Last Friday I took Seth to the school to drop off all his supplies. We didn't stay long, since he is already familiar with his classroom and knows his teacher, but he enjoyed seeing some of his friends. Afterwards, I took him to get an ice cream cone--kind of a farewell to summer vacation! There was a school picnic that evening but we hadn't really planned to go (Seth said he didn't care about going). However, I had ordered him a yearbook last spring and he could pick it up at the picnic so Frank took him over to the picnic for a little while to get his yearbook and see a few more friends. We ate dinner at home, though. It started raining later and Sam came to spend the weekend with us.
I spent most of the day on Saturday working on my resume, and managed to get a fairly decent one figured out. I still think it needs work, but I'm sure I will continue to refine it over time. In the meantime, I did go ahead and apply for a couple of the jobs I saw online. I didn't get to that until yesterday, so I haven't heard anything back yet. It's kind of scary to be looking for a job. I mean, on the one hand, I feel like I've gained a lot of valuable experience over the years and that I have a lot to offer an employer. On the other hand, I worry that I have forgotten everything I ever knew about accounting and that even if I manage to get a job, I will totally flop! At any rate, I was glad by the end of Saturday to have a resume figured out (at least somewhat). That was a pretty big task.
On Sunday our Sacrament Meeting was pretty interesting since we got a new bishopric. Our new bishop is pretty young (I'd say at least 10 years younger than me) but he will be great. His wife is our current RS president, so as I expected--there are going to be a lot of changes coming! One of the ward members sitting behind me in the meeting leaned forward and asked me if I was ready for round 2 as RS president, and I said "NO!" By the way, Frank always predicts who our new bishop is going to be and he always gets it right. (Last time we had a change, he predicted the entire bishopric correctly!) Actually, I kind of beat him on this one because a few weeks after our new bishop's family moved into our ward I said "He's going to be our bishop someday." (That was about 9 years ago.) After our church meetings and dinner, Sam headed back home and we were back to being a family of 3 again. It's weird sometimes to only have 3 of us!
We didn't do anything special for Labor Day, just the usual Monday chores and family night, of course. Seth played at the carpool boys' house for a while in the afternoon. I was busy trying to figure out some Cub Scout stuff too--we were trying to figure out when we were going to have den meetings for the month of September because our Pack Meeting date had to be changed. (It was supposed to be tonight, originally, but there is a special meeting tonight at our stake center with Elder Christofferson speaking. It's for the "young marrieds", though, so that doesn't mean Frank & I.) I was also working with the Primary president and another mom in the ward (the RS president & new bishop's wife, actually) to figure out plans for the 11 year old scout campout since we don't have an 11 year old scout leader called in our ward yet but her son and Seth are both 11 and wanted to attend the stake 11 year old scout campout. They had to have 2 adult leaders go with them, and we finally got it all worked out to have two men there the whole time and planned the meals also and then on Tuesday they cancelled the campout too! (It was supposed to be tonight also but besides the meeting tonight it is also supposed to rain all night and all day tomorrow.) The campout has been rescheduled for the middle of October (this is the 3rd time it has had to be rescheduled). I'm hoping by then an 11 year old scout leader will be called. At least our new bishop is well aware of the need for an 11 year old scout leader now! It is frustrating to me that Seth has been 11 for over 3 months and nothing has been done to call a leader before now, but I know it wasn't the highest thing on the priority list. It's just kind of a bummer for him (and us) because he has been wanting to work on stuff and there's no one to help him. (The other ward where he was going got a new leader and they decided they don't want to combine with our ward at all.) He still says he wants to be an Eagle scout someday, which means I want him to get through as many of the ranks as possible in the next year and a half before the church stops sponsoring scouting. We've already lost 3 months of that time. Please, just help us out here!!
Sorry, that ended up being a long sidetrack / sort of rant. Tuesday was the first day of school and since Frank was home to remind me, I actually took a picture of Seth:
To celebrate the first day of school, my friend Rebekah and I went out to breakfast together (as soon as I dropped Seth off at school). That was fun. Frank was pretty busy with his business this week and I had all the usual work to do plus extra stuff so we barely saw each other for a couple of days! After breakfast, I went to the library to get a book about a famous American for den meeting. (For one of their requirements, they have to learn about two famous Americans--we'll do another one next time we meet.) The library did not have a very large selection of biographies for children, so I just got one book. I will have to go to the larger branch to find a book about a second American. Anyway, for this den meeting I chose to talk about Neil Armstrong. That turned out to be a good choice--all the boys were really interested in him.
On Wednesday I had mostly the usual stuff, including the religion class. I enjoyed the class a lot, as always. The carpool family went out of town for a few days so they hired Seth to take care of their cats on Wednesday. We let them into the house on Wednesday morning (on our way to school) and then Frank & Seth went back over Wednesday evening to let them out. I had den meeting that night and besides learning about Neil Armstrong, we also made two simple pulleys (part of a different adventure) and at the end we played a game using Uno cards (but not Uno). The boys seemed to have fun.
Using two pulleys to send messages to each other across the room.
I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night so I got a late start on Thursday. I managed to get through everything I needed to do except sewing patches on Seth's Scout shirt (I need to move the council patch and the troop number patches, plus his Arrow of Light patch from his Cub Scout shirt to his Boy Scout shirt. I didn't buy him a Scout shirt--I have one I bought for myself several years ago and then outgrew. It's a little big on him, but not a lot.) I removed the patches from his Cub Scout shirt, but I haven't sewed them onto the Scout shirt yet. Hopefully that will happen soon.
Today I also woke up a little late (not as late as yesterday, though). It's been kind of a trying day. Everything I tried to do took a lot longer than I thought it should, so that all I've managed to finish at this point (it's almost 7 pm) is the budget. I guess it was the budget that took so long, and that is mainly because there were problems with a couple of things and we had to make phone calls to try to clear up those problems. For one thing, our car insurance withdrew the same amount from our account for September as they did for August, even though we removed Jared from our policy. For another, Marriott withdrew too much out of our account for our Cobra payment--I won't go into all the details, but we've had quite a few problems with Cobra payments since Frank got laid off and it is frustrating that they keep making mistakes. It is even more frustrating that when Frank called them today to try to clear things up, they admitted that they had made a mistake but said it would take 4-8 weeks to put the money back into our bank account!! Frank argued with them about that, and someone is supposed to get back to us about that on Tuesday. I think it's ridiculous that it would take that long to put money back into our account. It makes me angry because I feel like we have enough money issues to worry about right now without their mistakes adding to the load. I had better luck with one of our credit card companies, who agreed to remove an interest charge from our last bill. (Another long story; technically they could charge us the interest since I made a mistake and paid one of our bills late in July, but they agreed to remove the charge since we are long time customers and have a history of paying our bills on time.) At least one person was nice to us today!!
Looking back, I'm not sure why I felt so busy this week but I guess just adding in those two trips to the school and back every day does make a difference. Searching for jobs to apply for and applying for them took quite a bit of time too. I continued to exercise every day and Frank was able to start exercising again too. (His back has been hurting him a lot the last 3 - 4 weeks, so he hasn't been able to exercise.) Seth and I finished reading Farmer Boy last night and he wants to read the rest of the Little House series books now, so we started Little House in the Big Woods last night too. I've also been doing Brain Balance with Seth after school each day, which takes between 30 minutes and an hour each day (depending on how cooperative he is). It's going pretty well but it is too soon to see results yet.
That is everything that I can think of to tell about this week.
1 comment:
This being out of work and not having benefits is not fun and takes a lot of patience and faith. Luckily, we haven’t had any issues with cobra payments except they’re just really expensive. Still praying that things can work quickly for Frank to get this new job and will pray that you find a job that will work for you as well.
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