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!