Oh So Outnumbered: 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: