Weekly Review February 26 '16

Let’s see if I can remember what we did this week. The things I had scheduled on my calendar for the weekend and the things we actually did were two different things! Friday night ended up being kind of crazy. Seth didn’t go to sleep until about 3:00 am! Since we were all stuck in a small hotel room with him, that means most of us didn’t sleep much before 3:00 am either. We are pretty sure the reason he wasn’t sleeping was because of his medication. He started a new one a few weeks ago, but after one week we were supposed to increase the dosage. That should have happened on Sunday the 14^th, but I forgot to give him medicine on Sunday and on Monday and Tuesday too (those were days off school, you may remember, so we weren’t in our usual routine). I didn’t want to increase the dosage after he had missed 4 days straight, so I gave him the smaller dose on Wednesday and Thursday and then the higher dose on Friday. He has had some trouble going to sleep on the lower dose (on the previous medication as well) but he was staying up until about 10:00 or 11:00. Anyway, he wasn’t running around the room or yelling or anything like that, but he was very restless, and kept getting up to go to the bathroom or to look out the window and so forth. It was a long night! The surprising thing was that he woke up around 7:30 the next morning and didn’t seem tired at all the whole day on Saturday. The rest of us were exhausted!

Saturday was the memorial service for Crystal and it went really well. Frank's parents asked him to give a talk so he talked about the plan of salvation. Before the service started, he asked me to read over his talk to see if it was okay, and I almost cried reading it because it was so good. He really didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, either. There were a lot of non members at the service and I thought he did a great job explaining our beliefs about the plan in a way that everyone could understand, and in a way that emphasized the importance of Christ in the plan. It was just awesome. I never could have done that!

I found the service very comforting. Before that, I was feeling kind of depressed about Crystal’s life, to be honest. She had some mental illness and a lot of health problems that prevented her from having a very productive life. It seemed sad to me that she had accomplished so little in her life. But for part of the service, they opened up the time to let anyone there share their memories of Crystal and several people who had the chance to get to know her so much better than I did got up and said some really nice things. Pretty much everyone who spoke mentioned her beautiful smile, and how she was always loving and accepting of others. Someone else also mentioned that she always came to church every Sunday, even when she wasn’t feeling well. It left me with the feeling that her life really did have meaning, and I am happy for her that now she is free from mental and physical ailments and she can keep progressing. I’m sure she’s a lot happier!

After the memorial service, the branch provided a meal for us, which was really nice. We got to visit with a lot of Frank’s family members. Most of his dad’s sisters were there and several of his cousins. One of his mom’s brothers came too. All of Frank’s siblings were there except Tiffany. She was trying to come, but she never showed up so I’m not sure what happened. We went back to Franks parent’s house for a while to visit also. Dawn was leaving to go back home early Sunday morning so we had to say good bye to her.

On Sunday we went to church at the Brevard Branch. There was another family of three visiting besides us, and with all of the visitors, the missionaries, and a visiting high councilman, they had almost 60 people there. Yes, not much has changed there! The good news for them is that the family of three is probably moving in. At the end of Sunday School, the man who was asked to give the closing prayer prayed for Crystal and her family and it was really sweet. I don’t know him, but I was struck by the total humility of his prayer. There are just some really good and pure hearted people down there. After church, they had a potluck dinner. I guess they do that once a month. There was a ton of good food and we enjoyed visiting with some of the branch members. We visited a bit more with Frank's parents that evening.

On Monday morning we got packed up, said final goodbyes, and hit the road for home. It was another uneventful trip, which isn’t a bad thing! We made pretty good time and got home around dinner time. Frank went to get some pizza for dinner while I picked up Snickers. Then we unpacked everything, I got a few batches of laundry done, and we got to bed at a decent hour, since it was back to work, seminary, and school the next morning.

Tuesday was super busy because I had all the usual chores to do, plus I was finishing up laundry, returning phone messages, paying some bills, returning books to the library, buying a few groceries, and generally trying to get caught up on everything I hadn’t done over the last 5 days. Somehow I managed to get everything done! I also called the doctor that day about Seth’s medication to see if we could do something about his sleeping issues. In the meantime, I had gone back to giving him the smaller dose after that really bad night. I had to leave a message with the doctor, though. The Sisters came over for dinner that night, and we enjoyed having them here. For their message, they asked each of us to share a favorite scripture and explain why it is a favorite (they shared theirs too). Then they challenged each of us to share that scripture with someone else this week. I thought that was a good idea.

Wednesday things were mostly back to normal. I got to talk to Amy on the phone a bit which was nice because we haven’t been able to talk for a month or more. That evening we had a severe thunderstorm but we didn’t get the worst of it…there were tornadoes south of us in Virginia and north of us in Pennsylvania. There were even some fatalities with that storm. Jared had gone to Jessie’s house, but luckily the storm cleared up before he needed to come home. He had YM and Seth and I had Cub Scouts that evening. For Cubs, we played soccer for a while in the gym and I discovered that the boots I had worn that night (I didn’t want my feet to get wet) were terrible for playing soccer. It was fun anyway, though, and I got really hot! After soccer, we did a few quiet paperwork type things and then we played marbles for the rest of the time. (Both the soccer game and the marbles game are helping pass off some requirements; we weren’t just doing that for fun.)

Yesterday, honestly, I was kind of lazy and spent a lot of time reading, playing the piano and so forth. I did get my regular chores done, but that didn’t take much time. I should have done something productive like clean the stove or work on taxes or sew or something, but I like reading more! I guess if I keep playing the piano every day I might get better at it eventually and that would be something productive, right? Anyway, Seth and I finished reading the 5^th Harry Potter book. Frank got home from work and then ended up going to a couple of clients so he was gone most of the evening. Jared was running lights and sound for the talent show at the high school so he was gone too.

Today I am trying to make up for my slothfulness yesterday by working hard. I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished a whole lot yet, though. Some days are just like that, I guess. The guys have a two hour early release today so Jared is already home. Seth is going to the carpool boys’ house after school to play so he won’t be home until dinner time. The doctor finally called back Wednesday and didn’t have any suggestions for helping Seth sleep, but said that it was okay to just give him the lower dose of the medicine. However, I don’t really feel like the lower dose has been helping him that much. When I mentioned that, they said if we wish, we can try giving him the higher dose on a Friday morning to see if that helps him. At least if he’s up all night, he doesn’t have school the next day! (And we don’t have to get up as early either.) So I did give him the higher dose again this morning, and we’ll see how things go tonight. At least tonight if he can’t sleep, he can go in his own room, close the door, turn on his light, and read or something without bothering the rest of us. Honestly, it’s a bit discouraging that it is taking so long to find something that makes a difference for him. I hope we figure something out eventually!

We have stake conference next weekend and one of the members of the seventy is coming for that. Last night, Frank got a call from the stake president letting him know that he and the member of the seventy are visiting a member of our ward and they want Frank to come too. I told him no pressure! Hahaha!

Jared found out last week that he didn’t get accepted to BYU Provo, so he will be going to BYU Idaho. We are pretty surprised that he didn’t get accepted and of course it’s a bit of a disappointment for him and for us but he has been pretty cool about it. He and I have both come to the conclusion that for some reason he needs to go to Idaho, and he is fine with that. I feel okay about it except that it is going to be a bit inconvenient having him at one school and Tanner at the other, plus I would have liked him to be closer to family. But I’m sure it will all work out. We are waiting now to see what track they will assign him to. If they put him on the winter / spring track, he will just go on his mission when he turns 18 and defer until he gets back. Once we have Jared's plans figured out, we can figure out our plans for the summer.

That is all I can think of to tell you about this week. Here are a few pictures of Frank's family taken after the memorial service, plus one of the Monacacy River behind our house--it's quite flooded right now.

Weekly Review February 19 '16

Well, here we are in North Carolina at Frank’s parents' house. It’s weird because last week at this time I had no idea I would be here this week. On Tuesday morning when Frank was on his way to work, his dad called him to tell him that his sister Crystal had passed away that morning. She was only 25, so it was a bit of a shock. All we know is that she was having trouble breathing, her husband went to get her medicine, and by the time he got back she has passed out. He called 911, but it was too late. The last time we saw Crystal was at Thanksgiving, and I do remember then thinking that she wasn't going to live a long life unless her health changed for the better. Her breathing was very labored then. They are having a service for Crystal here in Brevard tomorrow afternoon so we decided to come down for that. We had a pretty uneventful trip down here. We left yesterday morning around 8:45 am (our goal was 8:30, so we did pretty well, I think!) and we got here around 6:00. I’m glad we came…I think Frank's paretns are really glad to have us here. I think it is helping them to feel a lot better. Dawn (Frank's sister) flew in yesterday too and it has been nice to see her again. Last night we took Dawn and Frank's parents to dinner at a little restaurant here in Brevard. It was a sandwich and soup place, and it was really good and surprisingly inexpensive. We are staying at that same hotel that we always stay at—the Holiday Inn. Today Frank is helping his Dad fix his computer and helping with funeral arrangements.

Wednesday was really crazy since we decided mid morning that we were coming here. (His parents weren't sure until then if the service was going to be this weekend or next weekend.) I’ve never packed for a trip with so little time to plan before! I think we managed to get here with most of the essential things, though. At least, so far we haven’t noticed anything we left behind that is really critical! Wednesday morning I went to Wal-Mart as usual, before I knew that we were going to be leaving. I wouldn’t have purchased so much milk if I had known! Wednesday evening Jared had YM and they had an etiquette dinner. Seth and I had Cub Scouts as usual.

Speaking of Cub Scouts, when I wrote last week we were getting ready to go to the Blue & Gold Banquet. Well, it got pretty complicated because there was a bit of snow predicted for that evening and the school district cancelled all their evening activities. The Cub Master in Urbana Ward (we combine with them for Pack Meetings) asked their bishop if we had to cancel if the school cancelled activities, and he said yes. Meanwhile, our bishop said he wanted us to meet anyway. We didn’t get that message, though, until after we had called all the families and told them we were cancelling. So then we had to call everybody back and tell them never mind…we are going to have an awards ceremony and dessert (but not dinner because people from the other ward were providing a lot of the food. They were supposed to set up, too). So it got a little crazy, but in the end we had a nice gathering from our ward even though not everybody made it. The only sad thing was that Seth and Frank didn’t get a chance to decorate a cake together. They had baked it that afternoon but when we thought the banquet was going to be cancelled, they decided not to decorate it, and by the time we found out we did need to go, there was no time to decorate it. Plus, we also have a TON of hot dogs because we were going to make hot dogs for the banquet. Oh, and in the end it didn’t start snowing until after we were done, and we only got an inch or less. Oh well! Seth received several belt loops (in the new program, they do “adventures” to earn their badges and they get a beltloop for each adventure they complete) and he is almost done with his Wolf badge.

Here are a few blurry pictures from the award ceremony. (All I had was my phone, and Seth wouldn't stop moving):

On Saturday morning we got up and went to the church to help clean. It was mostly just Seth and I—Jared had to go to work after a half hour and Frank didn’t go because his back was hurting him a lot that day. I kept busy that day with lots of little things…mostly with Seth. I sewed patches on his scout shirt, helped him write a talk and worked on his Faith in God. Frank and I went to dinner that night, for our Valentine’s Day date.

Sunday was our ward conference and it was nice. Jared sang a song with a group of men in Sacrament Meeting. After church, Frank took the sacrament to a family and also gave a ward member a blessing. We had the Sisters over for dinner that evening and then I went to stake choir practice. Jared skipped it—he was invited to dinner at Jessie’s house, so he went there instead. Frank got me some beautiful red roses for Valentine’s Day (they arrived on Saturday) and I got him some chocolate. I made Valentine’s cupcakes for dessert and we sent a bunch of them home with the Sisters.

There wasn’t school on Monday (President’s Day) or the next day (teacher work day) but that’s a good thing because they probably wouldn’t have had school anyway because on Monday it snowed (about 2 or 3 inches) and Monday night / Tuesday morning we had freezing rain. Frank had Monday off, but he made it to work on Tuesday. He had a late meeting that day so he got home really late. Meanwhile, we had the Elders over for dinner for that night but that was okay since Jared was home. Frank got home in time to finish dinner with us.

Here's a picture of the snow:

On Monday night around 10:30 we got a call from a family in the ward because the mom had an infection and had to go to the ER and they needed someone to take care of their kids. Since Frank had to work the next day but I didn’t have to get anyone to school, I went over to the hospital and picked up the kids and took them back to their house. This was in the middle of the freezing rain storm and the roads were a sheet of ice, but fortunately I didn’t have any trouble. I just drove really slowly! I didn’t end up being there all that long. By the time I got the kids home and settled, I was only there for a little while before their dad made it home. It was still after midnight before I made it to bed, though. The mom is home and doing okay, thankfully.

I already talked about Wednesday…the only other thing worth mentioning is it was great to get on Google hangout so we could watch Maddie open her mission call that evening. We couldn’t hear what she said when she read it out loud, but that’s okay—it was still fun to see everybody! J We are excited that she is going to Philadelphia. We are hoping to go to the open house for the Philadelphia Temple this summer (in August) so maybe we will see her! She also may run into some people we know since her mission covers the whole state of Delaware.

That is pretty much our week…the only other thing I’ve been doing--in between everything else—is working on our tax return. I would probably be mostly done by now if we hadn’t made this trip but that’s okay…next week will work as well as this week.

I've been a little distracted while writing this week's post since I've been in a room full of people having various conversations, but hopefully it makes sense! I'll finish with a picture I took last night when we were at dinner. I thought it was really cute that Frank's mom and Seth were having their own little conversation down at their end of the table:

Weekly Review February 12 '16

This week wasn’t terribly exciting, but it was busier than last week. Jared was gone most of the day on Saturday—he went to Jessie’s swim meet and then he went to work. Frank was gone for quite a few hours doing work for a client, so Seth and I were home alone for a lot of the day. We did some work on Cub Scouts, Faith in God, and school work. Later when Frank got home I ran some errands, including picking up Seth’s prescription. I’m not sure if the new medicine is working any better than the first, but it’s a bit early to tell.

On Sunday Jared and I went to a stake choir practice in the evening for a couple of hours. They have actually put our ward choir “on break” until at least this fall and they released the choir director and Jared (he's the assistant choir director). So if we want to sing in a choir at all, the stake choir is our only option right now. The stake choir is going to sing for stake conference and also put on an Easter music fireside. We are learning several songs. I think I’m really going to enjoy it! I’m sad about no ward choir for so long, though. I will miss it.

I volunteered at Seth’s school Monday morning—I worked in the school library. I got trained how to work in the library right after winter break, but the first shift I signed up to fill ended up being on a snow day, so this was the first shift I actually worked. I was a little concerned that I may have forgotten everything by then, but it went fine. The library wasn’t very busy that morning—I only had 9 kids come in during the two and a half hours that I was there. (Eight of them were boys—I swear I’m a boy magnet or something!) I didn’t mind that it was slow because I could just sit and read while I waited for kids to show up. I did a bit of straightening up in the shelves too. Also on Monday I worked some more on the slide show for the Blue & Gold Banquet, and I bought a package of arrows and some feathers and beads to decorate the arrows—these are to give to the boys who earn the Arrow of Light award (one boy is getting that tonight). This week has actually been pretty busy with Cub Scout stuff; mostly preparations for the Blue & Gold Banquet, which is tonight. Jared has helped me quite a bit with the slide show and it is ready to go. There has also been a lot of communicating back and forth with the other Cub Scout leaders as well, so Cub Scout stuff has taken up most of my free time this week. We had a Cub committee meeting on Wednesday evening too.

It snowed on Tuesday and school was cancelled again. We only got about 3 inches and personally I think we could have had school but that's how it goes in these parts! Originally, they predicted that the snow would start coming down Monday night and that we would get up to six inches, but it actually didn’t start snowing until sometime after 4:00 am. When Jared got up for Seminary they hadn’t announced a delay or a closing, so he took a shower. Then when he got out, they had decided to do a 2 hour delay so he went back to bed. A few hours later they changed it to schools closed. On Wednesday I guess the roads were icy because they had a 2 hour delay that day. We are supposed to get a little snow tonight and some more on Monday. Thankfully, Monday is a day off anyway (President’s Day) and Tuesday is also a scheduled day off so hopefully we won’t have any more snow days from that storm. In the meantime, it is SUPER cold here. The last few days have been miserable, with highs in the 30s or 20s with windy conditions as well. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be 17 or something like that. Yuck!! I noticed the other day that the high for Phoenix was 86. I’m really jealous of Tanner.

Our mini snow storm:

I planned to go to the temple on Wednesday. When they had a two hour delay, that messed up my plans a bit but I decided I still had time after dropping Seth off at school to go down and do some initiatories, so that’s what I did and I am really glad I went. We were supposed to feed the Elders that night but one of them was really sick with the stomach flu so instead we sent over some food for the well Elder and a bottle of ginger ale for the sick Elder. Jared dropped it off for them on his way to the church; the youth had a temple baptism trip that night. I didn’t have den meetings since we have the Blue & Gold Banquet this week, but as I mentioned before, I did have a committee meeting.

Yesterday was busy because I had book chat in the afternoon (it got moved to Thursday from Tuesday since school was closed on Tuesday) and there was an RS meeting that evening. At book chat we had our annual fondue lunch (we do that every February). One of the women makes cheese and chocolate fondue and the rest of us bring things to dip in it. We had carrots, broccoli, bread, and kielbasa to dip in the cheese and apples, strawberries, pineapple, angel cake, and pretzels to dip in the chocolate. So yummy!! For the RS meeting, we tied a bunch of lap quilts. It was fun because we could talk while we were working. I don’t have to stay to clean anymore, but I ended up helping with clean up anyway! Then I also talked a bit with the RS president about some of the sisters I visit teach so I got home about as late as I used to do when I was the RS president.

Today Frank had organized an Elder’s Quorum luncheon so I went to that with him. We had a nice group of people show up and it was fun. Now he and Seth are making a cake for the Blue & Gold Banquet.

I am still congested but otherwise feeling well. I don’t know why the congestion won’t clear up. It’s annoying! But I’m glad that at least I feel well other than that. Yesterday I was worried I might be developing a sinus infection but today I feel better.

I read the book Johnny Tremain (a Newbery medal winner) this week and now I am reading another Newbery medal winner called The One and Only Ivan. My book group is reading the book I just finished last week--The Invention of Wings--so I have a month to read other books that I've been wanting to read. The Invention of Wings gave me a lot to think about. The girl in this book wants to be a lawyer and learn all the things her brothers are learning but she is living in the early 1800s when girls weren't allowed to do these things. It makes me appreciate that I live in the time I do, when I have had so many opportunities. Even though I actually always wanted to be a mother more than anything else, this book left me wondering--if I had been denied the opportunity to get an education, would I have resented that? Or would I have been content to fill the role I was expected to fill? As I said, I've always wanted to be a mother, so I'm sure I would have wanted to do that. But I love learning things, too. I feel grateful that I was able to get a good education and I'm also grateful that if I wanted to work I could do almost any kind of work. Girls in other generations were not so fortunate!

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

Weekly Review February 5 '16

This week was pretty calm here and I’m not sure I will be able to think of much to write, but I will try not to bore you too much. I said in my last post that I wasn’t feeling very well but it could be worse, and I was right because on Saturday it got a lot worse! I started getting a lot more congested and by evening I was also having chills and basically feeling thoroughly miserable. I had a headache and I was dizzy too, besides the sore throat and cough I already had. I mostly stayed in bed on Saturday but I had to go out a few times. That’s because when Jared went out to go to work that morning, he couldn’t get my car to start. What?!! Frank jumped it and got it to start but we were having issues getting the doors to unlock and there was a light on the dashboard indicating that a door was open but none of them were (we checked several times). It’s still under warranty, thankfully, so Frank took it over to the dealer to have them look at it. They determined that the battery needed to be replaced and it needed to stay there for a few hours, so I had to go pick Frank up. Then I had to take him back later to get the car when it was done. Not a big deal, normally, but when you are feeling like you are going to collapse, driving all the way across Frederick and back twice is not very fun! The car is working just fine again, though, and it didn’t cost us anything to get the new battery so I am grateful for that.

I could tell on Saturday that I was not going to be able to make it to church the next morning and I was unhappy about that too. I never like missing church but missing it two weeks in a row is really rotten! It was probably the best thing to do, though…I got a lot of rest and by Sunday afternoon I was starting to feel a lot better. I missed singing in the choir and I had two things I wanted / needed to go to that night (a day camp planning meeting and a stake choir practice) that I also missed but I was feeling much more human by Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Jared kept busy on Saturday…he went to work and he also went to dinner and to see a movie with Jessie that evening. He directed the song for choir on Sunday too. Frank had his usual meetings on Sunday and he also went to visit a family that afternoon to take them the sacrament and to give one of the family members a blessing.

This week things finally got back to normal with the boys back in school and Frank back at work. There weren’t a lot of “extra” things going on so my days were pretty quiet with just the regular chores to do and I appreciated having the time to relax and recuperate a bit. I did have a visiting teaching appointment Monday morning. I almost rescheduled it on Sunday, but I decided to wait and see how I was doing Monday morning and by then I felt a lot better. I really didn’t want to reschedule since it was with a less active sister that I have been trying to connect with for 3 or 4 months. I did have a good visit with her, too. I got Jared’s papers for the Hill Cumorah Pageant sent off—glad to have that done. (Now we just have a lot of shopping to do.) I tried filling Seth’s prescription again but couldn’t find a place that had his medicine in stock. Since it’s a controlled substance, they won’t let us leave the prescription at the pharmacy to be filled when the medicine comes in and you can’t call and ask if it’s there either. A big pain! They did say finally that they would leave a note for us to be called when it comes in. As of today, we still hadn’t received a call but Frank was going over that way this evening so I told him to stop by and see if they had the medicine…and they did! So we will finally be able to pick it up tomorrow.

The only thing I did out of the ordinary on Tuesday was to sew a button on a pair of Frank’s pants, sew up a pocket on another pair of Frank’s pants, and do a few things to prepare for den meeting. Wednesday I started exercising again and that evening was YM / den meeting. We picked up one of the other boys for den meeting. Jared stayed after school Tuesday & Wednesday both days to help with auditions; we picked him up at the school on our way to the church. Yesterday I had a nasty headache (it finally went away today) and we had the Sisters over for dinner. The new sister is from Idaho, and she is nice.  

Since I was resting, I did a lot of reading this week. I finished one book (Contact by Carl Sagan) and read another one (The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd; very good book!). I haven’t done that much reading in a long time! I did some more indexing, too. I’m starting to work on a slide show for the Blue & Gold Banquet next week—a bunch of pictures of the Cub Scout activities over the last year. Jared is going to help me put it all together.

Jared went to one of Jessie’s swim meets on Monday and yesterday after school he went to her house for a while. Tonight he helped Frank do some cabling for one of his clients. He works tomorrow and he also wants to go to another swim meet for Jessie.  We are waiting for some supplies to come in for his Eagle project. Once they get here, he will HOPEFULLY be able to get his project finished up quickly.

Seth has been having a somewhat rough time at school, so I am really hoping that the new medicine helps him. He just isn’t getting much done, but besides that he struggles to get along well with others. If we can find the right medicine for focusing, it might also help with his tendency to argue and get upset easily. Apparently, a lot of ADHD kids have these issues. If not, then we will look into some other options for him, such as counseling. He had some school work that we were working on last night and he got really upset over it and had a pretty good melt down. Thankfully, I managed to stay calm myself…I don’t always do that!

The weather has stayed fairly mild this last week and we also had a whole lot of rain. The river behind our house is really flooded right now. On Wednesday it was super foggy. Most of the snow in our front yard has melted and the huge drifts everywhere have gotten smaller, but there is still plenty of snow out there. Most of it is dirty snow, so the world is not very beautiful right now. Next week we are supposed to get colder temperatures again. But hey! The ground hog didn’t see his shadow on Tuesday, so we’re going to have an early spring! We can hope, anyway.

Snickers is healing very well. His wounds are barely noticeable now. J

I think I have bored you long enough! I did warn you….

That's it for this week except...Happy Birthday to Ben!