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.
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