Weekly Review April 24 '20

We kept pretty busy this week. On Saturday, Frank was gone a lot of the day doing work for clients. We also took some dog items over to our bishop's family's house--left them on their porch, and then had a nice visit with them while they stood on their porch and we stood on their sidewalk! (They got a new puppy recently, so we took them some of the things we have leftover from Snickers, which I've been meaning to donate somewhere.) It was one of their daughters' birthdays, and she is in my Primary activity group (and was in my Primary class when I was teaching) so I got to wish her a Happy Birthday too. That evening we had a video visit with the missionaries who are currently serving in our ward. They are both new to our ward since church meetings stopped, so we hadn't had a chance to meet them until then. (Both of the missionaries serving in our ward previously had to go home because of health issues that put them at high risk.) They seem like pretty good missionaries and we enjoyed their message and getting to know them a bit. One is from Utah and the other is from Arizona.

Sunday turned out to be really full of virtual meetings and visits. We had a brief family sacrament service (just prayers, songs, and the sacrament) and then our ward had a virtual Sunday School class for the adults. Then Seth had Bishop's Youth Council, followed by Sunday School class. Before he finished with that, I had the family video call with Mom and all the siblings, and Frank had to leave that call after about 30 minutes to attend a stake self-reliance committee meeting (his current calling is our ward self-reliance specialist). When I got off the call with the family, I caught the tail end of the baptism for the little girl I mentioned earlier (whose birthday was on Saturday). So yes--it was a busy day!!

Other than all the meetings on Sunday, we haven't been online too much--I had book chat on Tuesday evening, Seth had his Deacon's Quorum activity last night (they played a Book of Mormon trivia game) and Seth had a visit with his counselor yesterday afternoon. We also have a virtual visit with his regular doctor this afternoon--just a regular check up / follow up on his medication.

I had more issues with my heart at the beginning of the week, but it seems to be okay now. I was having some other health issues that were causing me to feel quite anxious / stressed and I'm pretty sure that's why my heart acted up. I had a doctor appointment on Tuesday, though, and everything seems to be okay, so that was a relief and I've felt a lot better since then. Hopefully I am done with health issues for a while--it's been a rough month! (Oh, except my right eye is slightly infected now, but that seems to happen on a pretty regular basis. When all of this craziness ends, I really need to go see an eye doctor about my eye issues.)

On Monday we babysat for one of the sisters I minister to--she needed somewhere for her 4 year old daughter to stay while she went to a job interview. Her daughter has been here a few times and Seth always plays really nicely with her. This time, Seth was doing his school work for a lot of the time that she was here, but he finished before she left. I didn't think we'd done a very good job entertaining her, but she was really upset when her mom came to pick her up and didn't want to leave! So I guess we didn't do too bad.

Remember I said we thought we might have termites? We do. We had an exterminator come check things out on Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately, they haven't spread far and don't seem to have done any structural damage. They are in the front part of the house, so that's the area that needs to be treated. I didn't hear all the details of the treatment, but basically they have to come drill deep holes in the ground all along the front of the house--including through the front steps--and then they put something in the holes that will kill the termites, and then cover up all the holes. It's not going to be nearly as expensive as I feared, thankfully. However, we do have to move everything in the basement 3-4 feet away from the front wall of the house, which happens to be in our laundry / storage room, since it runs all the way across the front end of the basement. Since that particular room is full of stuff, it's going to be quite a job to move everything. We actually need to clean a bunch of stuff out before we will have room to start moving things. But guess what? I'm actually kind of glad to have a reason that forces us to do some cleaning in that room, because I've been wanting to do that for a very long time. I'm sure we will not clean up as extensively as I would like, but at least it will be better than before! We started doing some cleaning on Wednesday, so right now it is worse than before (always gets worse before it gets better). We can't do a lot at once because both Frank and I have to be careful about our backs. We already have a lot of stuff to throw away and a few things to donate. We started going through our food storage and ended up throwing a lot of stuff away because it was so far past the "use by" dates (as in several years past...) We'll probably work on cleaning a bunch more tomorrow. I don't know how much time we have exactly because they haven't scheduled a day to come out to do the treatment yet. First they have to have someone come out and mark where all the gas, electricity and water lines are so that they don't damage anything when they are digging, and no one has come out to do that yet so we should have until sometime next week at least.

We've had quite a bit of rain this week (it's raining again today). I don't love all the gray days, but we do need the rain so I'm not complaining. (Gray skies can be pretty though!):

We have had a couple of really beautiful sunny days this last week (although it hasn't been very warm) so I enjoyed that. I meant to mow the lawn on Wednesday because that day was sunny and according to the weather forecast it was our last sunny day for a while (and so far the forecast has been correct--raining every day) but then our lawn service people came and treated our lawn that day, so I couldn't mow it. The grass is going to be VERY long before I am able to mow it again (sometime next week, hopefully). The rain has made it hard to get out so I think we only went on one (maybe two) walks this week. One day we found a path that led down to the river bank (there's so much brush and undergrowth that it's really hard to actually get to the edge because of that.) The banks of the river are also really steep but there was a rope attached so we were able to hold onto that and go down the path so that we were able to stand right by the river. Seth wanted to wade out into it, but it was moving kind of fast (even though it wasn't very deep at all) so we didn't want him to go out there. Still, it was really pretty, and I'm glad we were able to go down there.

The bank on the other side is not the other side of the river...it's a small island that's in the middle of the river. The river is actually quite wide.

 
Looking downstream

Looking upstream. You can see that the tree's roots are exposed...that's because the river often floods and all of this area is underwater.

Seth coming back up the path.

Looking down the path...it's steeper than it looks.

Most of you already know this, but just for the family history records I should report that things are improving for Frank's employer and they are starting to phase back in to having people working full time. Yesterday we found out that Frank is back to working full time, so we are very happy about that. (And it did help that he worked so much during his furloughed time--they could see that what he does is needed and important all the time, and they also appreciated all those extra hours he worked without pay.) Because they are a critical business, they are allowed to have their office open, but they don't want everyone there all the time so he will be working in the office 2 days a week and working from home 3 days a week. I really didn't expect things to get better until everything starts opening up again, so I see it as a great blessing that things have started to improve so soon...didn't expect that at all!

Yesterday was our 28th Anniversary. There wasn't much we could do to celebrate, under the circumstances, but it was still a nice day. We got cards for each other and we ordered take out from a favorite local Mexican restaurant.

Seth is still doing well with school and getting his work done mostly independently, which I appreciate. Last Friday the school closure was extended to May 15th. Honestly, I don't really expect them to be going back to school before the end of the school year, but maybe they will. The last day of school is supposed to be around June 22nd, so maybe they will go for a few weeks near the end of the year. I guess we'll wait and see. Right now, Seth is working hard on a diorama for one of his classes:

I'm still keeping busy with regular chores, supervising Seth, and exercising (on the days my heart isn't going crazy!). I finished reading The Enchanted April before book chat, but haven't started reading the new book yet (I Am Malala). I've been reading one of the books in the Wings of Fire series though. Seth doesn't own the rest of the books in the series (except for the most recently written one) and I couldn't get them from the library right now (even digital copies) so we decided to buy the rest of the series (3 - 4 books) so that I could keep reading them. (We would have been buying them for Seth eventually anyway.) I'm almost done with one of my projects and making progress (not as much as I'd like) on the other one. I made a couple of masks this week--one of Frank's clients saw the one I made for Frank and said he'd really like one like that, so I made one for him. Since I was working on that mask, I decided to make another one while I was at it. I still have pieces for many more! We also continued our "Marvel Movie Marathon" this week--we watched Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers.

I'm nearly two weeks past the day I was supposed to get my hair cut so it is getting longer (and grayer!)  Mostly my hair isn't too bad yet except my bangs really needed trimming so I did that yesterday. There's no way I would attempt to do more than that, so it will be interesting to see how long my hair gets before I'm able to get it cut again. I don't like it long, but I'm curious to see if I can do anything to help it look good while it's long. Frank always wants me to grow my hair out, so he's getting his wish! I have also wanted to try to phase in grey / see what color my hair actually is by now, so I am getting my wish too.

To finish up, here are a few photos from last week, since blogger seems to be cooperating with my desire to add photos:

Seth playing Minecraft with his brothers & sisters in law

Countryside near Leesburg, Virginia (photo really doesn't show how pretty it was!)

A church in Leesburg

Easter dinner

Weekly Review April 17 '20

Well, here we are at the end of the 5th week of "social distancing" / sort of quarantining. I think we're getting a little lazy...I've noticed that we are getting up a little later in the mornings and that Seth isn't getting started on his school work as early as he was before. Part of that is because of spring break, though--we kind of got off our normal schedule for those few days and now we are trying to get back on it.

We are mostly still sticking with our usual daily routine, though--exercise, chores, and school work in the mornings. I sit next to Seth while he's doing his school work and work on projects, check email, read scriptures, etc. In the afternoon, Seth gets a couple of hours of screen time (and I get some peace & quiet!) Before I know it, it's time to make dinner and then we sometimes go on a walk after dinner.

Frank is still working a lot. He was going to take today off because he worked every other day this week for a good part of the day, and also worked 3 hours on Sunday because of an emergency that came up with one of the restaurants in Virginia. But this morning a problem came up with another restaurant (also in Virginia) so he is down there now taking care of that. I am trying to be okay with him having to work so much, but the petty side of me is really annoyed / upset about it. It's hard to be dealing with anxiety over income and feeling like there's nothing we can do about it, and then seeing him work so hard and realizing that's not going to help the situation at all. Besides that, he's also not accumulating paid time off during this time, so he's actually going to have fewer days off than before. However, I keep reminding myself that anything he does to help keep things operating is going to contribute to him hopefully still having a job long term. I hope! Besides that, I think it is better for his mental and emotional health to keep busy, even if he isn't getting paid for it. So I am trying to be content. But it's an uphill battle because I'm a very imperfect person.

We had a nice Easter. We dressed in our Sunday clothes and had our family worship service in the morning and I'm grateful that we did that before the emergency with Frank's work came up. He invited Seth & I to come with him to the restaurant in Virginia, and Seth didn't want to go, but I definitely did. It was super nice to get out of the house, have long uninterrupted conversations with Frank on the way down and back, to see some beautiful countryside, and to see for myself that there is still a big world out there, beyond the 1 or 2 square miles I've been seeing lately. I even got out of the state of Maryland!! We went to Leesburg, which is a really cute little city in the middle of rolling hills covered with ranches and beautiful homes. I tried to get some pictures, but it's hard to get good pictures from a moving vehicle! While Frank was working, I sat in the car and read scriptures and also read the current book chat book, The Enchanted April. (I'm really enjoying the book, by the way. It's sweet, and often laugh out loud funny.) After we got back from Virginia we made and ate our Easter dinner. That evening, I listened to the Tabernacle Choir Messiah concert.

We had a few virtual activities this week. On Tuesday, one of my ministering sisters did a visit with me using Zoom. It was nice to talk to her and I appreciate the effort she's making to stay connected with me. On Wednesday evening I had a virtual RS activity, where we discussed books we are currently reading, childhood favorites, and resources for finding good books to read. I really enjoyed that.  Seth had his weekly Deacon's activity on Thursday evening--they played Mad Libs. They also had a quorum meeting on Sunday, but Seth forgot to tell me about it so it wasn't on the calendar, and then he forgot about it completely, so he missed it. He was pretty upset about that, but they are having another meeting this Sunday.

We've had some nice days, weather-wise, although it's colder right now, with temperatures dropping below freezing the last couple of nights. I'm noticing that the weather is not concerning me too much right now--since I don't have to go anywhere, I don't care a lot if it's colder than normal for a few days (or even weeks). I do crave sunshine, though, so I don't like a lot of cloudy days in a row. Our lawn is continuing to grow and I mowed it again a few days ago (in two shifts, so I could get both the front and back yards mowed).

On Saturday I completed and filed the personal property tax return for the business. It was pretty easy and only took about an hour to do it.

I made a couple of masks earlier this week, so now I have a mask for each of us, plus one extra. In Frederick County, as of yesterday, we are required to wear a mask if we go anywhere like stores, so it's a good thing I got those done. I really should make the rest of the masks I have cut out, since I'm sure someone somewhere could use them. I'm curious how other states compare to Maryland with the number of Covid-19 cases. I really feel like I don't know what's going on anywhere except Maryland. There's a website I can check that is updated daily with information about confirmed cases and deaths and so forth, so I usually check that. Today (just for the historical record) we are up to 11,572 cases in Maryland, which is 788 more than 24 hours ago. Deaths are at 425, up 33 from yesterday. Frederick County has 525 cases (6th highest in the state) and Frederick has 409 of those cases, with 113 of them in our zip code. I know that Maryland has about the same amount of cases as Virginia and DC combined, but that's about all I know (except that there are other places, like New York, that are much worse than Maryland). I keep hearing all these conflicting reports about whether or not shutting things down was really necessary, which makes me crazy. I hope it really is doing some good--what a waste if it's all for nothing. I do feel like the worldwide fast was a good thing, though, and believe that it has and will continue to help.

I decided last week that if I am ever going to have a chance to get caught up on all the Marvel movies before I die, that now is my chance! So we started back at the beginning and watched Iron Man last Friday or Saturday. This week we have watched the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2. I think Thor is up next. I've actually seen the Iron Man movies already, but it's been a long time. I had not seen the Incredible Hulk. They're not my favorite kind of movie, but I'm enjoying them and it's nice to do something with Seth & Frank that they both enjoy.

I got to talk to Amy for a while this week which was really nice and I talked with most of my boys too. Both Scott and Tanner needed to replace their cell phones, and I had to help them with that since they're still on our cell phone plan (although they paid for their phones themselves.)

I tried to include a few pictures in this post, but for some reason blogger is not letting me add pictures. I only had a few of Easter dinner, a few of the trip to Leesburg, and a couple of Seth playing Minecraft with his brothers. Maybe I will be able to add them to next week's post.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else to tell you except that my heart has been a lot better this week and in general I'm less stressed although I feel like I'm mostly just trying to ignore how I feel. But to end on a positive note, I think we are actually going to be able to collect some unemployment. Not entirely sure yet, but it's looking that way. Oh, and we got our relief check from the government too so that will be helpful. We certainly have everything we need right now and I'm grateful for that.

Weekly Review April 10 '20

Once again, there's not a lot to write about, but there's been a few things going on and I do have some pictures to share.

School from home: Last week I reported that things were going well. Shortly after I wrote that, I thought I had spoken too soon because Seth had a complete meltdown over an art assignment on Friday. Actually, the real problem was that he was supposed to be working on the art project all week and he didn't realize it until Friday. He thought he was almost done with school work for the day (week) and then discovered he needed to do this project. He was really mad at me when I wouldn't let him message his teacher and say he couldn't do it. I told him he needed to work on it for at least an  hour (it was only noon!) and then he could send her a photo of what he got done and let her know why he didn't finish it. He finally calmed down and started to work on it, and then finished the whole thing in less than an hour! The finished project--it was a "positivity poster". I think the phrase he chose was appropriate!:

Other than that, things have been going really well and I have only had to help him with a few things...he's been pretty independent and getting things done, so I'm pleased with that. One day I helped him measure a room in the house because his math teacher is having them do a project where they are pretending that they are going to paint a room. They have to measure the walls and figure out how many square feet of wall space they need to cover, how much paint they need and what it will cost. I thought that was a cool "real life" example of how to use math. Here's his calculations so far:

This week, they had "spring break" so he only had school work to do on Monday through Wednesday. He has Monday off too. I was kind of surprised they did that when they already had 10 days off (and will need to make them up somehow) but oh well. On Monday of this week, his school posted a slide show of the teachers holding up signs with messages for the kids. Seth really loved that! Here are his teachers:

Science & Social Studies teacher

English teacher

Math teacher (He has Spanish, Art and PE too, but I didn't take photos of those teachers.)

Frank's work: This week was more like I expected things would be. He basically put in 3 full days on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Then yesterday he worked until early afternoon (an emergency came up and he had to travel to a store in Virginia to fix it). He planned to take today off, but still needed to do a few things so he was going to work for a few hours. It's 11:30 now and he's still working, although he's doing a few things for his business too. I appreciate that he has such a strong work ethic. I hope it will bless us in the end, somehow.

General Conference: It was so epic, right?!! I kind of had a hard time focusing on a lot of the talks--my brain doesn't feel like it's firing on all cylinders right now--but I loved the spirit I felt. I'm looking forward to listening to them again / reading them, so that hopefully I will get more out of them than I did originally. It will definitely always be remembered--with the different format because of the Coronavirus, the Hosanna shout, the new church logo, the new proclamation, the call for a worldwide fast, the beautiful special musical numbers, and announcements of temples in Dubai, UAE and Shanghai, China--wow!!! It was also cool that they announced a temple in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania because earlier in the week I was thinking about it and I had decided they were going to put a temple there. Had to document General Conference from a small room, with the few people there spread out:

And Tim singing:

Health issues: I had a pretty rough week with my health. I had trouble sleeping most nights, and I was feeling really super anxious / stressed about some things. Last week, I felt my heart fluttering a bit. This week it started fluttering again, but it got worse and didn't really stop from Monday evening until Wednesday morning. It wasn't painful, but very uncomfortable. I was trying to feel less anxious, but it's hard to feel calm when your heart is racing like you've had a huge adrenaline rush and / or you're running a race. I also have had a lot of issues with vertigo recently (which happens to me periodically, it's nothing serious) and that was also acting up, just to add to the fun. I was starting to think I needed to call the doctor by Wednesday morning, but then it stopped. I've felt a few flutters since then, but not much. I was so relieved when it stopped...I was worried I was going to end up in the hospital again, and I really don't want to go there right now. (Well, ever, actually--but especially not now.) I've spent the last few days just feeling grateful that I feel so much better. Oh, and shout out to Frank, who was super patient and sweet with me and helped keep me sane. Plus, he did all the grocery shopping for me this week.

Termites?: We were pretty distracted during the first part of the Sunday morning session of conference when we discovered a bunch of bugs crawling on the floor by the front door. We thought they were ants, because we've been seeing some large ants around the house the last month. And maybe they were ants, but these ones had wings. Frank sprayed ant spray around, both inside and out and we haven't seen any since but it occurred to me yesterday that maybe those were termites, not ants. I looked up what termites look like, and there's definitely a resemblance, although flying ants and termites look almost exactly the same. So now we need to call an exterminator to come look into it because termites are definitely something that needs to be taken care of right away, whether we can afford it or not. Ugh!!

Masks: Our ward leadership decided we need to have masks for everyone in the ward (it's likely that pretty soon we will be required to wear them when we go out) so they asked for volunteers to make masks. I offered to help sew, but needed materials. On Monday I remembered that I had some fabric leftover from making quilts, so I decided to see if I could make a few masks. When I looked, I had more than I remembered, so I spent the afternoon cutting out pieces and cut enough to make masks for the three of us, plus 25 more...not bad! One of my friends who had extra elastic and bias tape left some on my doorstep and on Tuesday, in spite of my heart issues, I managed to make one mask:

(I sent photos to Tanner & Darlee saying "does this look familiar?" because the fabric is from their quilt...haha!) Most of the rest of them are going to be made with elastic, not bias tape, and I'm going to do a strip of bias tape in each corner, rather than using a long strip all the way across the top and the bottom because that one mask took way too much bias tape. On Wednesday I planned to make a bunch more but after spending quite a bit of time cutting strips of elastic and bias tape, I was feeling exhausted and kind of achy so I decided to take a break for a while. Even though my heart had calmed down by then, I was wiped out from anxiety and lack of sleep. So I took a nap, and didn't really get back to the masks that day, other than sewing together some bias tape strips that I'm going to use for ties. On Thursday, the lady in our ward who is in charge of gathering all the masks that people were making sent out a text saying that we have enough! What?? Everyone else was obviously making a lot better progress than I was! But she said they will still probably need more in the future and obviously lots of places can use masks right now, so I will probably still make them since I have all the pieces cut out. For sure, I still need to make two more so that Seth and Frank will have them. I didn't get any made yesterday, though--I kept busy with regular chores and yardwork and Seth also had a teletherapy session with his counselor.

Walks: We've been on a few this week. We've had a couple of really nice days, a few cooler days, and the last few days have been really, really windy. But mostly it's been sunny, which I love. I'm glad we walked a few times because exercising hasn't happened much for me this week. I didn't think it was a good idea to exercise on Tuesday & Wednesday, when my heart was already racing. And today I didn't think fasting and exercising would go together very well. A few photos from our deck and from our walks:

From a walk earlier this week:

Love how flowers are blooming everywhere right now! It's encouraging to see that the natural world is alive, healthy and "normal"!

The Monocacy River...so nice to have a river right behind our house!

These are from a walk later in the week:

Baby rabbit hiding near the river bank!

We also spotted 3 bigger rabbits in a yard who were playing and chasing each other. I tried to get some pictures, and somehow pushed a button on my camera that took 79 photos in quick succession!! Sadly, none of them are very good...very blurry. But if I scroll through them rapidly on my phone, it's like one of those flip books and it puts the rabbits in motion, which looks really cool! Unfortunately, I can't do that for you on here. You'll just have to take my word for it. You can kind of see 2 of them in this photo:

We also had this reminder that the world is not normal:

Entertainment: We decided to let Seth play a new game this week (one left over from his brothers). It's rated "Teen", and we haven't let him play any games that aren't rated "Everyone" until now. He is almost a teenager! We're not planning to let him have a free-for-all on teen games, though. He just really wanted to play this one and we decided it would be okay. Last week Scott also asked us if we would let Seth play Minecraft on Xbox live with him, Tanner, Darlee, Jared & Jessie. We haven't let Seth play any live games, either, but this game is tame (even a bit educational) and playing with family members seems safe, and a good way for him to connect with his siblings on the other side of the country. So he played with them for a few hours on Friday and with Tanner & Darlee for a little while last night. His screen time has still been pretty limited except we're more laid back on Friday and Saturday. He has kept busy with reading, playing with Legos, and drawing. He spent an hour or more drawing this picture yesterday:

On Wednesday night when I was sewing ties for masks, he came down and started asking me all about my sewing machine and even wanted to try sewing (I told him he can help me sew his mask, when I get to it.) Then he totally entertained himself for 15+ minutes with my pincushion! (The plus side of ADHD):

Then he found a puzzle and decided to make it:

He didn't want me to take a photo of him making it, because he said it was a "baby puzzle". Actually, even though the pieces are big, it is a remarkably challenging puzzle, so I don't think he should be embarrassed by it. Last night, his Deacon's Quorum had a "General Conference trivia" competition for their virtual activity. He had to come up with 10 questions to ask. (I helped him.) On Tuesday evening we all watched a movie together--the animated movie "Onward". It was pretty good.

Yardwork: The lawn is growing like crazy. And so are the weeds. So yesterday I mowed the front lawn and most of the back lawn (before the lawnmower battery died). I also weeded in front and back. Not just in the flower beds--there's an alarming amount of weeds in the lawns too. Mostly along the edges of the flower beds, where grass won't grow for some reason. My back hurt by the time I finished, but the lawns look much better.

Cool things our ward is doing: Last week we had a blanket fort competition for General Conference, and this week our bishop asked us to post our favorite Easter songs on our ward's FB page. We could either perform the song ourselves or post a link to it. So far, everyone has been posting links! I've really been enjoying all the beautiful Easter music. (I posted a link for my song last night.) Our Primary presidency asked the teachers and activity leaders to listen during General Conference for a quote / message that we would like to share with the Primary children. Today they posted a video on our ward FB page where they shared all the quotes and told the kids how much we love and miss them. It was really sweet!

Last night, Seth woke up in the night feeling sick. But this time, he got out of bed and got a bucket...we so much prefer that to having him throw up on the floor! He only threw up once, and only a little. This morning when I asked him if he needed some soda or anything,  he said he felt fine and he is still choosing to fast. Good for him!

I guess that's a decent amount of things to talk about...there's been more going on than I thought. We hope you all have a beautiful Easter!

Weekly Review April 3 '20

Here's the photos I was trying to post last week from one of our walks:

I love that we can walk a few minutes from our house and see these wide open spaces! I suppose someone is going to build something there eventually, but we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

We had a few more things going on this week than last week, so I have a little bit more to write about. Last Friday night we decided to have a family movie night. We watched Cool Runnings. I've seen that movie a bunch of times, but not recently and it was fun to see Seth's reaction to it, since he hadn't seen it since he was really little and really didn't remember it.

On Sunday our ward had a "virtual meeting". Not sacrament meeting, more like a 5th Sunday meeting. We got updates on the missionaries--both missionaries serving in our ward had to go home because of Coronavirus concerns so we have two new ones. Also, one Elder from our ward serving in the Philippines had just arrived home and a Sister serving in New Zealand was due home soon (she's home now). The other three missionaries, who are serving in the States, are all confined to their apartments. We also had announcements...one of the little boys from my former Primary class just got baptized (they did it in a river!) and a convert baptism is coming up soon. The missionary who had just returned home from the Philippines shared his testimony, the Sunday School president shared some thoughts on the First Vision & the Restoration, and the bishop shared a message of hope and encouragement. It was really nice to feel somewhat connected to our ward again! The screen that came up when we connected to the meeting made me smile (read the small print):

Also on Sunday, we made this puzzle...the whole thing in one day:

Funny story from later in the week...we had moved the puzzle to the coffee table and Seth put "his" laptop down on top of the puzzle and somehow managed to accidentally move the puzzle so that a corner of it was off the table and pieces started to fall onto the floor. I went over to help him salvage the puzzle when all of the sudden Frank started yelling incoherently...neither Seth nor I had noticed that the laptop was starting to fall off the table too! It was too late...the laptop fell, but thankfully it was okay; no damage. Frank was kind of mad at us for not understanding him and saving the laptop, but Seth and I are still laughing about the incoherent noises Frank was making and the expectation that we would somehow be able to translate them into "the laptop is falling! Grab it!!"

Seth started "distance learning" on Monday and so far it's going pretty well.

I have to hand it to his teachers...they have everything so well organized and they really have some good content too. They also have designed some activities to help the kids stay connected and have shown real concern for the kids' emotional well being, not just for their intellectual learning. Seth does most of his work in Google classroom, and I'm really grateful there haven't been technical issues. From all the emails we've received from the school system, I gather that most of the school district is using something called "Schoology" and it has been having a lot of problems because of the sheer number of people trying to use it. We have not had to deal with any of those headaches! I'm also grateful that he's my only child at home (how are moms dealing with having to help multiple children with their school work?!) and that he is in a unique Middle School situation...only about 75 students in the whole middle school and the teachers work together as a team, so we don't have to check in with several different teachers. And I'm thankful that Frank had an extra laptop lying around that he was able to set up for Seth to use so that I'm not sharing my laptop with him. He is able to get most of his work done in 3 - 4 hours most days. I sit next to him while he's working because he's on the internet and we have a rule that he can't be on the internet without one of us supervising him, but I've been able to do things like read my scriptures and catch up on email and so forth while he's working. (As a matter of fact, he's working on today's school work right now.)

We had a spot on the ceiling in our living room that looked like this:

We've been noticing some staining on the ceiling for quite a while (even for years, but the last time we had someone look at it the area was totally dry so they said it was an old leak and painted over it) but the last month or two it's been getting worse--spreading to the wall and some of the plaster on the ceiling started to come off. So we decided we'd better do something about it. (We suspected it had something to do with the toilet in Seth's bathroom, which is right above this spot.) A guy came and looked at it on Tuesday and he cut this hole in the wall to see what was going on:

The joist just below the pipe was damp (although thankfully not rotted or anything). He had Frank go upstairs & flush the toilet, and sure enough...water started leaking. So the next day he came back and removed the toilet, and discovered a broken flange. He replaced the flange and put the toilet back in place. Then he cut a larger hole in the wall because some of the drywall was damp:

And then he put in new drywall and ceiling pieces. The next day he came back and sanded and painted so that it all looks nice again:

You almost can't tell anything happened, except that the ceiling paint is hard to match so it's slightly different. Not bad, though! It's nice to have that fixed although it wasn't nice to have the expense right now.

The weather here has been mostly cloudy, which I admit has been hard on me. Makes things feel more gloomy, as if I weren't feeling that way already! However, yesterday it was sunny and today it is too, which makes me happy. It's been quite windy both days and temperatures in the 50s / 60s, so not incredibly warm but still...I'll take it! Yesterday Frank and I went on a pretty long walk and I appreciated these flowers that we passed:

We've had a couple of other "virtual" gatherings this week. My book chat group met via Skype on Tuesday evening. We had a few technical difficulties, but mostly it worked and it was really fun to see / talk to all of them again, and to discuss our book (North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell). We picked a new book to read, The Enchanted April. The funny part came when we decided to pick our next meeting date. "How about April 21st?" someone said, and everybody else immediately said "Looks good. I don't have anything." We usually have to go back and forth for quite a bit before we find a day that works for everyone, working around travel plans and meetings and ward activity nights! Seth also had a virtual Deacon's Quorum presidency meeting on Tuesday night so they could plan some virtual activities. Then last night they had their first activity. They played chess, as teams, and it seemed like it was a pretty successful activity. They all had chess boards in front of their computers and one team (after conferring privately in a chat) would say "Okay, we're going to move this bishop this many spaces..." and everyone would move that piece on their own board so that they could see how it looked and then decide their next move. I know Seth had fun, anyway. (And in the end, his team won.) 

I'm grateful we have technology that allows us to connect with other people in these creative ways! What would we have done if this pandemic had happened before we had the internet?!!

Frank decided to work each weekday, from about 8:00 to 1:00. He's definitely worked more than that, but he has had some time off...more time off than I expected, anyway. I still don't feel like I've seen him much. He is always really tired by 9:00 pm because he never sleeps well at night. (I'm still having a lot of insomnia, but the last two nights I slept quite well, which was really nice.)

I made some good progress on one of my projects this week. Other than that, I'm just doing the usual chores and I'm still exercising faithfully. Oh, and I mowed the lawn again. I tried doing both the front and the back lawns, but the lawnmower battery died before I could finish the back lawn. So yesterday (after the battery charged for a few days) I finished the back lawn. We've had some rain the past couple of weeks and the lawn is growing really fast.

I'm really looking forward to General Conference this weekend! I haven't been in the best emotional state these last few weeks. I've tried to feel at peace about things, but peace has been rather elusive. It's strange because I feel more anxiety now than I did when Frank was unemployed for 8 months. Why does partial pay for at least 30 days feel so much worse than no pay for an indefinite period of time? I think what is really bothering me is feeling even more helpless than usual--the whole world feels out of control, instead of just our little world. Also, just feeling like the economic impact is going to be very severe and very long term. It's pretty likely this 2 day a week furlough situation is going to extend beyond the next 30 days, and even if it doesn't, I know for his employer things aren't going to immediately be better and go back to normal. It's going to take a long time for them to bounce back. (If they bounce back at all, and don't go under completely). And if Frank did need to find a new job, who would be hiring? So all of those things add to the anxiety level. However, it could always be worse! Frank talked to a former coworker from Marriott this week and she said that 80% of the people at headquarters are on full time furlough for the next 60-90 days, and the other 20% are on reduced hours and pay. So if he hadn't been laid off 2 years ago, we'd definitely be in a more difficult position now. I'm thankful that we're not. And I'm feeling a little better than I was. Just looking forward to being spiritually uplifted this weekend!

To finish up, here's a few photos I took from the deck this morning. We are so spoiled to have such a beautiful view!