouts and Jared & Jessie to the stake center, we discovered that the intersection at the end of the main street by our house was totally flooded. There was actually a good 5 inches or more of running water flowing across the intersection and up onto the street we were on. I’ve never seen it flood that much there before. We had to drive through it, too, which made me nervous. Especially because we were in the Prius! But there was no way to turn around and lots of cars behind us, so we went and we made it through okay. By the time Frank went to pick up Seth from Cub Scouts, all the water was gone. Below are pictures of the birthday celebration, plus some of the rain storm. The sky was this really amazing color that we couldn't capture in the pictures...it was kind of lit up because the sun was going down behind the clouds. But the pictures still look kind of cool:  

Today the boys don’t have school. Yesterday was the last day of the first term (already!). Frank is working from home today and he and I went out to lunch with another couple in our ward. Jared drove to Jessie’s house to watch a movie with her. She lives in Brunswick (about 25 mintues away), so it’s nice that he can take himself down there.

That’s about all that we’ve been doing. Frank’s back has been hurting quite a bit still. He is going to get a better chair for his office downstairs, so hopefully that will help. He talked to the owner at PVI (one of his clients) about getting a chair because they sell office furniture. Frank told him he wanted to buy a chair from him and asked his opinion of what would be best. The owner told him that he would give him whatever chair he wanted, free of charge. I thought that was nice!

Now I have a project I need to work on so I'll get going on that.

Weekly Review October 23 '15

The morning skies were well worth getting up for this week:

Besides the beautiful sunrises, I could also see Venus, Jupiter, and Mars in the early morning sky before the sun came up. Venus has been particularly bright, but Jupiter has been pretty bright too. Mars has been pretty faint, but it is still pretty cool to see all three of them close together in the pre-dawn sky.

The trees have turned beautiful colors the last few weeks too. Here are a few on our street:

I particularly like the bright orange one! I don't mind walking the dog so much when I can feast my eyes on all the beauty while he sniffs every blade of grass in sight.

Our week has been quite busy, but I'm sure I'm going to bore you all. Not much excitement, just a lot of busy things going on. For one thing, my computer has been having all kinds of issues the last few weeks and Frank has had to do a system restore on it 3 times, as well as a lot of other things. It seems to be working much better now so I hope he has solved the problems. In the meantime, I discovered just how much I depend on my computer to get things done around here. My "to do" lists have been hindered quite a bit the last few weeks as my computer has been down. But I am very grateful to have my own personal IT guy! (He's handsome too!)

We had a lot of appointments and meetings this week so we were running all over the place. I went in Monday afternoon to help with Seth's class. The boys and I had dentist appointments on Tuesday. Jared needs a few fillings but Seth and I are good for another 6 months. Jared had play rehearsal Tuesday evening and Frank went on splits with the missionaries. I had my yearly mammogram Wednesday morning. That evening Seth had Cub Scout den meeting, Jared had YM, Frank had a stake leadership training meeting for all the EQ presidents and HP group leaders, and I helped with Seth's den meeting and went to a Scout Committee meeting. On Thursday Jared had play rehearsal again. Tonight Jared is working. He works tomorrow too. 

What else did we do? Yesterday I went to the temple. A friend came with me. It was cool because she decided to go to the temple last minute and she texted me on a whim to see if I might be available to go too, and I was planning to leave right then! So I got to enjoy her company going down and back and she didn't have to drive which was really nice for her since she commutes to work every day (it was her day off). We did initiatories and I enjoyed very much being in the temple again. On the way home, we stopped and had lunch with Frank and some of his co-workers. Yesterday I also took Seth to the pumpkin patch. He had a free pass and we hadn't had a chance to use it yet. The weather was nice and it's supposed to get colder again soon (it was fairly cold the earlier part of this week but the last few days have been really nice) so I decided to take him while I had the chance.  I picked him up after school and we stayed there until it was getting dark and they were closing. Seth had a lot of fun and I'm glad we went because not only was the weather perfect, but it wasn't very crowded. When we went last year, we went on a day that the kids were out of school and it was a mad house! Here are a few pictures from our adventures:

  

Ride 'em cowboy!

 He's right about 4 1/2 feet tall now.

They had several giant slides.

Playing in the corn crib.

  In the corn maze.

(This was much harder than it looks!)

The farm is much larger than it looks! They have a TON of different activities. You don't realize how far you are walking until you realize that you are exhausted!

He found the perfect pumpkin!

This sign cracked me up. (Can you read the part that says "rule applies to all visitors ages 98 and younger"?)

Blurry photo of Seth jumping on the giant pillow.

In between everything else I've been pulling things together for our ward activity tomorrow, trying to sew (only got one skirt cut out, but it's a start), and trying to prepare a Primary lesson (I'm substituting Seth's class the next 2 Sundays). I've also been reading...I finished a book called "And the Band Played On..." which was about one of the members of the band on the Titanic who died, written by his grandson. It was pretty interesting. Now I'm reading a book called "Brothers Forever" about two young men who were roommates at the Naval Academy and who both died later...one was killed in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. So far, it's pretty good although there's some language since that's how they talked. I've managed to exercise every day although I still need to do that today.

Last Sunday was our Primary program and as always it was sweet, with a wonderful spirit, as well as being good for a number of laughs. Seth did a good job on his part.

Seth has been taking his new medicine all week and the result is...we haven't seen a dramatic difference. But he did get quite a bit more done at school this week than last week so we do think it's helping a little. We'll see how he does over time.

Frank's back has been giving him a lot of trouble this week. Sunday and Monday were especially bad. On Sunday he only stayed at church long enough to hear Seth do his part in the program. Then he came home and laid down for a few hours. His back is better now than it was then, at least. We are looking into getting him a better chair for his "office" downstairs. He spends a LOT of time in that chair, so we're hoping that will help. Frank worked from home on Monday and again today. We went to lunch today...we tried an Indian buffet place that was recommended to us but neither of us was very impressed with it so I doubt we'll go back there again. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't all that great either.

On Sunday our home teachers came over which is worth mentioning here because that is the first time in over 3 years that we have been visited!!

Funny story to end with. When I was helping with the Cub Scout den meeting on Wednesday, I was helping one of the boys with a requirement about extinct and endangered animals. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Do you know what "extinct" means?
Cub Scout: Yes, it means that there aren't any animals of that kind left.
Me: Right! So do you know what it means when an animal is endangered?
Cub Scout: It means that there are only a few of that kind of animal left...like unicorns, right?

Gotta love Cub Scouts!

Weekly Review October 17 '15

Here it is Saturday evening, and I am finally getting a chance to write my blog post for the week. We've been a bit busy, although not really with anything too exciting. I don't have a lot of time so I will just give a run down of what each of us did this week. We'll start with Seth. Last Saturday Seth and I went to Pack Meeting. I mean, I was actually in charge so of course I went! But I didn't have to do much because we were helping with a community service project planting trees. Here's a few pictures (the last two are of Seth):

This turned out to be a great project because the kids could really help and they loved it. Part way through, Seth said "Who knew planting trees could be so much fun?"

Seth got a haircut on Tuesday and his picture taken (at school) on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday he went with our carpool family to the library after school for "Minecraft Club", which he loves. Both he and Jared got out of school 2 hours early on Thursday and yesterday they didn't have school. I took Seth to a follow up appointment with the doctor on Friday and after looking over our completed questionnaires, they did decide to try some medication for him. So he is starting with the same medication that Tanner is on, just a smaller dose. I'm not going to have him take it until Monday (we just picked it up today) so we'll see how he does. I hope it helps him! On Friday I also took him to the store to look at Halloween costumes and we found a really nice Batman costume for cheap so he and I are both happy about that. Other than that, he's just been doing the usual little boy things. He and I have finished reading Voyage of the Dawntreader together and have started on The Silver Chair. We got the Dawntreader movie from Netflix this week so he enjoyed watching that.

Jared continues to be super busy. He and Frank went out to the farm (for his Eagle project) last Saturday morning so they could get a better idea how they are going to hang the signs when they are done. After that he went to work and after work he went with Jessie's family and some friends to a haunted pumpkin patch place. They didn't end up getting back to Frederick until nearly 1:00 am! We weren't too happy about that. I had to go pick him up at our stake center at that crazy hour.

On Sunday he had rehearsal but got permission to go late so he could stay for all of our church meetings. He was set apart as the 2nd assistant in the Priest Quorum that day. He has also been called to be our ward representative on the stake youth committee. On Monday he woke up in the early hours with the stomach flu so he didn't go to school that day. Luckily, it was a short lived illness and he was able to go back to school on Tuesday although he didn't make it to Seminary until Wednesday. He had play rehearsals on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. On Friday, the Arts and Communications Academy at his school had a showcase. He had to prepare the lights for that show and he also performed as part of the Advanced Theater Studies group. That means he was very busy at school on Tuesday and Wednesday and he didn't even come home in between school and the showcase on Wednesday. I went to the showcase, and it was really good--lots of talented kids. There were singers, pianists, and other instrumental numbers. Jared recited a poem relating to time as part of the ATS performance and he did a really good job. On Friday Jared wrote his letter for his Hill Cumorah Pageant work crew application. Then he went to a pumpkin patch with a group from his theater class. Jessie met him there and after they were done there, I picked them up and took them to Jessie's house. (At one point, I took the wrong exit out of a round about and ended up on a bridge going over the Potomac River. I didn't plan on going to Virginia yesterday, but I did!) Jared had dinner with Jessie's family and then went to her high school's football game. Jessie plays the trumpet in the band and he wanted to see her perform. Today he went to work, mowed the lawn, and now he is at a dance, so he will have another late night.

Frank has been busy as usual with work and work for clients. It seems like a new emergency comes up with one of his clients every week. His back has been troubling him quite a bit all week so I wish he could take it easy more than he does (which is practically never). Frank got a haircut too, along with Seth.

I kept busy with all the usual housework and so forth, as well as getting everybody to all those places that they needed to go. Besides that, I had a doctor appointment Monday morning (just my annual female check up, although I kept forgetting to set up an appointment so I was almost a year late), and an eye doctor appointment on Wednesday. I was asked to help organize an upcoming ward activity, so I got going on that. I also did some Cub Scout work...got our Pinewood Derby scheduled. It's not until January, but the place that loans the track out is used by many of the packs in the area so you have to reserve it pretty far in advance. I tried to get some visiting teaching appointments set up, but I've had trouble connecting with my partner. I went to the library, kept scanning photos, and got some new winter clothes. I went to Jared's showcase, as I mentioned, and because of that missed the monthly RS meeting. I was sorry to miss that because we were doing a service project that involved sewing, so I really wanted to go. But as I said, I did enjoy the showcase. I tried to get some sewing of my own done but so far all I've managed to do is to pre-shrink the fabric (for the three skirts I want to make) and to iron one of the pieces of fabric. Maybe I'll make more progress this week but it's looking like it's going to be pretty busy so I probably won't get very far. The Elders came for dinner on Thursday. Last night I volunteered to help with a stake RS activity called "Give and Get" which is basically a free yard sale. Last night everyone brought their donations, and this morning you could go take whatever you want. So last night I was helping to sort all the donations that came in. There were lots of people to help and it went well. After I got home we watched the BYU game which we could see for once, and we were happy that they ended up winning that game although it wasn't looking very good for a lot of the game. Today I helped Seth work on some Cub Scouts and some Faith in God. I also helped him write a talk for Primary tomorrow.

Last week I weighed myself and was not at all happy with what I saw. I decided I've got to get more serious about exercising and more careful about what I eat. So I've been working on that this week. I have been exercising fairly regularly for the last few years but obviously not as much as I should. I decided I need to jog every day, Monday through Friday. Or at least, I need to try to do that. This week I was successful at exercising every day, and I also went on a walk this morning.

Yesterday we got a security system installed for our house. No reason...we aren't feeling paranoid or anything! It's just that our cable / internet / phone carrier has a deal where we could get faster internet, HD tv, more channels and a security system and it actually cost less than what we were paying already. The security system almost seems more trouble than it's worth since I'm not used to it yet and I'm sure I'm going to forget to disarm it before I open a door one of these days. But I guess once we adjust to the new system, it will be nice.

I'll finish up with a few sunrise photos that I took a few days ago. As always, the photos fail to capture the true beauty that my eye could see. But they are still nice:  

Weekly Review October 9 '15

General Conference Bingo (and enjoying snacks while we listen):

General Conference was great! I loved it! I’m listening to all the talks again now. I actually missed the first half of the 2^nd session on Saturday because of a miscommunication with Jared so I didn’t get to hear the part where they called the new apostles. But then right after the session I was online trying to find out more about them and discovered that there was a press conference happening in just a few minutes so I got to watch that live, where they introduced the 3 new apostles to the press and then allowed the members of the press to ask them questions. It was really great because as I listened to them share their experiences of receiving their calls and then as they answered the questions posed to them with great wisdom and power, I knew that they are the three men that Heavenly Father needs to be special witnesses of Christ right now. I can’t even explain it really, but they brought me to tears more than once and I could just see that they’ve been totally prepared to be apostles of Jesus Christ. (I did go back and watch the first part of that session this week too!) There were so many good talks. I loved Elder Nelson’s talk. I was also really struck by the guy who spoke right after Elder Holland…can’t remember his name right now; he’s  a member of the seventy…but he talked about our responsibility as parents to teach our children, and I realized Frank and I could have done a lot better in that area. But he also said it’s never too early or too late to start, which gives me hope.

I really liked Elder Hales’s talk too and I was thinking when I listened to it that I hoped Scott had listened to his talk because he had a lot of good advice for people Scott’s age and in his situation in life. Then when I talked to Scott yesterday I asked him what his favorite talk was and he said it was Elder Hales’s talk. So I was very glad to hear that!!

General Conference dominated our weekend. I did get quite a bit of work done Saturday morning before conference started…I was going through more boxes in the laundry room, and got all the boxes in the living room better organized and back down to the laundry room. (I cut my foot on some glass in the process, but it wasn't too bad.) I also did quite a lot of photo scanning although I didn’t spend as much time on it as I had planned. I have scanned a big stack of photos, but I haven’t even made it through the first box. I have two more boxes after the first one, plus a big album and a bunch of envelopes full of pictures. And then after all that, I need to go through all the other photo albums and find any others that I missed. This project is going to take a really long time. But I’m glad I finally got started on it at least.

Jared went bowling with Jessie and some friends in between conference sessions on Saturday. And that’s where the miscommunication came about…we were supposed to pick him up and take him to another girl's house to watch the second session. We thought it was just he and Jessie we needed to pick up. It turned out to be them and four other kids! So when Frank arrived with the Prius to pick them up, there wasn’t enough room. Plus they got done late. Jared says he told me there were 6 kids who needed rides and we should bring the Expedition, but somehow I missed that. I have no memory of that conversation! Frank was pretty mad (I wasn't very happy either) and I ended up leaving immediately with the Expedition to pick them all up but by the time I got them dropped off and back home, the first half of the session was practically over. It was frustrating, but that’s how it goes sometimes. By the way, they were all going to the other hosue so they could watch the session with a young man named Kyle who has been taking the discussions and going to seminary. He’s getting baptized tomorrow. So that is pretty cool! Jared went with the Elders Wednesday to teach him. Actually, he went to a couple of appointments with them plus had dinner with them so he was gone from 4:00 to 9:30. Pretty crazy. But he said teaching Kyle with them was amazing. As long as I’m talking about Jared, he also went to the Sunday morning session at our bishop's house because they invited all the Priests and Laurels to their house for breakfast and to watch the first session. I took him to the cardiologist on Tuesday and they did an EKG and an ultrasound and his heart looks fine. So the cardiologist thinks he’s just getting random adrenaline bursts. He told Jared to keep track of times his heart beats fast…when and how long, and what his heart rate is. If his heart rate gets higher than 150, then he should call him back. Otherwise, we don’t need to worry. That was good news, although I was a little annoyed because I felt like the doctor kind of brushed us off. I do hope he's right, of course, but I don't think he even looked at our family history. At least he didn't seen anything structurally wrong with Jared's heart. That's the good news. Jared has been working on his Eagle project a little bit this week…we talked with a guy in our ward and he has an idea of how to finish off the edges of the signs. Jared, Dad, and this guy are going out to the farm tomorrow morning to figure out how the signs will be hung. Jared only had one rehearsal this week. He seems to be pretty busy all the time, though. It turns out his play (Legally Blonde) does have performances on Sundays and he also has a rehearsal on Sunday pretty much every week from now until the performances start, so we aren’t very happy about that. We told him no more plays for this group!

Let’s see…Seth has been doing some of his schoolwork at home and he’s done well with that. He still isn’t getting enough done at school. We got all the questionnaires back and I turned them in to the doctor; now we have an appointment next week to talk about what to do next. He was “personality of the week” in his class this week so he enjoyed taking in pictures of himself and things to show and tell. He is enjoying Cub Scouts a lot and we are making progress there.

Frank is still super busy with work and clients. Not much else to say about him! I am keeping busy too. Besides scanning photos, I’ve been trying to keep up with everyone else’s schedules and making sure everyone gets to where they need to be at the right time. The scout committee chair in our ward has asked me to help track how all the YM are doing with Duty to God, so on Wednesday evening I went to the church to meet with as many of them as I could. Of course, most of them forgot to bring their books, so I only met with 3 or 4 of them. But it’s a start. I also had a Cub Committee meeting that evening and I’ve been working out a few details for the next Pack Meeting, which is tomorrow morning. We had a few carpool changes this week with both school and seminary so I did a little more driving than usual. I got a bunch of doctor appointments set up. Oh! And on Wednesday I went to the temple, so that was awesome. It’s been closed since August 10^th and just reopened on Tuesday. I went down with two other sisters in our ward and I didn't even have to drive, so that was nice.. There is new carpet on the entire 4^th floor (floor with the endowment rooms) and they put all new seats in the endowment rooms too. It looks nice. The temple president visited our stake conference a few weeks ago and he said that the temple is 41 years old now so it needs a lot of renovations. They gave them the option of having longer maintenance closures for the next couple of years so that they could do renovations gradually, or they could just close the temple completely for about a year and a half and do everything at once. They chose to do the longer maintenance closures, and I’m glad they did. Having the temple closed for nearly 2 months kind of stunk. Having it closed for a year and a half would be much worse! So he said this time while they were closed, besides the work they did on the 4^th floor, they also re-caulked half of the marble on the outside and replaced half of the HVAC system. Next time they close, they will do the other half of those projects. We've had longer closings for the last couple of years (I remember last year they replaced the roof) so we probably have a few more years with longer maintenance closings and then hopefully they'll be done with all the renovations for a while.

We had the Elders over for dinner on Tuesday and they are coming again tonight. Frank wants to talk to them about people in the Elders Quorum for them to visit . They didn’t have a dinner appointment tonight so he told them to just come eat with us and then they can talk.

After rain and clouds most of last week, we had a few really sunny and warm days this week. It was really nice to see the sun again! Today is somewhat cloudy and gloomy again, though. I've been enjoying watching the many squirrels in our neighborhood scampering around gathering nuts and such. There are a lot of them!

That's about all I can think of for this week and I need to get dinner started anyway.

Weekly Review October 2 '15

It definitely feels like fall around here. The temperature has dropped close to 20 degrees over the last few days and it is raining. Actually, it's rained a lot this week. We had a heavy rain storm on Tuesday evening and it has been raining off and on in varying intensities for the last two days straight. We will be getting more rain and some gusty winds, courtesy of Hurricane Joaquin out in the Atlantic, over the next 24 hours. But at least we are not going to get up to a foot of rain (some places south of us might) and the Hurricane actually isn't going to hit the United States at all. It's just that a front is pulling a lot of the moisture from that storm into the atmosphere over us and the rest of the east coast. For a while there, everyone was worried we were going to get a repeat of Hurricane Sandy, so it's good that we're not.

I have a nasty headache again today (yesterday too); that seems to be happening to me a lot lately. I wish I could figure out the cause. I was a bit more productive this week though. I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah on Monday and visited my friend Wanda too.

I met with Seth's teacher on Tuesday and everything she had to say reinforced my feeling that it is time to see if medication will help him. I gave her the questionnaires for her and the other teachers to fill out and I just got them back today when Seth came home from school so I have to get them back to the doctor and we will go from there. The good news is, he tested above average in both math and reading on recent assessment tests. His teacher says he is actually very intelligent, which is why he is able to perform well in spite of the fact that he doesn't get much done. But  his writing is behind and he has lots of "gaps" in his knowledge because he can't focus and she thinks those gaps will get wider as time goes on. His intelligence can compensate for only so much. I expect it will take a while for us to work out the details and to find the medication that is right for him. In the meantime, I am going to go in to school to help him occasionally and we are also doing some work at home. I helped him do some math yesterday afternoon and we did get it done but it took all the patience I could muster not to scream in frustration, mostly because he was so distracted. (But he is also good at arguing with me when he is confused about something.) I also went in to his school on Wednesday afternoon to help him and that went well...in one hour, we got 4 things done. Up until then, he had completed 5 things for the whole week. He was amazed at how much we got done in one hour. He just needs someone to help him focus.

Besides all that, I took the dog to the vet for a vaccine update and started on some projects. I am having a hard time settling on just one project so I have a number of different things going on at once, which is probably not a good idea. I need some more cold weather clothes so I did some shopping and found a few sweaters. But I also need some skirts and I have a hard time finding exactly what I'm looking for. So I decided to make some skirts instead. I bought patterns and fabric to make three different skirts. Let's see how long it takes me to get those done! (I still have a lot of doll clothes I want to sew too...that project went on hold over a year ago because I found that I was having so much fun that I was spending too much time on that and not doing other things that needed to be done.) I began some much needed cleaning / purging this week. I pulled several boxes out of the basement and brought them upstairs to sort through. I'm not finding very many things to throw away, but I did get rid of one box. In the meantime, the living room is a mess with all the boxes but I guess sometimes it has to get worse before it can get better!  I'm starting to put together a box for Tanner and starting on some Christmas preparations. Tomorrow I'm planning to start a photo scanning project because that sounds like a good thing to do while listening to General Conference. So, do you think that is enough projects?

We've barely seen Jared this week. He had a play performance for a play last night and another one tonight. This is not Legally Blonde, it's a play they are doing at school as part of his Advanced Theater Studies class. It's called a black box play because it's done in a small classroom instead of an auditorium. The play they are doing is called Triangle, and it's about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (an actual historical event). I would have liked to see it, but both performances sold out before I thought to buy tickets. Our book club read a historical fiction book about this fire once, so I'm familiar with it. Besides the play (and getting all the lighting ready for it), he had two in car driving lessons this week (he's done with that now). He had the same instructor for both lessons...the one who wanted a Book of Mormon after Jared talked to him during the first lesson. They were able to talk a little more and he does have a Book of Mormon now and he's reading it. Jared went to an Eagle Court of Honor for a friend and had an interview with our bishop for his Hill Cumorah Pageant work crew application. He had a Legally Blonde rehearsal on Monday and worked a long shift on Saturday so add school and Seminary to that and yes...we barely saw him!

Seth went to a birthday party for one friend last night and he's going to another one tonight, so he's had a pretty busy week too. Frank, as usual, has been swamped with projects. He spent most of Saturday working on one and he's had a lot to do in the evenings this week. He missed the BYU football game on Saturday, but of course he didn't miss much. I was so happy they finally had a game that wasn't in the middle of the night for us and then as you all know, it was a big disappointment. Not just the lack of scoring, but the lack of even one really good play! There was literally nothing to get excited about in that game, unless it was the fact that the defense managed to keep Michigan from scoring the entire second half.

Sunday was my first "real" Sunday not being the RS president (the week I got released and stake conference don't really count). I ended up holding the new RS president's 8 month old baby during RS, and I admit I was pretty distracted by him and didn't get much out of the lesson. It's kind of strange to be in RS and to be sitting in the back I've really spent very little time in RS in this ward...and usually when I am in RS, I'm there because I'm in the presidency so I'm sitting in the front! That doesn't mean I don't like sitting in the back, though. :) I could get used to it!

The theme for our Sacrament Meeting on Sunday was The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and we had some really good talks. One guy went through it and broke it down into sections...he pointed out that the whole first part is really restating doctrine that we already know, from the scriptures and from former prophets. Then it shifts focus a little and tells us how to go about applying the truths that we know about the family that were just restated. Then it shifts focus a little again and issues a warning and prophecy about what will happen if we don't follow the doctrines of the family. I had never thought about it quite that way before, and for some reading thinking about it that way really added to the power of that document for me. Especially the warning part, because I can see how the world is going the wrong way with families and unfortunately I think most of those warnings are going to become a reality. It's hard to put into words, but I was really struck by it all. After his talk,, we sang "I Am a Child of God" for the closing hymn and it was really cool because I could hear all the children in the congregation singing too (I don't think many of them sing usually, but this is a song they know, of course). It was just really sweet!

That's it for this week!