Here is our week. (Warning: Lots of pictures this week!!):
Friday: The first day it didn’t rain all day for a while! I
had a busy day with errands and party preparations, along with all the usual
things. Frank was working in Frederick (Marriott has a data center here and he sometimes works there) and I had errands to
run in that direction, so we met and had lunch together. Seth got out of school
2 hours early.
Saturday: Seth’s birthday party!! I spent the morning
decorating cupcakes while Frank went to get balloons. He also ran around all
morning buying things because as EQ president, he was in charge of the ward’s Mother’s
Day surprise for the women. (More about that later.) The party was fun and a
total success, I think. It was really nice having someone else in charge
because I was free to take pictures (and I took a ton of them!). Frank spent half
the party outside, waiting for late comers so he could direct them to the right
place. (The room where we were having the party was a little difficult to
find.) I have to say that I think Legos for a birthday party is a GREAT idea.
To start, they had a couple of large fabric bags full of tons of different
Legos for the kids to play with while they waited for everyone to arrive. Then
after most of the kids got there (except for the inevitable stragglers) they
got out all these bins of Legos sorted into colors and they gave them a couple
of laminated sheets with pictures of Minecraft things on them and invited each
child to make one of those things—whatever they chose to make. The kids loved
doing that! Then they gave each child a small laminated paper with a picture of
a Minecraft thing on it, and they were supposed to build that without letting
anyone else see their picture. When they were done, they each got to hold up
their creation and the other kids guessed what it was. They really loved doing
that, too. Then at the end they played a game like hot potato, only using a
Minecraft “TNT” block made out of Legos. After that, the party lady turned the
party over to us. Seth opened his presents and we served cupcakes, ice cream,
and drinks. That was it!! We gave the kids treat bags and they each got a
balloon as they were leaving. All we had to do was set up (simple), provide
refreshments, and clean up (easy & fast). The kids had a blast, but it was
very little work, for both us and the party lady. (For those of you who may be wondering what Minecraft is, it's a video game where you build things. The graphics are quite "primitive" but somehow that adds to the game, and all of my kids have loved it!! It is a very popular game with many kids. I like it because it is somewhat educational. So anyway, Seth chose to have a Minecraft theme party, but this place does lots of other themes as well.)
The back of my car was full of balloons!! Frank and Seth had to take his car to the party.
The "Legos" on the cupcakes are actually candy. They really did lock together, though, so you could still play with them.
Here's one of the treat bags and it's contents--a little bag of candy Legos, a glow stick, one of the Lego rice krispy treats we made, and a Lego mini figure.
Me setting up the party room. It only took a few minutes.
The food table, all ready to go!
The cupcake on top with the "10" candles was for Seth, of course!
What to decorate with? Legos, of course! I made this number 10 for part of the decor.
I also built Seth's name out of Legos!
One of the place settings...I decided to go with lots of bright colors for this party, since Legos come in many bright colors.
Seth is ready for the party to begin!
Cupcake close up. I wanted both chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, so we had 48 cupcakes! This obviously isn't all of them. We gave cupcakes to pretty much anyone who wanted them--parents and siblings who came to pick up party kids!
Here is Seth with the first guest to arrive!
You can see the party lady in this picture. She was great with the kids!
More kids have arrived...
And even more kids! (We had 11 kids, counting Seth. One child never made it, although he still gave Seth a present at Cub Scouts a few days later.)
After most of the kids arrived, we pushed the tables together and now they are working on their Minecraft creations.
These two boys are in our ward (and in Cub Scouts with Seth)
One of the finished creations! This little boy has been in the same class at school with Seth since they were 3! They will still be in the same class, up through 8th grade if they both stay at the school that long.
Another finished creation! This little girl has also been in the same class at school with Seth since they were 3!
This little boy has been one of Seth's best buddies since Kindergarten! They aren't in the same class this year, but they still get together for play dates.
This is one of my awesome Cub Scouts! He is the youngest of four boys, just like Seth. They have lived here less than a year, but I have gotten to be good friends with his mom.
One of Seth's creations.
One of Seth's new school friends this year.
And another new school friend! I loved seeing how proud the kids were of their creations!
Guess what I made!
Guess what this is!!
How about this?
Proof that Frank was there!
One of the girls in Seth's Primary class shows off her creations.
And another girl from Seth's Primary class. Guess what she made?
Another "guess what I made" picture. (By the way, the kids were able to guess everything correctly!)
What is this?
Guess what my creation is! This is another ward / Cub Scout friend.
Pass the TNT!!
Don't get caught with it!!
Present time!
He got three of these!!
Yummy refreshments!!
And that's the end of the party! Believe it or not, I actually left out a lot of the pictures!
Sunday: Mother’s Day. It was great because I got to relax
(Frank made me breakfast and he made dinner and he did all the dishes), plus I
got beautiful flowers and a large plastic serving spoon (I actually ASKED
for that!).
At church, the talks for Mother’s Day were really good. For the last
hour, the men took over the Primary classes so that all the women could go to
Relief Society. We had a really good lesson and then for the last 20 minutes we
got to visit and eat treats. They had brownies, ice cream, and fresh fruit for
all of us. (Frank was the one who bought everything, and set everything up and
arranged all the Primary substitutes, so he had a busy week getting all of that
arranged.) Anyway, it turned out wonderful. Then of course I got to talk to all of my boys, so that was the best!! We managed to do a four way Skype so that everyone could talk to each other. Jared was late calling in, so we talked to Scott and Tanner for about 45 minutes. Then we were all talking together for about 10 minutes. Then Scott and Tanner both had to go, but we got to talk to Jared for another 45 minutes or so. It was wonderful. Isn't technology a blessing sometimes?!!
ALL of the boys together!!
And a better one of Jared since he was blurry in the first one. Not to mention he looked like he had a ceiling fan growing out of his head!
By the way, one of the funniest things said in our conversation: we asked Tanner how hot it was where he is and his response was "Oh not very hot. It's only about 103 degrees." We all burst into laughter!! Spoken just like someone who's been living in Arizona for almost 2 years!
Monday: Besides the regular chores, I took Seth to Wal-Mart
after school. He received 3 of the same Lego set (a Minecraft theme) from
friends at his birthday party so Frank had returned 2 of them to Wal-Mart and he
had a gift card to spend. He also received some money at his party and he had
received his allowance so with all of that combined, he had a pretty decent
amount of money to spend. He got four different Lego sets with that, and he
still had some money left over! So Seth spent the evening building Lego sets.
Meanwhile, Frank was working on monthly maintenance for his clients (he worked on
that most evenings this week) and I went to visit my friend Wanda. She moved again—now
she is living at a care facility about five minutes away from our house which is
great because that means she is back in our ward and she lives so nearby too. (Plus the facility is much nicer than the last one she was in.) I
wasn’t finding the time to visit her much when she was in her last place, which was about 30 minutes away, so I’m
really happy that she is so nearby now. She has been there for a few weeks but
I have been sick almost the entire time she’s been there so I couldn’t go see
her until this week. She was very happy to have a visit. I’ve really missed
her, so it was nice for me too! I tried to refill Seth’s prescription this day
too, but it turns out the pharmacy is out of his medication so I haven’t been
able to fill it yet. His medicine ran out on Tuesday so he probably hasn’t had
a very productive week at school. However, I’m noticing that he is going to
sleep a lot quicker and waking up a lot earlier in the mornings when he is not
on the medication.
Tuesday: It warmed up a lot this week. As a matter of fact,
we have had record breaking high temperatures the last few days. On Tuesday it
was in the 70’s / 80s and I mowed the lawn because I knew it was going to get
even hotter later in the week and I didn’t want to be mowing the lawn in 90
degree weather. I think everyone else had the same idea because I saw a lot of
the neighbors out doing the same thing. I tried edging the lawn with the weed
eater too and I am so bad at that!! But I figure if I keep trying eventually I
will learn how to do it right. Anyway, that evening for Cub Scouts we finished
our soap carvings and then we let the boys just run around and play. It was a
really pleasant evening, so we did the soap carving outside too. The boys had
so much fun running around after they were done with their carvings…it was fun
to watch them!
All these pictures are blurry because they were running around! (They made up their own game and were having a blast!):
I also took all the leftover cupcakes from Seth’s party and
managed to give them all away, which made me happy because if they are sitting
around the house, I will eat them. I am trying not to get fat!
Wednesday: We had the Sisters over for dinner and I spent
most of the day going to the temple. I always love going to the temple, but
this time was especially nice. For one thing, I was able to do an endowment for
one of Frank’s ancestors (thanks to Jared, who is doing family history work and
sending me names that need the work done). I also had a really sweet experience
there, though. The session I was in was unusually large for a week day in the
middle of the day—it was almost full. I noticed there were quite a few young
people and I thought some of the young men were probably missionaries. Well,
after the session ended, I was sitting in the Celestial room and I noticed that
an older gentleman was standing near the entrance to the room. As the young men
came into the room, he gave each one of them a big hug. Several young women
came in too and he gave each of them a warm handshake. After a few minutes, he
was joined by his wife (she happened to be the sister who was sitting next to
me in the session) and she started giving hugs to all the young women and
shaking hands with all the young men. This is when I realized that all of these
young men and women were full time missionaries and that this man must be their
mission president. Soon, this couple began moving quietly about the room,
seeking out all the other missionaries that they had missed as they came in so
that they could greet them and give them their love. I watched them, and the
tenderness and love on their faces for their missionaries was beautiful to
behold!! I actually started to cry because I thought about Tanner and Jared.
Watching this couple was a sweet reminder to me that as Frank and I pray for them and write to them and do everything that we can to help them from here, that they each have another set of “parents” out there where they are serving, who are loving them and helping them too. Watching them also reminded me that ALL of us have
another set of parents—heavenly parents—who love us, are doing everything they
can to help us, and who are anxiously waiting for the time when we can return
home to them. It was just really beautiful, and the spirit was so strong!
Incidentally, I felt like I should write about my experience and post it on a Facebook page for missionary moms, so I did. I had quite a few people comment
that reading my experience really helped them. The really fun part was, though,
that I found out who the mission president was. He is the mission president of
the Washington DC North mission, and the group of missionaries there that day
were returning home the following day. I got to communicate on Facebook with
some of the parents of some of those missionaries! So that was pretty cool.
Thursday: It was SO HOT that day!! High 90s. (I hear it snowed in Utah!!). There is a Greek festival going on this week, so after I picked up Seth
from school we went over there to get a few gyros for dinner, as a surprise for Frank. He loved it! We had a brief rainstorm come through after that and the
temperature cooled down quite a bit which was nice because we had an RS
activity that evening which was outdoors. I almost decided not to go earlier in
the day but when the temperature cooled down a lot I decided to go. It was
fun—we toured a community garden. We got to sample fresh picked asparagus and
strawberries. I’ve never had raw asparagus before, and I was surprised that it
was quite tender and tasted really delicious! The strawberries were also 100
times better than the ones you buy at the store—sweeter and softer. I’m almost
convinced that I need to start growing my own asparagus and strawberries!
(Well, actually, we’ve tried strawberries before but they didn’t work.)
The sky that evening looked so cool! The clouds were this really unique shape. It was hard to capture in a picture, but I tried:
Also that evening I dropped by a friend's house to give her a birthday card and gift. There were two little bunnies on her side lawn:
Plus she had some beautiful iris in her yard:
Today: That brings you all up to date, since all I’ve done so
far today is exercise and write to my missionary sons!
I’ve had a really full heart all week, thinking
about my boys serving missions. A lot of people complain about how hard
it is to have their kids serve missions. I don’t feel that way! Yes, I do miss them, of course! But I also love it! When people find out I have two sons
serving missions at once, they often comment on how hard that must be. But
actually, I love it!! I love getting TWO missionary letters each week. I feel
like we get so many blessings and we feel the spirit in our home even more. All
of my boys so far have chosen to serve missions, have WANTED to serve, and have
served or are serving faithfully. How can I be sorry or complain about that?? I
feel like one of the most blessed mothers alive. I am grateful!!
