Weekly Review January 15 '16

I think I will do this week in categories.

Car Repairs: Remember that last week the anti-lock braking system on the Expedition went out, and we were trying to decide whether or not to get it fixed? Well, on Sunday when I drove to church I could tell something else was wrong. If I got above 30 mph, the car started making this really loud whining noise. Jared said “Oh yeah, it was doing that yesterday too.” Why on earth he didn’t mention that to me, I will never know! He says he just thought it was something to do with the anti-lock braking system. I was worried it had something to do with the transmission, and when Frank drove it, he agreed. So on Monday Frank worked from home in the morning and we took the car back to the shop to find out what the new problem was. It turned out it wasn’t the transmission but it was something really major and expensive to fix—the differential. The guy at the shop recommended we “shoot it and put it out of its misery”. So yes, we ended up buying a car this week. This was obviously not part of the plan and it made our week extra crazy since it was already going to be busy and car buying takes time. We did some online research on Monday and that evening we went to two car places. At the first place, they had just sold the car we were interested in driving but they had another car that had just come in that fit what we were looking for and they said we could come back the next day to test drive it. At the second place we test drove two cars but weren’t too impressed with either one…they were both kind of clunky. I felt like they were priced too high, considering the condition they were in. On Tuesday we went back to the first place to test drive the other car and it was MUCH better and we felt really good about it, so we decided to buy it. On that day we just negotiated the price and we also brought in the Expedition so they could look it over and tell us what they’d give us for a trade in. On Wednesday we worked out the financing with the credit union and the insurance coverage, cleaned out the Expedition, and then went back to sign all the paperwork. I was able to drive the car home that evening, although we still need to drop off the check from the bank today. So what car did we buy? It’s a white Hyundai Tucson. I think of Tanner and Arizona every time I get in it! It’s a very small SUV…as a matter of fact, it doesn’t really look like an SUV to me. More like a larger car. It seats 5 people, and has a nice sized trunk. It has several nice features like a double sun roof and heated front seats. I was especially happy that we found a car with heated seats, since that was one thing the Expedition had that I really hated to give up! Here's a few pictures of the new car, as well as a final farewell shot of the Expedition: 

I had Seth stand in front of the Expedition because we bought it a few months before he was born…just to show how long we had it! It was 16 years old and had over 150,000 miles on it so it served us well. I don’t like having another car payment (and our insurance went up a bit too of course) but I do like having a smaller car. The last few years I’ve been feeling like it’s such a waste for me to be driving around in that huge car all by myself most of the time!

Pinewood Derby: The Pinewood Derby is tonight. We still aren’t ready. Seth’s car is painted, but we haven’t added any of the details and the wheels still need to go on. We just didn’t get much time to work on it since we were busy worrying about real cars! He decided that he wanted to make it look like the Tardis, which means that we didn’t have to cut the block of wood at all, which helped. We bought some really thin, narrow strips of wood and cut them & glued them on to make the rectangular pattern of the Tardis, and last night it got a coat of “Tardis blue” paint (as we call it). We will have to finish it up this afternoon. We’re still not positive how to add the details to make it look right. Hopefully we’ll figure it out! I spent quite a bit of time this week preparing other things for the Pinewood Derby, like printing up award certificates and planning a few gathering activities in case it takes longer than expected for the track to get set up (last year, I’m told, the guy setting up the track got lost and was really late!). Hopefully everything will come together okay. I’ll be glad when it’s over. I hope all the boys have fun.

Cub Scouts (besides Pinewood Derby): On Saturday I spent a lot of time working out a year plan for den meetings. I wanted to have that worked out so that I would make sure that all the boys are able to fulfill all the requirements to advance, no matter what month their birthday is. I also paid attention to what things would be better to do in certain months, especially taking likely weather into account. I worked out a pretty good plan, I think. On Sunday evening I went to a meeting to help plan a Day Camp for next summer. Several of the wards in our stake are pooling resources to do a Day Camp so that parents will have a more affordable option for their boys than the District Day Camp, which costs close to $200 per boy. This camp is going to cost about $20 per boy.

Frank’s Birthday: Frank’s birthday was yesterday. We took him out to dinner on Tuesday (there wasn’t going to be time to do that yesterday) and yesterday he got to open presents after work. I made him a chocolate cream pie too (his request) but we didn’t eat any last night because we were too full. The Sister missionaries came by on Wednesday evening and gave him some candy bars and a big bottle of Coke Zero (they asked me what he likes) and a card which says “Hey Uncle!” on the front, which made us all laugh. (They call Frank “Uncle Frank”.) I think Frank really liked that. Here's a few pictures from present opening:

I love this picture...Frank has a confused look on his face because he has no idea what this is or why I got it for him. It turned out to be a nice case for his drone:

(I love how Seth popped up behind the drone case in this photo.)

Jared: He wasn’t too happy about the lack of a car for most of the week because that meant he wasn’t able to go to any of Jessie’s swim meets. (Well, not having a car for a lot of the week was kind of difficult for me, too.) He got to drive the new car to the church for YM on Wednesday evening, though. Last night he went to the school to help usher and run lights for a Martin Luther King program—he got NHS service hours for doing that. He still needs to get another half hour done by next week. Jared hasn’t worked in a while but he does work tonight and tomorrow. He was happy that I finally got around to paying he and Seth allowances…I haven’t done that since June!! He’s getting tons of emails related to Pageant. We need to get going on all the preparations for that soon. His Eagle project seems to be at a standstill until we can figure out how to finish off the edges of the signs. Everything else is done.

Book Chat: We met this week. We read & discussed a book called The Boys in the Boat, which was really good. It was about an American rowing crew who won the gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Now we are reading a book called The Bookseller, which is very intriguing and I am having a hard time putting it down. Too bad I don’t have a whole day with nothing else to do!

Church related (but not Cub Scouts): I managed to squash in one visiting teaching appointment this week. Last night we had our monthly RS meeting (we are trying something new and switched to Thursdays instead of Wednesdays for this meeting). It was nice to just show up and not have anything to get ready, or to do once I got there, and to leave when I wanted instead of staying until everything was cleaned up! The purpose of the activity was to help people get started on indexing; since I’ve already done that, I helped other people who were learning. I did get a batch of names indexed while I was there too, though. It was fun. Those of us that were there all agreed that it would be fun to have indexing parties in the future!On Sunday, Tanner's friend Elisabeth spoke in church. She goes into the MTC this Wednesday...she is going to Sweden. They had an open house for her that afternoon so we went to that too. Here is a picture of her with me:

Her dad used to sell physical therapy equipment, and he gave Frank a massager and an electric shock thing for him to use for his back. He's been trying them out this week and they seem to help him. I am substituting Primary again this week...same class. They haven't been able to call a teacher for that class yet.

Dining Table situation: Frank and I did go look at some furniture stores on Friday night, and we also did some online research. We found a couple of dining sets that we are interested in at one of the furniture stores. They are customizable, so we can pick our own finish and type of chair, etc. We want to get a table with leaves so that we can have a smaller table for the four of us but make it bigger when we have guests or when (happy day!) all of the boys are home visiting. We meant to look over the options and make a decision this week but the need to buy a car got in the way. Maybe this week we’ll get back to the dining table decision. Whatever we decide, it takes a long time to get it delivered so we won’t have a new table anytime soon.

Weather: We have had true cold winter weather this week. Yesterday and today have been fairly mild (40s), but the earlier part of the week was really frigid. Didn’t help that the wind was blowing really hard at the same time, either. We also saw the very first snowflakes of the season on Tuesday. When we were at the restaurant for Frank’s birthday dinner, the air was full of blowing snowflakes for quite a while but none of it really stuck. This weekend is going to continue to be somewhat mild, but on Monday the temperatures drop way down again and the high for that day is supposed to be 24. Still no snow predicted…we seem to keep getting our moisture during the mild periods so we get rain instead of snow. When it gets cold, it also gets dry. Poor Frank! The winter’s not over yet, though. We usually get our biggest snow storms in February so maybe we’ll get some snow then.

Seth: He doesn't seem to be getting a lot done at school, but I have been noticing that he can tell me a lot more about what he is doing at school than he used to. I get the impression from what he says that he is spending a lot more time on the work that he is doing, so even though he isn't producing more completed work, I still get the feeling that he is focusing more. It will be interesting to check in with his teacher and see what she thinks. I also noticed when we were at the restaurant this week that he was a lot less wiggly than he usually is. Usually, we are having to tell him to stop crawling under the table and things like that! So maybe this medicine is helping him more than I originally thought it was.

Misc Stuff: I went to lunch with a friend on Wednesday...she had to come pick me up since I didn't have a car at that point. Frank and the boys got haircuts this week. I need to do the same thing soon. I'm doing great with exercising...I'm pretty much in the habit of jogging for a half hour and doing situps every week day, and I walk on Saturdays. I'm not losing any weight, but I'm not gaining any either, and overall I feel better. 

That is all the categories I can think of for this week.