Weather: It's starting to feel a lot more like winter. No more 50s and 60s! It is actually really cold today. We've had a lot of cloudy days too and we might even get some snow tonight and tomorrow. Thankfully, the new coat I ordered also arrived this week and it is super warm. I love it!
Temple: Last Friday Frank, Jared and I were able to go to the temple. (We hired a boy in our ward to come stay with Seth while we were gone.) It was our stake temple day, and we had a special meeting in the large room on the 7th floor. This is the very last time we will ever do that because there aren't going to be any meetings like that anymore. It was a very good meeting and I'm glad Jared got to go to one. After the meeting Frank went home because his back was hurting a lot. Jared and I stayed and went to a session, which was completely full with people from our stake. I was sitting on the very back row, so it took a while to get through the session but it was very nice to be there. Jared got to speak Spanish with a couple of people too, which he enjoyed. The temple grounds are all decorated for Christmas and it is beautiful!!
Jared: He is doing pretty well but I think this week was a little hard for him. He mentioned that he felt like he had been home a lot longer than 2 weeks (earlier this week; now he's been home for 3 weeks exactly). I know what he means--to me, it feels like he's been home for months, not weeks. I think the initial excitement of getting to see us again has worn off now and he is missing his mission more. He also mentioned that he doesn't feel like he is doing anything really important right now, and he's not used to that. So please keep him in your prayers. Jared is keeping pretty busy. He worked every day this week except for Tuesday. He was scheduled to work Tuesday also but he called in sick. He's had a mild sinus / congestion illness ever since he got home (actually he was sick before he left his mission) and I think the long hours of working were starting to get to him. He wasn't incredibly sick, I think he just needed some time to recuperate both physically and emotionally. He has been a lot better since then, although he is always tired after being on his feet all day at work. He worked two "opening" shifts this week, which means he had to be at work at 5:30 am. He got his first paycheck yesterday and he was happy about that. Jared is definitely going to go back to school in January. He got signed up for classes, he found a place to live, and we bought him a plane ticket. So he is going!! I think that it will be really good for him to go back to school so I am glad he is going although of course I'll miss him. He and Tanner will be flying back to Utah together on January 4th; school starts on January 8th for both of them. This week Jared went to Institute again. He has also been asked to help the Seminary students prepare a musical number for the Christmas program so he went to Seminary this morning (before work) to work on that with them. On Monday he went to both the dentist and the orthodontist (after work). He had to get a new retainer made because his old one had a crack in it. A guy in our ward took him to dinner on Wednesday night, which he enjoyed.
Seth: He started the next session of swimming lessons on Saturday. It is a shorter session--only 3 weeks instead of 6. He will start another 6 week session after Christmas. I decided to move his lessons to Saturday mornings instead of Wednesday evenings because I wanted to see if being on his medicine for his lessons would make a difference. (His medicine wears off by evening.) So far, I would say it definitely helps. He seemed to be a lot more focused and cooperative for his lesson on Saturday. He started putting his face in the water a lot more and by the end of the lesson he was gliding across the pool on both his front and his back. Floating on his front was really the only skill he had left to do on level 2, so they bumped him up to level 3 and he can start using goggles now too. So we are pleased that he made so much progress in just one lesson! He has his second lesson tomorrow; we'll see how that goes. Seth gave a talk on Sunday in Primary. The Primary kids are going to do a live nativity for our ward Christmas party next week and Seth has been asked to be one of the three wise men. I have to figure out some sort of costume for him by next week.
Christmas preparations: I made a lot of progress on Christmas prep this week. I got most of the Christmas cards addressed and mailed. (Still waiting on a few addresses.) I also mailed packages to Scott, Tanner, my parents, and Frank's parents. Scott is not going to be able to come home for Christmas (bummer!) so I mailed his presents. Tanner is coming home, but I mailed him his Christmas pillowcase and some buckeye candy because he loves those. I did a lot more shopping and I am mostly done although not completely. (Shopping included an exhaustive search for chocolate oranges which was finally successful.) I wrapped everything I have purchased so far! I worked on our 12 Days of Christmas service project. We finally got the tree and other decorations put up this week too. I planned to do that on Saturday, but we ended up being really busy that day and didn't get anything done other than going to the storage unit to get the decorations out. Jared put the tree up on Tuesday and on Wednesday I put on all the ornaments and got the rest of the decorations put up too.
Renata: She needed help getting her outside lights put up so we asked the missionaries to help. I went over to her house on Tuesday afternoon with 3 sets of missionaries, and we got all the outside lights put up in a little over an hour. She was grateful!:
My phone: It's acting up again. I'm getting parts of text messages or missing them completely. Frank also called my phone today and it didn't ring. So it looks like I will be getting a new phone for Christmas, whether I want one or not.
Baptisms: Remember the investigator couple who got married a few weeks ago? On Saturday, the husband got baptized. It was a very lovely baptism. Tomorrow his wife will be getting baptized.
Yard work: Our lawn became completely covered with leaves a few weeks ago and I kept looking at it and thinking that I needed to rake it, but didn't have enough time. Frank and I have been discussing the idea of getting a leaf blower to make that job easier, since Frank can't really do it and it is a lot of work for me to do it alone (most of the time I won't have Jared or any of the older boys here to help). So on Saturday we went to look at leaf blowers and found out they aren't terribly expensive, so we got one. Then we took care of all the leaves in the yard! (Frank helped, although he shouldn't have--he paid for that later.) It was definitely easier with the leaf blower / mulcher, but it was still a decent amount of work. We barely finished in time to change and go to the baptism. One of our friends in our ward brought us a snow blower on Saturday too so our new shed is pretty full now.
Self Reliance Group: We had our next to last meeting on Sunday and it went well. For this Sunday's meeting, each group member will be doing a 5 minute presentation about their business. We have invited a few guest business professionals to attend to give them feedback. We are also going to have refreshments.
Caroling: On Sunday afternoon, we all went caroling with our bishop's family and a couple of other families in the ward. The bishop wanted to deliver a gift from the ward to several single sisters in the ward, so members of the ward council and their families were divided into groups to go caroling and deliver the gifts. Our group went to 6 different sisters' houses and we actually found all 6 of them at home and all 6 of them seemed to really appreciate our visit. It was a lot of fun. Sunday was especially crazy, though, since we barely had time to eat in between church and caroling. Then I went right to choir after caroling (I was actually pretty late because caroling took longer than expected) and straight from choir to my self reliance group meeting. Then I got home just in time for the First Presidency Christmas Devotional! So yes--that day was packed.
Cub Scouts: We had den meeting on Tuesday and I have 2 Bears now because one of the younger boys turned 9 in November. I started working on a new adventure with them called "Roaring Laughter" and it was fun.
Frank: He had a busy week. In addition to working full time and doing work for clients, he also had his monthly PPI with the bishop, had an EQ presidency meeting, and did some visits. His back, shoulder, neck, and knee have all been bothering him a lot more the last few weeks. Hopefully it's just the change in the weather and he'll adjust soon. It looks like we are getting close to getting the settlement for his accident, which will help with getting caught up on all the medical bills but sadly will not take away his pain.
Service: I've been trying to participate in the Light the World program this month but I haven't been doing very well--at least, not at doing service that fits the theme for each day. However, once again I am noticing that I have opportunities for service pretty frequently. (This week: caroling, hanging lights, gave a ride to someone, etc.) I also signed up to help with babysitting for a RS temple trip this week. That was on Thursday, and I expected to be at the church babysitting most of the day. As it turned out, though, all of the women who had signed up to go ended up not being able to go. What that meant is that I suddenly had 5 free hours that I didn't expect to have. Although I was sorry that no one was able to go to the temple, I was grateful for that extra time. The last couple of weeks have been very busy and I had been feeling pretty stressed about all the things I needed to do that I wasn't getting done. I had been praying for help to get everything done. This seemed like an answer to prayers. I felt like I was really blessed for being willing to serve in this way. If I hadn't signed up to help, I'm sure my day would have been filled up with other things. But since I thought I needed to keep that time open for service that didn't happen at the last minute, I had all that free time. I worked hard all day and got a ton of things done--mostly Christmas stuff. I wouldn't have gotten nearly as much done on that this week if this hadn't happened. I know that we get many blessings from serving, but we also get blessings just for being willing!
Other stuff: I went to the weekly religion class where we talked about doing family history work. Frank and I went to lunch with another couple in our ward today. I exercised every day. I crocheted every day too. I did not get anything done on the upstairs bedroom still, but I will keep trying! It doesn't look like it is going to be done before Christmas, unfortunately.
That is all of the news from these parts this week.
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