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: