We have now lived in Maryland for 17 years! And guess what? I recently passed the milestone that means I have lived in Maryland longer than I lived in Utah! So I guess I am truly a Marylander now, even though I am not a native. Just thought I'd mention that for fun!
I’m going back to a daily list of what we did this week.
Saturday: Seth, Frank, and I helped pass out flyers with the
Cub Scouts for the lawn aeration fundraiser. We only had to do a small
neighborhood and most of the Cub Scout families showed up to help, so it didn’t
take very long. The weather was pretty nice on Saturday too so that made it
more pleasant. I did some Cub Scout planning later and Seth got his project for
school done, except for taping things down to the display board. Frank, Sam and
Seth went on a trip to Wal-Mart to get a few things we needed including a new
backpack for Seth. His backpack was wearing completely out—it had holes in it!
(He used it for a couple of school years.) His old backpack was a Minions
backpack. The new one is larger and much more “grown up”—plain black with
orange trim. It should last him a couple of years at least. That evening I
watched the Women’s Meeting, which was really good. A friend in my ward invited a small
group of people to watch together at her house, so that’s what I did. It was
really nice and I got some crocheting done while I watched, too.
Sunday: We had a really busy Sunday. I substituted a Primary
class, pretty last minute so I didn’t have much time to prepare the lesson but
it went well. After church one of our home teachers came to see us. This is
exciting, since we haven’t had a home teacher visit for years!!! After that we
fed dinner to the Sister missionaries. Immediately after that, Sam had to head
back home and I had to go to choir practice. Practice went great; the songs are
really starting to come together. I actually got chills all over singing one of
them, it was so great!
Monday: We got Seth’s display board for his project put
together that morning before school. Besides the usual stuff (laundry etc) I
practiced choir songs and worked on our Personal Property tax return for the
business. I got it almost done (it’s not very complicated, fortunately) but I
was up late doing that. It was a very busy day. Actually, every day this week
has been like that.
Tuesday: In addition to the regular chores (cleaning
bathrooms etc) I did some preparation for that evening’s den meeting and I
signed Tanner up for housing in Heritage Halls. (It’s a building for people age
20 and over.) Last night I went back into his account and I could see his
roommates’ names. The guy in the room with him is named Tyler. Then I noticed
in the room next door there are two boys named Bryce and Taylor. In the last
room is a guy named Steven. No one has signed up for the other bed yet. But
anyway, I realized that means there will be a Tanner, a Tyler, and a Taylor all
living in the same apartment!! Crazy!! Anyway, back to what I was doing on
Tuesday. We had den meeting that evening and the boys built their Rube Goldberg
machine and it went really well! I gave them the task to get a ball into a cup,
and they were able to figure out a way to do it. I provided them with a lot of
objects (marbles, ping pong balls, cups, Legos, a pulley, a lever, a train set,
toy cars, funnels, pipe cleaners, etc!) and they figured the whole thing out
with very little input from me. It was actually really cool to watch them
discuss things and work together to figure it out!! I could just see the wheels
turning in their brains. J They were
really excited when we got it to work. I was super proud of them!! Here's a few pictures of the process (sorry they are blurry) and a video of the finished machine in action:
Also on Tuesday, Frank had his follow up doctor appointment.
They decided they want to try something called a nerve block next, to see if
that helps with the pain. The second cortisone shot seemed to help, but the
other two didn’t do much. So no surgery yet. Hopefully the nerve blocks will
help. It will be a process too, though, so it will take some time before we
know if it’s working at all. Frank had a presidency meeting for Elders Quorum on
Tuesday evening. The rest of the week he has continued to be super busy with
stuff for his business.
Wednesday: I got Wal-Mart shopping done in the morning and
then went visiting teaching. Snickers had his appointment with the specialist
that afternoon and he had to fast for that, so I couldn’t feed him all day. How
do you explain to a dog why you can’t feed him?! He did pretty well, actually
though. Still, I wanted to avoid going in the kitchen /eating in front of him
as much as possible so I ate breakfast before I let him out of the crate that
morning and then on my way to visiting teaching I got a hamburger and some
onion rings from Burger King. After I got back from visiting teaching, it was
time to take Snickers to his appointment. It was in Gaithersburg, so about a 30
minute drive from here. The specialist did some blood work and took a urine
sample and did an xray. She also put him on 3 different medications—2
antibiotics for the liver and 1 medicine that supports liver function. After
all the test results come back and he’s been on the medications for a while we
will have a better idea of what is going on with his liver. Hopefully he will
avoid surgery on his liver but we don’t know yet. I paid the astronomical bill
and brought Snickers back home. He enjoyed the trip back more than the trip
down because I gave him several treats to keep him occupied. I had arranged for a friend in our ward who has kids at the same school to pick Seth up from school because I was afraid I wouldn’t get
back in time, and that was a good idea because I didn’t get back in time to
pick him up. They took Seth to the park with them so I went there to
pick him up. It was the nicest day we had all week, sunny and temps in the 60s.
I decided to let Seth play for a while and he was having so much fun that we
didn’t get home until nearly 7:00. Frank hadn’t come home yet because he had
volunteered to help with a youth temple trip, so he went straight from work to
the temple. We stopped on the way home from the park to get some food for
dinner and Seth chose Burger King—so yes, I ate at Burger King twice in one
day! That is not something I want to do ever again.
Thursday: Another very busy day. Besides the usual chores
(vacuuming, laundry etc) I got my hair done that afternoon. When I got back
from there, I quickly mowed the lawn before I had to go pick up Seth from
school. I wanted to get the lawn mowed because it was super long and it was
supposed to start raining that night and rain until Sunday. Then rain again
early next week! So it was Thursday or wait another week to mow. It was cloudy
and only in the 50s so I had to wait until later in the day because it took
that long for the dew to dry out. Actually, the lawn was still somewhat damp.
So it wasn’t ideal conditions for mowing, but as I said—I was kind of desperate
to get it done before the rain hit! The lawn does look much nicer though and
it’s a good thing I did it because it was already so long that the lawn mower
had trouble in a few places. After dinner I spent the evening looking at
Tanner’s registration stuff, trying to help him figure out what classes to sign
up for this fall. (Registration opens up on Wednesday.)
Today: As expected, it is raining. It has been coming down
pretty hard!! Seth has the day off school because the third quarter just ended
and it’s a teacher work day. I have no idea where this school year has
gone—only one quarter left! I spent the morning getting the budget updated and
I just finished writing to Tanner and Jared. I have a lot more things I need to get done before the day is over, so today
will be very busy too. However, I am trying to get a lot done so that tomorrow
I won’t have as much to do and I can totally focus on General Conference, which
I am totally looking forward to watching!!
That's all I can think of for this week.
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