After I wrote last week's review last Friday, I got a text from another family in our ward inviting us to meet them at the park for some sledding (they have a son Seth's age) so we did that. Seth always enjoys sledding and I enjoyed the opportunity to talk to a couple of the other moms in our ward (about 4 or 5 families met at the park). The park we were at has a very big hill and Seth got pretty hot & sweaty climbing that hill over and over, even though it was pretty cold. We stayed for a few hours. It was good for both of us to get outside, get some fresh air, and socialize a bit with other people!
Nice view of the sky from where I was standing.
It's hard to believe that we were sledding just a week ago. The temperatures have warmed up a lot so a lot of the snow has melted. Our front yard is completely bare of snow (our house faces south) but there's still a decent amount on our deck and in the back yard.
Saturday was busy because I had an appointment to get my hair cut and we also had meetings because it was our stake conference that weekend. All the sessions of stake conference were broadcast as Zoom webinars or on youtube, so we could watch them from home, although some people were invited to attend some of the meetings in person. We had some extra sessions this time too...there was one for the YW, their moms, and YW presidencies and another one for all YW and RS sisters. I'm not sure why they did that, but the one I attended (for all the women and YW) was nice. Frank and I also attended the adult session on Saturday evening and we all attended the general session on Sunday morning. When I say "attended" I really mean we watched them from home, with the exception that Frank attended the general session in person. He did that because he realized that the visiting area seventy is the husband of a girl he grew up with in his home ward, so he wanted to go say hello to him. I would have gone with him but I had a slight sore throat / bad headache on Saturday evening and most of the day Sunday so I decided I'd better stay home. (My head hurt a bit on Monday too but I woke up feeling fine on Tuesday and I have been fine ever since.) Frank says the heat in the chapel wasn't working and it was really cold so I'm glad I didn't go with him! It was much nicer watching from the comforts of my own home. Anyway, all the sessions were really good and uplifting.
We got another small snow storm on Monday morning so school was all virtual again. We got maybe 3 inches of snow with some sleet mixed in. It came down pretty hard for an hour or two but the storm was completely gone by afternoon. I went out to shovel our front walk and sidewalk when it was still coming down but when I was through shoveling, I sprinkled ice melt all over the walk and sidewalk so it stayed clear. I did not shovel behind or around our cars because my back was starting to complain at me after just doing our walk and sidewalk. Since we didn't get a lot of snow, that thankfully didn't turn out to be too big of a deal. We had another meeting (virtual) with the YW leaders in our ward that afternoon...to discuss some of the direction received at stake conference, plus we had made a decision in our meeting last week that some of us were having second thoughts about. So we discussed that some more and made a different decision and we all feel better about it now. It's been difficult figuring out the best format for activities because we have many people who want to meet in person but we still have several families who are not comfortable doing that. Trying to meet the needs of both groups without making anyone feel excluded is a real challenge! We have a plan we're going to try and we'll have to see how it works and make adjustments as needed.
On Monday evening we had family night activity (as usual...we usually have our lesson portion on Sunday evening) and we played Mario Kart, which we do fairly often. (Frank and Seth both like to choose that for the activity when it's their turn to choose.) I just have to record for posterity that I actually won one of the four races, because that never happens! (I am really bad at Mario Kart.)
Seth had his second day of in-person school on Tuesday and seemed to enjoy it. He mentioned getting to talk to another boy in his class for a while at dismissal time, and seemed really happy to have some social interaction! I did not do my volunteer shift that afternoon because the tax software account still wasn't up. At least this time I didn't have to go in at all. They did get it back up and running that evening so hopefully I will actually be able to accomplish something next week.
Tuesday evening there was a combined YM / YW virtual activity which was a "kick off" for the "new" youth program, so Seth and I attended that together. It was really nice. The presidents of each of the classes talked about the different goal categories and described the emblems they receive. Our bishop talked a bit about setting goals at the end. It was nice to see a lot of the youth there...we haven't had that many show up for an activity since I started working in YW about 4 months ago.
Frank had to work overnight on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights this week. On Tuesday he was supposed to be done working at 4:00 so he could take a nap before having to leave at 7:00, but he ended up being in a meeting until about 5:30. I had a bit of a meltdown about that. I do understand that emergencies come up that he has to handle, but I feel like he shouldn't be expected to attend meetings and things like that during the day when he has to work all night. I just start to get really anxious about Frank's health and safety when he is working constantly, not getting enough sleep, and having to drive long distances (an hour or more) in the wee hours of the morning on almost no sleep. I told Frank he needs to stick up for himself or they are always going to take advantage of him. I told him once he has overnight jobs scheduled, he should let everyone know he will be unavailable during the day for the days before and after he works, except for emergencies. I think he realized that's a good idea because he did make himself unavailable yesterday all day. On Tuesday morning he already had a walk through of a new restaurant scheduled at 10:00 am and this morning he had a 10:00 am meeting scheduled (although he was able to do that from home). Because the restaurant walk through Wednesday morning was at a restaurant that is 90 minutes from home and the restaurant he worked at Tuesday night was an hour from home, he decided not to come home in between. The overnight job wasn't done until nearly 5:45 am, so after that he drove to the other restaurant and then slept in his car for a few hours until he had to do the walk through. He finally made it home and was able to go to bed around 12:30. So to summarize, he woke up about 5:30 am Tuesday, worked from about 8:00 am to 5:30 pm, slept for maybe an hour and then worked from 7:00 pm Tuesday to shortly after noon on Wednesday, with maybe 2 1/2 hours of sleep in his car. Then he had to be back at work at 6:30 pm on Wednesday and worked again until 5:30 am Thursday, then had an hour's drive to get home. Can you understand why I get anxious about him?? The good news is, last night was his last drive-thru timer installation so now the only overnight project he has left is installing digital menu boards, which is going to be spread out over a couple of years so they won't be too frequent. I'm sure other things will come up too (like new stores opening) but I think he has made it through the worst of the overnight stuff.
Meanwhile, the rest of the week was pretty quiet for Seth and I. He did virtual school as usual and I did housework and stuff like that as usual. I signed up for Root Tech yesterday and I have watched a few brief sessions and plan to watch some more things today and tomorrow. I probably won't watch a lot of stuff but since it was free this year I decided it was worth checking it out. Last night I had book chat which is always fun. We had a larger group than normal. We discussed Vinegar Girl and now we are going to read True Grit (the famous John Wayne movie is based on the story but there are differences). I have started reading another Newbery medal winner called Dobry which is not incredibly compelling so far but it's pretty good. I watched the last BYU Education Week presentation, which was about receiving personal revelation. The presenter talked about four things that tend to impede getting revelation and it was really good. I have really fizzled out on my cleaning / organizing project; mainly because I've completed the areas that were bothering me the most! There are still plenty of things to do, though, so I am going to try to motivate myself to keep working on it, even if I only do a little bit here and there.
We got Seth's report card for the second term and he got all As except for a B in Spanish. What pleases us even more is that his teachers added comments like "great contributor to class conversations", "always turns in work on time" and "excels and manages virtual learning with commendable achievement". We're grateful he is doing so well.
Last night before I left for book chat I considered telling Seth he could watch television while I was gone (since he'd be home all alone) but since he had already used up his 2 hours of screen time for the day, I decided not to do that and see if he could manage to entertain himself. I thought it was fairly likely that he would watch television while I was gone anyway, since he could get away with it. As far as I can tell, though, he didn't. He called me shortly before I came home (I was gone for 2 hours) to say "I'm totally bored!!!" Besides that, Scott called while I was gone and when I called him back later he said that he had asked Seth what he was doing when he called and Seth told him he was drawing. He asked Seth why he wasn't watching television and Seth said "because I already used up my 2 hours of screen time today." So maybe he watched some television, but I'm pretty sure he didn't. We're really pleased that he kept busy for a few hours before he got bored and even more pleased that he obeyed the rules (probably!) even though we weren't here to enforce them. We've talked to him quite a bit lately (ever since the dentist chair incident) about the importance of doing what's right even if no one is there to make you do that right thing. Seems like some of that may be sinking in! Oh and also last night when he called me he hung up a little abruptly and then called me right back and apologized for hanging up on me. He hung up on me once recently and I told him afterwards that was really rude and that he shouldn't do it again. So it seems like he remembered that conversation too. Progress!
One of Seth's goals right now is to learn to play the ukulele. He's actually had this goal for a few months but I keep forgetting to do anything about it. This week I finally remembered to do something about it so he had his first "lesson" on Wednesday evening. We'll see how that goes. I'm just glad we finally made a start.
Honestly, I feel like I was busier than this post indicates but I can't think of anything else to tell you about so that's it for this week.
