Weekly Review December 18th, 25th, and 31st '20

 I guess it's about time I got caught up on this blog. I was too busy to write on the 18th because I was getting ready for our trip to Utah and since then I've just been enjoying being with family so I decided to wait until I got back home to update the blog. Now I have a lot to cover, but fortunately for all of you, I can't remember details anymore so maybe this post won't be incredibly long. 

So going back to Saturday the 12th--I don't remember everything but I know it was a busy day from what I do remember. I had an appointment to get my hair done, for one thing. Seth also mowed the lawn and he and I raked all the leaves. There were definitely fewer leaves to rake this year, which I am certainly not complaining about! I don't know why...I think maybe we had a wind storm that blew a lot of them away. I put up all the outside Christmas decorations that day, too, swept & mopped the kitchen floor, worked on labeling the photos on my ancestry board, and wrapped all of Tanner & Jared's Christmas ornaments in bubble wrap so they wouldn't break on the trip out to Utah. (I planned to take them out with me...now that they have their own Christmas trees, they wanted their ornaments and I'm more than happy to have less stuff in my house.) Raking the leaves, even with a lot fewer of them, was not easy on my back and I had some trouble with back pain that evening, but thankfully my back was a lot better after a good night's sleep. 

The ancestry board has names on it now:

And lines connecting married couples and parents to children:

I can't remember much about Sunday the 13th except that we did online church. One of the girls in my YW class taught the YW lesson and she did a great job. I spent some time that day, and the next few days, tracking down photos for the blog post(s) about Christmas that I've been working on for months and may someday actually write. 

Don't worry--I'm not going to give a daily blow-by-blow account of all the things I can't remember! The week of Monday the 14th through Friday the 18th was quite busy, but most of the details are long forgotten now. Seth had school as usual, so of course I was supervising him as always. I did all the household chores, exercised most days, continued to crochet my afghan, continued to work on the tax course, watched some BYU Education Week presentations, did Christmas shopping (mostly online), and got ready for our trip to Utah. 

Besides all that, I had an online YW activity on Tuesday the 15th. I was helping the girl who was in charge of this activity get it all ready and as usual with virtual activities, this involved a lot of driving around to drop off materials at the girls' houses. For the activity, each girl decorated mugs with paint markers--one for herself and one for one of the other girls (or for a leader) who was not at the activity. We met online to chat while we decorated our mugs. I didn't make a mug for myself (I already have enough mugs and I don't have any room in my kitchen cabinets for more mugs) but I did make one for the YW president. One of the girls made a mug for their former advisor (the one I replaced) as a "thank you".  Each girl was responsible to deliver the mug they made for someone else to that person. (We included a couple of hot chocolate packets and mini candy canes with each mug). I didn't get much done on the mug I was decorating during the activity, so I had to finish it later in the week and finally got it delivered to the YW president on Friday the 18th. It didn't turn out as nice as I would have liked, but hopefully she liked it.

   On Wednesday the 16th, we got about 8 inches of snow! One good thing about virtual school...no snow days, so this storm doesn't mean the school year is going to extend farther into the summer. (I mean, Seth was disappointed about it, but I wasn't!) We didn't get just snow, we got freezing rain / sleet as well. Seth had to do the shoveling and that wasn't too easy with ice mixed with snow and he hurt his back a little bit. He complained about it for a few days but it got better in time and certainly wasn't as bad as mine would have been if I had shoveled! At least the snow was really pretty:

Seth loved playing in the snow for a while:

On Wednesday evening I also attended a virtual baby shower for a member of our ward. She actually grew up in this ward--I was her advisor when she was in Beehives--but now she's all grown up and she and her husband, along with their three boys, are currently living at her parents' house. The new baby is a girl, so that will be nice for her. Anyway, the shower was pretty fun although virtual parties are just not the same. You don't get to chat with other people who are at the party. It was still really nice, though. The evening before, a party box was delivered to my house:

The box included decorations I was supposed to hang up so they'd be visible behind me and a photo booth prop that I was supposed to take a selfie with:

(I'm terrible at selfies.)

The sun came back out on Thursday the 17th, and the ice-coated trees looked really pretty, sparkling in the sunshine. 

I was busy that day mostly with laundry and starting to pack, plus finishing up the mug and I don't remember what else. Friday the 18th was particularly busy since I was finishing the packing, needed to update the budget (which can take all day sometimes) and I was also trying to record my part of Away In a Manger for our ward's virtual choir. I needed to get that done before I left, but didn't get the information to start working on it until Thursday. I ran into a lot of technical difficulties so it ended up taking a long time and became rather stressful although I did enjoy singing again. I finally got that done but unfortunately our choir director has been sick so she hasn't been able to finish putting it all together yet. I was also busy that day trying to finish up a project for my boys for Christmas (which I will explain later) as well as helping deliver bags to a few families in the ward for our ward's virtual Ward Christmas Party, which was the next day. Packing was crazy because I had more things than usual to take (a few presents, ornaments for the boys, our video camera which I'm lending to Amy, etc. etc.) and I was trying to figure out the best suitcase to put each thing in so that breakable things would be protected the most and so that if (heaven forbid!) a suitcase got lost, we wouldn't lose all the presents or all the ornaments or all of someone's clothes. The bottom line is...I was up really late Friday night (technically, really early Saturday morning) getting everything done. It was a crazy day, but I did get everything done, finally. In the middle of the chaos that evening, one of my ministering sisters dropped by with a Christmas gift for me.

It turned out to be a really beautiful calendar, plus a big tray of dried fruit and nuts. Yum!

The week of December 14th to the 18th was really busy for Frank, too. He had an overnight drive thru timer install every night, plus of course he worked during the days, too. One nice thing about the snow we got on Wednesday...because the restaurants weren't very busy, the one he was working at that night closed hours earlier than normal so he was able to start that install early and he got back home around midnight instead of 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. 

Seth and I flew to Utah on Saturday the 19th. We were on a non-stop flight and the trip was pretty uneventful. We took 2 suitcases each instead of the usual 1 each since we had extra stuff to take out and I knew we'd be bringing presents back (I had most of the presents shipped directly to Mom's house so I wouldn't have to worry about them going out). Getting all the suitcases tagged, labeled and checked was a bit stressful with just Seth to help me, but we got it done. Our flight was completely full, with every seat taken. We left 40 minutes late because it took so long for all the luggage to be loaded but we were only about 15 minutes late getting into Salt Lake City. The new terminal at the SLC airport is quite nice, but it was a super long walk from our gate to the baggage claim. I thought it would take forever to get our luggage since it had taken so long to load it onto the plane but by some miracle all four of our pieces of luggage were in the first 25 or so bags to make it onto the carousel, so we got out of there a lot sooner than we anticipated. Jared picked us up and took us to Mom's house, where we had pizza for dinner and enjoyed visiting with Mom, Scott, Jared, and Tanner & Darlee (who showed up later) as well as Amanda and Daniel too. I'm probably forgetting someone.

On Sunday the 20th I watched my ward's Sacrament Meeting which was the Christmas program...they had 3 instrumental musical numbers plus brief talks about the music and it was all really beautiful. Then we all tuned in to Tim's ward's sacrament meeting to hear Izak's homecoming talk, which was great, and then Daniel and Seth took care of the sacrament for all of us. I don't remember what else we did...just visited, probably. Sometime in those first few days Amy and her kids and Tim & Rachelle and their kids came to visit, but I don't remember who came when now.

I managed to keep pretty busy in the days leading up to Christmas. Seth still had school Monday the 21st through Wednesday the 23rd, but thankfully his teachers only did synchronous learning, so he only had to tune in for his actually classes, which was only for a few hours each day. We did have to get up pretty early since school starts at 9:30 which is only 7:30 in Utah! But he was done with school by about 9:15 each day, so that was nice. I had a lot of present wrapping to do, which I did on Monday and Tuesday and I also needed to buy stocking candy, which I did on Tuesday (along with some grocery shopping with Mom)

Here is Seth doing an activity on his last day of school--looks like he's learning a lot, right?!

On the evening of Monday the 21st Mom, Daniel, Amanda, and I along with Amy and her kids all drove out to a place so we could see the "Christmas Star" (the conjuction of Saturn and Jupiter that is the best we've seen for hundreds of years). It wasn't as bright as we thought it would be, but it was pretty bright and we could see both planets quite well--Jupiter was much bigger and brighter than Saturn. It was fun to visit with each other and it was nice to be away from the city lights, where we could see the stars much better. 

Frank arrived in Utah on the evening of the 23rd. Amanda was flying to Texas that evening, so Scott and I took Amanda to the airport so she could catch her flight and then stuck around for a little while (didn't turn out to be long at all) to pick up Frank. It was great to have him with us again!

I can't remember much about Thursday the 24th except that I made Christmas Eve dinner for Mom and all of our kids. We enjoyed dinner, visiting, and scripture reading together. Seth opened one present--he told me he wanted to open his new pajamas, so I told him which one to open. :) 

 Unfortunately, we discovered a problem that night when we were going to bed. When I first arrived in Utah, I thought the guest bedroom downstairs smelled a little musty but after looking around I couldn't find anything wrong and Scott said the room had been shut up for months so we decided that was probably all it was. That evening we discovered that a part of the carpet, in the corner by the closet, was soaking wet! After we pulled the cedar chest away from the wall we could see water damage to the wall, too, and "legs" of the cedar chest were so saturated that they fell apart when we moved it. Yikes!! Of course we couldn't do anything about it until after Christmas, though.

Christmas day was wonderful. Seth actually slept in so both Frank and I were awake long before he was and we had time to shower & dress before he was up. Scott slept even later so Seth had to wait quite a while to open presents. He was actually quite patient about it. (In general, Seth was a lot less anxious for Christmas to get here this year. Probably partly because he's getting older and partly because he was distracted by our trip and the chance to play games with his brothers.) Seth in new pajamas, waiting for Scott to get up:

After Scott got up, we opened presents.

 

The new BYU blanket around him is from Grandma.

Christmas 2020--Frank asked for a mask!

Seth got mostly Halo mega blocks stuff, but we also got him a hoodie, a game, and an electric circuit set that he can use to build different things. 

After presents, we had scrambled eggs and sweet rolls for breakfast. The rest of the day was great because different family members arrived at different times all day long to open presents, so we got to visit with everyone. We were all careful and everyone wore masks (except when eating) but it was so fun to see everyone!

I enjoyed making a lot of gifts for my kids this year. Besides the Christmas stockings and pillowcases that I made for Darlee and Jessie earlier, I also made each of my kids a hat (except for Seth). For the boys I made photo books of Snickers and I also made digital copies of all our family home movies and put them onto a thumb drive for each one of them. (The home movie project was one of the things I was working on until really late on Friday the 18th because I didn't receive the video transfer equipment until a day or two before.)  

Clockwise, starting at the top right: Jared's hat (Scott's was gray, Tanner's was blue), Jessie's beret, a beret I made for Amy, photo book of Snickers, home movie thumb drive, Darlee's pillowcase, Jessie's pillowcase, Darlee's hat.

For the married couples I also got each of them an ornament of the temple they got married in and a book called The Adventure Challenge for Couples, which is a "scratch off" book with date ideas for an entire year...they have to pick one and then scratch off the covering to find out what they are going to do for their date. The book has places for them to add snapshots and comments about each date as they do it. They seemed to like those, and I hope they have fun with them!

A few photos from Christmas Day:

Tim's gang

Seth looking at the photo book of Snickers

All my kids in their hats

The awesome shirt Tanner & Darlee gave me (Darlee made it)!

First Christmas together since 1996!

I caught Jared & Jessie when they weren't looking.

Seth building

I can't remember much about the day after Christmas except that I wore the shirt Tanner & Darlee made me and Lisa came by with her two boys to open presents (Taran was having an allergic reaction and wasn't feeling well). 

Frank with baby Quinn

Adrian checking out the Christmas village

This is the first time I've seen the Christmas village (besides in pictures)!

On the day after Christmas, a plumber also came to look at Mom's house to start the process of fixing the water leak problem, which is still ongoing. I don't remember all the details, but the plumber also called a restoration place since there was obviously damage from the leak. They took out a big panel of the drywall in the bedroom downstairs and found a very long crack in the pipe. It's turning out to be quite a long process to get the pipe fixed and all the restoration done, but thankfully Mom's insurance is covering the restoration part of the cost. Hopefully it will all be fixed soon and she can go back to her normal routine! 

The rest of our time in Utah we just enjoyed visiting with various family members. For the entire trip, I stayed up too late every night and got up too early so I didn't get a lot of sleep but it was worth it. On Sunday the 27th we tuned in for most of our home ward Sacrament Meeting (there were technology problems) and tuned in to all of Mom's ward Sacrament Meeting (which was a nice Christmas program with narrative and musical numbers). We also tuned into our home ward's priesthood and YW meetings. On Monday the 28th we went to Amy's house for a while to visit and to help her get her video transfer stuff going (she's borrowing our video camera and our video transfer equipment). I also got to see the cool Disney princess dollhouse that Maddie built. On Tuesday the 29th we went to lunch with Amy, Tim & Rachelle. We also found out that day that the governor of Maryland had just announced that day before that anyone traveling out of state would need to either get a Covid test or quarantine for 10 days after returning home. We tried to get tested for Covid that day, but we were unsuccessful. All of our kids came over for one last visit on Tuesday evening (Amy came too). 

Because our flight was leaving so early on Wednesday morning (6:45 am), we decided to get a room at a hotel next to the airport for that night so that no one would have to get up before the crack of dawn to take us to the airport. We said goodbye to everyone and Scott drove us up to our hotel on Tuesday night. I'm always a little anxious when I have to be somewhere really early that I will oversleep, and that showed in the fact that I woke up several times and that in all of my dreams I was dreaming that we were running late and trying to get ready and get everything packed up and get to the airport in time! We didn't oversleep, thankfully, but we still didn't have a lot of time in the morning. We showered the night before so that all we had to do was get up and get dressed. The hotel had a shuttle bus that took us to the airport. The flight home went well and was pretty uneventful too. We went to Denver first, where we had to change planes. We weren't there long at all--just long enough to get some food and get to our next gate. The flight to Denver was completely full but the flight from there to Baltimore was only about 2/3 full, which was nice for a change! (Although it didn't make much difference to us, since the 3 of us sat together.) We were tired, but the nice thing about having such an early flight is that Seth slept almost the whole way home! We didn't even need to give him his medicine. I slept a little bit too, but not much. Sunrise, shortly after takeoff:

One of the few moments that Seth was awake:

Goodbye to Denver:

Hello Baltimore:

 Although stopping in Denver made the travel day longer, it made the second part of the flight seem much shorter than it does when we do the whole thing in one leg. The flight going home is always about an hour shorter (must be the jet stream) and our flight arrived about 10 minutes early too. It is nice to be home again, although we miss everybody, of course.

We spent the rest of yesterday unpacking and then we ordered some food from a restaurant and picked it up since we need to be quarantining.

Today Frank worked from home. His office closed a little early today for New Year's Eve (3:00 pm) so he got to finish working early. He tried to get a Covid test today but everywhere was totally booked up. He will try again tomorrow. Seth didn't wake up until after noon! I spent the day picking up a grocery order from Walmart, doing laundry, and other things like that to get caught up on stuff. (Including this blog post!) I also worked on the tax class again, which I haven't worked on this week up until now. After Seth woke up, he was more interested in playing with Christmas presents than in showering, but I finally convinced him to take a shower. He got out his electrical circuit set and built several different things with it. 

Tonight we are having our traditional New Year's Eve dinner of appetizers. Seth is currently playing video games, but we will probably start a puzzle and maybe watch a movie or play some games in a little while. I'm not sure Frank will make it until midnight, but Seth probably will! 

Frank had a few of my Christmas presents sent to our house (since they were a little heavy) so today I took a picture of all my loot together:

Just for the record! 

I appreciate the nice gifts I received, but the best gift this year was being able to be in Utah with family! It was the best, and I'll forever be grateful I got to spend Christmas 2020 in Utah. 

Weekly Review December 11 '20

This week's post will also be short. We are staying home so much, so there isn't much to talk about. I definitely don't get bored. I still do housecleaning, cooking, and laundry, of course. I exercise on week days. I'm still working my way through the tax certification course. I crochet a few rows of my afghan most days. I've done a little bit of online Christmas shopping. I watch BYU Education Week presentations. I'm also learning a song for choir, because we are trying to put together a virtual choir performance of "Away In A Manger" for our ward. I'm reading a new book for book chat...China Dolls by Lisa See. So overall, I'm keeping busy.

Seth keeps busy with school and he lives for his 2 hours of screen time per day. (He gets a lot more on Friday after school and on Saturday.) He does get bored...he often tells me he's bored in the evenings because he usually uses up his screen time by late afternoon. Sometimes Frank plays video games with him for a while, but mostly he reads and hangs around me, driving me a little crazy! Today he had an "early release" day at school so he's already done for the day. He's happy about that.

Frank is working a lot, as usual, but he didn't have any overnight installs again this week, which was super nice! He puts in a lot of hours every day but he's not totally swamped. He is working on some projects for clients right now too, so that has kept him pretty busy. 

I haven't been out much this week. We did not attend church in person, even though it was our week to go. (We did tune in virtually.) We did get good news Sunday morning...shortly before church started...Frank's sister and her daughter both tested negative for Covid-19. We were relieved to hear that. They have still been sick...the doctors think they both have some kind of food poisoning. Doesn't sound fun! So we're praying for them, but glad they don't have Covid. Frank's mom fell on their front steps on Sunday morning too and had to go to the hospital by ambulance because his dad couldn't get her back up. They did x-rays but fortunately she didn't break any bones. She is just bruised and scraped up. We're very sorry she fell, but thankful it wasn't worse.

On Sunday I also had a ministering interview with the RS president, over the phone, and that evening we watched the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional, which was wonderful. I've been reading a book about Frederick G. Williams (actually, it's more about his wife so far) on Sundays and it's really interesting. I did not know that he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. 

I did venture out a little bit on Monday...I needed to pick up the book chat book at the library and my car also needed gas. I am helping one of the YW to organize our next class activity, and on the way home from those errands I stopped at a dollar store to look for some supplies we need for the activity. I was successful and found just what we were looking for--plain white ceramic mugs--for a much better price than any we found online. Other than that, I haven't been anywhere all week. I haven't even been to Walmart to pick up our grocery orders because Frank did that for me on both Monday and Thursday mornings. 

On Tuesday Seth had a virtual Deacon's activity...they played "trashketball". The YW had a combined activity and we made Christmas ornaments. It was fun. The youngest class of girls was in charge of the activity so they taught us how to make them. These are the two ornaments that I made:

  I like them, but I'm thinking about giving them away because we have so many ornaments already. 

We still haven't put up our outside decorations because the weather last weekend did not cooperate with our need to rake leaves and mow the lawn--it rained a lot. Today the weather is perfect--sunny and in the high 50s!--but our lawn service guy came today and put down fertilizer so we have to stay off the lawn. Maybe we'll be able to do it tomorrow. 

I think that's really all there is to report this week. I think we've decided that we'll be able to come to Utah...I still need to talk to Frank about it a little more. He is concerned about the high positivity rate in Utah, which is much higher than it is here, and about needing to quarantine when we get back. We are thinking, though, that if we limit our contact to just family members and we don't go out and do a bunch of things while we're there and we're really careful when we're traveling that we'll be okay and it won't be much riskier than what we're doing now since Frank has to go all over the place and has contact with lots of people, because of his work. When we get back, he will probably get tested and work from home until he gets his results, just to be courteous to his co-workers. Anyway, I hope it's all going to work out.

We had a fabulous sunrise on Wednesday so I will finish up with a photo of that:

Weekly Review December 4 '20

There wasn't a lot going on this week so this post will probably be short. 

Frank didn't have any overnight installations this week, which was really nice! I feel like we are a normal family again. He went into the office on Monday, but he has been working at home for the rest of the week. That's because on Monday we found out that his sister (as well as her daughter) was sick. They both got tested for Covid-19 on Monday, so he decided he should not go into the office until they get the results. We're actually still waiting for the results though. In the meantime, he has certainly kept busy doing work from home. 

As I mentioned before, Seth and I are trying to stay home as much as possible too, so we didn't do a lot this week. He had a YM activity and I had a YW activity on Tuesday evening...they were both virtual. Seth's group had a chess tournament (they found a free online version they could play together) and my group made cookies. We were supposed to give the cookies away to someone, but since I'm trying not to have contact with people I didn't think giving someone food that I made in my home was a good idea. The cookies were fun and easy to make...we used a recipe that uses a funfetti cake mix to make the cookies. They were soft and pretty yummy.

I did help deliver supplies to some of the girls' houses earlier that day. I just did porch drop offs (didn't talk to anyone) and I was careful to wear gloves and a mask. 

I had book chat last night, but I didn't go to that. I was sorry to miss it but instead we used the time to put all the ornaments on our Christmas tree. We have most of the decorations up now. We went to our storage unit on Monday to pick up all the boxes of Christmas decorations, and we put up most of the decorations that evening...wreath, advent calendar, stockings, mistletoe, nativity sets, candles, etc. We saved the tree for Wednesday evening but then we ran into a problem...when we set up the tree, we couldn't get the lights on the whole top section of the tree to light up. (Our tree is pre-lit.) Last year we couldn't get one string of lights on one side to light up, but it wasn't too noticeable. That string still wouldn't light up either, so we had more lights that weren't working than were working. We decided it's time to get a new tree. So Seth and Frank went to the store and got another tree exactly like the old one, except all the lights work. By the time they did that, it was getting late so we decided to wait until the next day to add all the ornaments. Now it is looking like Christmas around here! We still need to put up the outside decorations but Frank thinks we should mow the lawn one more time before we do that. 

Other than that, we just did the usual stuff this week--Seth did school and I've been keeping up with the household chores, crocheting, watching BYU education week presentations, and preparing for the VITA tax preparation certification test. I never run out of things to do.

It's getting colder and starting to feel more like winter. Today it is raining (so not cold enough for snow yet). 

Some of you may have heard that Darlee's aunt passed away earlier this week. It was sudden and unexpected and she was way too young, so that always makes it harder. We were really sorry to hear about it and have been praying for Darlee and her family. She is coping with it pretty well but we know it's really hard for her.

We're still pretty up in the air about our trip to Utah. We are waiting to see if we were exposed to Covid-19 while we were in North Carolina for one thing. (Although it's been over a week since we saw Frank's sister and her daughter and none of us are sick, so that's a good sign.) We're also keeping an eye on travel restrictions and on the situation in Utah. Jared & Jessie are both sick right now. They were tested for Covid-19 on Monday and the results came back negative, but Jessie's mom & sister (who were visiting them for Thanksgiving) both tested positive. So they aren't entirely sure that the test result was accurate. Scott is also not feeling well, and he saw Jared on Saturday. So things are a bit crazy right now out there. We don't want to get anyone sick, we don't want to get sick ourselves, and Frank needs to avoid having to quarantine for 2 weeks (after returning) since he really needs to work. There are a lot of unknowns right now. But of course we are still hoping to come! I hope in another week we will have a better idea of what to expect. 

I'm really enjoying listening to Christmas music. Last night I watched the Christmas concert and virtual tour of Temple Square, and I really enjoyed that. The beautiful music is one of my favorite things about this time of year.

That's really all I can think of to tell you about for this week. Everyone stay well! 

Weekly Review November 29 '20

 I'm late getting this week's post out because we were traveling this week. We got home last night. We had a good trip and we are happy to be home again. Let's see if I can remember back to what we did before we left...

Frank was working a ton...he worked overnight on Friday (the 20th) as well as the four previous nights (and every day too). He rested a lot on Saturday, but ended up doing some more work for a few hours on Sunday. He didn't have to work overnight this last week, though, and only had to work on Monday and part of Tuesday.

On Saturday (the 21st) I attended an online baptism service for one of the little boys who was in my Primary class last year. He is the youngest of the class, so he is the last one to turn 8. The baptism was very nice. Frank and I watched the BYU football game that afternoon...for once it wasn't late at night! We enjoyed that although the teams were so mismatched that the game wasn't terribly exciting. There wasn't much doubt that BYU would win. I appreciated the lack of tension, but as I said...it wasn't as exciting either. I don't remember details of what else we did...I think I probably went to the store to get a few needed items and I probably did some crocheting.

On Sunday we had an online regional conference for church. Some of the speakers included Elder Soares and President Eyring. It was really good! Afterwards, I had an online ministering visit with one of the sisters I minister to. She moved into the ward in June and was added to my ministering list about a month ago. I actually knew her a little bit already--she used to live in our stake years ago and her older children are the same age as my older boys. It was nice to see her again and to get caught up with her. I was able to get in contact with my companion, too, so we were all three able to visit together. 

Remember last week I mentioned one of the girls in my YW class tested positive for Covid-19? We decided to do a "heart attack" for her. Some of the girls in the class as well as the other leader and I cut out hearts and wrote encouraging messages on them for her. On Sunday afternoon, the other leader and I went to the girls' houses to collect the hearts they made. I met the other leader at the church parking lot to give her all the hearts I had made and collected. Then she took all of them over to the sick girl's house the next day. Her mom put all the hearts on her bedroom door while she was napping. Apparently she really enjoyed it, and her mom sent us a thank you text with a photo of her daughter standing by the decorated door, smiling. The sick girl also sent a thank you text to all of us. Thankfully, she is getting better and she hasn't had any of the more dangerous complications. 

On Monday we were busy packing and doing all the other things we needed to do to prepare for our trip. I made a batch of pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to share for Thanksgiving dinner. I also got the bulk of our Christmas cards addressed, stamped & stuffed so I made a trip to the post office to send those. I had a couple of small packages I needed to send too. The post office was super busy...you'd think it was December already! 

I got regular chores done on Tuesday morning and by afternoon Frank was done with work and we were able to get the car packed & ready to go. Seth has a 2:00 class on Tuesday afternoons but we didn't want to wait until it was over to leave. He finished all his other work by 1:00, so we left shortly after that. We used my cell phone for a hot spot so that he could log into his 2:00 class using my laptop. That worked out fine...my laptop battery died before the class ended but they were just wrapping things up. We only had to drive halfway to NC on Tuesday. We had a room reserved at a Fairfield Inn in Christiansburg, VA (just south of Roanoke) on Tuesday night. We got there around 5:00 pm and were able to get some dinner and just relax for the evening. 

While we were at dinner, I noticed that my throat was hurting a little bit and my head was starting to ache too, which caused me a bit of consternation. When I woke up on Wednesday morning my throat was definitely sore and I had a bad headache too. Yikes! Frank and Seth went downstairs to get me some food from the free breakfast (they had a grab & go breakfast for everyone anyway...no one was allowed to eat in the dining room). I took some acetaminophen and we got on our way. We decided I would just need to be careful and keep away from people as much as possible. We got to Brevard around 2:00 pm and stopped to see Frank's parents although I didn't hug them or come close to them. I wasn't feeling any worse by then, at least. We checked into our air B&B and got settled, then we had to go to the grocery store to get some food for ourselves and a few ingredients for the things we were making for Thanksgiving dinner. We also stopped by Dawn & Mike's house (Dawn is Frank's sister) to pick up the turkey (we were cooking it) and to get a few things we needed from them. (Again, I stayed away from them.) I rested the rest of the evening, but Frank went with Dawn & Mike to set up some tables and chairs at the community center where we were having our dinner the next day. He also made a banana pudding dessert and a chocolate cream pudding pie. 

I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night...for some reason I woke up at 2:00 am Thursday morning and I never went back to sleep. However, I woke up feeling completely fine...no sore throat and no headache...so I was really happy about that. We ended up cooking the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner because everyone who lives in NC were making a ton of other things and since we were staying in a place with a stove, we were able to cook too. Besides the turkey, we also made mashed potatoes and gravy. So that kept us pretty busy on Thursday morning. In planning our meal, we had had some concerns about how to get together without anyone getting sick and without breaking any of the local rules, which limits indoor gatherings to 10 people. We ended up having only 13 people there total and the weather was beautiful (sunny and high 60s) so between people going in and out and a few people who had to work and got there late, we never had more than 10 people inside at once. We sat at tables that were spread out too so we didn't get very close to anyone, and Frank and Dawn's husband Mike served everyone (wearing masks and gloves) instead of everyone serving themselves. It all turned out fine, we had a delicious meal, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. 

(I love this photo of Seth and Frank's mom!)

On Friday we planned to visit Frank's brother James. (He didn't come to Thanksgiving dinner because he just had knee surgery). However, James contacted us on Friday morning to let us know that he had just found out that he'd been exposed to Covid-19, so we decided we'd better not visit him. Frank's parents came to see us at the little house we were staying in (it was just around the corner from his parents' house) and we took them to lunch. Frank's mom saw the afghan I'm working on and she has been wanting to know how to make an afghan like that, so I showed her how to do it. We also got laundry done (the place we were staying had a washer and dryer, which was nice). That evening we went to dinner with Dawn & Mike and enjoyed visiting with them a bit more. After dinner we went back to Frank's parents' house to visit with them some more too. 

Here's the cute little house we stayed in:

Yesterday we got up and got ready to head back home. We stopped at Frank's parents' house for a few minutes to leave some leftover food with them and to say good bye. We did the whole trip in one day this time, so it was a long day of driving but we made really good time and only had to make stops three times (one for gas, one for food, and one restroom break) so we got home by around 5:00 pm. We hadn't planned to be home in time for dinner so after unpacking we had to go get something to eat. There's still not a lot of food in the house (other than junk food leftover from our trip), but we have food for dinner tonight and tomorrow morning I will be picking up an order from Walmart, so we'll have plenty to eat then.  

Today we found out one of Frank's nieces is sick which is a bit of a concern, but none of us had much contact with her at all so hopefully we will be okay. However, I already decided earlier this week that since we just traveled and came into contact with a lot more people than we normally do and since we are hoping to be travelling again in a few more weeks, that Seth and I are going to stay home (except for necessary trips to the store and things like that) until it's time for our Utah trip. I will just feel better if we minimize our contact with other people as much as possible. Frank still needs to go to work, of course, but Seth and I don't have to go places much anyway so it won't be too hard to stay home as much as possible. 

Today we had church online. Normally, it would have been our turn to go to church this week but because of the higher Covid cases in the area and because of Thanksgiving gatherings, our ward leadership decided to have in-person sacrament meeting only for ward members who don't have the opportunity to partake of the sacrament at home. Everyone else tuned in online. (We would have stayed home anyway, as I explained above). One of our speakers today was a girl who was serving a mission in New Zealand and had to come home in April because of Covid. She had been out about 4 months. She talked about her mission and about how hard it was for her to come home so early. It was a really good talk. We also had another online meeting today (5th Sunday) where we learned more about the Just Serve initiative (we've had that here for years...it was more of an update).

Tanner's birthday was this week...it fell on Thanksgiving Day this year. We sent him a few presents earlier and on Thursday his mother-in-law texted me a few photos of him with presents and with a sweet note saying how much they love him. So that was really nice!!

That's all the news from these parts that I can think of. We hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We certainly have enjoyed seeing all the uplifting, thankful posts on social media this last week. I do believe that gratitude can heal us, and I'm thankful we have a prophet who is so inspired!