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!
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