Weekly Review May 29 '20

Here's the report for this week:

Virtual Activities: On Sunday Frank had an EQ meeting, Seth had Deacon's Quorum meeting, and I had a "virtual choir practice". No, we couldn't actually sing together. We had a discussion about the importance of music in the home and then the choir director directed us (her daughter is the pianist, so that worked well) while we all sang our parts...but on mute. So we couldn't hear each other, but it was better than nothing. (The sheet music for the song, along with practice tracks have been available on our ward's choir website for the last month, so we could practice our parts at home.) I actually really enjoyed it, even though I couldn't hear anybody else singing (except for the director). The director sang soprano, so actually I felt like we were singing a soprano / alto duet, which was fun! Later on, Frank had a meeting for the stake self reliance committee. Other than Sunday, we didn't have any more virtual meetings this week except two on Wednesday evening--Seth and I met with the missionaries serving in our ward (Frank was working) to meet the new missionary (we have 3 now) and I had a RS meeting right after that. (We did yoga). The new missionary was reassigned to our mission after spending about a year serving in Taiwan. He's from Salt Lake City. (More on Seth's Deacon's activity later).

Memorial Day: We couldn't do much since we're still under "stay at home" orders, but Frank had the day off (theoretically...he still ended up doing some work, but at least it was less than usual) and Seth didn't have school work. We spent the afternoon watching Avengers: Endgame (it's a long movie) and for dinner we had hamburgers, potato salad, fruit salad, and chips.

Marvel Movie Marathon: That brings us to our Marvel Movie Marathon, which is now complete. We watched Ant Man & the Wasp and Captain Marvel over the weekend so that we were ready for Endgame on Monday. There is one more movie (Spider Man: Far From Home), but it's not available on any of our streaming websites yet and we couldn't rent it either. (We could buy it, but we really don't want to do that.) So we'll watch that one once it become available. Maybe we will start a new movie marathon now (Harry Potter? Star Wars?), but we haven't decided yet. It's been nice that we've had all this time to spend together as a family.

School: Seth is still doing well with school. We found out yesterday that the last day of school will be June 17th. Seems like an eternity from now, but it's really only 2 1/2 weeks. It will be nice to have one less thing to worry about, although I'd say overall school hasn't been too big of a deal for us. If I had a bunch of kids at home, though, that really would have been difficult!! With one kid, it's been pretty relaxing.

One assignment this week was to create art with non-conventional materials. He made this Joker face out of Legos:

Frank: Frank is still super busy, and June is going to be even busier for him. Some of the projects that got put off because of all the pandemic stuff are now back on the table and he'll be working on 3 different projects in June. One project involves overnight installations at restaurants, and he will be doing at least one--and sometimes two--of those per week all summer. I worry about that because even though he is supposed to get the following day off work, it actually never happens. Things come up and he ends up working all day both the day before and the day after the overnight installation, with minimal or no sleep. Now he's going to have to do that every week? I hope he survives! He actually had a late night installation this week--on Wednesday night--from 10:00 pm to 3:30 am. Then he was up again at 6:30 am on Thursday and worked until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. (Some of that from home.) He is definitely underpaid for how much and how hard he works, but I do appreciate that he's a hard worker--loyal and dedicated to doing his best. I just hope his health doesn't suffer. Speaking of his health--he's been exercising again this week and we have started taking long walks together, which is good for both of us! I hope he can keep that up, although his work schedule makes it challenging.

I took this photo on one of our walks (a pretty marshy area in the park near our house):

Me: I'm keeping busy with all the usual household chores, supervising Seth's school work, reading, and projects. I finished the 11th Wings of Fire book and also read the 12th one this week. There's only one book left now (I'm sure more will be written, though.) I'm making great progress on my project and think I will be done in a couple of weeks. (Don't worry...I have plenty of projects left to work on!) I've been doing some indexing and have also been adding photos to family search (just of me and my kids, so the rest of you won't be able to see them I think). I have been watching a lot of home improvement shows on Hulu lately which I enjoy but it makes me want to do a bunch of changes to my own house! (Which would be great if I had unlimited funds, but I don't...) 

Seth's Birthday: Yesterday was Seth's birthday, so we have a teenager again! He was really excited about his birthday--been marking off days on his calendar for weeks--and I had to stay up really late on Wednesday night, waiting for him to go to sleep so I could wrap his presents. It was tricky keeping secrets this year since he's been home literally all the time, but I ordered his gifts from Amazon and had them sent to Frank's office. There was no chance to wrap them, though, except when Seth was asleep. He took a long time to go to sleep Wednesday night because he was excited about his birthday. He woke up early, of course, but actually kept quiet until I woke up about a half hour later. (Frank was already awake.) Then he opened presents, and he was really happy with everything. That's one thing about Seth--sometimes his enthusiasm can be exhausting to us, but for birthdays and things like that, it can be really fun. He even gets really excited about the cards!! He showered while I made blueberry muffins for his breakfast (his request) and then ate and put together a few small Lego sets while I showered. After that he did his schoolwork. Once his school work was done, he spent the rest of the afternoon putting together his remaining Lego sets. (He got 4 Lego sets and 1 Mega Blocks set--and that's it from us, besides some Kit Kats) Tanner & Darlee sent him a Minecraft book too, and he got some money from Grandma. While he was building, one of his friends from school called and talked to him for a while, which was a nice surprise. For dinner, we got pizza from Little Caesar's (his request). For his Deacon's activity that evening he thought they were going to meet virtually as usual, but instead his leaders and the other boys surprised him by showing up at our house. They brought him 2 giant cookies and one of the boys gave him a Wings of Fire book. (He owns all of them now.) Then they walked over to the park near our house and sat spread out throughout the pavilion to have their activity--they were discussing the first Wings of Fire book, which all of them had read. They also had cupcakes, and I had purchased some wrapped snack cakes to share with all of the boys.Two of the moms had driven their sons over to participate in the activity, so I walked over to the park with them and we sat on a long bench, spread out, and visited while the boys had their activity. So that was really nice for all of us, and I know it was really fun for Seth. After the activity, we came back home, lit his candles on his cake, sang to him, and had cake. Then we got ready for bed and for the last hour before bedtime he had a video chat with Scott, Tanner & Jared. So all in all, I think he had a great birthday! I'm adding some photos from yesterday, but that's all I have to report this week.

When Grandma sent his birthday card, she also sent two crocheted animals she made for him, which he was allowed to open right away instead of waiting for his birthday:

Opening presents:

Building:

Deacon's Quorum activity:

Cake:

Video chat with brothers (they were playing with filters):

Weekly Review May 22 '20

What is there to write about this week? Are we doing anything? Not much, but we do keep busy. It's just not very exciting to read about. I'll give it a go, though.

Seth's Schoolwork: Mostly the same (he's getting it done and doing well) but there was one new development this week. His school district got the authorization to hold virtual meetings so after sending in permission for him to participate, he was able to tune in to a few virtual meetings with some of his teachers this week. (Up until now, they have been receiving assignments through Google classroom, and sometimes his teachers have provided a video with instruction, but there hasn't been any direct two-way communication.) The purpose of these meetings is not for formal instruction, but just a chance to ask questions if they have them and get immediate answers. He isn't required to attend any of the meetings...they are just available if he needs them. They started out with a meeting for everyone on Monday morning so that the teachers could explain the purpose of the meetings. I think Seth really enjoyed that--seeing most of his classmates and teachers. Then they have a weekly schedule of meetings with each subject having a meeting at least once (some of them twice) a week. So far, he hasn't had many questions so he has only tuned in to a few of the meetings.

Class virtual meeting

Something he made for art

Weather: It's been warmer, but mostly cloudy all week, and we've had some rain. We did get a few hours of sunshine yesterday, but honestly I think that's the only sun we've seen all week. I took the opportunity to go on a short walk, and really enjoyed the sunshine while it lasted!

Iris growing by the river that I saw on my walk. (Someone must have planted a bulb here.)

Virtual Meetings: Besides Seth's school meetings, we had Sunday School for the adults on Sunday and Seth's Sunday School class also met. Seth had his usual Deacon's activity last night--they had an art / talent show where they each shared something. Seth shared some of his drawings, one boy shared a ukulele he built, and another read a story he wrote. One of the leaders showed some pottery he made and the other one performed a rap song he wrote called "The Deacon's Quorum Rap". All the boys really enjoyed that one! I was supposed to attend a virtual meeting for the Primary activities age children (7 - 10 year olds) yesterday afternoon, but I totally forgot about it! I was so upset when I realized that I'd missed it. I was really looking forward to seeing / talking with the girls in my group. They are going to do it again next month, though, so I get another chance. I had book chat on Tuesday evening, which was fun as usual. We are hoping that next month we will be able to meet in person again! We are reading the book Where the Crawdads Sing, but I don't have a copy of the book yet. (In the meantime, I'm reading the next Wings of Fire book...I'm on number 11 now.)

Frank: Same thing for Frank--he's still really busy! I don't feel like I see him much. He's been so busy that he hasn't had a chance to do invoicing for his business for nearly 3 months but he finally got caught up on that this week so now maybe he will start getting paid for all his hard work! He had to go up to a store in Hagerstown on Wednesday so I went with him, just to keep him company and to get out of the house for a while. That was nice. We got the results for his blood tests and his blood sugar is in the normal range, so that's good. I forgot to mention last week that he got his car detailed. It looks so nice now! A few years ago, he left some cases of soda in his trunk and since it was summer & really hot, several cans exploded. He's had soda splatter all over his trunk since then. It's nice to have that gone.

Marvel Movie Marathon: This week we watched Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War. Wow, that last one had a depressing ending! The advantage to not watching them when they first came out, though, is that I don't have to wait months or years to see the next movie. So hopefully the next couple of movies will be more cheerful! (Only 4 more to go.)

Pandemic Update: Just for the gee whiz historical factor, I will report that Maryland now has 44,424 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and 2,092 deaths. Frederick County has 1,625 cases. On the bright side, the number of people hospitalized continues to drop. When I look at the graph, the line in April climbed steadily, but when we got to May it started to flatten out and then to drop...it is dropping steadily. So that's good news.

Other stuff: We actually went somewhere (other than the grocery store) on Saturday! A sister in our ward was turning 70 and a bunch of us decided to take her some flowers for her yard. We dropped them off and talked to her for a while (from a distance). It was nice to see both her and several other members of the ward in person! She lives north of us in Thurmont, so the drive out there was really pretty too. Later on Saturday, Seth and I took dinner to the missionaries serving in our ward. I mostly did the usual stuff this week, but I also did some online birthday shopping for Seth, since his birthday is next week. I finished all 10 sessions for the voice project, Frank did 3 and Seth did 3. That's all we're going to do since the project has ended now. I did some indexing, wrote the music spotlight for our ward's newsletter (part of my ward music chair calling) and have been helping to set up a virtual choir practice for this Sunday. Last night I helped one of the sisters I minister to...she just needed someone to keep her company and help her stay motivated while she got a bunch of things done for her daughter's birthday. (And while I was near a gas station, I filled my car up for the first time since March 15th!) All in all,  I keep pretty busy.

That's it for this week.

Weekly Review May 15 '20

There's very little to write about...same routine! I have a few categories to write about, though.

Mother's Day: It was a nice day. Frank got me some beautiful yellow roses on Saturday. Scott called me Saturday night, Tanner & Darlee sent me a gift (a diffuser & essential oils) and Tanner also called me late Sunday night (10:00 pm!), and I got to video chat with Jared & Jessie for a little while. Then of course I also got to video chat with Mom and all my siblings so that was great too. Frank and Seth also gave me cards. My ward had a virtual RS meeting which was really nice; we discussed President Nelson's talk "Hear Him" from General Conference.

Virtual Activities: Besides the RS meeting on Sunday, I also visited with one of my ministering sisters Tuesday afternoon, and attended a RS activity on Wednesday evening. (We shared ideas of fun games to play while we're stuck at home). Seth had his weekly Deacon's activity--they wrote letters to missionaries. He also had a visit with his counselor on Wednesday afternoon.

Voice Project: A friend in our ward let us know about an opportunity to make a little bit of money by participating in a project where we record our voices saying various phrases. It's for a company that is working on improving voice recognition for artificial intelligence, and they need 5000 people to participate. I mostly thought this would be a good way for Seth to earn some money, since he is trying to save up for an expensive Lego set. But then I figured since they need people, Frank and I should go ahead and do it too. (Although ironically...only Frank and I have actually done any of the sessions so far. Seth hasn't done any yet.) There are 10 different sessions and each one takes about 15 - 20 minutes to complete. We get paid $5 for each session, but also get a $20 bonus for completing all 10, so there's the potential for each person to earn $70. We just got the information yesterday, and Frank did 2 sessions and I did 3. It's pretty easy. We have to complete them soon because the project will probably end in about a week. (If any of you want to do it, let me know and I will send you information.)

Marvel Movie Marathon: We watched Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Spider-Man: Homecoming this week. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are not my favorites but I thought Doctor Strange was really interesting and I like the Spider Man in these movies a lot better than the other Spider-Man series. We still have 7 movies to go, but at our current rate that will only take us 2 or 3 weeks to finish them. Most of the movies are on Disney Plus and we also own most of them, but we had to rent the Spider-Man movie.

Seth's Schoolwork: He's doing really well with school still. As usual, he had a really light load today and he finished it in about an hour. But this week a lot of his classes had days to make up work, and he wasn't behind on anything so he finished early almost every day this week. He did spend quite a bit of time working on a project for his English class, which involved writing a "process essay" where he had to explain how to do something that he does well. He chose to explain how to draw a picture by copying an image. Here are some pictures of the process:

Here's the finished product:

This is the image he was copying:

Pretty good, right? He has quite a bit of artistic talent, I think!

For his history class they were working on an oral history project and he had to interview someone and ask them questions about what they remember about their lives / historical events that happened in their lifetime. He chose to interview Mom, so he did that on Tuesday. It was fun to talk to her and hear her stories!

Frank: He has continued to be very busy with both work and his business. Unfortunately, he's not sleeping very well and last night he barely slept at all. Poor guy!! At least he really is working from home today; I wouldn't want him to be driving far today since he's so sleepy. Yesterday he had to go to Virginia and he's done quite a bit of driving around this week for both his job and his business. Yesterday he had his blood drawn to check where his blood sugar level is at, but we don't know the results of that yet. (He has to have it checked periodically).

Me: Making good progress on my current project. I finished the book chat book and also read the next book in the Wings of Fire series. Both books were really good. I find myself feeling somewhat restless. I'm not running out of things to do, necessarily, but I feel like I should be doing things that are more worthwhile. I've been doing some indexing and trying to find other worthwhile things to do. I enjoy the extra free time, but sometimes I feel like I'm wasting it.

Weather: It was unusually cold over the weekend (below freezing overnight a few nights) and still on the cool side most of this week, but temperatures started warming up yesterday and it's supposed to be pretty hot today. We've been a few walks this week, and walked longer than usual. Yesterday morning was beautifully sunny (it got cloudy later and even rained a bit last night) and when I walked out on our deck, I enjoyed hearing all the birds singing and then seeing two rabbits chasing each other across a neighbor's lawn. We always see rabbits in our neighborhood this time of year, but we've seen more than usual this year. We see squirrels (LOTS of them!) practically year round lately since the winters have been so much milder. I always really enjoy watching the wildlife.

Pandemic Progress: The governor is lifting the stay-at-home order for the state of Maryland and starting "phase 1" of re-opening at 5:00 pm today. However, he gave each county the option of making their own decisions about re-opening things according to conditions in their county, and Frederick County is one of the counties that has decided to open more slowly. So the stay-at-home order is still in place for us for at least 2 more weeks. A few things will be able to start opening on a limited basis, though. So it's a start! The state is now up to 36,986 cases with 1,792 deaths. Frederick County has 1, 364 cases. Hospitalizations are definitely going down now, though, so that's encouraging. I found out this week that my friend Wanda, who lives in a nursing home, had COVID-19, but she is better now. There was quite an outbreak at the nursing home where she lives--among both residents and staff--and quite a few deaths. She is doing okay though. She reported that she hasn't had a shower in a month, though, because they are not letting anyone get out of bed. Ugh!! I can't imagine how awful that would be.

Travel Plans: Tanner alerted us to the fact that airline tickets between Baltimore and Salt Lake City had dropped down to $99 one way, so we decided to go ahead and buy some tickets for a week in August. It's still uncertain, of course, whether or not travel restrictions will be lifted for us by then, but hopefully they will be. If not, then we will be coming at a later date. But we'll be coming to visit sometime! That cheers me up a bit. We're hoping we can visit Frank's parents sometime this summer too.

Well, I managed to muster more information there than I thought I would! We hope everyone is well and happy.

Weekly Review May 8 '20

What is there to tell you about this week? Seems like not much!

Frank has been really busy with work and his business. I feel like I don't see him much. Theoretically, he works from home on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, but it seems like he ends up going into the office or to solve problems at restaurants pretty often. It's good for him to be busy, though, and I appreciate how hard he works.

Seth and I have continued our regular schedule. It's been harder to get him going in the mornings lately...getting through the exercise / breakfast / shower routine takes a lot of nudging from me and he's been starting on his school work later than usual a lot of days this week. He still gets all his work done, though. A few days ago they announced that schools will remain closed and distance learning will continue for the remainder of the school year, so this will be our routine until the last day of the school year. I'm still not sure what day that will be exactly, but I think it will be around June 12th.

We've had a lot of rain and cloudy days this week and this weekend is going to be cold, with record lows, but yesterday was sunny, warm, and beautiful. We had Seth mow the front lawn since there probably won't be a chance to do that again for a while...more rain in the forecast. (He's getting better at it, too!) We went on a walk on Monday evening but haven't been out much otherwise. Hopefully the weather will cooperate more next week, and we'll get out more.

Last Friday I watched a lot of the online BYU Women's Conference, and it was really good. I actually want to listen to a lot of those talks again. Very uplifting!!

Saturday was a pretty busy day; I actually had some things to do for both of my callings. For music, I contacted a couple of the choir directors to work out who was going to be in charge for the next couple of months (currently that just means they choose a song to feature on the choir website, although there's a chance they may actually be leading a song that month if we get to resume church meetings). For the Primary activities, I started going through all the suggested activities the church website lists to see which ones could be used (or adapted) in a virtual setting. I also came up with a few of my own ideas. We are thinking that if church meetings and activities can't resume this summer that we will start doing at least one virtual activity each month (maybe more). Besides working on church callings, I practiced ukulele, cleaned the kitchen floor, and supervised Seth while he mowed both the front and back lawns (at different times, since the battery has to have time to recharge). On Saturday Frank and I also went to the store in search of a few things; we were mostly successful although Clorox wipes are nowhere to be found. (Not too surprising.) I use those pretty regularly for cleaning around the house so I always have them on hand, but we're starting to run out since they haven't been seen on store shelves since mid-March. I understand that a lot of people ran out and bought them when the pandemic broke out, but I don't understand why they haven't been able to replenish the supply since then. (I can say that about a lot of other things, too.) We also tried to recycle our printer ink cartridges but no one is taking them right now so we ended up throwing them out.

On Sunday our ward had a short virtual testimony meeting (they asked for volunteers ahead of time). It was really nice! Then Seth had a virtual Sunday School class right after that. Other than that, we didn't have any other meetings but Frank and I did participate in a "birthday parade" for one of the girls in our ward who was turning 18 (she stood in her front yard and we all drove by her house and waved and called out greetings). She is one of the young women in our ward who is graduating this year; she is also my friend Rebekah's daughter so I got to see Rebekah briefly too. There was a pretty long line of cars, some decorated with balloons and signs, and it was fun to see other members of our ward as they drove by (we had to loop around, since her street ends in a dead end). The parade was a surprise, apparently, and afterwards I got text messages from both the birthday girl and Rebekah thanking us for coming. The birthday girl said "I was so surprised, and I have never felt more loved!".

The rest of the week has been business as usual, with not much to tell you about. Seth had a virtual presidency meeting on Tuesday evening so they could plan some more activities and last night for their activity they played HORSE "trashketball" which is like the regular basketball game except each one had wadded up paper for balls and they were trying to throw them into a trashcan.

I have continued to read the book chat book and have made some progress on my other project although not as much as I should have because I got kind of involved with watching Call the Midwife, so I spent more time on Netflix than I usually do. As a family, we continued our Marvel Movie Marathon by watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant Man, and Captain America: Civil War. That means we've watched 13 of the 23 movies so we're over the half way mark now. Actually, Seth and I watched that last one without Frank because Frank was too busy to watch it with us (he's seen it before, though).

As usual, Seth has already finished his school work for the day (Fridays are always a lighter workload). Frank is doing some work for a client and a while ago I took him something that he forgot; I noticed that my gas tank is down to about a quarter of a tank so I need to fill it soon. However, the last time I filled my gas tank was on March 14th...just shows how few places I've gone in the last few months!

It's encouraging that some of the temples are going to open next week, even if it's very limited (and none of them are anywhere near us). It's a start, right? It looks like Maryland is on track to start phase 1 of its 3 phase reopening plan in another week or two. The number of people hospitalized is starting to go down every day, which is encouraging. The number of cases still goes up every day (by a lot) but I'm sure a lot of that is because more testing is available. Deaths seem to be slowing down a bit. Today Maryland is up to 30,485 confirmed cases with 1,453 deaths. Frederick County has 1,182 cases. Thankfully, we are healthy and doing just fine.

This week was teacher appreciation week. Usually at Seth's school they provide meals for the teachers, encourage the children to write notes of appreciation, and collect donations for a gift (one year they got a massage chair for the teacher's lounge). This year they couldn't do most of that, but they asked us to send in a photo or do a short video clip each day, with a theme for each day. We forgot to do most of them, but I remembered two days so here are the photos I took of Seth. For the first one they were supposed to hold up a book that they've been reading. For the second one they were supposed to be holding wildflowers or standing next to wildflowers:

Here's a couple of other photos I took this week. My iris plant in the front yard bloomed this week--just in time for a possible freeze tonight :(

More wildflowers we saw on one of our walks:

Cinco de Mayo fare (sour cream enchiladas with tomato & guacamole):

And finally, I took these photos from the Walmart parking lot on Wednesday because I thought the sky looked really cool (although stormy); the pictures don't do it justice:

Weekly Review May 1 '20

It's May...wow! Here's the weekly update on our happenings.

Weather: It rained a lot this week, especially yesterday (it basically rained all day). This morning the river is flooded. It's crazy how much it has changed from just a week ago. Remember that path we took down to the river last week? It's all under water this morning.

Last week:

This morning:

To fully appreciate the difference, you have to realize that the path slopes downward several feet and that this part of the path was above our heads when we were standing on the river bank last week. Here's a few more photos of the flooding river (Seth and I went on a walk this morning):

That's the path we took down to the river last week again, in the left corner of the photo.

We had to stop and walk the other way at this point, obviously! The line of trees on the right is growing along the top of the river bank (where it usually is, when not flooded).

We also saw this cardinal in a tree:

We need the rain, but I would appreciate it if we had a few sunny days once in a while. Seth was supposed to do an art project this week which involved tracing shadows, and it has never been sunny enough for him to do that! (He did an alternate art project instead.) Thankfully, we got the front lawn mowed on Saturday or it would be a total jungle by now. (Seth did most of the mowing; I'm working on teaching him to do that so that I can turn that job over to him.) We didn't do the back lawn because it was too wet. Why? Well, that leads me into the next category.

Termites: We did a lot of work in the basement on Saturday and made a lot of progress with cleaning things / moving things away from the wall. One of the things we had in there was a big barrel of water; it was so heavy that we couldn't budge it without emptying it, so Frank got an old garden hose, cut off the ends, and used that to siphon most of the water from the barrel to the back yard.

(See, it's big!)

After all that work on Saturday, we both had very sore backs--especially Frank. My back felt better after a good night's sleep, but Frank's hurt for a couple of days. After making so much progress on Saturday, we gave it a rest for a few days but on Tuesday we got a call from the exterminator that they were scheduled to come do the termite treatment on Thursday. So Tuesday evening we did a bunch more work (mostly in the hallway outside the laundry room, although we did some more organizing in the laundry room also) and got almost everything moved where it needed to be. We threw out a LOT of stuff from the hallway--mostly old computer equipment. Poor Frank was hurting a lot again by the time we got done. It's a good thing we took the time to do all of that on Tuesday evening, though, because on Wednesday morning the guy called and he wanted to come that day instead of Thursday, since it was supposed to rain all day Thursday (and it did). Frank was doing work for Roy Rogers in Virginia all day that day, but I was able to move the last couple of things that needed to be moved, and the exterminator helped me move the water barrel since it was still kind of heavy. He got the work done in a couple of hours.

If you look closely, you can see two holes drilled into the floor.

He drilled holes every few feet, all along the back wall of the laundry room.

There's a couple of holes drilled into the front step too. (Harder to see.)

After he drilled the holes, he put stuff in them that will kill the termites when they go through it. It basically created a barrier on both the outside and the inside of the house, so that they can't get through it without dying. After putting that stuff in the holes, he cemented over the top of the holes again.

Now for some before and after photos, so you can see how hard we worked!

Before

After

Before

During

During

After

Before

After

Obviously, there's still a lot of stuff in there but we did get rid of a lot of things! We also have not put things back where they go yet...the chest freezer, for example, will go back against the wall. We are still going to get rid of a few more things (it's kind of hard to get rid of everything right now since places like Goodwill are closed and electronics recycling places are closed) and everything needs to be moved around a bit. These shelves, for example, are going to go on that big empty wall:

But anyway...there's a lot of empty space that we didn't have before, and things are a lot more organized instead of in big jumbled piles. Plus, the entire floor has been swept clean of all the dust / lint that accumulates in laundry rooms.

Here's a photo of the hallway outside the laundry room, which you really can't appreciate because I forgot to take a "before" photo:

We have more work to do here, too, but trust me--it's a big improvement! For example, that entire wall on the left of the photo had boxes piled against it. I couldn't get into that closet (you can see the edge of a door there) without moving a bunch of boxes. The open door in the back on the right is the door to Frank's office, and there used to be boxes and other stuff blocking a lot of the doorway. Those boxes you see there now are flattened boxes standing on their sides--we're just waiting for our recycle pick up day next week to be able to get rid of those. (The wood slats on the floor are some old quilting frames which I'm also going to give away.) So overall, when I walk downstairs now I see much more uncluttered open space than I did before, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me! Frank is different from me...clutter really doesn't bother him. I asked him if it feels better to work in a less cluttered space, and he said "not really". So hard for me to comprehend, since clutter makes me anxious / depressed / crazy!!!

There's not a lot to say about the rest of the week. Frank has been really busy and his body really took a beating this week because that day he worked in Virginia all day he was doing a lot of physical labor--lifting things and such--so he got a double dose of that kind of work at home and at work! He also picked up a new client this week (a current client referred him to a friend who needed IT help) so that has kept him busy too, in addition to going back to work full time with his regular job. He worked at the office all day on Tuesday and in Virginia all day on Wednesday, and it was strange to have him gone all day...have to get used to that again!

Seth and I have been busy with the usual things and he is doing well with school still. He got his report card for the third term and he got straight As. For his virtual Deacon's activity last night, they shared cool creations they had made out of Legos. He also attended a virtual meeting for all the youth that the ward had on Sunday. He was in charge of asking two people ahead of time to say the prayers.

My heart has been quiet, I haven't had any health scares, and I've been sleeping great all week, so that's been really nice. I finished one of my projects--sorting family memorabilia. I am making progress on my other project too. I exercise and supervise Seth's school work, and get the regular things like laundry, cleaning, budgeting, and shopping done. One of my ministering sisters had a virtual visit with me on Wednesday afternoon. I find that I still have quite a bit of free time. It's strange!! I finished the Wings of Fire book that I was reading and now I'm reading the book chat book (I Am Malala) and it is really good. I have been reading some other books and sometimes play games / work on puzzles. Last night I was doing a word puzzle and Seth got interested and helped me with it. I like it when that happens--he's using his brain, but he's having too much fun to notice! We have continued our Marvel movie marathon--we watched Iron Man 3 and Thor: the Dark World over the weekend. Then we watched Captain America: the Winter Soldier for family night activity on Monday and watched part of Guardians of the Galaxy on Tuesday evening (after all that cleaning!) and finished watching it Wednesday evening. We didn't go on any walks until this morning because it has been raining so much.

I keep hearing about states that are starting to open things back up, but we are not anywhere close to doing that here in Maryland. There is a 3 phase plan to start opening things back up in place, but the first phase can't start until we have 14 days of downturns in new cases of Covid-19. Right now, we're still going up every day. As of this morning, there are now 23,472 confirmed cases in Maryland (up 1, 730 from yesterday) and 1,098 confirmed deaths (up 51 from yesterday). Frederick county has 942 cases. When I look at numbers like that, it feels like life is never going to go back to normal. But hopefully things will start changing soon. Even the 3rd phase of opening is not going back to normal life, so at this point it looks like we're still going to be living with a lot of restrictions into / throughout the summer. I guess we'll see, though. We have talked about possibly trying to visit Utah before the summer is over, but it's doubtful that will be possible until August, if at all. We will just keep an eye on things. Overall, I am feeling a lot less stressed and more optimistic but I'll be really glad when we can go back to church and things like that!

Seth is already done with his school work today (only took him about an hour!) That's everything I can think of to report, so I'll finish up with photos of this card I got in the mail today from Frank's mom. His parents sent an anniversary card for both of us, but then there was this other card addressed just to me.

("When I saw this I saw you so I'm sending it to you. Love you Mom Elaine")

Have I mentioned that I love Frank's mom??!! This made me laugh so hard. She's the best, honestly. I love her so much! She has always been so loving and accepting of me. She often says to me "You're not my daughter-in-law, you're my daughter!"  I know not everyone is that lucky.