Weekly Review January 25 '19

I am going to try to get this week's post written quickly because it is getting pretty late. I spent literally all day working on budget-related things, including a lot of stuff for Frank's business, and now I am tired and crabby! Here's what we did the rest of the week:

Saturday: We did get some "wintry mix" in the evening but my self reliance group decided to meet anyway and the roads weren't bad so I'm glad we decided to chance it. We have our last meeting tomorrow evening. The rest of the day I was busy with a lot of things--cleaning the kitchen floor, picking up a book from the library, doing some shopping for some things my friend Wanda needed, finishing up my Primary lesson, music calling stuff, and working on one of the quilts. I got all the pieces cut out and got my sewing machine set up. Frank had some work to do for a client in the morning.

Sunday: I had a moment of panic right before Sacrament Meeting started when I realized that the chorister hadn't showed up yet. Thankfully, one of the sisters in the ward who is musical also realized the same thing about the same time I did, and she went up and offered to lead the music. Bless people like that!! I was so grateful! My Primary class went well again, although I noticed the kids were a little more wiggly...they are getting more comfortable with us already! In the afternoon I did scripture study, indexing, etc, but I also got really sleepy so I took a nap. That evening our stake had a fireside--Youth Standards Night--so we took Seth to that. His medication had completely worn off and he wasn't very attentive. They had a panel of several of the bishops in the stake and let the kids ask questions. It was pretty good--I hope Seth picked up a few things!

Monday: Seth didn't have school because of MLK Day. I didn't work either because the lady I support had a doctor appointment and her mom wanted to take her to that. I got the usual chores done, plus I also wrote a "music spotlight" for our ward newsletter. In the afternoon we met some friends in our ward at a frozen yogurt place. I thought it was kind of crazy to get frozen yogurt on that day because the temperature was in the teens, with wind on top of that. But apparently a lot of other people are as crazy as we are because the place was packed! So much so that we had to come back to our place to eat our yogurt because there were no seats available at the yogurt place. (And sitting at the outside tables was out of the question!) Our friends came to our house too and we played some games. It was fun, but I hadn't planned on that so I didn't end up having any time to work on the quilt that day. We also talked with Jared for a while that day--he needed to interview a married couple with children for a class assignment.

Tuesday: This was a really productive day. I got all the usual chores done and practiced the ukulele. Then I spent a couple of hours working on the quilt and got most of the blocks sewn together. It felt good to make some progress on that project! I really do get a lot of joy out of creating things!

Wednesday: I got Walmart shopping done in the morning and went to my religion class, as usual. Seth had YM that evening and I took some things to my friend Wanda after I dropped him off at the church. In between everything else, I was reading. I started the book for book chat on Saturday (Before We Were Yours) and it was one of those books that is hard to put down. It wasn't a mystery, really, but it was one of those books where you know there's a connection of some sort but you're not sure what it is and you're trying to figure it out. So by Wednesday I knew I just needed to finish the book so that I could get back to doing all the other things I needed to do! The book went back and forth between 1939 and the present day. It was not a happy story, although it ended up as happy as could be expected. It was fictional, but it was based on a true historical event--a lady named Georgia Tann, who actually stole babies and children and then placed them for adoption with wealthy families, collecting exorbitant fees and pocketing most of the money. Incredibly, she did this from  1924 until 1950 before she got caught. (She had a network of corrupt judges, police men, politicians, etc that helped her.) Anyway, it was a book well worth reading.

Thursday: This day was busy too because I worked in the morning and in the evening I got my hair cut and the color done. I still managed to get the regular chores done in between.

Friday: Today, as I said, I spent working on the budget most of the day. I also practiced my ukulele a little bit. I wanted to work on the quilt some more but it is too late for that now. Earlier this week, I ordered a special quilting foot for my sewing machine. It came today, so I can start using that now and it will make the process easier and (hopefully) faster.

I am still going strong with exercising daily and working on brain balance with Seth. We started reading Little Town on the Prairie together and we've read several chapters. We're still working on Articles of Faith--I think he needs another week to work on those. He's been asked to be the secretary for the Deacon's quorum and he really seems to be enjoying both YM and scout activities.

We have not heard back from the place Frank had the interview with last week. We do know they were checking with some of his references earlier this week because one of his references told Frank they called him. Frank thinks since we didn't hear anything today that he didn't get the job and I can tell he feels pretty glum about it. I'm not as pessimistic--I think there might still be hope there. At least, until they let him know he didn't get the job, I'm assuming it's still a possibility. Hopefully we will find out something one way or the other soon. In the meantime, at least the government shutdown seems to be coming to an end (for now) so maybe his paperwork will be submitted soon. Really, most of the time we are feeling pretty calm about things but today I feel like our stress levels were up. It's just not a fun situation that we're in.

But to end on a positive note, last Saturday I said a prayer about my eye. (It was red and swollen--infected.) It was starting to feel like the infection I had last summer, which got really bad and didn't go away completely for months. Plus it was feeling like the infection was starting to spread to my other eye, which happened last summer too. I just really didn't want to go through that again, and I had things I needed to get done. So I said a prayer. It's always hard for me to ask for things for myself--I'm always afraid that I will ask for something that I shouldn't ask for. So when I prayed, I said that I had complete faith that I could be healed if it was His will, and I asked that my eye would be healed, unless there was something I needed to learn from having my eye infected again. When I got up Sunday morning, my eye was almost completely back to normal! I'm so grateful for that. 

Weekly Review January 18 '19

We had a fairly eventful week. Here's what we did:

Saturday: Frank went to a luncheon given by the company that he is eventually going to work for. This luncheon was specifically for people in the hiring process; there are several of them. Everything is at a standstill right now because of the government shut down. We live in an area where obviously the shut down is affecting a lot of people. We keep hearing people talking about not getting a paycheck. I am sympathetic, of course, but I also can't help thinking "you have no idea!!" Try 7 months without a paycheck, and no end in sight. I'm grateful every day a million times over for Frank's business, which is what's keeping me sane. It has been a blessing for over 7 years now. Definitely a tender mercy!! It was something we never planned, but that just came about and we know it has been a part of the Lord's plan for our family. Nothing we ever could have come up with on our own, but His plan is so superior to ours. It really humbles me whenever I realize how the Lord provided the way for us to provide for our family, and particularly for us to send our boys on missions and to help them with their education expenses. He truly has poured out blessings upon us.

Okay, I didn't mean to get off on a tangent, but I think that was a good one at least. I spent the day working on things for my music calling, preparing for my self reliance group meeting (which was scheduled for Sunday evening), cleaning the kitchen floor, and doing some shopping for Frank's birthday. (Both online and actually going to stores.) Going to the store that day was pretty brave because we were also scheduled to get a snow storm that evening and that means the stores were packed with people feeling the need to stock up on milk, bread, and toilet paper. I enjoyed the hassle-free online shopping much better. Besides finding a gift for Frank, I also found some fabric for the quilt projects I want to begin. I was looking for 10 inch pre-cut squares and I found one place that sells several different packs of those. All of the fabrics were so beautiful!!! I wanted to buy all of them, but had to settle for two different packs. (I am going to have to come up with some projects to use some of the other packs in the future!)

That evening our ward had a chili cook off, which Frank was in charge of. We were unsure whether or not it was really going to happen, because of the weather forecast, up until an hour or two before it started. Frank had delegated all of the set up since he was going to be at the luncheon and wouldn't get home until a few hours before the chili cook off was supposed to start (the luncheon was in Virginia). Everything came together and it was a fun event. For our contribution, we made macaroni & cheese and a bunch of hot dogs so that the kids who didn't like chili would have something to eat. I was happy that Seth tried some of the chili, though--and he liked it!! It started to snow as we were driving over to the church, but the roads were not bad coming home. It did continue to snow during the night, though.

Sunday: When I woke up Sunday morning it looked like this outside:

I checked my email and discovered that church had been cancelled. That's how they roll out here! Actually, it is stake policy to cancel all church meetings if a snow emergency is declared, and it was. I know 6 inches doesn't seem like an emergency, but really what that means is that they want everyone to stay off the roads so that they can get them plowed quicker. I was disappointed to miss taking the sacrament and meeting with my Primary class again (I really missed them!) but since we are a home centered, church supported church, we spent time together as a family reading the scriptures and discussing them. :) I actually kept really busy all day doing things like indexing, personal scripture study, family scripture study, preparing next Sunday's Primary lesson, and working on Faith in God with Seth.  It stopped snowing during the day but started snowing more in the early evening so my self reliance group decided not to meet.

Monday: School was on a 2 hour delay with a re-evaluation at 7:00 am. When they re-evaluated, they decided to cancel school. I'm guessing that was mostly because parking lots hadn't been plowed and sidewalks hadn't been shoveled because the roads really weren't too bad, at least by mid day. It was Frank's birthday so he opened presents. He got a couple of movies and a game.

Frank and I had discussed the problem of having a lot of leftover cake in the house that neither he nor I wanted to be tempted to eat, so we decided that a better plan would be to take him out to dinner to celebrate his birthday and get some dessert there. That way, he had a treat on his birthday, but there were no leftovers!

Other than the birthday celebrations, it was a mostly normal Monday and I got the regular chores done. I didn't work because the lady I support didn't want to go anywhere with the roads being bad. Frank took Seth outside to go sledding for a while, which Seth really enjoyed.

Tuesday: Back to school for Seth, and it even started at the usual time (no delay)! I didn't sleep well the night before and had a later than normal start (that seems to happen more often on Tuesdays, for some reason). I did get everything on my list done, though. Frank had an interview that afternoon--his third interview with the same company. They are supposed to make a decision next week. I had book chat that evening and enjoyed it a lot as always. I finished 4 out of the 5 Dickens stories that we were reading; I had started the 5th one but hadn't finished it yet. It turns out that only one person read all of the stories and most people read less than I did. So we did discuss the stories for a while (with me and the lady who had read all of the stories doing most of the talking!) but we also talked about a lot of other things. As a matter of fact, we talked until nearly 10:00, which is much later than we usually talk.  Now we are going to read a book called Before We Were Yours.

Wednesday: This was a pretty busy day for me. After dropping Seth off at school I did the weekly grocery shopping. Then I went to the religion class. From there, I went to a 2 hour training at the Arc. That was my last required training, so I am fully trained now! Frank picked Seth up from school because I wasn't done with the training until 4:00. We had dinner and did brain balance and then Seth had YM. Frank had to do some work for a client, so he dropped Seth off at YM and then picked him up afterwards, on his way home. I enjoyed having a little bit of quiet time at home, after a busy day.

Thursday: Yesterday was pretty busy too. I worked until about 1:00. Then I came home long enough to eat some lunch, and then went to visit my friend Wanda for a few minutes. I had a couple of things to give her that she had asked me to purchase for her, and I had planned to give them to her on Sunday but then we didn't have church. After visiting Wanda, I went to the fabric store to pick out fabric for the back and for the pieces to go around the quilt blocks for one of the quilts that I am making. I also got batting for that quilt and another one. I went straight from there to pick up Seth from school. We got brain balance done and then I went over to a ward member's house to discuss a possible job that I might be doing in late February / early March. It's for a lady who is getting hip replacement surgery. She is the caregiver for her 93 year old mother, so after her surgery she needs someone to come in every morning to make breakfast for her mom and to keep her mom company, plus help with her dogs and a few small tasks like an occasional load of laundry and taking out trash. I can't do it on Mondays and Thursdays, of course, but I could do the other week days. I will probably do it unless they find someone else who can do every day and decide they want to do that instead. It will only be for 2 or 3 weeks. By the time I left there, it was snowing and we got a couple of inches in the night. We had dinner and then I still had a lot of things to do like vacuuming and folding laundry but I got everything done. My left eye was feeling kind of sore all day so I wore glasses because I suspected I was getting some kind of eye infection.

Friday: Today there was a 2 hour delay because of slippery roads, with the new snow plus everything freezing overnight. My left eye was red and swollen when I woke up and it is even more red and swollen now. I wish I could figure out why I have so much trouble with my eyes and why they are so prone to getting infected. Snickers had an appointment to be groomed which was long overdue--when I made the appointment, I discovered that it has been nearly 6 months since he last went to the groomer! (I did give him a bath once since then.) It took them longer than usual, which didn't surprise me since he was a big fluffy mop!! He looks about half as big now, with all that hair gone. Seth had a music concert at his school this afternoon which he REALLY wanted us to attend, so we went to that. Each of the classes had composed the music and written the lyrics for their own song. Seth was playing the bass xylophone in his class's song, but unfortunately we couldn't see him from where we were sitting. I got the budget updated today and I pre-washed the fabric for the quilt that I hope to start making tomorrow. Earlier this week, I got out all the pre-cut squares and tried to figure out how I want the quilt top to look. I moved a couple of pieces around after taking this picture, but it is mostly going to look like this:

That's without the strips that go in between. The back is going to be dark brown with a small autumn leaf pattern over it. The strips in between are a cream color with gold glitter scattered over it. I hope it will look nice when I am done, and I hope it doesn't take me forever to finish it! I purposely picked a simple quilt top and a throw size quilt, because I know I'm not up for a big project right now.

It is supposed to snow more tomorrow and possibly on Sunday. I hope the weather won't interfere with church, and I hope my self reliance group can meet tomorrow also. We only have 2 meetings left, so I would like to finish soon.

Frank kept pretty busy this week and yesterday a couple of his clients gave him some more projects to start working on, so he feels a little overwhelmed by everything there is to do but of course he is glad to have work to do! Seth finished reading the Wings of Fire series (at least until the next book comes out) but we haven't started reading the next book in the Little House series yet. I've been working on the Articles of Faith with him and he is learning quickly. He knows the gist of all of them now and can repeat all but two of them from memory. He still needs to polish up those other two. He will probably get that done this week so I expect in a week or two he will be completely done and ready to be ordained to the priesthood. I would like to go to the temple soon but I want to wait until he has the priesthood so that he can come with us and do baptisms. 

That's all we've been doing...or the important things, anyway!

Weekly Review January 11 '19

January is not my favorite month, but I swear it has the best sunrises!:

I took those photos on Monday morning. I can't complain a whole lot about this January, even though it is miserably cold right now. Most of the month has been quite mild for January, and it has been going by fast (already 1/3 over). We are supposed to get some snow this weekend (Happy Birthday to Frank!) but we haven't had any snow up until now.

Here is a summary of what we did this week:

Friday: I wrote about most of Friday last week, but I went to a baby shower that evening, which was a lot of fun.

Saturday: Frank & Seth got haircuts and ran a few errands. Frank also had a lot of work to do for one of his clients. I kept busy going over my Primary lesson, preparing for self reliance group, and cleaning the kitchen floor. I had self reliance group that evening. We finished our last chapter and practiced interviewing, because the guy in our group had a couple of interviews this week.

Sunday: Our ward switched from 1:00 pm church to 9:00 am church, so that was quite a change! I actually prefer the earlier schedule, though. I had choir practice at 8:20. Our morning ended up being eventful because our power went out...and stayed out. In the nearly 19 years that we have lived in this house, that has never happened! (Except for a couple of scheduled outages, which we were notified about ahead of time.) We've had the power blip a number of times, of course, but it has never stayed out for more than a few seconds. Anyway, thank goodness it didn't go out until after I had finished drying my hair! My hair takes forever to dry on it's own so if it had been wet I would have had to go to church with wet hair. Besides, my hair dries all crazy when I air dry it. As it was, I had just plugged in my flat iron and I wasn't able to use it but thankfully my hair looked okay without it. So we made it to church and 2 hour church was great! Frank got released as the ward mission leader. He had some real frustrations with that calling, especially since the changes that were made a couple of months ago, so he was relieved to be released. He doesn't have a new calling yet, but I'm sure he'll get one soon. Seth was presented to receive the Aaronic priesthood and to be ordained a Deacon, but as I said, he doesn't want to be ordained until after he finishes Faith in God, so we haven't done that yet. They called a new teacher to be my team teacher in Primary, so I was happy about that.

And speaking of Primary...the new curriculum gets an A+!! The shorter class time was nice, too. I thought I would feel rushed, but it was actually perfect. My new class is eight 6 year olds (only one was missing on Sunday), and they are adorable! I love them so much already! I thought class would be a bit wild, but I felt like I had their attention the whole 20 minutes and we had some great discussions. (Like I said, the new curriculum is awesome!) At one point, I showed them a short video clip, and ahead of time I told them to be looking for ways that people in the clip were being like Jesus. I had the clip on my laptop, and I had the laptop in my lap facing out and all the kids gathered around on the floor in front of me, to watch the clip. If I could have taken a photo of them without distracting them, I would have, because it was a beautiful sight--these 7 sweet little faces, all intently watching to see how they can be like Jesus! I got all misty-eyed!!

After church I did some indexing and finished transcribing the talks that Erick and I gave at Dad's funeral. I added them to his page on Family Search, too, so you can go read them. I did a little bit of editing, for clarity, but mostly they are word for word what we said. Some friends in our ward invited us over for dinner so we went to their house and had a yummy dinner and enjoyed playing a crazy game called Exploding Kittens. Then we went to the church for the Temple and Priesthood Preparation Meeting for all the kids turning 12 this year (the other family has twin daughters Seth's age, so they went too). It was very nice and afterwards the Deacon's Quorum president took Seth and the other boy his age (Henry) to the chapel to show them how to pass the sacrament.

 The rest of the week wasn't as eventful, I think!

Monday: The lady I support for my job was sick this week so I didn't work with her this week again. I didn't find out until Monday morning that I wasn't working, so I was all ready to go. Since I had unexpected free time, I cleaned the stove and the microwave oven. (They both really needed cleaning!!) Frank had a job interview that morning. He interviewed with this place once already, back in December, so this was a second interview. He felt like it went well. They told him they would be making a decision on Tuesday and that they would be calling his references. We didn't hear anything on Tuesday, so we figured that meant he didn't get the job, but then they contacted him on Wednesday and asked him to provide 3 former employer references and then today they contacted him again and asked him to come in for another interview on Tuesday. So he's not out of the running for that one yet. We'll have to see how it goes next week.

Tuesday: I didn't sleep very well Monday night, so I woke up late and got a late start on all the things I needed to do but I still managed to get through my list. That evening we had an RS activity. They asked each of us to bring a pair of shoes and tell a story that goes with it so that we could all learn new things about each other. It was fun, and there were lots of interesting stories!

Wednesday: Nothing really out of the ordinary happened on Wednesday. I went to my religion class and it was nice to do that again after a month of not going. I took Seth to YM and picked him up again because Frank was doing work for clients. They played board games and Seth seemed to have fun...at any rate, he didn't want to leave when I got there to pick him up. (By that time, they were playing soccer in the gym, and he was one of the goalies. He stopped a goal from going in, but it was total luck, not skill...hahaha!)

Thursday: Although I didn't have my regular work, I had signed up to do some required training that afternoon. Originally, I would have had to go straight from work to the training, so it was kind of nice that I didn't have to do that. The training was a CPR class and a First Aid class. It was actually really interesting, although after taking classes like that, I feel kind of paranoid--half expecting people to just start collapsing around me!! I have to remind myself that things like that don't actually happen very often. (Thankfully!) CPR is not as complicated as I remember it being from the last time I took a CPR class (as a teenager), so I'm glad I got to do that. It is definitely a good thing to know how to do. Frank picked Seth up from school because I was still at the training.

Friday: Today has just flown by. I spent a lot of time updating the budget, including quite a few accounting tasks for the business. After I dropped Seth off at school this morning, I went to the fabric store to see what quilting fabrics they have, because I want to start a few quilting projects. They didn't have specifically what I was looking for, so I didn't buy anything today. I will need to do some more planning and calculating to figure out what to get instead. When I picked up Seth from school today, I picked up three other kids too. You may remember that last spring I picked up one of my friends' two kids a lot because she had her gall bladder removed and then she had a lot of complications. Anyway, she was having a follow up procedure today so she had asked me to pick up her kids. Then this afternoon I got a text message from the mom of a girl in Seth's class asking if I could pick up her daughter also. We live really near each other (I actually pass their house every day on the way to the school and back) and earlier this week we had a conversation about how we should really carpool sometimes since we live so close and we also seem to be picking up at the same time nearly every day! So we exchanged phone numbers but hadn't really set anything up yet. Today this lady was sick, though, so she asked me to pick up her daughter, which I was happy to do. We just dropped her off at her house on our way home. The two kids who came home with us didn't end up staying very long--only about an hour--before their dad picked them up. I went through all of the supplies I have accumulated for Cub Scouts so that I could give them to their dad, because he is one of the new Cub Scout leaders. I didn't finish going through everything before he picked them up, but I gave him a box of stuff and now I've finished going through everything else and have another box ready to take to him this weekend. It is always nice to get rid of a few things!!

Frank has been pretty busy with work for clients again this week. We are always grateful for that. Seth and I haven't been reading this week because he is still finishing The Wings of Fire series, but he is almost done. We got brain balance done every day and I exercised every day too. I spent most of my free time earlier this week watching Downton Abbey, but then I decided that I was spending too much time doing that so I decided to take a break for a few days and focus on getting a few things done that are more worthwhile. I spent some time looking through quilting books and reading the book for book chat. We have book chat next week, so I need to finish it. (We're reading 5 short stories by Charles Dickens, and it's taking me a lot longer to read them than I thought it would. They are good stories, though.) I have also spent some time talking with Jared, working on wedding plans.

That is everything I can think of to report this week. 

Weekly Review January 4 '19

Well here we are--it's 2019. This has been a pretty good week. Here's what we did:

Saturday: It seems like ages ago, not just a week ago and I don't remember details anymore. Frank wasn't feeling very well at all. I took Seth to the library and I spent a lot of time working on stuff for my music calling. I set up a spreadsheet where I can keep track of the hymns we sing each month and I also chose all the hymns for January. I also finished preparing my Primary lesson and talked to Jared about who he wants to invite to his wedding reception. (Jessie's family have been wanting to get a ballpark idea of how many people will be coming to the reception.) Oh, and I took Seth to look for some church pants because he has grown too tall for the ones he has. We looked at Walmart and Target and they didn't have any church pants at all. I wanted to take him to JC Penney too but he started feeling sick on the way to Target so after we finished there I decided to take him home. And a good thing, too--he threw up right after we got home. We were pretty sure he was just car sick, though, because he had been reading in the car on the way to Target. He never got sick again and felt fine after that so I think we were right.

Sunday: Frank was feeling worse so he stayed home from church. I didn't have choir practice but I did have a practice for the song I was singing in Sacrament Meeting with a small group. I think the song went pretty well. I would have liked to have had more time to practice it, but overall I think we did a pretty good job. I taught my last lesson to my current class--I'm teaching the CTR 6 class this year. I really enjoyed this class and I will miss them! But hopefully I will love the CTR 6 class too. It is very different from my Valiant 9 class. Besides the obvious difference in the age of the children, my Valiant 9 class had 5 kids--4 boys, 1 girl--and only 3 of them came regularly. My new class has 8 kids--6 girls and 2 boys--and most of them will be there every week. I don't have a team teacher yet, but she is supposed to be sustained this Sunday. Anyway, I actually wasn't feeling too great on Sunday myself, although I was nowhere near as bad as Frank. I had a headache and a slight sore throat. And actually--I still do. I've been feeling that way off and on for a couple of weeks. I'm glad I haven't come down with a full blown illness, but I wish whatever it is would go away completely.

Monday: I kept busy with the usual chores, plus I took down all the Christmas decorations. That's always a big job and I'm always kind of sad to see them go down but I do enjoy that my house looks a lot tidier and more spacious when I'm done. We have a small living space and the Christmas tree takes up a chunk of it! Frank was feeling a little better, but still not very well but Seth helped me get the boxes out of the storage unit. For New Year's Eve we stayed home and watched movies and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. I realized when I was talking to Seth a few weeks ago that he had never seen The Wizard of Oz or The Sound of Music, so I got those two movies at the library and we watched them on New Year's Eve. He really liked them both and even though he hadn't seen them before he had heard a lot of references from them so he enjoyed those moments when he realized where phrases he had heard came from. I laughed when they started singing "Do, Re, Mi" and he hit the pause button and said "Wait! This is where that song came from?!" We spent a lot more time watching movies than we did working on the puzzle, so we didn't make a lot of progress on the puzzle. It looked like this on Tuesday morning:

Frank actually didn't make it to midnight (remember he wasn't feeling well)--he went to bed around 11:00. Seth and I stayed up to welcome in the new year, but then we went to bed shortly afterwards.

Tuesday: We enjoyed a quiet New Year's Day and mostly did the usual chores. Frank started to feel a lot better, which was nice. We worked on the puzzle quite a bit more that afternoon and by evening it looked like this:

We decided to go out to eat that night--we used some gift cards that some nice person left on our doorstep. Then we went to JC Penney and found church pants for Seth. Actually, we didn't just get pants, we got him a suit. He's been wanting one and he will need one for Jared's wedding anyway.

Wednesday: Seth went back to school and we all tried to get back into a normal routine. I didn't have my religion class so instead I worked on the guest list for Jared's wedding and got it mostly done. I did all the other Wednesday chores, including Walmart shopping, and Frank and I took all the Christmas decorations to the storage unit (they had been sitting in the back of the car since Monday). That evening Seth went to YM for the first time and he enjoyed it. They were having an Eagle Court of Honor and he and the other 11 year old scout helped with the flag ceremony for that--they carried the flags. I was feeling kind of sick to my stomach on Wednesday evening so I didn't eat dinner and Frank took Seth to YM and picked him up. Thankfully, I felt better by morning. We worked on the puzzle more and it really started to come together. I was surprised how much I got done in a short amount of time. It is definitely a much easier puzzle than the one we did last year! By evening, it looked like this:

Thursday: I went to work for a couple of hours. The lady I support forgot that I was coming! So we just worked on some things for a couple of hours and then I came home. I'm not helping out much financially, but I was glad for a couple of extra hours to get things done around the house (plus I still had a headache, even though the stomach ache was gone). Thankfully, I haven't needed to work much anyway--Frank has been keeping busy enough with his business that we've been okay. I got my Primary lesson for this Sunday ready to go (the new manual is awesome!) and I made it through the rest of my "to do" list also. We worked on the puzzle and finished it! (sorry it's sideways):

Friday: Today Frank needed to go down south to purchase some computer items for one of his clients so I went with him and then we went to lunch at a place down there, and met a couple of his former co-workers for lunch too. He enjoys seeing them again and getting caught up on what's going on with everybody. That took most of the day, but I also got the budget caught up and I've been working on getting some financial information that Tanner & Jared need to adjust their FAFSAs (since our financial situation has changed quite a bit, they can petition to get better loans). I don't know if it will help them much since our income for last year (2018) was a lot better than you'd expect, considering that Frank's full time job ended half way through the year. I'm definitely not complaining about that--we're very grateful!!--but it's not very helpful for the boys.

That sums up our week. Seth and I got back on track with brain balance and I exercised every day except Thursday. We finished reading The Long Winter, but we haven't started the next book yet since Seth is still engrossed in the Wings of Fire series. By the way, we haven't decided yet when we are going to have Seth ordained a Deacon. Whenever we talk about it, he gets upset and says he wants to finish Faith in God first. So I guess we will wait until he finishes that. Hopefully it will only take a month or less.

Now I had better go make some dinner!