Weekly Review November 25 '16

This week was pretty quiet; I’m not sure I will have a lot to write about. I will try to think of something though!!

We didn’t go back to IKEA on Saturday. We decided that everything else could wait a bit—no rush. The chairs were really the thing we needed the most. They totally don’t match our table, but that’s not a big deal. We’ll get the new table in the next month or so, I think. Frank put one of the chairs together on Friday and I did another one on Saturday. I put together the other four on Monday. They were fairly simple to do, but my arms were sore afterwards! It is really nice to have 6 matching chairs, with backs! Saturday was a funny day because it started out warm and sunny (as it has been the last few weeks) but half way through the day a storm rolled in with some rain and a lot of wind, and it got a lot cooler. It’s been cooler since then, even cold at times, but still not too bad. I can’t complain! We spent the afternoon watching the BYU game (we were able to watch it online through BYU TV). On Saturday evening, Frank and I went out to dinner. When we were driving to the restaurant, we noticed large areas where the power was out (because of the wind we had earlier) but luckily they did have power at the restaurant that we had chosen to go to. It was nice to go out alone together—we hadn’t done that in quite a while.

Frank’s knee was hurting a lot on Saturday evening / all day Sunday because he accidentally knelt on it Saturday afternoon. He didn’t sleep well Saturday night and he also felt like he was coming down with a cold so he didn’t stay for all of church, but he did go to Sacrament Meeting. He had a meeting that afternoon with the bishopric (to talk about / work on home teaching assignments) and he did go to that. I had choir practice after he got back, so the day seemed to go by fast.

On Monday, besides putting together chairs and all the other Monday chores, I put away my sewing table and some other things to make room in the upstairs bedroom because we are having some guests coming tonight. I also started a project for Christmas (so I’m not giving any details on that!) On Tuesday I spent a lot of time planning for Cub Scouts and I also finished the project for Christmas. Frank had PT that morning for his neck and back—it’s helping a bit. Tuesday was Seth’s last day of school this week.

On Wednesday I took Snickers to the groomer so he looks super cute now. I went to Wal-Mart and to the grocery store since I wanted to avoid all stores for the rest of the week. Frank and I made pies and sweet potatoes to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner. I went to the library to pick up the next book for book chat and we went to the storage unit to get out the pack and play since our guests have a young baby. I also cleaned out my desk, which had gotten pretty messy. Besides all that, we also drove to Fort Meade (about an hour away) to pick up Sam. So that was  a very busy day!

We had Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday afternoon with some friends in our ward. Even though we didn’t have to cook the whole meal, I still feel like we spent a lot of time Thursday morning finishing up our contributions to the meal. I made the topping for the sweet potatoes and we baked them. I also carmelized some pecans to put on top of the pumpkin spice pie I made the day before. Frank made banana pudding (the kind with vanilla wafers and bananas and whipped cream layered with the pudding). I also did the laundry and vacuumed the whole house that morning, so we certainly weren’t relaxing! We had a delicious dinner, though, and I think everyone had a fun time. This family had also invited over three other families in our ward, so there was quite a crowd. The tables looked amazing and all the food was really good. Although I admit I don’t like the topping for the sweet potatoes when it’s made with gluten free flour! We used gluten free so that a couple of the guests who have gluten allergies could eat the sweet potatoes. I didn’t think it would make much difference, but it did taste different and I didn’t like it. Oh well! Besides the things I mentioned, we also made a chocolate cream pie, a pecan pie, and a ham. After eating, we played a few games and then headed home because Snickers needed to be fed.

This morning I visited with my friend Wanda for a bit and then got the budget caught up. I got to talk with Amy for a couple of hours—we haven’t had a chance to talk to each other since I was in Utah in September, so it was nice to talk to her finally. Our guests will be arriving any time now. My friend Marci's daughter and her family are coming to stay for a few nights. Marci and her family lived in our ward several years ago. Her daughter (Breanna) was a beehive when I was the beehive advisor. She is married and has a 3 month old baby boy now. They live in Maine, but are in Maryland for Thanksgiving and needed a place to stay for a few nights. So we will have a houseful the next few days, but the more the merrier, right?

That is about all that we have been doing this week. Since it's Thanksgiving, I want to say that I feel like I have a lot to be thankful for. I have everything I need temporally, PLUS I also have the blessings of the gospel in my life every day. I have good health and I have a wonderful, righteous family. I feel very, very blessed!

Sorry no pictures this week. I didn't even think to take pictures on Thanksgiving!!  

Now on to the Christmas season!!! It's a busy time, but it's wonderful too. 

Weekly Review November 18 '16

This week has gone pretty well. Frank has improved quite a bit, and he’s starting to be able to do more things without as much pain, so that is nice. On Saturday, my Cub Scouts did a little service project to help the Primary leaders. The following day was the Primary program, and the Cubs helped the leaders prepare a treat to give to all the kids in Sharing Time after the program. They built “walls” out of rice crispy treats. (They were supposed to represent the wall Samuel the Lamanite stood on.) It was a fun and easy project, but nice that they could help the Primary a little bit too.

 I spent a lot of time on Saturday doing Cub Scout stuff. Our ward (pack) just started using an online program to track the Cub Scouts’ and Scouts’ progress so I put in the information for all my Cubs on Saturday. It took a long time since I was putting in all the information for all of the Bears at once, but it will be much simpler to track their progress from here on out. I can go in each week and record what they did after each den meeting, and the parents can also go in and record things that the boys do at home. It’s a pretty nifty little program.

Besides that, on Saturday I tried to watch the BYU game but it wasn’t on a channel that we get and I couldn’t get the online live stream thing to work, so that was a bummer. Unfortunately, the game tomorrow is on the same channel, but maybe I’ll have better luck with the live streaming thing this time. Sam was here on Saturday, and he wanted to go to a movie so I dropped him off at the theater, and Frank picked him up. A guy in our ward helped Dad out a lot by changing the brake pads and rotors on his car. Frank got the wrong parts to start out with, though, so he kept busy running back and forth to this guy's house and the parts store.

As I mentioned, Sunday was the Primary Sacrament Meeting program, which is always one of the best meetings we have all year. This year’s program did not disappoint. Frank was able to stay for all the meetings, too! After church, my visiting teachers came to see me and Frank had a presidency meeting. Then I went to choir practice. After dinner, Frank and I took Sam back to Fort Meade. He will be back again for Thanksgiving.

Monday was busy because I was getting things ready for den meeting the next day, shopping for Tanner's birthday, and Seth and I had dentist appointments, besides all the usual things. For den meeting on Tuesday, we did a bunch of little science experiments. It was pretty fun, and we got a lot done. Frank had a PPI with a member of the stake presidency while we were at den meeting. He says that went well. On Wednesday I did some service in the morning—about four of us went to help a lady with some house cleaning. She had knee replacement surgery so it’s hard for her to do all the cleaning herself. I got Tanner's birthday package mailed that day too, and we had the Elders over for dinner that evening.

Frank and I have been trying to figure out what to do about a kitchen table and chairs, so on Thursday we decided to go to IKEA and check out what they have there. We had already looked online and found some things we liked but we wanted to get a closer look at them before deciding. We actually decided to get a different table than we originally planned and we also decided that as long as we are at it, we want to get a bed (headboard / footboard) for us as well. (We got a King size mattress about 4 years ago and since then we've had our mattress on a metal bed frame. That's actually fine except that the frame is lower than most beds so the underbed storage containers we had under our bed don't fit under the frame. So all that underbed storage has been sitting on our floor for all these years, which I don't like.) Anyway, there wasn’t enough room in our car to bring all that home, so we just got the chairs (so at least we have 6 chairs with backs now, although they still need to be put together) and we were planning to order everything else online. But after looking at things closer online after we got home, we have some questions about what bed to get for sure, so we may possibly go back to IKEA tomorrow. We haven’t figured it all out yet. The IKEA furniture isn't exactly what we wanted and it is certainly not as high quality as the dining set we originally ordered, but it is also much less expensive, so I'm happy. It probably won't last as long but it also isn't a huge investment and I won't be as upset when the inevitable scratches and dents come along.

By the way, there is a great view of the temple from the Capitol Beltway on the drive back from IKEA. I tried to get some pictures, but I only had my phone so they aren't too great:

The trip to IKEA took a good part of the day, since it is about an hour away. It was hard on Frank walking all through the store (there weren’t any carts for him to ride on) but he survived. When we got home, I hurried to get vacuuming done and then went to the grocery store before picking up Seth from school. I had book chat that evening, which I always enjoy.

Today I’ve been getting all the finances caught up, which has taken most of the day. We are had the Sister missionaries over for dinner tonight.

Frank had physical therapy on Monday and Wednesday, and he is done with that for his knee (he will start on PT for his neck and back next week). He also had his follow up appointment with the surgeon today. The surgeon said he can go back to work when he feels ready to do it. The physical therapist warned him not to rush it too much, though. He won’t go back next week, but he may go back the week after that. We’ll see how well he does this coming week. It is encouraging that he is doing so much better. He really seemed to “turn a corner” this last week. I don’t want him to rush back to work too soon, though. Last time he really went back to work too soon and it was very hard on him.

This post is short and boring, but that is about all that is going on around here!

Weekly Review November 11 '16

Well, this week has been pretty eventful. For starters, the school week was ridiculous. Monday was a normal school day but there was no school on Tuesday since they use the schools as polling places. Then the rest of the week was parent / teacher conferences, so Seth had school 4 hours late on both Wednesday and Thursday, and he got out 3 ½ hours early today.

Last Friday, other than the usual stuff I do, I took the sister missionaries to an appointment. We got there and the person they were supposed to be teaching wasn’t there, but then they discovered that she had left them a message that she needed to reschedule, so at least she hadn’t completely ditched them. We tried checking on a few other people, but no one was home. We wanted to give the Sisters a desk so after that we went back to our house to pick up the desk and take it to their house. Then I couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to go together, so Frank came over and helped us figure that out.  On Saturday we had Pack Meeting—we distributed the bags for Scouting for Food. Seth and I worked together to get the bags put on all the doors for several streets. We worked hard for 3 hours and Seth did a good job and only complained a little bit when he started to get tired, so I was proud of him. We had the Elders over for dinner and watched most of the BYU football game (we had to turn it off while the Elders were there.)

On Sunday Frank made it to Ward Council again but had to leave after the sacrament again. Hopefully he will be able to go to all of church again someday! I’m sure he will, but it is going to take time. The rest of Sunday was very restful, which was nice.

On Monday I met with the new Wolf den leader to answer questions and give her information on how we are doing things in the cub program. I also had a doctor appointment (just an annual check up). Since Seth was out of school on Tuesday, he was invited to play at the carpool boys’ house for the afternoon. Frank and I voted. Then we avoided the television / social media for the rest of the day and went to bed at the usual time. I just couldn’t face all the election stuff! Frank often wakes up in the night and that night was no exception, so he just happened to be up and online around 3:00 am when it became apparent that Trump was going to win. I woke up shortly after that, as I sometimes do when Frank is awake. Frank said “Trump won” and I was so surprised that I couldn’t go back to sleep for over an hour. I certainly did NOT expect that! Since then, I have heard constant laments about the state of our country but to my surprise, I have been feeling remarkably cheerful. Not really because Trump won…more because Hillary Clinton lost!! Sorry, but I just really, really, really didn’t want her to be president. I don’t like Trump either. But since we’ve got him, I’m interested to see what he will do, and I’m hopeful he’ll change a few things that I don’t like. Also, overall I have to say that in my lifetime elections have come and gone and no matter who wins, whether I like them or not, whether I agree with their politics or not, the quality of my everyday life is really not impacted much by who is in the White House. I feel very, very blessed to live in a country where I have the freedom to worship how I choose and where we are incredibly prosperous compared to most people in this world. I have a roof over my head, plenty of food to eat, clothes to wear, numerous comforts (such as running hot water, air conditioning, and central heat), good health, the opportunity to get whatever education I want and to become whatever I want to be. How can I complain when I have all of that? Yes, this country has problems—big ones. But we are still incredibly blessed. There isn’t much room in my heart for anything but gratitude.

Okay, off my soapbox! J Wednesday was also busy. I had another annual check up procedure (totally routine) and in the afternoon I went to a little birthday gathering for a friend in the ward. We just talked and had yummy food. I had a parent teacher conference for Seth after school. He is actually doing pretty well. He is focusing a lot better than he did last year (there is room for improvement still, but he’s making progress). He tested above average in both reading and math when they tested him at the beginning of the year. He’s also been calmer and getting along well with others most of the time AND his teacher said she wishes all of her students had such a neat and well organized binder! She showed it to me, and she’s right—it’s pristine! He does like things to be “just so”, although you’d never guess that when you look at his room.

After going to the conference, I came home and made dinner and then went to visit  my friend Wanda for a bit. She had called me earlier in the day, crying, but I couldn’t go see her right then. It’s really unusual for Wanda to be down like that, but she’s been struggling a bit lately. She was feeling better by the evening but she still enjoyed the visit. We talked for a while and then we watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy together. They had a Jeopardy category on The Chronicles of Narnia—I got all of those answers right!!

Yesterday I got my hair done in the afternoon and that evening we had a dinner and activity for Relief Society. One sister did a presentation about the joy of laughter; Frank helped her with the technical aspects of her presentation. He tried to show me how to do it, but I didn’t have enough time to learn it well enough to feel confident that I could do it, so Frank came over to the church to help with that part. We had a nice dinner and played a game to get everyone to laugh. It was a fun evening.

Sam also got here last night—a member of our ward works near Fort Meade so he picked him up and brought him (a different member than last time). Sam has today off since it is Veteran’s Day, so he came to spend the weekend here. However, he didn’t finish work as early as he anticipated on Thursday so he had to grab all of his stuff really quick and when he got here he realized he left a pile of stuff that he meant to grab, including his toothbrush and his Sunday clothes. The toothbrush I was able to help him with, but not the Sunday clothes so this morning I drove him back to Fort Meade to get his stuff. We went from there to the temple. The temple was totally packed today—besides being a federal holiday so a lot of people were off work, there were three stakes there for their temple day. I couldn’t even find an empty parking space, but had to park on the curb on one side, at the very back of the parking lot. In our session, they had to bring in chairs and put them along the wall so there would be enough seats for everyone. Crazy!! But it was great to see so much temple work getting done for so many people, and I was happy to finally make it to the temple again, after trying to get there unsuccessfully last week. We didn’t get back home until close to 4:00 and so it was almost time to start making dinner. Frank picked Seth up from school while we were gone. I am tired now, but it was a good day.

Frank had PT today and on Wednesday. He is supposed to start walking without his crutches as much as possible now, although today they worked his knee pretty hard so they told him to use the crutches again for a few days. He is hoping to go back to work in a few weeks, but we will see how he is doing. I don’t want him to rush into it. He is tired of not working, though.

I finished reading The Bronze Bow to Seth. It is was one of my very favorite books as a child, and I still love it. It was satisfying I to see that Seth really liked it, too. Now we are going to start From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. basil E. Frankweiler. I finished reading The Graveyard Book, but I haven't started another book yet.

It is still warmer than average here although it is cooler today than it’s been in a while. We got a lot of rain on Wednesday but the rest of the week has been sunny. The whole world has turned gold and orange, and it is beautiful!!!

That's everything around these parts for this week.

Weekly Review November 4 '16

How did it get to be November already??! This week seems to have gone by really fast. I’ve been really busy, although I’m not sure how much of it is going to be interesting to all of you so this post may not be all that long.

Something kind of funny happened last week. When I got up on Friday, my phone had a notification saying it was Jared’s birthday, starting at 8:00 am. I thought that was odd, because I hadn’t put Jared’s birthday on my calendar. Then on Saturday, I had a new notification that said “Sam coming” at 8:00 am. Again, I hadn’t put that on my calendar. I asked Frank how that could happen, and he said I must have put something on my calendar. But I knew I hadn’t. It was actually kind of creepy, like my phone was reading my mind! Then as I was leaving to go pick up Sam, Seth asked me what Frank and I had been talking about earlier. When I explained it to him, he said “Oh, I did that! I put those things on your phone.”  Well, at least the mystery was cleared up and my phone isn’t spying on me or reading my thoughts! But why is my 9 year old messing with my phone?!! I’ve been letting him use the gospel library app on my phone when we do family scripture study and I guess he decided he could do other things on there too. Crazy kid!

On Saturday morning I drove down to Fort Meade to pick up Sam. On the way there, I saw that there was a major wreck on I-70 coming back (they were routing everyone off the freeway entirely), so after I picked up Sam I called Frank and he looked it up and figured out another route we could take home so that we wouldn’t get stuck in that. It took longer to get home than it normally would have, but a lot less time than if we had gone on I-70. After we got back home and ate some lunch, Sam and I went to Gettysburg for the rest of the day. It was a perfectly beautiful day—sunny and in the 70s—hard to believe it was the end of October! But we were really happy for the nice weather. We went to the visitor’s center first and watched the movie and went through the museum. That actually took a long time because the museum is huge. Then we spent some time at the gift shop and I bought the audio tour on CD so we could listen to that while we drove around the battlefield. By the time we started the audio tour it was getting late and the “fast” version of the tour was 2 hours, so we didn’t do the whole thing or stop at all the stops, but we still saw a decent amount of the battlefield and we listened to the rest of the CD while we drove back to Frederick. Frank didn’t go with us because it would have been too much for his knee, and I tried to convince Seth to come with us, but he didn’t want to. But when we got back to Frederick, we met Frank and Seth at Olive Garden for dinner. Then I took Sam to Wal-Mart because he needed to get a few things. We were all ready for bed after that!

Frank got up Sunday morning and went to Ward Council and then he stayed for part of Sacrament Meeting, but after that he had to go home and put up his knee and put ice on it. We had a fairly relaxing day, resting and playing games. After dinner, Frank and I took Sam back to Fort Meade. I drove there and Frank drove home—he wanted to see how he did on a longer drive. He made it okay, but it was painful and wore him out, so it’s a good thing he’s not going back to work yet.

There was no school on Monday—a teacher work day, or something like that. I was super busy all day Monday, though—I had lots of errands to run, I visited my friend Wanda, and I made dinner for a neighbor who just had surgery (she has all 12 of her grandkids living with her!), besides all the usual things I do on Monday. We barely got through dinner before the trick or treaters started arriving. Frank sat outside in a camp chair with his leg up in another camp chair and the candy bowl in his lap, handing out candy while I walked around the court with Seth. We took Snickers with us and at one house, they ran inside and got him a dog treat! It seems like only every 5^th house hands out candy these days, but after walking around our court, he didn’t want to go any further. His pumpkin was probably about three-quarters full, but he said that was enough candy for him! I really don’t get it. :)

On Tuesday I was busy getting a lot of things ready for cub scouts. I had den meeting and cub committee meeting that evening. The good news is, they finally called a Wolf den leader and a new Cub Committee Chair, so after this week, I don’t have to try to run den meeting for two age groups by myself. With the Bears, I just started a new “adventure” called Super Science; we are doing lots of little experiments. We started out with some static electricity experiments on Tuesday.

My original plan for Wednesday was to go to the temple, but I slept terribly Tuesday night for some reason so I knew driving down there and back alone would not be a good idea. I decided to try to go Thursday instead, so I spent all day Wednesday trying to get as many things done as I could so that I would have time to go on Thursday. I worked really hard and got a lot done, including mowing the lawn. We have continued to have really nice weather (a bit cooler some days) and so the lawn is still growing, but it was also pleasant to be outside working. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner that night. Frank and I decided it would be a good idea to vote early this year, since Frank’s not up to waiting in a long line, but when we tried to go Wednesday evening there was a huge line for early voting, so we decided to wait and go on election day after all. By Wednesday evening, Frank realized that he really needed to go to one of his clients on Thursday, which is an hour and a half away, and in talking about it he admitted that it would help him a lot if I went with him (to do the driving and to help him carry things), so instead of going to the temple on Thursday I went with him to help him instead. (Hopefully I’ll make it to the temple next week.) I didn’t sleep well Wednesday night either, but I didn’t have any trouble keeping awake on the drive since Frank was there to talk to. He got the work done he needed to do and I was able to help by getting things out of the car for him and plugging in a few things so that he didn’t have to go up and down stairs any more than necessary or get down on his knees on the floor. It took all day to do that—we left right after dropping off Seth at school and we didn’t get back in time to pick him up (I had arranged for a friend to pick him up for me). Frank was worn out when we got home, but he would have been even more tired if I hadn’t gone with him. That evening I got the laundry going and after dinner I went to choir practice. We haven’t had choir since early this year, but we are going to sing for Christmas so we are starting practices for that now. We are doing an arrangement of O Come All Ye Faithful and an arrangement of Stars Were Gleaming. I like them both a lot. It is nice to be singing Christmas music…always brings in the spirit!

This morning I went back to see Wanda—she asked me to come trim her bangs for her, because they are getting too long! I also read a little bit of the Book of Mormon with her. Later today I am going with the Sister missionaries to an appointment.

Frank is still resting as much as he can and slowly improving. He had PT on Wednesday and next week he has two PT appointments. He will have 2 or 3 appointments each week for the next several weeks. 

I did some reading this week--I finished the book we are reading for book chat--Go Set a Watchman. It's a sequel to the book To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read in high school and admittedly don't remember that well. I enjoyed the sequel, although I've heard a lot of people are really upset about it. Maybe I would be bothered by it if I remembered the original book better! I do understand why it's controversial. But it was very entertaining--there were some really funny parts--and there are some interesting things to think about, especially in light of the current presidential election we are going through. Yesterday I started reading a book called The Graveyard Book, which is a Newbery Medal winner.

We still haven't decided what to do about the furniture. I haven't had much time this week to even think about it, let alone do some looking around for options. Maybe I will have more time to do that this coming week. I think Frank would prefer to re-order one more time and hope they'll finally get it right, but I am leaning more towards trying to find something else. I'm tired of waiting and I'd really like to have 6 chairs with backs. I know, I'm picky.

That's all I have to report this week.