Weekly Review January 22 '16

Let’s start with the weather. Remember how last week I said maybe we’ll get some snow in February? Well, as you've probably heard, we’re getting it sooner than that, and it appears that we are going to make up for all the snow that we haven’t had so far this winter…all in one blow! Winter storm Jonas is just starting to arrive--it started snowing a little while ago. They are saying that we are going to get at least 2 feet of snow from this storm. On the weather channel, we are smack in the middle of the big pink area that stands for 24+ inches of snow. Besides that, we are also supposed to get strong winds so we are under a blizzard warning and they say that visibility will be reduced to practically zero at some point in time tonight. What that means around here is that everyone is going crazy and that everything is starting to shut down. School was already not in session today…yesterday was the last day of the term, so today is a teacher work day. So we are not using any snow days yet! I’m not incredibly hopeful that there will be school on Monday. We’ll see. It depends on how much snow we actually get and how quickly they are able to get everything plowed. I got a kick out of the sign in front of CVS (a local pharmacy) when I drove by on Wednesday night. It said “The SNOW is coming! But don’t panic! We have milk (price). We have toilet paper (price). No bread though, sorry…. We also have salt and snow shovels for your outdoor entertainment needs.” I went to Wal-Mart as usual on Wednesday, but I decided to also go to the grocery store that afternoon instead of waiting until Thursday. I thought I might get ahead of the rush, but I was sadly mistaken. Wal-Mart was pretty busy but the grocery store was ridiculous! Every lane open and five or six people waiting to check out in each lane. If everyone else had a regular grocery shopping schedule like I do, we would not have these “runs on the grocery store” before every predicted storm. I wish more people were better prepared. Anyway, there will be snow pictures next week!

The Pinewood Derby last week went pretty well. We ended up with 21 boys competing (we combined with two other wards / packs for this event) and most of them brought their families, so we had a pretty big crowd. I think everyone had fun. The boys seemed to enjoy it, and I didn’t notice any of them getting upset, even if their car didn’t do too well. Seth’s car did okay. I got the computer read outs afterwards so I could look at the times. The Wolves actually had the fastest cars, overall. Seth’s car was 7^th fastest of all the Wolves (about 10 boys) but his car was actually faster than most of the Bears’ and Webelos’ cars. If he had raced as a Bear or a Webelo, he would have got 2^nd place in both of those levels. At any rate, Seth really didn’t care that he didn’t win anything; he just enjoyed the races. I was just glad he had a completed car to race. It was a hectic day and we barely got out the door in time with a completed car. (We had to be there early to meet the guy who was setting up the track.) Seth also had a birthday party to go to that night, so I dropped Frank off at the church to help with the track, took Seth to his party, and then went back. Frank went back an hour later to pick up Seth from the party. I admit that the Derby was a bit chaotic and I wasn’t prepared for how much I needed to do all at once but the other den leaders and the cub committee chair all jumped in to help so it all went pretty smoothly. I really appreciated their help! After the Derby ended, Frank took Seth back to the birthday party where he stayed until 10:00. (It was a sleep over, but we didn’t let him stay overnight.) Jared had gone to work and then to a party for a girl in our ward who is moving, so he picked Seth up from his party on the way home from that party.

A few Pinewood Derby photos:

(Yes, it's a Tardis, folks!)

Sunday morning got a little crazy…I lost track of the time and didn’t wake up Jared until rather late, and then as I was hurriedly trying to peel potatoes to put in the crock pot for dinner, the peeler slipped and cut my finger. It wasn’t a really bad cut, but bad enough and it was bleeding a lot so I had to stop dinner preparations to get it bandaged up. We ended up being about 5 minutes late for choir practice, and Jared was conducting! Oh well! I substituted a Primary class again and I had 3 really disruptive ADHD kids in that class so it was pretty exhausting. I keep thinking that now that we have church from 9:00 am to 12:00 noon that we will be able to come home and relax the rest of the day. That hasn’t happened yet. This week there was a farewell openhouse for the family who's moving in the afternoon (I hear they got on the last flight out of here just a little while ago) and a fireside that evening. Frank had some work he had to do for a client also, so he was gone all afternoon into the evening.

This was a short school week because there was no school on Monday (Martin Luther King Jr Day) and no school today. For some reason, it still seemed long to me. On Monday Jared (with some help from Frank and I) hung up the towel racks in the bathrooms. Finally!! We have a place to hang our towels again. That’s something you don’t appreciate until you don’t have one for about 3 months. He also replaced the TP holders and the handles on the toilets, and installed a new toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom. On Saturday Frank and I had purchased and installed new light switch plates and outlet covers in the kitchen and two upstairs bathrooms. Light switch plates are another thing you don’t appreciate much until you go without them. I can flip on lights without getting my fingers caught in wires and such!

Other things I did this week: visited with a lady in our ward who's in a nursing home (she wants to come back to church now!), another visiting teaching appointment, finished the book I was reading, volunteered in Seth’s class, went to a scout committee meeting, and weekly den meeting. For den meetings, we are learning about pocket knives. This week we started doing soap carvings. I’m down to just one boy now (the other one is also in the family that moved this week) and it is kind of nice to just have one when you are doing something like pocket knives! It’s a lot easier to watch him closely and make sure he doesn’t cut himself. I think doing this with 3 or 4 (or more!) boys would be very nerve racking. When I volunteered in Seth’s class, I helped in the computer lab. His teacher wanted them to work on a couple of different things but when they got half way through the time and she asked them to switch to the second task, Seth wasn’t finished with the first one and he wanted to finish it first (a lot of the kids hadn’t finished). He completely refused to do the second task, and instead sat there for the rest of the time pouting. Frustrating!! I’m really not sure what to do about him.

A word about the book I read...remember, I was having a hard time putting it down? It was mind blowing. If you like reading, you will like this book! It's called The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson.I got it with my Kindle app for less than $4.00. Everyone I've talked to so far in my book club had the same reaction to it...didn't want to put it down.  

In between everything else, I have been prodding Jared to get going on his preparations for the Hill Cumorah Pageant. He worked a show earlier this week and last night he went to Jessie’s house. He was scheduled to work tonight and tomorrow but his work closed down so he doesn't have to go. No big surprise. Jared is really happy that he just finished his AP Literature class. I hope he got a better grade in it this term than last term. Now he will have theater for 3 of his 4 periods every day. He will continue with Calculus for his other period. He doesn’t mind Calculus nearly as much as AP Lit, which just goes to show how different he is from me!!

Frank has been busy with work and with his business. It seems like a lot of his clients have needed things done lately and he did maintenance this week too. Today he went to the church to make sure the snow blower is functioning and has enough gas, since our ward is responsible for snow removal. If it snows the way they say it is going to, there is a good chance we won't have church on Sunday.

One of Frank's clients gave him two tickets to a Capitals hockey game a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be tonight. Last week Frank made a hotel reservation for us down in DC so that we could go to the game and then spend the night down there. It was going to be a fun little overnight get away for us. On Wednesday, however, after watching the weather reports for the previous few days, we decided we'd better cancel the reservation. Snow we can handle, but blizzard conditions with almost zero visibility? Also, we didn't want to get stuck down there and leave the kids alone up here for who knows how many days. Turns out they just decided to postpone the hockey game, so maybe we will get to go at a later date.

Seth and I just finished the 4th Harry Potter book, so we are planning to get a good start on the 5th one over the next few days. We are also planning to do some school work. Earlier today, we finished the school work that he was so determined to finish at school on Wednesday and we did the second thing his teacher wanted him to do also.    

Since I started writing a few minutes ago, the snow has gone from a few flakes drifting down to fairly heavy and we've already got about 1/4 inch on the ground.Hopefully the power won't go out and we'll be warm and cozy for the next few days. That's all I've got for this week!