Weekly Review May 31 '19

It's been another busy week, and with the Jared's wedding and Tanner's openhouse only 2 weeks from today, I don't anticipate any slow downs until we get through all of that. I'm going to stick with categories this week.

Seth's birthday and other activities: Here's a photo of him asleep on the couch last week, after his class camp out:

I might be getting another picture like this tonight, since he had another camp out this week! This time, the camp out was for all the 6th graders at his school (about 30 kids) and this time he actually spent the night, so he'll probably be even more tired. Once again, like last week, there was a big thunderstorm in the afternoon yesterday. I'm glad that he chose to spend the night this time--I think it probably had a lot to do with the fact that one of his best friends was there too (they've been friends since 1st grade, but they have been in different classes for 4th to 6th grade, so his friend was not at his class camp out last week). I have to pick him up in about 30 minutes, so I will hear more about how things went then.

Tuesday was Seth's 12th birthday and I think he had a great day. He opened presents in the morning before school and we had pizza for dinner and birthday cake in the evening. At school, all the 6th graders had "outdoor school" on both Tuesday and Wednesday, which is a special program where they spend the day outside learning about a particular topic. Last year they learned all about local geology and this year they learned about water. They visited some local rivers and creeks, and he was very enthusiastic about it both days when I picked him up from school. So it was nice that he had a fun school day on his birthday too. Here are several photos from the day:

This gift was from Granny & Grandpa Cleveland, and they sent it months ago, so he's been dying to open it ever since! It's a Lego Ninjago dragon set which he would love anyway, but when I was wrapping it on Monday I noticed a bonus--on the back of the box it said it can be combined with another set--the Lego boost set--to "bring your dragon to life". It just so happens that he already has the Lego boost set. So that is really cool!!

 I saw this shirt at the store last week and knew he would love it since it's Minecraft themed. Besides that, he has been saying he needs a green shirt. So this was perfect!

He actually asked for Batman pajamas! The shirt says "Not a Morning Person".

He loves this series of books.

 He spent the rest of the morning (after getting ready for school) putting together new toys.

The shirt he's wearing is a shirt that he tie-dyed on his class camping trip. Unfortunately, it shrunk when I washed it. Like, a lot!! So it's practically too small already. Oh well!

On Wednesday, Seth had a presidency meeting for Deacons, followed by a YM / YW activity called "Adopt a Grandparent", where they each had the chance to sit and talk with one of the elderly members of our ward. He seemed to really enjoy it. Yesterday morning he casually mentioned to me that during their Deacons' meeting, they had decided that they wanted to get together at one of their houses every other Friday and oh...he had volunteered to have everyone come to our house this Friday! He thought he might be tired from the camp out, so he didn't want to go somewhere else--he wanted everyone to come to us. Thanks, Seth!! There are actually only 4 active Deacons in the quorum, counting Seth, though, so I decided that would be okay. They can probably entertain themselves while I quilt or something!

We have continued to work on Seth's Mars project a little but haven't had much time for it this week. Between the 2 camp outs, Memorial Day, and 2 days of outdoor school, he actually hasn't had a "normal" school day since Wednesday the 22nd!! We did print up a few photos for his display board and he started typing up some information also (which he did without my help--bonus!) He has all next week to work on it, so he should be able to get it done.

Jared: Jared had Memorial Day off but has worked every other day this week (and will work tomorrow too). I really don't feel like we've seen him much since the times that he has been off he has mostly spent with Jessie or her family, or he's been house sitting for the people in our ward. On Monday, Frank went with him back down to Virginia to finish the car purchasing process. It's been nice for him to have his own car (although Jessie has it for the weekend) to get around to the places he needs to go. But the car buying and insuring process was a bit stressful and now he still needs to get some repairs made to the car, get it inspected, and get it registered. We feel crunched for time because he gets married in 2 weeks and then goes on his honeymoon for a week so by the time he gets back from that, he only has 2 days until his temporary registration expires. So he really needs to get the repairs and inspection and registration done before the wedding! And since he's working every day or gone all the time, that hasn't been happening. Let's just say there have been some tempers fraying around here and leave it at that. I can really feel the tensions rising around here with the wedding two weeks off. I would like to feel more happiness and joy and less tension and stress, but I guess it's inevitable that there's going to be some stress at this point.

Jessie's sister Kylie graduated from high school on Wednesday. Jared had that morning off so he went to her graduation and then to lunch with her family before going to work in the afternoon. He also spent most of Memorial Day with her family. He has spent at least a couple of hours at the house that he is "sitting" every day also.

Snickers: He had a follow up appointment with the vet on Wednesday morning and they are pretty sure from the x-rays that he has a minor herniated disc. Thankfully, it doesn't need any treatment besides the medicines we are currently giving him. His appetite is still a bit off at times and he doesn't always look incredibly happy, but he is definitely moving around a lot better than he was. We just have to finish out the medicine that he's on and keep an eye on him to see if he has any more problems. The vet said he may have a recurrence of symptoms but we will probably be able to treat it with the same medications if that happens. I'm really thankful that we avoided further expensive tests and so forth! One of the medicines makes him thirstier than normal so he's been drinking a lot and he has whined to go out in the middle of the night for the last 3 nights in a row. That's not too fun so hopefully that won't continue much longer.

Cleaning / de-cluttering / organizing project: My project for this week was the deck, shed & yard, and I am happy to say that I made more progress on that than I did on last week's project (which you may remember was zero). Frank and I did weeding and cutting down iris (they're done blooming for the year) in the front flower bed on Monday evening and on Wednesday I mowed the lawn (Frank edged it) and weeded and cut down iris in the backyard flower bed. It was an extremely hot and humid day, and I waited until evening to work on it so that it had cooled down a bit but the weeding part still nearly killed me. The mowing wasn't too bad, though. Now the yard looks pretty nice! I didn't get anything done in the shed but it isn't too bad. On the deck, I mostly wanted to clean our patio table and I am partway through with that but haven't finished yet. It actually has a coating of green stuff (mold? mildew? pollen?) all over it and it is pretty hard to get off so it is taking time. At least I feel like I got something done!

Furniture assembly: Frank and I, with some help from Seth, managed to put together the other bookcase for our bedroom. I think that was on Saturday...I can't even remember now! It looks pretty good:

We bought stuff to tether them to the wall on Monday, but Frank hasn't had a chance to actually tether them yet so I still haven't put books in them yet. All that stuff on the shelves is either tools we used to put the furniture together (and haven't put away yet, since Frank will need some of them to do the tethering) or random things that I need to put somewhere else but haven't had a chance to yet. The drawers are mostly full--with blankets. The blankets used to be in a corner of our room, overflowing out of the big basket that you see on the bottom shelf. It does look a lot nicer (and neater) without that overflowing blanket basket in the corner. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the basket instead yet, which is why it's just sitting there on the shelf right now. Hopefully Frank will get the chance to tether the bookcases to the walls in the next few days and then I can really get things put away and organized, and our room will look a lot better. The storage shelves for my office / sewing area are still in the box--originally, Jared was going to put them together on Wednesday morning before work but then he went to the graduation instead. And as I said, he really hasn't been around much since. Maybe tomorrow after he gets home from work he will get to that.

Wedding stuff: I've been working through my list of stuff to do for both Jared's wedding and Tanner's openhouse. We're getting closer to working out all the details for the dinner for Jared's wedding and I also ordered a Costco cake for that and purchased paper products and tablecloths this week. I did some research on paper products for Tanner's open house, but haven't decided for sure what I want to do about that yet. I made a photo guest book for his open house on Tuesday and much to my surprise it was delivered today and it looks good! So that's one more thing that can be crossed off the list. I spent most of Saturday getting the guest list, including addresses, ready to send to Tanner & Darlee and I did get that done. I also created and sent out an email invite for their open house. We immediately got a ton of RSVPs, and they have continued to trickle in throughout the week. So far, everyone who has responded has said either "yes" or "maybe" (mostly "yes") and we are up to 43 adults and 7 kids attending already. There are still a lot of people who haven't responded yet, though, and I'm pretty sure we will get some "no" responses eventually! Darlee sent me some photos of her growing up, because I asked for some for a display I want to do for the openhouse. I have spent some time looking through our photos to find some of Tanner, and have discovered two things. 1) Darlee's family had a much better camera than we did when Tanner was little and 2) We don't have a ton of photos of just Tanner! We have lots of photos of Tanner with one of his brothers, or with me, or with the whole family, but not a lot of just him. What can I say? He's a middle child!! Darlee, on the other hand, has a ton of cute photos of just her. (She's the youngest child.) Hopefully I will be able to scare up a few decent photos of Tanner! One of my friends has a neighbor who makes little tarts and other pastries for a couple of the nice restaurants around here, so she offered to see if her neighbor could make some pastries for the open house. She got back to me a few days later and said her neighbor could make 150 mini tarts and cupcakes for a price that is incredibly low. So that is really nice! We're going to do that, and supplement those with cake, donut holes, and brownies. I did some pricing on those items this week too. We went looking for a lattice backdrop that is supposedly at our church, but haven't located it yet, unfortunately. I have also been communicating with the lady making Jared & Jessie's wedding cake and getting those arrangements finalized. So overall--there's been a lot of wedding stuff going on! I try to do at least one or two things every day, and I am slowly crossing things off and whittling down the lists. There is still a lot to do, though.

Weather: We've had a few really hot and miserable days this week. We have also had some thunderstorms, including a severe thunderstorm yesterday afternoon that included a tornado warning. I was at the store when I got the tornado warning alert and felt torn between staying put until the storm passed (probably the safest thing to do) and trying to get home before the storm hit. I could see ugly looking clouds in the distance but they weren't too close and then I remembered that Snickers was home alone and he gets really nervous during storms so I decided to head home. I really wanted to get home first, anyway. It was kind of crazy because I felt like I was the only person on the road aware that a storm was coming (even though it was pretty obvious from the sky that something was coming). All the other drivers seemed to be meandering slowly about--I kept getting stuck behind people who weren't even going the speed limit!! I did make it home before the worst of the storm hit, thankfully. It started raining before I got home, but not very hard. Shortly after I got home it turned into a deluge so I was really, really glad I got home first. The wind blew really hard also but thankfully no tornado materialized in our immediate vicinity (although they think a tornado may have gone through part of Frederick county). I was a little concerned about Seth, since he was outside again but I got an email from the school later letting us know that everyone on the 6th grade campout was fine. Today is absolutely beautiful, with temperatures in the low 80s and low humidity. Everybody please pray that we'll have weather like that for Jared's wedding day and especially for his reception!!

Quilting: I made a lot more progess on the quilt this week, thankfully. I finished up the 3rd row, did the entire 4th row, and am now working on the 5th (and final) row. I'm trying to get the entire quilt done before Amy and kids arrive next Friday because I lose access to my sewing room at that point (Jared is going to have to sleep down there because Amy & Maddie will be in his room) so I still have a lot to get done but hopefully I will make it in time.

Other stuff: Of course I have continued to do all the regular cleaning, shopping, and laundry. I exercised every day also. As I mentioned last week, I decided to let brain balance go for the duration, and I'm glad I did because there really hasn't been time for it. I also decided I am going to have to give up going to the religion class until after Jared's wedding. Cutting out all the things that aren't absolutely necessary did seem to help me get more things done for the weddings and more quilting done too. I got a few things done related to my music calling and on Sunday I taught my Primary class. We had the Elders over for dinner on Sunday too. On Monday our ward had a crab fest / picnic for Memorial Day and we were planning to go but we were running errands in the morning and then I started to feel sick so we decided not to go. I had a bad headache and started to ache all over. We came home and I took a nap, and after that I felt a little better. By Tuesday I was fine. It was weird, but I'm not complaining that I didn't come down with something serious! On Wednesday I picked up my friend's kids (the one who had surgery recently) from school when I picked up Seth. They came to to our house, but they were only here for about 15 or 20 minutes before their dad came to pick them up. I will be picking them up from school 3 days next week, though.

That about wraps it up for this week, and I need to get dinner made and eaten before we have 12 year old boys invading our house so that's it for now.

PS to Weekly Review May 24 '19

Oh yes--I forgot!! I also ordered birthday presents for Seth early this week and the last one arrived today. Thank goodness for online shopping because I never would have had time to go shopping this week. And thank goodness he chose to have his last birthday party when he was 10, instead of waiting until his 12th birthday. (We did sleep over birthday parties for all our other boys when they turned 12.) I can't imagine throwing a birthday party into the mix right now. Tender mercies!

Weekly Review May 24 '19

I'll start out this week with photos of the Mother's Day gifts I didn't include in last week's post:

This week was super busy and I'm exhausted! (That might also have something to do with the fact that I went to bed last night after 11:00, woke up at 2:30 am, and didn't go back to sleep. I did get a nap later, but it was only an hour or less.) I am going to do categories this week.

Work: I didn't work with my Arc friend this week, but it was just as well since I was so busy and on Thursday I didn't feel very well. I did a little bit of work on the office furniture website. Frank has been working long hours, both for his regular job and for his business. Jared was scheduled to work every day this week but today, but he didn't work yesterday because he felt sick to his stomach when he woke up. Whatever it was, it didn't last--he seems to be fine today. Some days he went in to work in the afternoon and worked into the evening (sometimes as late as 10:00 pm) and other days he went in late morning and worked until dinner time.  A family in our ward asked him to house sit for them this coming week--he just has to go over there for a few hours a day to check on things and so it looks "lived in".

Allergies: I have had a really bad time with allergies this week. The last few weeks I've had some issues, but it was much worse this week. I've been sneezing a lot and have a runny nose and itchy eyes and ears. It was especially bad on Wednesday and yesterday I also had a bad headache and a lot of congestion. I actually wondered if maybe I had some kind of cold or flu, not just allergies. Mercifully, I started feeling better by late afternoon and today I have only had a little bit of trouble.

Furniture: Some of the furniture I got at Ikea last Friday has been put together and some of it is still in  boxes. Frank put together the shoe holder on Saturday but he paid dearly for it--sitting on the floor for that long really hurt his back. He was in a lot of pain for a few days. No more furniture building for him! Jared put one of the bookcases together on Saturday after he got home from work and he put another one together on Monday morning before work (he didn't have to go in until afternoon), assisted by Jessie (she also didn't work until afternoon).

Here is the shoe holder:

I really like this piece because it takes up very little room, but holds 12 pairs of shoes. (Plus it has a drawer that I can put things in.) Shoes are always a big problem because we have a super small coat closet. We have a shoe rack hanging inside the coat closet door, but Jared's and Frank's shoes are really too big to go on the rack so we couldn't put very many shoes on it. I tried to solve that problem by putting a couple of bins for shoes in the bottom of the closet, but there was only room for small bins and they were always overflowing with shoes. Now the rack is free for my shoes and Seth's, the bins only have a few shoes in them, and Jared and Frank have a place to put their shoes. Plus Frank's shoes aren't on the floor anymore so he doesn't have to bend over to get them, which is a big deal for someone with chronic back issues.

Here's one of the bookcases:

The other one he built is just like it, but the third one is wider and doesn't have any drawers. We're planning to put it in between the other two. Heaven only knows when the other bookcase for my room or the storage shelf for my craft / office area will be built, because Jared and I are both swamped. So until then, the house actually looks messier, with boxes lying around. Plus I haven't moved anything into the bookcases yet because they need to be tethered to the wall first and I don't want to do that until all three are built and we can make sure we have them placed exactly where we want them. That means all the things that need to go in them are still cluttering up my room. So that is stressing me out a bit, because we are running out of time to get these things done. But I'm glad to have the new furniture, just wish it would put itself together!

My cleaning / organizing /decluttering project: I got the boys' bathroom done last Saturday. My project for this week was my office / craft area (and anything else in the basement I could manage) and I got done--absolutely nothing! That is partly because I was so busy, partly because I was not feeling well, and partly because the storage shelf hasn't been put together yet so there's not much I can do. So that is discouraging, but I've decided that I'm probably not going to get a lot more done on this project at this point. I have done most of the main living areas, and they do look a lot better overall, so I am just going to have to be content with that. I'm hoping I'll get a little done tomorrow still, and if I get a few more things done in the next couple of weeks--great! But I am going to be totally stressed out if I try to get everything done and I have enough things to stress about already, without adding something else.

Which takes us to wedding stuff: I'm now officially in high stress mode over wedding stuff!! For some reason, in my head I still had about 4 or 5 weeks until Jared's wedding. Don't ask me why! When I realized I actually only have 3 weeks, I started to feel some panic. And actually, it's not Jared's wedding so much (although I'd like to get details for the dinner completely nailed down) but the realization that the openhouse for Tanner is that same day and I haven't really done anything about that, besides reserve the place (our church building). I also looked over the list of who we want to invite and it turned out to be a lot more people than I was thinking and overall, it started to look like a  much bigger deal than I had originally planned. But I contacted some friends in my ward and asked for help. Last night, 6 of my friends came over and we pretty much planned the whole thing. Many of them have things that they are willing to loan us to use for decoration and they had a lot of good ideas. Plus they all offered to set things up, which we really need since we will be coming back from Philadelphia that afternoon and will probably barely get here in time. So in some ways, I felt better after that but I also have a pretty long list of things to do so I've been feeling pretty overwhelmed. But I'm extremely grateful to my friends who are so generous and willing to help me!! They're the best!! Other wedding stuff I got done this week--I ordered a dress I thought might work for Jared's wedding and it got here and it fits! But it's a bit see through at the top (it's lacy) so I had to order a layering shirt to go underneath. I actually ordered two, because the dress is coral and coral is a tricky color because there are so many different shades of coral (some more peachy, some more orange-y / reddish, some more pinkish) and I wasn't sure what shade would match the best when I was just looking at a photograph online. The shirts arrived today and one of them is a pretty close match, thank goodness. We also changed our flights to Utah for Tanner's wedding (and unfortunately they all cost more than our original flights) and I rescheduled the luncheon for Tanner's wedding too. I'm sure there are other things, but that's all I can think of right now, besides lots of discussions with Jared about various wedding things and lots of text messaging with Tanner (and Darlee, and her mom) about things for his wedding.

Jared & Jessie: They both asked for the day off today so they could go get their marriage license. They had to go to Pennsylvania to get it, since they are getting married in Pennsylvania, but thankfully they didn't have to go all the way to Philadelphia. They just had to get it from somewhere in Pennsylvania, so they went to Gettysburg, which is a straight shot 30 minutes north of us, instead of to Philadelphia, which is 2 1/2 hours north east of us, on a good traffic day. And I very much doubt that the Friday before Memorial Day would be a good traffic day!! After getting their license, they drove down to Virginia to look at a car they were thinking about buying. They decided to buy the car, so they put down a deposit to hold it and we will have to go back to get it sometime next week. On the way home, the car they were driving (one of Jessie's family's cars) overheated so Jessie's mom ended up having to go rescue them--1 1/2 hours away! So they didn't get back home until this evening and it was a very long day for them. I feel really bad for Jessie's parents, who certainly have enough stress right now without adding car problems.

Seth: We're getting into the end-of-school-year activities and this week his class had a campout. They left yesterday morning and got back this afternoon. Except Seth decided he didn't want to spend the night so Jared picked him up last night and I took him back to the campground this morning (it's only about 30 minutes away). I would have preferred that he spend the night and I encouraged him to stay but in the end I gave in. He got sick to his stomach the last 2 times he's camped out overnight, so he didn't want to do it again. We had a pretty severe thunderstorm yesterday afternoon but they went to the campground's bathhouse during the storm to stay safe. However, Seth said their tent flipped over and some of his stuff got a little wet. Anyway, he seemed to have fun overall. The sixth graders in his class also had a special field trip with his teacher on Tuesday but he didn't go to that. Some of the other kids planned it and they decided to go ice skating and he didn't want to go ice skating so he refused to go! I didn't even hear about it until I went to pick him up from school and they told me the 6th graders in his class weren't back from their field trip yet. I was really confused because I hadn't heard anything about a field trip! His teacher said they never bothered to send home a permission slip since he said he wouldn't go. I kind of wish she had let me know that--I could have talked to him about it, although it's doubtful I would have changed his mind. As it was, I ended up having a going-around-in-circles discussion / argument with him about it on the way home from school that day and didn't really get anywhere. He was mad that they picked something he didn't want to do and felt like they "owed him something" and I was trying to get him to understand that it was his choice not to go so no one owed him anything, as well as trying to get him to realize that he really ought to be more willing to try new things--who knows, he might actually have fun!! So that was pretty frustrating. Unfortunately, I have these kinds of discussions with him fairly often. It's discouraging. Seth also has a project he's been working on about Mars and we worked on that this week too and pretty much finished up the research. (I am actually supposed to be helping him with this--don't you "love it" when teachers give parents homework? Maybe they could have asked me if I had something big going on in my life first, like say...two weddings?!) At least he got to pick the topic, so he's doing something he's interested in (which was actually the whole point of the project).

Brain balance: Didn't happen much this week between the campout, an injured toe which prevented Seth from being able to do some things, and me needing to be other places right after school, which is our brain balance time. And I'll be honest--I think brain balance is another thing that is going to need to go on hold until we get through Jared's wedding. 

Quilting: I barely got any quilting done at all, which is disheartening. I snatched little bits of time here and there to quilt but I haven't even finished the 3rd row yet. Hopefully next week will be better! I do have more time to finish now but I'd still really like to get it done before Jared's wedding. I'd like to use it for decor at Tanner's openhouse, maybe, but obviously that won't be possible if it's not done!

Snickers: He hasn't seemed to be his best the last couple of weeks (tail down a lot and skipping a meal occasionally) and on Tuesday evening we noticed he was limping pretty distinctly. He didn't eat his dinner that night and he wouldn't eat in the morning either. He was also still limping. So we decided we'd better get him into the vet. After examining him, the vet decided she wanted to get some x-rays done of his shoulder and spine. He actually showed signs of having a neurological problem and she suspected he might have a herniated disc in his spine, which can cause problems with signals to his brain so that he was putting his feet down wrong (at an awkward angle) which would explain the limp. Plus it can also be pretty painful, which would explain why he wasn't feeling very well (not eating and tail down). She said it can cause stumbling too and he's totally been doing that lately, so I'm pretty sure that's what the problem is, even though the results from the x-rays haven't come back yet. In the meantime, they prescribed a muscle relaxant and an anti-inflammatory drug for him and we definitely saw improvement yesterday and today. He's eating again, not limping so much, and looks a lot happier. The medication is supposed to make him drowsy but I haven't noticed him being a lot more drowsy. (He sleeps quite a bit already.) He's not supposed to go up and down stairs because he might fall so we've been carrying him up and down--but sometimes he goes down when I'm not paying attention! I can't watch him like a hawk 24/7! If he really does have a herniated disc, I'm not sure what the treatment for that would be (or if there is any treatment) and I'm not looking forward to finding out. The vet visit and x-rays already cost a mint of money. If only we could put pets on our health insurance plan! We are glad that he is feeling a lot better though. 

Other stuff I did this week: All the usual cleaning, cooking, meal planning, laundry, etc. I also mowed the lawn, went to the religion class on Wednesday, and had book chat on Tuesday evening. (We're reading a book called In His Steps now. I've read a little bit of it and it's good so far.) I worked on my music calling (arranging a few musical numbers, although people are still coming to me and offering to sing, which is great!), prepared my Primary lesson for this Sunday, got a birthday treat ready for one of the kids in my Primary class, exercised most days, got people to all the places they needed to go, helped Seth pack for his campout, took Jared to a song practice, did some shopping for my friend Wanda, returned movies / games to the library (and renewed some books), and was visited by one of my ministering sisters (she came on Thursday, and stayed for the openhouse planning meeting). Just writing about all of this makes me tired.

I'm not the only one who's tired--while I've been writing this, Seth fell asleep on the couch! He never does that!! I guess all the hiking the last couple of days wore him out. It's my bed time too so I'll post this now and get to bed myself.

Weekly Review May 17 '19

I am going to try to get this done in a reasonable amount of time, but this week was fairly eventful.

Friday: After I picked Seth up from school, I had an appointment to get my hair cut and the color touched up. I can't remember what we did that evening except that Jessie was here for a while; she picked Jared up from work. I think they went out for a while. Frank was gone until late but I can't remember why--either he had a project at work or he was doing work for a client.

Saturday: Jessie was going to the temple to receive her own endowment so Jared and I went with her. Originally, we were all going to go (Seth was going to do baptisms) but Frank had so much work he needed to get done for one of his clients and it had to be done by Monday, so he decided that he couldn't go. We decided under those circumstances it would be better if Seth didn't go either, and he was happy to stay home and play games & watch television on Saturday instead of going to Philadelphia and back! Hopefully we'll be able to get him to the temple to do baptisms soon, though. I feel really bad that we haven't done that yet. As it turned out, I think it is a very good thing that both Frank and Seth weren't with us because it ended up being an all day event and I know it would have been really hard on Frank's back and he also would have needed to eat before we were done. We ended up not eating anything between breakfast (about 8:00) and dinner (about 4:30) and that is something that Frank can't do. (Diabetes is a real pain.) Seth would have ended up waiting around for us for a long time and I'm sure he would have become tired and crabby. So anyway--it all turned out for the best. Jared and I left here about 8:30 and for once the traffic wasn't too bad so we got to the temple around 11:30. However, the temple was swamped with people that day! When we got there, the parking garage under the temple was full and we had to wait a while for someone to leave so that we could have a place to park. Then when I got upstairs to change, the women's dressing room was so full that they had run out of lockers! So they had a bunch of large plastic bins and I had to put my clothes in one of those. They had them stacked against the back wall of the dressing room and there were probably 40 - 50 bins that were full. Well, having too many patrons is a nice problem to have, right? It was kind of a mob scene, but still managed to be pretty quiet and calm. Without going into a lot of details, though, I'd say they were really struggling with organization that day. They didn't have anyone to meet us and guide our group around when we arrived, her mom got an escort tag but the rest of us never got tags to identify us as people in her group, they kept losing track of Jessie and when they finally got us all up to the endowment room (her parents, grandparents, and Jared and I were all there with her) they had only saved 2 places up front for Jessie and her mom so her grandma and I ended up sitting in the back. Then they forgot she was one of the new people (there were at least 4 going through for the first time in our session) and didn't invite her escort and those in her group to go up with her at the end. At least her mom went through first, so she had one person to greet her when she finished but the rest of us got there much later. Jared wasn't too happy about that (I can't blame him). But overall, it was really nice to be in the temple again, in spite of the chaos, and Jessie didn't know any different so she had a good experience overall. And I guess that's all that matters! We were in the 1:15 session (Jessie had to be there at 11:45, and Jared wanted to be there then too so that's why we got there so early) and it was totally packed so it took a long time to finish at the end (especially since Jessie's grandma and I were in the very back of the room). It was an ASL session, which was actually pretty interesting and kind of cool. At any rate, by the time we all changed and were ready to leave the temple, it was about 4:30. By then we were all starving and Jessie's mom wanted to get cheesesteaks, so we went to a place nearby called Reading Terminal Square (or something like that) which was a big market where you could buy all kinds of food but they also had lots of little restaurants. So we had our dinner and then headed home--another 3 hour drive! We didn't get home until about 8:00 pm, so it was a LONG day!

(I only ate half of it! I took the rest home to Frank.)

Sunday: It was Mother's Day so I got to talk to both Scott and Tanner, which was nice. It was pouring rain when we went to church (and coming home too)! At church, they had arranged for some of the men to come in and teach all of the Primary classes so that all the women could go to RS and we had a nice meeting with everyone together--they had asked several women to share something from the most recent General Conference that had touched them or helped them. It was really sweet! At the end, we all got our Mother's Day gift from the ward, which was this:

I thought this framed scripture was a really nice idea--better than a plant that I will just kill!! Frank made dinner and they gave me some cards and some presents.

The thing on the right (with a glare on it) is a magnet, which I saw at the fabric store and thought was cool. It looks like a vintage pattern envelope. Seth decorated the mug for me at school.

Jared got the roses for me.

Close up of the other side of the mug-- a heart and "#1 Mom"! I got a nap that afternoon too, which was the best. (I actually wasn't feeling all that great on both Saturday and Sunday. My stomach was a bit upset and I had a bad headache.) Then later, two packages got delivered and I got two more presents--a game called Dead Ringer and a book about the history of fashion. (Both things that were on my Amazon wishlist). Then a few days later another package arrived and it was a butter dish and matching salt & pepper set. So I was thoroughly spoiled this Mother's Day! (I forgot to take pictures of the other gifts; I will try to remember to do that.) I also got to talk to my own mom, so that was wonderful.

Monday: The rest of the week wasn't as eventful so I will be more brief from here on out! Since I hadn't felt really well over the weekend and I was really wiped out too, I decided not to exercise on Monday morning. (I did exercise every other day though, and I started feeling better on Monday.) I worked with my Arc friend for a few hours in the morning. She had a doctor appointment and some other places that she needed to go. Frank left work long enough to take Jared to work because he didn't need to be there until an hour after I needed to meet my Arc friend to take her to her appointment. Since I worked most of the morning, I had a busy day getting all the rest of the chores done in the afternoon  and evening. I did a little bit of work for the office furniture website and on Tanner & Darlee's quilt too. For family night activity Jared chose to play Clue, and he actually won which made Frank happy because I always win that game...he kept saying the reigning champion had to step down now, haha!!

Tuesday: Not much to say about Tuesday. I kept really busy all day, but just doing the usual things mostly--cleaning bathrooms and planning the menus for the following week and working on the quilt a little bit. I also called the doctor to set up an appointment for Seth because he needs some immunizations updated (although I think I'm going to have to change the appointment now) and I called the pharmacy to find out why his prescription wasn't ready yet. I found out that they wouldn't fill it until they confirmed that we have health insurance--our insurance just changed at the beginning of May so when they contacted our insurance company they said we weren't covered. Once they talked to me and I told them we had new insurance, they said they would fill it that day so I was able to pick it up on Wednesday. I spent some time looking over our new insurance information to make sure I knew what I needed to take with me to the pharmacy. We also have a new flexible spending account for medical expenses and thankfully when I picked up the prescription, the debit card for the account worked, so I was able to pay for it that way. Also on Tuesday Jessie came over for dinner and Jared met with our stake president to get his recommend for his sealing (he met with our bishop on Sunday). Jessie already has her recommend for the sealing so they are ready to go with that.

Wednesday: My religion class wasn't held because the teacher was out of town. I missed the class, but it was nice to have more time to get things done. Besides the usual chores, I also mowed the lawn (first day that it didn't rain in a while!) and worked on the quilt for quite a while.

  
I took those photos on Wednesday; since then I was able to work on the quilt a bit more and I finished quilting the second row, so I'm ready to start on the third row now. In the evening, I took Seth to YM and ran errands while he was there, then picked him back up. I actually picked up 2 other kids on our way and took them back home again afterwards. For their activity that evening they were learning about Ramadan and there were actually several Muslims who came to teach them about it and at the end it was time for one of their prayers so they showed us how they pray. Then they had some food for everyone--the sun had set by then so they could break their fast for the day. It was kind of cool to see them pray!

Thursday: I did not work with my Arc friend but I kept busy with the usual chores and quilting. When I picked up Seth from school, I also picked up 2 other kids--the same ones I took to school one day last week. Their mom had her surgery that day so I brought them here and then took them over to their grandparents' house after their grandpa got home from work (the grandparents and this family are both in our ward). This is the same friend who had surgery about 14 months ago and then had a lot of complications afterwards so that she needed a lot of follow up procedures. I picked her kids up from school a lot last spring when she was in the middle of all that. The surgery she had this week was also a direct result of all of that--the first surgery was to remove her gall bladder, but in doing that they inadvertently damaged her liver and it has been leaking bile ever since. She has had a stent in there ever since to help drain the bile and they've had to change the stent several times and have tried changing the size of it too. Anyway, they have not been able to successfully resolve the leaking bile problem so they finally decided they were going to need to remove part of her liver, which is what she had done yesterday. Hopefully she will recover quickly and hopefully this will finally resolve the problem and she can go back to living a normal life. It has been a real ordeal!! After dinner on Thursday I finally got around to working on my cleaning / organizing / decluttering project for the week, which is the bathrooms. I got the master bathroom done, which feels great. I will have to do the boys' bathroom tomorrow. The half bath on the main level is already fairly pristine--I don't think I need to do anything in there.

Friday: Today has been really busy. Jared had the day off work (he worked every other weekday and he works tomorrow too) so he helped me out a lot by going to Ikea with me to get some furniture that I've been wanting to get. He actually isn't feeling all that great (seems to have the same stomachache / headache thing that I had over the weekend) but he still went with me. That was a real sacrifice, too, since he was the one that did all the loading and unloading of boxes, not to mention walking all through the store with me which took a couple of hours. It actually took us all day to do that (the store is about an hour away)--we got home with just enough time to unload all the boxes before I had to go pick up Seth from school. I took Seth to the library on the way home and then we went to Chick-fil-a to get a milkshake for Jared because I told him I owed him something for spending his whole day off helping me. I got a milkshake for Seth too, of course, and since by then it was 3:30 and I hadn't even eaten lunch yet, I got food for me also. After finally getting home (the traffic between Chick-fil-a and our house was terrible for some reason!) and eating lunch / dinner, I updated the budget. Then I made dinner for everyone else (I still wasn't hungry). Dinner was pretty late but Frank was working on a report at work and didn't get home until after 6:30. Tomorrow we have a lot of furniture to put together! I got three bookcases for our bedroom (we have an empty wall to put them on), a storage shelf to put in my office / craft room, and a shoe storage piece to put next to the front door. I eventually want to get a few storage pieces for the kitchen too, but I was having a hard time making up my mind and I knew we were probably going to fill up the car with the other items (and I was right) so I decided to wait on that. Here's Jared on our fun Ikea adventure:

(I took a photo of this little office unit because I liked it. My office isn't very big so something like this might work in my office. Another thing to maybe do later!!)

Now it is almost bedtime, so I will sign off for this week!

Weekly Review May 10 '19

I'll start this week with some more iris photos. A lot of them are blooming now; there are probably a dozen of them at least. Last night it rained a bit so this morning, they look really beautiful with drops of rain on them:

We are still keeping pretty busy. Here's what we did this week:

Saturday: I had a long talk with Tanner on the phone Friday evening,which I haven't had a chance to do in a long time. It was good to talk to him, but our conversation also left me with some concerns about him and on Saturday I was worrying and really feeling pretty down. It was hard to be motivated to do much when I was feeling that way, but I forced myself to work on Tanner & Darlee's quilt, and I  finished marking the quilt top and got the pieces for the back cut out and sewed together. I was glad to get that done! I also worked on cleaning and organizing in my room a bit and between that and what Frank did, it looks quite a bit better now. I wouldn't say it's completely finished, but it's better than it was and it will have to do for now! Jared worked for a few hours in the afternoon and that evening the missionaries came over for dinner.

Sunday: Besides fasting and praying for Erick and family, I was also fasting and praying for Tanner, and it really helped! I woke up feeling much calmer and more at peace than I had on Saturday, and that feeling remained throughout the day. I am really grateful for that! Frank had an emergency come up with work so he ended up having to leave church right after the sacrament. After church, I helped Jared address wedding announcements for a while and then he left to have dinner with Jessie's family. Frank made it back home a while later and we had Mexican food for dinner, in honor of Cinco de Mayo. After Jared got back from Jessie's, we had family night.

Monday: Jared started working full time this week at Chick-fil-a, and he worked every day except yesterday. He is on a schedule where he goes in later--usually not until 10:30 or even early afternoon--and he works later--until sometime between 6 and 9 pm. He is a shift manager and he's also in charge of making sure new hires get trained properly in all the different areas of the store. Anyway, on Monday he didn't go in until 2:00, so he wasn't off until 9:00. Seth, Frank, and I played Mario Kart for family night activity and even though I'm terrible at that game, for one of the races I somehow managed to knock Frank out right when he was at the finish line and then scooted right past him to win the race (and Seth came in second)! It was hilarious, and I still don't know how I did it. Other than that, it was a normal day for me with the regular chores. I also got the layers of Tanner & Darlee's quilt put together and started quilting it. I didn't end up working with my Arc friend at all this week but it was good to have extra time...I never run out of things to do.

Tuesday: We got an early start because one of my friends was bringing her 3 kids over at 7:30 so that I could take them to school with Seth. They go to the same school, and she had a pre-op medical procedure that she had to have done that morning. It was a busy day with the regular chores, plus I stopped to see my friend Wanda because she needed her bangs trimmed (I do that for her occasionally) and she needed to give me a list of things she needed at the store. I also did a little bit of work for the office furniture website, worked on the quilt, and mowed the lawn. Jared was planning to mow the lawn for me after he got home from work, but Frank needed his help moving some heavy stuff and running cables at a client's, so I mowed the lawn after dinner instead. It was a nice evening--the perfect temperature--so I didn't mind doing that too much. Except that something started growing this week that my body does NOT like, so I've been sneezing quite a bit and have itchy eyes, plus a headache a lot of the time.

Wednesday: Mostly a regular day with chores, religion class, and working on the quilt. I do feel a bit more of a chauffeur lately because I usually have to take Jared to work and pick him up. His hours always overlap the times I have to pick Seth up from school, so I can't let him take my car. It's amazing how much extra time that takes--just those few extra trips each day. I know on Wednesday in particular, I felt like I was just running from one thing to another. Take Seth to school, take Jared to work, do the weekly grocery shopping, go to religion class, pick up Seth from school! Frank took Seth to YM that evening and picked Jared up from work on his way back, and Jared picked Seth up from YM when it was over, so at least I was free from chauffeur duties that evening and I managed to get some work done on my cleaning / organizing / decluttering project for the week, which was the living room. (I worked on it some on Monday and Tuesday also, so I'm pretty much done with the living room and it looks a lot better.)

Thursday: Again, I just worked on the usual chores and on the quilt. I'm almost done with the first row of the quilt. I decided to mark the rows 2 inches apart on this quilt, instead of 1 inch apart, which is what I did on Jared & Jessie's quilt. (That's actually what I intended to do with their quilt originally, but then I forgot and marked all the lines 1 inch apart and started quilting before I remembered.) That means I have half as much quilting to do as I did on the first quilt, and it is going much faster. Maybe, maybe I will finish it in time! On Thursday I also went to Costco to check out the price of sheet cakes because we are thinking about getting one (or more) for Tanner & Darlee's openhouse. We might get one for Jared's reception also, since their wedding cake isn't very big. Still trying to decide about that, though.

Friday: Today Jared had to be at work at 8:45, so I took him to work and then went straight from there to drop Seth off at school. I stopped on the way home to drop some books / movies / games off at the library, and then I came home and got the budget done. Seth has a 2 hour early release from school today so I have to leave in a few minutes to pick him up.

Frank has been really busy this week with work and with his business. I feel like I've barely seen him! There have been a lot of interesting things going on with his work and he has had to travel to several stores this week. He is still really enjoying his job, though.

Jared has started looking for a car but hasn't made much progress yet. He is also taking an online class from BYU this summer, which he started last week. I think all the financial realities are starting to hit him and I think he's feeling a bit overwhelmed. So please keep him (and Tanner) in your prayers.

It was pouring down rain a few minutes ago, but thankfully the sun has come back out...just in time for me to go pick up Seth. I think we will have more rain before the day is over though. We love you all and hope everyone is doing well.

Weekly Review May 3 '19

My first iris bloomed on May day:

Now there are 4 or 5 of them blooming out front. We've continued to have typical spring weather, which means some days are nice, some are kind of chilly, and some are pretty hot. Here is the summary for this week:

Friday: Frank and I got to go out for dinner as a belated anniversary celebration. We went to a Mediterranean place and it was really good. 

Saturday: I had to kind of laugh at myself on Saturday because I realized I was "nesting". Frank left to go pick up Jared and Jessie from the airport and I was running all over the house, "tidying up". I realized that I always do that when one of the kids is coming home after a longer absence...just like I did the weeks before each of them were born. (As a matter of fact, this house cleaning / organizing / decluttering project I have embarked on...isn't that really just a huge case of nesting, because I know ALL of the boys are coming home in June?) The thing that is funny about it is that my kids don't care a fig if the house is tidy or not. And certainly babies don't care, either!! But it got me wondering...does nesting cause some kind of feeling in the air of the home? A "welcome, we love you, and went to a lot of effort for you" kind of feeling that the child (baby) can sense, even if they don't consciously notice that the house has been cleaned up in their honor? I guess I'll never know the answer to that, but I do know I always feel compelled to welcome my kids with a house that is as clean and uncluttered as I can manage. Anyway...after all that philosophizing, now back to the other things we did on Saturday. I was actually really proud of Seth. He started the day kind of crabby and difficult but we got him out the door by 8:00 to go help with the annual scout lawn aeration fundraiser. I really thought he would only make it an hour or so, but he worked until we needed to pick him up at around noon (because I needed his help with other things) and he worked that whole time and came home in a good mood without any complaints! Then he spent all afternoon until dinner time working in his room to help me finish cleaning and organizing it, and once again...he was really cooperative and didn't complain or anything. Super nice!! His room looks like this now:

Yes, I would still prefer less clutter and fewer Legos than there are! But now we can see his floor. And the pull out bed is not covered with Legos anymore. And there are fewer things scattered on his bookshelves, desk, and dresser (even though there's more things scattered there than I would like). I'd really like that big basket of Bionicles to go too but I'm going to have to be patient about that. Someday, he will be ready to give them up! (And I think when he is, we're going to make a small fortune on eBay because we have so many of them and some of them are quite old and worth quite a bit.) Besides spending several hours cleaning Seth's room, on Saturday I also cleaned the kitchen floor, reviewed my Primary lesson, practiced the ukulele, worked on stuff for my music calling, worked on wedding stuff, did some work for the office furniture website, worked on our amended tax returns, and worked on the quilt. So it was a very busy day! I actually worked a few hours on the quilt and I finished sewing the quilt top:

And of course Jared came home!! So that was nice, and we are enjoying having him here.

Sunday: Jared came with me to choir practice. I assumed that he and Jessie would be going to the YSA ward until they get married, but they actually decided that since this is the last time either of them will be living at home, they wanted to spend more time with their families so they are each going to go to the ward with their families. Frank and I took naps after church and I did some indexing and we had family night.

Monday: I worked with my Arc friend for a few hours in the morning...she wanted to do some shopping at an outlet mall. I spent the rest of the day getting the regular chores done and I also contacted BYU catering and got the date for Tanner's luncheon cleared up and contacted the webmaster for the office furniture website because he was helping me solve the sideways photo problem. (Hopefully it's solved now, but we'll see.) Jared helped with the laundry, thankfully, because there was a TON of it. That was his fault, though, because he brought home so much dirty laundry. He mentioned on Saturday when he got home that he needed to do laundry, but when I told him that I usually do laundry on Monday, he decided it could wait. If I had known that he needed to wash EVERY STITCH OF CLOTHING HE OWNED BESIDES WHAT HE HAD ON, I would have told him to do laundry on Saturday! But as I said, he helped a lot. He kept the wash moving while I was gone and he also folded almost all of it. That evening we all (including Jessie) went to a Frederick Keys baseball game. (The Frederick Keys are the local minor league baseball team. They are named the Keys after Francis Scott Key, who lived most of his life in Frederick and is buried here.) The reason we went to this particular baseball game is because Roy Rogers was making a donation to the Cal Ripken Foundation and so we all got free tickets through Frank's work. Plus, they had rented a box for our group and had all this free food too, so that was nice. The only thing that wasn't nice is that it happened to be one of our chilly days. It was cloudy and only in the low 60s and windy. And of course as the sun went down it got chillier. We could watch the game from inside the box, of course, but it was pretty crowded so we all stayed outside most of the time except for Frank--he went in and out because he was talking with various people that he works with. (A few blankets that Jared retrieved from the car helped us out a lot.) We met Frank's boss and a lot of his coworkers, and we also met the owner of  Plamondon, which is the company that owns all the local Roy Rogers restaurants (and the local Marriott hotels also). Everyone was really nice. The game went pretty late, since baseball games are always kind of long, and no one made it to the end of the game but our family outlasted everybody in the group, staying until the end of the 7th inning. Seth had a blast and he was really excited because he got on the big screen three times. We also had a few close calls with foul balls, although Seth was disappointed that we never got a chance to catch a ball.

Roy Rogers advertisement, with the Plamondon Hospitality Partners advertisement right next to it.

Oh, and the Keys won the game! It was 5-0 when we went home, and the final score was 5-2. One of the owners of the company told us that they have blocks of tickets for all the games so if we ever want to go to a game, we can probably get free tickets again. We will probably do it again sometime...on a warmer day!

Tuesday: I didn't exercise on either Tuesday or Thursday because I didn't get up in time. But I did get all the regular chores done on Tuesday, plus I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah, took Seth to the orthodontist, and went to book chat in the evening. Jared mowed the lawn for me, which I really appreciated! My friend Rebekah and I had planned to go to Boston Market but discovered that it has closed! That's kind of a bummer because I really like Boston Market and now the closest one to us is 30 minutes away. The orthodontist persuaded Seth to let him try pulling 3 of his teeth and he did pull 2 of them out. He has so many loose teeth that are just barely holding on! He also decided that we can give it a few more months and see if he can keep wiggling them and get more of them out. Which is fine with me, because I'd rather not have to pay the dentist to pull a bunch of them. The orthodontist didn't even charge us for the 2 he pulled, which was nice. Book chat was fun as always, with lively discussion. Now we are going to read a book called When You Reach Me, which is actually an older child / young adult Newbery winner book, and I have already read it twice--once a few years ago, and then I read it again in the last couple of days! I decided I needed to read it again since I couldn't remember it very well, but I didn't intend to read it that fast. But it is pretty short and easy to read and I just got through it really fast. It's one of those books where you are trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together, so it's pretty motivating to keep going. The first time I read it, I had a really hard time putting it down because I just wanted to know what was really going on!! This time I remembered enough that I was okay putting it down but as I said--I still read it pretty quickly.

Wednesday: I got Seth to school, came home for a little while and then took Jared to work. He actually wasn't scheduled to work this week but he picked up a few shifts. (He's working at Chick-fil-a again this summer.) His work is right next to Walmart, so I did the Walmart shopping right after I dropped him off and then went to my religion class. We are going to study the Pearl of Great Price this summer and this week we learned all about the history of the Pearl of Great Price--where it came from and so forth. I actually learned a lot of things I didn't know and it was interesting. After class I worked on the quilt for a bit--started marking it--and then I had to pick up Jared from work and then Seth from school. Then it was time to do brain balance with Seth and to make dinner and after dinner I took Seth to YM. I had agreed to take a couple of other kids home when I picked Seth up at the end. (Meanwhile, Jared went to Jessie's and they worked on addressing wedding invitations.) I really needed to get some work done for the office furniture website, but didn't get the chance to start working on that until about 9:00 pm. I stopped long enough to say prayers with everybody and then I kept working on it while everyone else went to bed and I ended up staying up until 1:30 am finishing everything! I didn't intend to stay up that late, but once I got going I really wanted to finish it.

Thursday: I actually woke up about 6:00 and never took a nap either--not sure how I functioned on so little sleep but I wasn't even that tired. I got the regular chores done (Jared helped with vacuuming) and kept working on marking the quilt. It's probably my least favorite part of the project, but it has to be done. I'm hoping to finish that part tonight. Jared had an appointment with the eye doctor in the afternoon, and even though I called and added him as a driver on our car insurance, I still had to take him because I was worried he wouldn't be done before I needed to pick up Seth from school. And I was right--he wasn't quite done when I needed to leave but thankfully I didn't have to go back and get him because Jessie stopped by (her mom works at this eye doctor's office) and she said she could bring Jared home. They did some shopping or something before coming home too. While I was waiting for Jared at the eye doctor, there were a couple of little kids running around and they came over and started talking to me and pretty soon they were handing me toys and books and climbing up into my lap and everything! When their mom finally appeared, she just looked at me but didn't say anything, which I thought was kind of strange. I mean, I didn't really mind that they were climbing all over me, but if my kids had been doing that with a complete stranger, I would have told them to stop and I would have apologized to the stranger. For that matter, I wouldn't have left them roaming through the waiting room alone for that long, but to each his own, I guess. Frank decided that he really wanted to go see End Game after work so he got tickets for him and the boys. There wasn't time for him to come home from work and then go back, so we drove over to meet him at a restaurant and I traded cars with him. I was supposed to be going to a stake RS activity--a dinner and speaker--but after dropping the boys off I decided not to go. I had a bad headache and the thought of being able to lie down in a quiet house was just too appealing!! So I just made myself a sandwich for dinner and relaxed and that's when I read most of the book chat book. I also folded clothes and did some other chores that I hadn't had time to finish earlier (my head felt better by then). I did have the house to myself for a couple of hours but they got back home a lot earlier than expected because something went wrong with the movie about half way through and the picture went out!! They couldn't fix it, either. What rotten luck! So now poor Frank and Seth are waiting to see what happens. (Jared has already seen the movie.) They did give each of them 2 free movie tickets at least. Hopefully they will be able to go see the movie soon, and hopefully it will work this time. (I fell behind on the Avengers movies several years ago, so I need to watch a whole bunch of other movies before I can see this one. Maybe in a few years...or maybe a decade!...)

Friday: Today I got the budget done and took Seth to the library. Jared and I took a few things to the storage unit too. My cleaning / organizing / de-cluttering project for this week is supposed to be my bedroom and closet, but I have barely got anything done except I went through a couple of bags of salt & pepper shakers that Frank's mom has given me in the last few years. I'm hoping to get some more work done in my room tomorrow. I actually need to get a couple of bookcases before I can really get things moved around in there the way I want to. But I also went through my closet about a month ago and purged a lot of clothes and also about a month ago I got some new underbed storage containers and put a lot of stuff in them, so my bedroom and closet are already a lot better than they were a few months ago. We actually had 2 large underbed storage containers sitting in the corner of our bedroom on the floor for YEARS because when we got our king size mattress several years ago we got a metal bed frame rather than getting a new king size bed (headboard, etc). As it turns out, the frame is a lot lower than our previous queen size bed was, so the underbed storage containers wouldn't fit under it anymore. And there they have sat, with a lot of stuff accumulating on top of them,  until I finally found some underbed containers that do fit. I was pretty happy when I found them, believe me!! So our room isn't too bad, but there's still plenty we could do to get it more organized and less cluttered, and I hope to make some progress on that tomorrow. I was supposed to take my friend Wanda to the store today but she changed her mind and I was glad because I barely got the budget done before I had to go pick up Seth as it was. Plus that gave Jared a chance to take the car this morning so he and Jessie got more wedding invitations addressed.

Speaking of weddings, Tanner sent me a link a few days ago for he & Darlee's engagement portraits and they are beautiful!! We also ordered ties for everybody for Jared's wedding and Jared's came a few days ago and the rest of them came today. These weddings are starting to seem more and more real. I gave Jared & Jessie their quilt on Monday because I wanted to surprise them with it and I knew that Jared was going to see me working on Tanner & Darlee's quilt and he would probably figure out that I had made him one too. So I gave it to them early. And they were surprised, and they did like it a lot.

That's all I can think of to report except to say that we are praying for Erick and his family and we will fast for you all on Sunday, too. We love you and hope you can feel the strength of all of us praying for you!!