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!
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