Weekly Review November 29 '20

 I'm late getting this week's post out because we were traveling this week. We got home last night. We had a good trip and we are happy to be home again. Let's see if I can remember back to what we did before we left...

Frank was working a ton...he worked overnight on Friday (the 20th) as well as the four previous nights (and every day too). He rested a lot on Saturday, but ended up doing some more work for a few hours on Sunday. He didn't have to work overnight this last week, though, and only had to work on Monday and part of Tuesday.

On Saturday (the 21st) I attended an online baptism service for one of the little boys who was in my Primary class last year. He is the youngest of the class, so he is the last one to turn 8. The baptism was very nice. Frank and I watched the BYU football game that afternoon...for once it wasn't late at night! We enjoyed that although the teams were so mismatched that the game wasn't terribly exciting. There wasn't much doubt that BYU would win. I appreciated the lack of tension, but as I said...it wasn't as exciting either. I don't remember details of what else we did...I think I probably went to the store to get a few needed items and I probably did some crocheting.

On Sunday we had an online regional conference for church. Some of the speakers included Elder Soares and President Eyring. It was really good! Afterwards, I had an online ministering visit with one of the sisters I minister to. She moved into the ward in June and was added to my ministering list about a month ago. I actually knew her a little bit already--she used to live in our stake years ago and her older children are the same age as my older boys. It was nice to see her again and to get caught up with her. I was able to get in contact with my companion, too, so we were all three able to visit together. 

Remember last week I mentioned one of the girls in my YW class tested positive for Covid-19? We decided to do a "heart attack" for her. Some of the girls in the class as well as the other leader and I cut out hearts and wrote encouraging messages on them for her. On Sunday afternoon, the other leader and I went to the girls' houses to collect the hearts they made. I met the other leader at the church parking lot to give her all the hearts I had made and collected. Then she took all of them over to the sick girl's house the next day. Her mom put all the hearts on her bedroom door while she was napping. Apparently she really enjoyed it, and her mom sent us a thank you text with a photo of her daughter standing by the decorated door, smiling. The sick girl also sent a thank you text to all of us. Thankfully, she is getting better and she hasn't had any of the more dangerous complications. 

On Monday we were busy packing and doing all the other things we needed to do to prepare for our trip. I made a batch of pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to share for Thanksgiving dinner. I also got the bulk of our Christmas cards addressed, stamped & stuffed so I made a trip to the post office to send those. I had a couple of small packages I needed to send too. The post office was super busy...you'd think it was December already! 

I got regular chores done on Tuesday morning and by afternoon Frank was done with work and we were able to get the car packed & ready to go. Seth has a 2:00 class on Tuesday afternoons but we didn't want to wait until it was over to leave. He finished all his other work by 1:00, so we left shortly after that. We used my cell phone for a hot spot so that he could log into his 2:00 class using my laptop. That worked out fine...my laptop battery died before the class ended but they were just wrapping things up. We only had to drive halfway to NC on Tuesday. We had a room reserved at a Fairfield Inn in Christiansburg, VA (just south of Roanoke) on Tuesday night. We got there around 5:00 pm and were able to get some dinner and just relax for the evening. 

While we were at dinner, I noticed that my throat was hurting a little bit and my head was starting to ache too, which caused me a bit of consternation. When I woke up on Wednesday morning my throat was definitely sore and I had a bad headache too. Yikes! Frank and Seth went downstairs to get me some food from the free breakfast (they had a grab & go breakfast for everyone anyway...no one was allowed to eat in the dining room). I took some acetaminophen and we got on our way. We decided I would just need to be careful and keep away from people as much as possible. We got to Brevard around 2:00 pm and stopped to see Frank's parents although I didn't hug them or come close to them. I wasn't feeling any worse by then, at least. We checked into our air B&B and got settled, then we had to go to the grocery store to get some food for ourselves and a few ingredients for the things we were making for Thanksgiving dinner. We also stopped by Dawn & Mike's house (Dawn is Frank's sister) to pick up the turkey (we were cooking it) and to get a few things we needed from them. (Again, I stayed away from them.) I rested the rest of the evening, but Frank went with Dawn & Mike to set up some tables and chairs at the community center where we were having our dinner the next day. He also made a banana pudding dessert and a chocolate cream pudding pie. 

I didn't sleep well on Wednesday night...for some reason I woke up at 2:00 am Thursday morning and I never went back to sleep. However, I woke up feeling completely fine...no sore throat and no headache...so I was really happy about that. We ended up cooking the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner because everyone who lives in NC were making a ton of other things and since we were staying in a place with a stove, we were able to cook too. Besides the turkey, we also made mashed potatoes and gravy. So that kept us pretty busy on Thursday morning. In planning our meal, we had had some concerns about how to get together without anyone getting sick and without breaking any of the local rules, which limits indoor gatherings to 10 people. We ended up having only 13 people there total and the weather was beautiful (sunny and high 60s) so between people going in and out and a few people who had to work and got there late, we never had more than 10 people inside at once. We sat at tables that were spread out too so we didn't get very close to anyone, and Frank and Dawn's husband Mike served everyone (wearing masks and gloves) instead of everyone serving themselves. It all turned out fine, we had a delicious meal, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. 

(I love this photo of Seth and Frank's mom!)

On Friday we planned to visit Frank's brother James. (He didn't come to Thanksgiving dinner because he just had knee surgery). However, James contacted us on Friday morning to let us know that he had just found out that he'd been exposed to Covid-19, so we decided we'd better not visit him. Frank's parents came to see us at the little house we were staying in (it was just around the corner from his parents' house) and we took them to lunch. Frank's mom saw the afghan I'm working on and she has been wanting to know how to make an afghan like that, so I showed her how to do it. We also got laundry done (the place we were staying had a washer and dryer, which was nice). That evening we went to dinner with Dawn & Mike and enjoyed visiting with them a bit more. After dinner we went back to Frank's parents' house to visit with them some more too. 

Here's the cute little house we stayed in:

Yesterday we got up and got ready to head back home. We stopped at Frank's parents' house for a few minutes to leave some leftover food with them and to say good bye. We did the whole trip in one day this time, so it was a long day of driving but we made really good time and only had to make stops three times (one for gas, one for food, and one restroom break) so we got home by around 5:00 pm. We hadn't planned to be home in time for dinner so after unpacking we had to go get something to eat. There's still not a lot of food in the house (other than junk food leftover from our trip), but we have food for dinner tonight and tomorrow morning I will be picking up an order from Walmart, so we'll have plenty to eat then.  

Today we found out one of Frank's nieces is sick which is a bit of a concern, but none of us had much contact with her at all so hopefully we will be okay. However, I already decided earlier this week that since we just traveled and came into contact with a lot more people than we normally do and since we are hoping to be travelling again in a few more weeks, that Seth and I are going to stay home (except for necessary trips to the store and things like that) until it's time for our Utah trip. I will just feel better if we minimize our contact with other people as much as possible. Frank still needs to go to work, of course, but Seth and I don't have to go places much anyway so it won't be too hard to stay home as much as possible. 

Today we had church online. Normally, it would have been our turn to go to church this week but because of the higher Covid cases in the area and because of Thanksgiving gatherings, our ward leadership decided to have in-person sacrament meeting only for ward members who don't have the opportunity to partake of the sacrament at home. Everyone else tuned in online. (We would have stayed home anyway, as I explained above). One of our speakers today was a girl who was serving a mission in New Zealand and had to come home in April because of Covid. She had been out about 4 months. She talked about her mission and about how hard it was for her to come home so early. It was a really good talk. We also had another online meeting today (5th Sunday) where we learned more about the Just Serve initiative (we've had that here for years...it was more of an update).

Tanner's birthday was this week...it fell on Thanksgiving Day this year. We sent him a few presents earlier and on Thursday his mother-in-law texted me a few photos of him with presents and with a sweet note saying how much they love him. So that was really nice!!

That's all the news from these parts that I can think of. We hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. We certainly have enjoyed seeing all the uplifting, thankful posts on social media this last week. I do believe that gratitude can heal us, and I'm thankful we have a prophet who is so inspired!

Weekly Review November 20 '20

 We had a fairly busy week. Last Friday night (Friday the 13th!) Frank and I went out by ourselves for a little while. We got some gyros to eat and then ate them in the car and just enjoyed talking to each other for a while. It was nice!

On Saturday morning we were supposed to put donations for Scouting for Food out on our porch and even though I had our donations ready by the door, I forgot to put them out! Luckily, I had been driving through Walkersville earlier that week and happened to notice a sign at a grocery store that said you could drop off donations for Scouting for Food there. So we drove to the grocery store and were still able to make our donations. After that, I went to Jo Ann's to get some yarn and a few other things...they were having a big sale and it was pretty busy. One thing I wanted to get was a new iron, because mine is not in very good shape (I've had it since we got married, I think!) but all the irons had sold out already. I did succeed in getting a new glue gun--I noticed when I was working on the family tree board last week that my glue gun is not working very well. It is also quite old (although not as old as the iron). I got some yarn to make some more hats (I think I'm addicted!) and a chalk marker thing that I've been wanting as well. Frank and I also went to Walmart together, and while I was at Jo Ann's, Frank went to Costco to get chicken since we needed that too. At Walmart we got a couple of RC cars because I signed up to get those for two little boys in need (our ward is sponsoring their families for Christmas). I got two more pieces of the skirt cut out...now all the big pieces are done and the smaller pieces will be easier. I THINK I succeeded in matching the plaid pretty well, but I will see how well I actually did when I start sewing pieces together. Between all the shopping and the other regular Saturday chores, I kept pretty busy all day.

Sunday was also busy...really busy!! It was not our week to attend church in person, but we tuned into the Sacrament meeting broadcast...we had speakers from the stake come for the first time since the pandemic started and they gave excellent talks. Then we also tuned in to the adult Sunday School class. After that was over, I had an online presidency meeting with my YW class, followed by online tithing settlement with our bishop (for the whole family, of course). When I was done with all that, Frank drove me to four houses where YW live to drop off journals that we were giving to each of the girls. We also dropped off the RC cars at another ward member's house...she's collecting all the donated items. After we got home we had dinner and after that I watched the Face to Face broadcast with the General YW Presidency. It was so very good! So overall, I had a very busy day but it was a good one. While I was watching the broadcast a very severe storm rolled in...no thunder & lightning, but heavy rain and the wind was just howling! It didn't last very long though. 

After that busy weekend, the rest of the week has been fairly quiet for me, but there were still some things going on. Frank's week was NOT quiet...he had drive thru installation installs every night this week. He has also basically worked every day for most of the day (after getting 2 - 4 hours of sleep) so I'd say he's easily going to get in 80 hours of work this week. No wonder he's exhausted. He has NO overnight installs next week though. I'm so glad, and I'm sure Frank is too. 

Most of my week I've been doing the usual...housework, supervising Seth, crocheting, reading, watching Education Week presentations (some of my favorites this week were one on the compensatory blessings of the atonement, one on planning for retirement, and one on the power of establishing good habits). Besides that, I had a few other things like returning library books, ordering & picking up Christmas cards, ordering a birthday gift for Tanner, and an online visit with one of my ministering sisters. On Tuesday evening I had an online YW activity...it was a combined activity with all the girls although not very many of them came. We talked about goals...the ones the girls are working on, the ones we (as leaders) are working on, and just some general goal setting tips. It was pretty good although we (the leaders) had to do most of the talking. Two of the girls in my class let us know they weren't going to log in because they weren't feeling well, and I found out yesterday that one of those girls just tested positive for Covid-19. She had just returned from visiting her sisters in Utah, and one of her sisters just tested positive too. Hopefully both of them will recover quickly! 

Meanwhile, Seth also had an activity on Tuesday evening and his was in person. It was actually a stake YM activity (although they limited how many boys could attend). They did some testimony sharing but they also played dodgeball. (Everyone had to wear masks the entire time). Seth seemed to enjoy that and I'm glad he got to get out of the house for a few hours and spend time with other boys (he literally can go weeks without leaving the house). 

This morning there was a bulk trash pickup for our neighborhood so last night before Frank left for work we were able to put some things out--some wood and a few old computers and a really old stool...mostly things that we decided we needed to get rid of last spring when we were cleaning the basement before the termite treatment was done. All these things have been sitting around ever since then so I was really happy to finally be able to get rid of them. 

Seth has been keeping busy with school and overall he is doing well although I detect some "burn out" happening lately. Last week he actually had kind of a melt down on Friday afternoon because he didn't want to work anymore so he ended up finishing up his work for the week on Saturday morning. He did it all on Saturday without complaining, though. This week he had a few sort of difficult days where he put off too many things but he managed to do a lot of catching up yesterday and today he is almost done with everything for the week. Our county has approved a hybrid model for the second semester (which starts at the end of January) so hopefully he will be going back to school at least some of the time then. I'm not totally counting on that, though--with the increases in Covid-19 cases the last few weeks I think it's a real possibility that they will change their minds unless things get better. Maybe we'll get a vaccine by then? That would certainly be great!

Another thing that has kept me busy this week is going over tax law...I'm starting to prepare to re-certify to be a VITA volunteer tax preparer again this coming tax season. I'm not sure how (or if) it's going to work...but we are probably going to be doing taxes virtually instead of in person with the tax payers. So even if Seth is still doing school from home, I will probably be able to volunteer because I'll be able to do the work from home too. So I'm starting to review all the material so I can take the test again (volunteers have to take the test every year). So far, I'm pleased at how much of it I'm remembering...I thought I would have forgotten everything by now! I'm also going to try to certify at the advanced instead of the basic level this year (that means I will be able to prepare more complicated tax returns). 

I got to talk to both Tanner and Jared on the phone this week and get somewhat caught up with them, which was nice. I don't get to talk to either one of them very often.

I have not touched the ancestor board project since last time I wrote...I'm still just anxious that I'm going to ruin it when I try to start writing names on it. Plus, I keep looking at it and wishing I were artistic enough to draw some sort of a tree on it. I just want someone who is artistically talented to look at it and figure out how to make it look awesome and then make it look awesome for me! If Shellie lived nearby, I would definitely be asking for her help. But here is something fun that I can share with you. Getting the photos of Frank's family was really fun because the resemblance between Tanner, Frank, Frank's dad, grandpa and great grandpa is really remarkable. His dad and grandpa especially look like each other...in the photos I have they even have their heads turned the same way, and the same expression on their faces! Here's a photo I took of their 5 pictures next to each other:

We are still having really nice weather for November. Temperatures did drop a lot this week so we've had some cold days but today it is back up into the 60s and sunny. We keep having gorgeous sunsets that it's impossible to capture on film, but I keep trying. I can take a photo of the sky, but capturing the light just right is another matter! Last night, the very air was pink, I swear! And faded orange leaves basking in a pink glow are just amazing:

In this last photo, the sky was actually much pinker in real life (although not as pink as it was in the other photos) and the moon also looked bigger and more distinct (can yo see the moon, peeking through the tree branches on the right side?):

Everyone have a great week and remember to #GiveThanks!

Weekly Review November 13 '20

 It's the middle of November already. It's going to be 2021 before we know it! Most of this week didn't feel like November. We had beautiful days in the 70s! It was so nice!! It rained all day Wednesday and into Thursday morning and it was cloudy the rest of Thursday but still fairly warm both of those days. Today the sun is back out again and it's cooler, but still above average for November. It is supposed to cool down a lot this weekend and into next week, though. In the meantime, I've just been grateful for the beautiful weather that we've had. 

Frank wasn't as busy this week...he only had one overnight job, which was on Monday...his last POS install. He is so glad to be done with those! He said last week that he wanted to go out to eat on Tuesday to celebrate being done with POS installs, so that's what we did. We enjoyed a yummy meal at Outback Steakhouse. And just in the nick of time too...our governor announced that day that because of an uptick in Covid cases, restaurants would be cut back to 50% capacity instead of 75%, effective at 5:00 pm on Wednesday. (Indoor gatherings are also being cut down to 25 people.) Anyway, Frank certainly still kept busy with work all week, and there were a few crazy emergencies but at least he was home almost every night and got a decent night's sleep. 

Speaking of increasing Covid cases, from what we hear cases are going up all over the country (Utah seems to be particularly hard hit) and lots of places are instituting new restrictions so that leaves us wondering if we are really going to be able to carry out our holiday plans for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We're in "wait and see" mode. We're hoping we will still get to travel, but probably won't know until the last minute if plans are going to work out or not. 

Seth had a Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening (they played a version of "Headbandz") and on Thursday evening he had a presidency meeting to plan next month's activities. On Wednesday Seth got braces on his top teeth (he'll get braces on the bottom teeth in a couple of months). His mouth is sore, of course, and he doesn't love having braces but he's dealing with them pretty well. He has complained a bit, of course, but doesn't seem to be suffering too much, thankfully. Knowing this was coming, I purposely planned meals with soft foods for a number of days. Before and after photos (sorry "before" is a bit blurry):

 I've been keeping fairly busy. Having a calling in YW definitely adds quite a few events to my life! On Sunday evening there was a stake fireside for parents and leaders of youth, as well as youth class presidents, so that means everybody in our family since Seth is the Deacon's quorum president. The fireside was held online, with only a few stake youth leaders and 2 youth actually at the stake center. The purpose was to discuss the youth program and how we can help and encourage the youth. It was pretty good. They had 2 youth speakers who were particularly good and then they had a panel discussion where we could submit questions. On Sunday we had in person church and then I had my first online class with my YW class. One of the girls actually taught the lesson and she did a good job. On Tuesday our ward YW leaders had a presidency meeting where we discussed the fireside and some other issues. On Wednesday evening we had an online YW activity...my class was combined with the older girls' class as well as the Teachers and Priests for this activity. (Normally we do activities Tuesday night...I'm not sure why this one was on Wednesday.) Anyway, it was a mystery cooking activity. They told us what ingredients we would need ahead of time, but not how much or what we'd be making. We just had to come up with our own recipe. The ingredients were very similar to the ingredients we use to make buckeye candy (peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, chocolate chips...) so I was planning to make those but then I discovered that I had only one stick of butter in the house! That wouldn't be enough to make many buckeyes so I made peanut butter bars with a layer of chocolate on top instead. Some people made no bake cookies and some made truffles (basically buckeyes) or "puppy chow" (cereal coated with powdered sugar and peanut butter). I'm sure everything that was made tasted good...it's hard to go wrong with peanut butter, chocolate and butter!! It turns out the actual recipe was for buckeyes...just a slightly different recipe than the one we use. Here's a photo of my creation:

Monday was a day off school (teacher work day because of end of term). Seth enjoyed having the day off and I got to go visit with my friend Rebekah for a few hours, so I enjoyed it too. I had a good idea before I went over to visit with her...I realized I'm going to need to wind several skeins of yarn into balls soon since the afghan I'm making changes colors. So I took one skein of each of the 3 new colors I'll be using soon and I wound those into balls while I talked with Rebekah. It was nice to get that normally very boring job done while I talked to her--kept me entertained!

Last night we had an online RS activity. We shared family history stories and ideas while we made family tree boards. I got all my photos attached to the board but I haven't added the names of everybody yet so I haven't taken a photo of it yet. I will share a photo when it's done. I'm nervous about adding the names...worried that I'm going to mess that part up!! I'm glad we did this activity because it motivated me to get photos of Frank's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents from his parents. My family tree in family search on Frank's side has been bare of photos so it's nice to have pictures of at least the first four generations now. 

Besides all of that, I've been reading a lot and crocheting, of course. Also, I'm still watching Education Week presentations. I finished the book for book chat (Song For a Whale) yesterday. I would have finished it a lot sooner but I got distracted by other things. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it. Today I started reading Merci Suarez Changes Gears, which is a Newbery winner and the only one I own that I haven't read yet. I've also been reading the Harry Potter series again...just one chapter a day for the last few weeks...and I'm already about half way through the second book. I'm making good progress on the afghan. I finished the first band of cream color and successfully added the next color (purple) and I'm well into that band. Here's a photo:

It's a lot easier now...I'm just repeating the same pattern over and over so I have it memorized and don't have to check the instructions in the pattern anymore. It's pretty fun.  

I didn't make any progress on the skirt this week. I wanted to work on it on Saturday, but we really needed to mow the lawn and do a bunch of weeding in the yard and by the time we were done with all that, my back was hurting and I couldn't face the idea of doing more cutting (which is also hard on my back). We watched the BYU football game Saturday night and that was great. Frank was exhausted (of course) so he didn't make it through the whole game but Seth and I stayed up until the end. Well, actually, Seth fell asleep on the floor a few minutes before the end so I guess I'm the only one who made it through the entire game, but Seth saw most of it. It's fun to see BYU playing so well!

On Saturday Seth and I both got haircuts too...you'll notice his hair is much shorter in the photos I included above. It looks so much better! He's a real pill about getting the back of his neck trimmed, though. He tolerates the scissors but will NOT stay still for the clippers, so there's always short hairs on the back of his neck that the stylist is not able to clip. It's frustrating, but I don't know what to do about it. I think he has some sensitivity issues. At any rate, the rest of it looks much better. 

I feel like I'm forgetting stuff but that's probably the most important things. I have continued to attempt to capture the beauty of the outdoors, so I'll finish with a few more photos that I took this week.

Weekly Review November 6 '20

 Well, let's see...I guess I'll start with Frank. As I mentioned last week, he worked Friday night as well as Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday nights this week. The Friday night job turned out to be a bust because the contractor was drilling a hole and hit a water line and caused a flood. So he couldn't finish the job but Frank still had to stay up all night...supervising the emergency plumber, who came to fix the damaged water line. That means Frank will have to go back to that store another night for the drive thru timer install, so that is a bummer. Sunday night he had a digital menu install and Monday night he had a POS install (only one left!). The Wednesday night job was a cabling job and didn't take long so he was able to get home by about 1:00 am. He took Wednesday during the day off from Roy Rogers because he has built up so many extra hours, but he didn't get any rest. Instead, he had some work to do for two of his clients...one in southern Maryland and one in Virginia. He ended up being gone all day and since he was already in Virginia and the restaurant where he had the cabling job on Wednesday night was also in Virginia, he ended up not coming home in between. (He would have been home about one hour and then would have had to turn around and go back.) I feel like I've barely seen him this week so I'm glad it's almost the weekend. 

Seth had Tuesday off of school for election day. Originally, I'm sure school was out because they use the schools for polling places. I guess they decided to keep it a day off so that it would be easier for the teachers to go vote (as well as parents who would normally be supervising their kids' school work). He enjoyed having a day off and I enjoyed not having to supervise him! Other than that, he had a quiet week. He didn't have a Deacon's activity this week (they decided not to meet since it was a day off school and at least one of the boys was out of town). This is the last week of the term so they are winding things up and I feel like he didn't have as much work to do. He finished his school work early on more than one day. I checked his grades today and they all look good...including PE. He did better on the last few quizzes and his teacher also added in points for class participation and he got 100% for that. So now his grade is a high B. 

Seth did get sick one night this week...I guess it was Tuesday night...in the middle of the night. He said his head did not hurt this time, so who knows why he got sick to his stomach. He only threw up once and then went back to sleep and was fine the next day. Unfortunately, I did not go right back to sleep but instead stayed awake for a couple of hours, so I was pretty tired on Wednesday.

I actually haven't felt really great this past week...I've had headaches a few days and my stomach hurt a lot the first couple of days this week too. I'm feeling fine now, though, and I think it was probably hormonal (the headaches, anyway). I've been busy with all the usual stuff...housework, supervising Seth, reading, crocheting, projects, and BYU education week presentations. I finished reading Smoky the Cowhorse. I got the book for book chat from the library on Wednesday and I'm well into it already. It's going to be an easy read and I'm enjoying it so far. I got all of the home movies digitized except for the ones that are still on tape (instead of DVD). I still have to figure out how to get those transferred off of the tapes but I need Frank to help me with that and he hasn't been around much (and when he is around, he's exhausted...or sleeping.) I made some progress with the afghan I was crocheting but then ran into another problem...or thought I had. I was concerned that the edges of the afghan were not looking even at all, and I thought I must be doing something wrong so I was looking at that more closely trying to figure out what to do. I finally realized that I just wasn't looking at it right! This particular afghan is a ripple afghan (zigzag pattern), which I've never done before. So I had a good laugh at myself over that, and I'm relieved that I don't have to take out a bunch of rows and start over again. Here's some photos of how it looked early this week:

And here it is now:

I haven't made it very far yet but now that I've worked out all the bugs it should go more quickly. (I will need to change colors several times...it's not going to be plain cream colored).  

On Saturday I got the skirt I'm working on back out and I cut out the two back pieces. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it and I wasn't feeling really great (one of my headache days) so that's all I did that day. The two front pieces are going to be a bit trickier, but once I get those done I only have the yoke (waistband) pieces left to cut out and those will be a bit easier. 

On Saturday we made shrimp tacos for lunch, using the new little grill. They were so yummy!! I will definitely be making those again!

Saturday was Halloween, of course, but it sure wasn't very exciting at our house. Seth's last year to trick or treat was last year, so no dressing up for anyone at our house. We turned on our porch light to welcome trick or treaters from 6:00 to 8:30 and we had a grand total of two trick or treaters come by. Two!! The number of trick or treaters in our neighborhood has been dwindling the last several years and I expected that there would be a lot fewer this year because of Covid-19, but I didn't anticipate there would be practically none. I bought a lot less candy this year, thankfully, but we still have a lot of leftovers (of course) that I am trying not to eat. We're planning to take the leftovers to NC with us for Thanksgiving...to eat in the car and to share with others!

I watched the first half of the BYU football game that night, which turned out to be perfect since the first half was super exciting (5 BYU touchdowns) and it looks like the second half was really boring (only 2 BYU field goals and the other team only scored once.) It also helped that we were "falling back" that night so even though I was up until midnight, it was the same as staying up until 11:00.

I got released from both of my church callings on Sunday and sustained to my new calling as a YW advisor. My class did have an online activity on Tuesday, so I went to that. In honor of "Dias los Muertos" we were asked to come prepared to share a family story. I wanted to share either "Miracle at the Crossing" or "Ruth and the Christmas Doll", but by the time it was my turn we were almost out of time so instead I told the story of Dad killing the turkey (which they all loved) and promised to send them the other two stories to read. All the other stories that were shared were really good, too (mostly funny stories). I'm going to enjoy this group of girls! Today I spent some time talking to the young adult who is replacing me as ward music chair, explaining what the responsibilities are for that calling. 

I've been busy with a lot of other little things like gathering family photos for an upcoming RS activity, setting up dentist and hair cut appointments and calling the pharmacy to find out why Seth's prescription hasn't been filled yet (his medicine has been on order for over 2 weeks!). I also needed to contact Walmart because the order I picked up last week was not "tagged" as picked up for some reason. I never got a receipt for it and then on Saturday I got an email saying that my order had been cancelled. But don't worry...I hadn't been charged for it. Free groceries! Awesome!! Just kidding...I try to be honest, so I decided I'd better call them. Except guess what? No one at my local Walmart answers the phone, apparently. I tried several times and finally got to talk to a human being on Wednesday. The guy I talked to said "Hmm. That's weird. I'll have to talk to the people in charge of the app to see if they can fix that." He also thanked me for my honesty. But so far, that order has not been changed. It still says "cancelled" when I look it up and our credit card hasn't been charged for it. Meanwhile, I picked up another order yesterday and that one hasn't been tagged as picked up yet either!! It still says "ready for pick up" even though I picked it up over 24 hours ago. So I tried to call again today about that one, but once again...the phone just rings and rings and no one answers it. So frustrating, and so strange!! I've been doing a weekly order since school started and have not had this problem until now.

I'm still enjoying BYU education week presentations...definitely well worth the $49 I paid for access to these classes! I watched one about insulin dependence, one about symbolism of the atonement (excellent!!) and another about doing things we don't think we can do or don't want to do. It was excellent too. My favorite quote from that one is "It's not about understanding the reason for the commandment (talking about commandments we don't understand or agree with), it's about knowing and trusting the Commander (God)." Yes, yes, yes! That's how I've always felt, but haven't been able to put into words.  I've probably forgotten a few other presentations; I think I watched more than 3. 

I have this game I like to play called "Just 2 Words". You try to figure out what the photos represent...usually a familiar two word phrase or compound word; sometimes a famous person's name. I usually only do one puzzle each day (although you can do as many as you want). I laughed at the irony on Wednesday morning when the puzzle I happened to be on turned out to be this one:

Nope, no one in this presidential election is going to be able to claim a landslide victory! My plan for coping with the election results (or lack of results or whining about the results...) this week has been to avoid watching or reading the news. I'm a lot happier that way!!

After it got really cold last weekend, it has warmed up again this week and has been really quite pleasant. It's beautiful outside and I keep taking photos but then being disappointed that the photos don't look anywhere near as beautiful as it is in reality. But here are a few of the photos I took this week, to finish up.