Weekly Review November 27 '15

This week’s post is coming to you from Brevard, NC. I am currently sitting in the laundry room at the Holiday Inn Express, waiting for our laundry to get done. We got here on Wednesday afternoon. We left Frederick on Tuesday in the late afternoon, after Jared got home from school (Seth had a half day but the high school had full days) and after we got finished getting everything packed up. We intended to leave sooner but Frank had a busy day at work and was still on a phone call (some sort of crisis) when Jared got home from school and Frank hadn’t even packed his stuff yet! So he got packed and he and Jared got everything in the car while Seth and I took Snickers over to the family in our ward who are taking care of him while we are gone. We did finally get out the door but by then it was close to rush hour traffic time so getting out of Frederick and through Harper’s Ferry took a long time. We finally got through all the messy stuff and then made better time. We stayed at a Fairfield Inn in Roanoke Tuesday night. Then on Wednesday we drove the rest of the way to Brevard. We would have got here sooner but first of all we slept in and second, by the time we got to Asheville we were pretty hungry and we did NOT want to eat fast food again (we had fast food for dinner the night before) so we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch and of course that takes some time. But we got here eventually.

After we got to Frank's parents' house, we (mostly Frank, but I helped a little) made two cheesecakes and two chocolate cream pies. We also helped his mom make some ham and turkey rolls (stuffing inside them) and we took a bunch of stuff to the church. Then we took Frank's family out to eat at a Chinese buffet place. (Jared and Seth came too.) Yesterday was Thanksgiving of course and as usual we all gathered at the church for the feast and had all the usual kinds of food. Most of Frank's family was there, plus a few friends from church and the Elders too. (The Elders had three other places they were going to eat that day!) We ate and played games and just visited. I read to Seth a bit. We just finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Today we slept in again and have just been doing laundry. (I haven't been sleeping very well on this trip.)

Last weekend Frank and I did more shopping for the bathrooms and we got some Christmas shopping done too. We still haven’t got the towel racks or anything put up yet as we hoped. Maybe soon. Jared had a priest / laurel activity and a dance on Saturday. I volunteered to help drive to the activity and when I got home the Elders came over for dinner. I missed the BYU football game while I was doing all that so of course BYU won the game by a ton of points. They only play badly when I get to watch. The good news is, they should do well tomorrow since we'll be driving home and I'll miss the game again.

Tonight we are going to Frank's brother's house for dinner (James) and then tomorrow we will head home. Frank has to give a talk in church AND teach the combined Priesthood / RS lesson and I am substituting a Primary class (not Seth’s this time) and giving a ride to a less active young sister so Sunday will be busy. Oh! And we are also having the nice investigator lady over for another discussion. She didn’t show up for church last Sunday and she cancelled the Monday discussion so we were expecting the worst but then the sisters texted us on Tuesday and said her daughter has decided to take the discussions too so they are both coming to church on Sunday and then to a discussion in the evening. So hopefully that will go well.

We forgot to bring a camera with us on this trip so sorry I don't have any pictures! But a nice family in Arizona texted me this picture of Tanner last night:

The message said they love him so they made sure to take good care of him for Thanksgiving / his birthday and that we have raised an amazing son. I am grateful for people like this!

That's all I've got for this week!

Weekly Review November 20 '15

We’ve had a pretty busy week. I guess all weeks are pretty busy. Jared is done with his play so he’s been around more. Not sure he’s enjoyed it much since I’ve been bugging him to work on his Eagle project and his BYU application and both Frank and I had to get after him for his grades because this last term he didn’t do very well. He thinks his grades are actually lower than they should be so he’s going to look into that. Jared was able to meet with both our bishop and a member of our stake presidency about his BYU application so he’s basically done except he has to write his essays. I was feeling pretty good about his chances of getting accepted to BYU - Provo, but now I’m afraid his first semester’s grades might ruin his chances. We’ll just hope for the best though.

On Saturday Frank and I went shopping and got most of the things we need for the bathrooms. We also found some lights that don’t need an outlet box so on Monday Jared (with help from Frank and I) hung up the light in our bathroom and on Wednesday he did the one in his bathroom. It is nice to have lights again! We still haven’t found the time to hang the towel racks and other things, but hopefully we’ll be doing that tomorrow.

We enjoyed "seeing" everyone on Saturday and we hope Mom had a very happy birthday! Now I can mention that the last couple of weeks I've been working on her book when I was able. It was fun; just wish I'd had more time to work on it! In the process of gathering up all those pictures of things that she has made, I was really overwhelmed with the time and effort that she has put into making beautiful things for us! I knew she spent a significant amount of time sewing clothes for us kids when we were growing up, but I had not truly realized how much time she has spent since then, making clothes, quilts, and cross stitch items for us as adults and for grandkids and daughters and sons in law. Thank you, Mom!!

While we were watching the pathetic BYU game Saturday evening, the sister missionaries serving in our ward called. They have an investigator who lives right across the street from us and they wanted to know if they could teach her at our house. She has 2 big dogs and about 12 grandkids living at her house, so she didn’t want to do it there. We said sure, so she came over Sunday evening for the first discussion (she went to church that day too) and last night they all came over for a second discussion.  It’s been totally awesome!! She is this really humble lady who is willing to listen and accepts readily what the missionaries have to say. Last night when she came over she said she’d been looking forward to the lesson and she even turned down an opportunity to work so that she could come. She agreed on the first visit to prepare to be baptized on December 5^th and when she met with us last night she had read the Introduction to the Book of Mormon (which is what they asked her to read), plus a little bit more. She also said the closing prayer last night even though she was nervous about it and she did a beautiful job. And she said she is excited to read more of the Book of Mormon and learn what is in there. The missionaries are doing a great job teaching her. They are both really new but I’ve been impressed with how well they teach; how bold they are and how powerful their testimonies are. It’s been really great to be a part of it, and to have the chance to share my own testimony here and there. The third discussion is scheduled for Monday evening, so we’ll see how it goes.

 The rest of the week has been full of many things. I visited my friend Wanda (she lives in a nursing home) and she was really happy to see me.We had the Sisters over for dinner on Monday and we’ll have the Elders over tomorrow. I went visiting teaching this week…saw three of my four sisters. My companion has been sick a lot so I’ve been pretty much on my own for the last 4 or 5 months to do visiting teaching. I got together with the Cub Committee Chair to work on the charter renewal for Cub Scouts (we're almost done) and one of the den leaders got released on Sunday and hasn't been replaced yet so I helped with the den meetings on Wednesday evening as well. Seth had Snapology again and Frank has been working on maintenance for clients. Seth and I finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone a few days ago and now we’ve started Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Seth keeps stopping me to point out how the books are different from the movies, which is kind of annoying but I’m still enjoying reading them with him. Plus, he's only seen the first two movies so after this book he won't be able to do that anymore!  

Today Seth had a very short school day because of parent teacher conferences. It is sunny and not very cold so the carpool family took him to the park for a while after school. Seth has half days next week also (Monday and Tuesday) and he and Jared both are out of school for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I had Seth’s parent / teacher conference this afternoon and his teacher reports that she has seen small improvements in his ability to focus. Not as much as we'd like, but some.

It’s supposed to get a lot colder tonight and be quite frigid the next few days. We really can’t complain too much about the weather so far, though. It’s almost the end of November and we’ve had hardly any cold days. It's been really nice.

Everyone have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  

Weekly Review November 13 '15

Wednesday was Snickers’s birthday…he turned 7. So I got him some treats. He loved them! That’s what he’s eating in these photos. I love how he's holding the treat between his paws in the first one:

 Today is what is called “a very blustery day”. It is super windy and leaves are blowing everywhere. It isn’t cold, though…just a bit cool…and it’s sunny so it’s actually pretty nice. We had a lot of rain and clouds this week so it is nice to see the sun again.

This week we had more illness and more painting going on. Frank wasn’t feeling very great over the weekend but never got really sick. Seth was on the mend but still not 100%. We went out to eat on Saturday and he only ate a few bites of his mac & cheese and then he just wanted to lie down with his head in my lap. He improved on Sunday though and by Monday was ready to go back to school. He went to school Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and was just fine but Wednesday night when Frank & I were saying our prayers before bed, we heard him get up and go in the bathroom. Then he threw up all over the bathroom floor! What??!! (That's what I get for thinking I was going to make it to bed at 10:00 or once.) So Seth was home from school again yesterday. No idea if it was just a last burst from his previous illness or something else entirely. He woke up yesterday feeling hungry though, so even though I had to keep him home from school, he ate just fine all day (as a matter of fact, he finally seemed to have his full appetite back) and seemed to feel great. He’s back at school today and I’m hoping we’ve put illness behind us for a while. He actually lost several pounds and his face looks thinner because he was sick for so long! I woke up in the night Wednesday night (after Seth threw up) and wasn’t feeling too great myself, so I was afraid I was coming down with the same thing. But other than my stomach feeling a bit funny and my head hurting a little, nothing much came of it. Thankfully! Frank felt the same way yesterday. Meanwhile, Jared is just sailing along and seems to be the only one who hasn’t felt at least slightly sick. That’s a good thing, though.

On the painting front, our neighbor was here painting sometime between 1 and 4 hours every day this week except today, and yesterday he finished the kitchen. He finished up the bathrooms earlier this week so the painting is all done except we want to have him do the crown molding in our bedroom. We have to figure out what color of paint to do first though. (It will just be a white or cream color. Trying to figure out if we want to try to match the color of the baseboards or just repaint the baseboards too.) There are some pictures of the kitchen and bathrooms below. The bathrooms are kind of dark because we still don’t have the lights up! That’s because we decided to put in new lights and when Frank got them out to hang them, we discovered that we’re supposed to hang them on something called an outlet box, which we don’t have. We’d have to cut holes in the walls to put them in, too. So we’re still trying to figure out what to do about that, and in the meantime we are still in the dark. We’re hoping to go buy new towel racks and stuff like that over the next few days and hopefully we’ll get the bathrooms put back together. The kitchen is easier; it’s mostly back to normal but I’m trying to figure out what I want to hang back up on the walls and what I want to change. I’d like to put some sort of shelving on the wall in the dining area, but I'm not sure exactly what yet. Anyway, I’m glad to have the painting done and I do think everything looks better (although it’s hard to tell in the bathrooms!) The new paint color in the kitchen definitely looks better with the counter tops than the blue paint did. Here's the color before:

Here it is after:

(Please ignore how messy the kitchen is...I am planning to work on that!)

The paint in the two bathrooms is the same color but it doesn't look like it because the lighting is different. Here's a "before" photo of the master bath, where you can see the white stuff where the wall was repaired nearly 4 years ago:

Here it is after, with no more white splotches in the corners:

The other bathroom used to have white splotches in the corners too, but now it's all one color:

On Saturday, even though Frank and Seth both weren’t feeling really great, we went to Jared’s play. (We bought the tickets weeks ago and we didn’t want them to go to waste.) We did enjoy it a lot. It was hilarious and very well done. I thought some of the dancing was a bit too suggestive but overall it was really good and I liked the small size of the theater…made you feel like you were really a part of the show. The cast was very enthusiastic and obviously having a great time. Jared did a good job on his parts. (He only had one line…but he was on stage in various roles for many scenes.) Saturday was a busy day because I spent the morning helping with Scouting for Food. The cub scouts were in charge of distributing all the bags. Fortunately, we had a lot of families show up to help with that and it actually got done quicker than I anticipated. I didn’t actually help put the bags out…I had to stay at the church to hand out routes to people when they arrived and to give them donuts and cider when they finished their routes. So I had a pretty easy job. Seth didn't come because he wasn't feeling up to it.

Jared had play performances on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and he has performances again tonight, tomorrow and Sunday. Then the play will be done. He hasn’t been quite as busy this week because they didn’t have any rehearsals. But he did go down to Brunswick twice…on Monday for an award ceremony for Jessie and on Wednesday to watch a movie with Jessie. He tried to talk me into letting him go down there yesterday too but I wouldn’t budge on that one…I don’t want him to spend too much time with her and let’s face it…that’s a lot of gas money! On Tuesday the youth had a temple baptism trip and he was able to do that. I’m trying to get him going on his Eagle project again, and he is making progress on his BYU application also.

Seth had a class after school on Wednesday called “Snapology”. They are learning about engineering by building things with Legos. He seemed to really enjoy it. I’m glad he didn’t get sick until later that night, or he would have missed it! I finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia with Seth on Saturday. On Sunday, one of the speakers in church mentioned the Chronicles of Narnia during her talk. Seth looked up at me with a delighted look on his face and gave me a fist bump! This week we started reading the Harry Potter series, so that is going to keep us busy for a long time. 

I had a busy week keeping up with everyone else. I did quite a bit of cleaning in the kitchen, too…cleaning walls so they could be painted and I also cleaned the refrigerator and stove. I did a few things for Cub scouts, have kept up with my exercising (except I skipped it yesterday since I didn’t feel very well), and helped Frank decide what benefits we are signing up for next year (health insurance and so forth). I’ve also been reading a book called Brothers Forever which is the true story of two friends in the military who were both killed in action, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. It’s sad and has made me cry but it’s good too and kind of an appropriate book to be reading for Veteran’s Day.

Wednesday evening was the monthly RS meeting and I went to that. They had a dinner and we talked about being grateful. It was really nice. It was especially nice to just show up instead of having to help plan the whole thing! Frank helped cook the food and they did a great job. That’s the first time Frank has done something like that since his car accident. His back seems to be doing a bit better this last week.

Oh! We had transfers last week and our ward got a set of sister missionaries again. We get to keep the Elders too so that’s pretty great. The sisters have an investigating family nearby so they stopped by this week to get acquainted with me. I really enjoyed talking with them. One of them just came out on her mission the end of July and the other one is straight from the MTC! I’m really glad I didn’t have to train when I was that new…I would have fainted! Anyway, they are awesome. They found out I served a mission and they asked me for advice and it was hilarious because they both sat up and leaned forward like they just couldn’t wait to hear what I had to say! Hopefully I said a few things that will help them along their way.

That's about it for our week. I am looking forward to "seeing" most of you tomorrow!

Weekly Review November 6 '15

Well, now Halloween is over and I am seeing Christmas stuff everywhere. (Forget about Thanksgiving, I guess.) I can’t believe it is that time of year again already. Especially since we’ve had beautiful weather all week…it’s been in the 70’s most days. Absolutely gorgeous!! I’m sure it won’t last, but I am enjoying it. I'm not sure about Frank…he just wants snow!

This is the time of year that I keep grabbing the camera to try to somehow capture the beauty I see all around me. It's hopeless...the photos never look as good as the reality. But I keep trying! Here are a few of this week's pictures, starting with what I see out my front windows when I am sitting on the couch and look up:

These were taken from our back deck one morning:

And here is a tree across the street one bright sunny afternoon:

Here's another random picture I took last week:

This bucket of building blocks is probably the best toy investment we have ever made. They cost about $20, and Seth plays with them CONSTANTLY!! I suddenly realized that I have no pictures of him playing with them,, even though he has been playing with them so often for probably the last 5 years. They are an important part of his childhood that I was forgetting to document.

Here's another random photo I took this week:

It's not the best picture because I only had my phone, but maybe you can see that it's a house surrounded by beautiful trees in the middle of a field. Wouldn't that be a nice place to live? It makes me feel more peaceful just looking at it! I drive by this house pretty often.  

So…it’s been kind of a crazy week here. Jared’s play starts tonight so he has had rehearsals every night this week until late (ie 10:30 is the earliest he got home). I am so glad that he can drive himself! Last night was the worst…he didn’t get home until after 12:30. Plus, he armed the security system and then forgot it was on and opened a door so the alarm went off. (It’s very loud.) I didn’t go back to sleep for over an hour after that so it wasn’t a very good night. I have to hand it to him, though, he made it to Seminary every day this week except today in spite of all those late nights.

I said Jared is driving himself but actually he’s only allowed to drive to places like rehearsals and work right now. Last Friday we let him drive to Jessie's house to watch a movie with her. He was supposed to leave there no later than 5:30 so he would be home before dark, but by 6:40 he still wasn’t home and when we called to try to find him, he was still at her house! So he lost the privilege to drive to places for fun for a while. Not the wisest thing to do the first time your parents let you take the car. That was a week ago, though, so we’ll probably give him another chance soon.

Seth has been sick all week. He actually started feeling sick on Saturday and announced at dinner time that he didn’t want to eat and that he didn’t want to go trick or treating. You know a kid must really be sick if he doesn’t go trick or treating! He didn’t seem to be too sick that night, though. On Sunday morning I was telling Frank that I dreamed Seth had thrown up in the night. Seth was lying on our bedroom floor and heard me, and he said “Well actually, I did throw up once in the night. I just leaned over the side of the bed and threw up on the floor.” What?!!! I checked his room, and sure enough there was a spot on the floor. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad and I was able to get it cleaned up. But I told him next time to please let me know right away, even if he has to wake me up! Funny kid! So anyway, we kept him home from church on Sunday. He drank soda and ate crackers and seemed to be fine but Monday morning he said his stomach hurt so I kept him home from school just to be sure. Again, he never threw up but he didn’t eat much either. He did have some dinner that night so I sent him to school on Tuesday. He seemed fine all day but Wednesday morning he woke up feeling sick and started throwing up shortly after that. He was truly sick that day…couldn’t keep even sips of soda down and didn’t even want to watch television most of the day. He just lay on the couch and slept a lot. He was the same for a lot of the day yesterday, but in the afternoon he was finally able to keep some soda down (the one tablespoon every 10 minutes for 2 hours routine really works...every time!) and had a little bit of soup too and he perked up a bit. Of course, I kept him home today too and he hasn’t thrown up anymore but he still isn’t eating much. He seems to be finally on the mend, at least. I took this picture of him last night--he's slept on our floor the last two nights so we he could be near us if he needed anything:

His face actually looks thinner to me! And no wonder...he really hasn't eaten much for a whole week! I'm glad he is starting to feel better. He has eaten a little bit today finally.

Meanwhile, the house has been kind of a wreck because we’ve had our neighbor in doing some painting. He's a professional painter and we asked him a few months ago if we could hire him to paint the kitchen and two upstairs bathrooms. He said he could, but wouldn’t be able to start until sometime in October. Then late last week he stopped by and said he could start this week. So on Saturday Frank and Jared (mostly Jared) pulled down the wallpaper borders in the kitchen and in the master bathroom and our neighbor came over and patched up all the holes and such. (They took down all the things on the walls, including towel racks and so on, too.) Frank and I also went to the store to pick out paint colors. We settled on a light tan for the bathrooms. We will probably do a tan in the kitchen too, but not the same shade, and we are still deciding for sure. Our neighbor started painting on Monday. It’s been kind of a pain because we also decided to replace the light fixtures in the bathrooms so we had to take them down and that means…no lights in the bathrooms! We’ve had to put lamps on the counters in there in the mornings so we can see to shower. Our neighbor painted on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and he got both bathrooms done except for some of the baseboards, which he will do next week. The bathrooms are still rather dismantled because Frank hasn’t had time or been feeling well enough to put the lights back up and we need to go buy new towel racks too. (I am not complaining, though, I AM really glad and grateful to have the bathrooms painted!) Frank seems to have some form of Seth’s illness (although he hasn’t thrown up yet so hopefully it won’t be as severe a case). I’ve actually been feeling a little “off” myself but I’m not feeling as bad as Frank is. Both of us have headaches in addition to our stomachs not feeling the best.

By the way, we did have a pretty decent amount of trick or treaters come by on Saturday…probably more than we’ve had in the last few years, although still not a lot. I bought less candy than usual and we still had leftovers. (Even after I put a bunch of our candy in Seth’s pumpkin since he didn’t feel well enough to go out and get some. He hasn’t eaten any of it yet, either. That just goes to show how sick he’s been!)

Besides all of that, I also had book chat this week, had a Cub Committee meeting, substituted Seth’s primary class on Sunday and for his den meeting on Wednesday, got my hair cut, got things ready for Pack Meeting (it’s tomorrow…we’re distributing the bags for Scouting for Food), went visiting teaching, got a package for Tanner ready and sent it, took Jared to the dentist (he had two fillings done), exercised every day (except Sunday), got the Expedition in to get the brake pads replaced, and worked on another project. I think that is quite enough for one week, don’t you?

Seth and I have continued to read the Chronicles of Narnia and we are now reading The Last Battle and only have 3 chapters left so we'll be done with that soon. I think I am going to read him several of my childhood favorites / Newberry winning books before we tackle another series. It's been a lot of fun to read with him. He could read these books himself, but I enjoy doing it together. Besides, it's been good for him to be exposed to new books and to realize that there is something out there to read besides "Diary of a Wimpy Kid"! (Nothing against those books...they are pretty good too, but he tends to read them over and over and not try new things.)

That's all from us until next week!