Weekly Review November 28 '21

 This week's review is coming to you a few days late because we were out of town for Thanksgiving and just got home last night. 

Going back to last weekend, I don't remember a lot about what we did now, but on Saturday I got my hair cut and we watched the BYU football game. On Sunday the YW presidency had a Zoom meeting with the bishopric in the morning (to discuss plans for and needs of the youth) and Frank and I also had temple recommend interviews. I was able to have my interview with both a bishopric member and a stake presidency member, but the stake presidency member had to go to another commitment after he talked to me so Frank had to wait until today to get his second interview. He did get that done today, though. Frank made chocolate chip cookie bars for his Sunday school class last week also and they were a big hit.

Monday and Tuesday of this week we were busy getting ready for our trip to NC. Frank had a couple of very busy days at work and he had work to do for clients also. I got laundry and shopping done on Monday and on Monday evening we all packed our bags because we were planning to leave on Tuesday afternoon, right after Seth got out of school. Seth had to take a photo at night for his photography class so I took him to downtown Frederick to do that on Monday evening. We also went to the library and browsed around a bit since we had to park at the parking garage next to the library and that way we could validate our parking ticket at the library. I ended up finding a book to check out too. We discovered that behind the library on Carroll Creek, all the little boats are out (they're put out during the Christmas season) so Seth was able to get some photos of those, and I took a few too:

Tuesday wad busy also with packing a few last minute things, making sure the trash was taken out and the refrigerator was cleaned out and things like that. We did manage to get everything ready to go and were able to leave about 30 minutes after Seth got out of school. We drove to a place in southern Virginia that day and spent the night at a Fairfield Inn. We got dinner at a Cracker Barrel restaurant which was right across the street. We weren't too impressed with this particular Cracker Barrel...or maybe I should say with our server. We had to wait about 30 minutes to be seated, which was understandable since they were somewhat busy...we didn't mind that so much because we could wander around the store in front and see all the fun things they had there. But once we were seated, we only saw our server 4 times...once to take our order, once to bring our drinks, once to bring our food and once to bring our check. She didn't bring out our biscuits with our drinks and it took about 45 minutes to get our food after we ordered it so we were sitting there for all that time, sipping water and getting really hungry! Then we finished eating and waited & waited for her to reappear so we could ask for our check. Frank finally went up to the front to see if they could track down our check...of course, as soon as he left our server finally showed up so I asked her for it. We have no idea what she was doing all that time...hiding in the kitchen?? But anyway, we finally got to eat and returned to our hotel and went to bed.

On Wednesday morning we woke up early so we got on the road pretty early and arrived in Asheville by noon. We stopped in Asheville to get some lunch because there aren't many good options of places to eat in Brevard (at least, not very many healthy options) and then we also went to Walmart and a grocery store to get groceries that we needed to prepare food for Thanksgiving. Then we drove to Frank's sister Dawn's house and went with them to the place where we were having Thanksgiving dinner. His sister had reserved this place, which was a local Lion's Club, and she was able to pick up the key that day so that we could go there to do some cooking. It was a nice, fairly new building with a large kitchen. We made layered banana pudding (with vanilla wafers, banana, and whipped cream) as well as two chocolate cream pies, and we were able to store a lot of stuff in the refrigerator for the next day too. After that we went to our hotel in Brevard to check in and then back to Dawn's house for dinner. They fed us homemade pizza and salad. After dinner we all helped make turkey rolls for the next day and we also had some cookies and ice cream. By the time we got back to our hotel at bedtime, we were all exhausted from traveling, shopping, and cooking all day but it was fun to spend all that time with Dawn and her husband Mike. They also had a friend visiting them from Utah named Luda. She is originally from Czechoslovakia. We really enjoyed getting to know her and she was very cheerful and helpful all the time. Just a very pleasant person! 

That first night in that hotel, we had an issue with our heater being really loud every time it came on so it kept waking us up. Fortunately, we didn't have that problem the other two nights. But since we didn't sleep very well Wednesday night and we were already really tired, we didn't wake up until after 8:00 Thursday morning. We had breakfast at the hotel and showered and then after a brief visit with Frank's parents at their house, we headed back to the Lion's Club building to get ready for Thanksgiving dinner, which was scheduled to be at noon. We still needed to warm up biscuits (we brought some from Roy Rogers), whip more cream for the desserts, cook some broccoli, make macaroni & cheese, and a few other things to get ready for the dinner. We had dinner with Frank's parents, his brother James & family, Dawn, Mike & Luda, and the local sister missionaries. (We missed his sister Becky & her family...they were having dinner with her mother in law, who isn't in the best of health so she needed to stay at her own home.) Each family contributed 4 or 5 things so we had a lot of food and a big variety of things to choose from and it was all delicious! After dinner, we played games...Frank, Mike, Seth and I played Scrabble and I was lucky and pulled ahead at the end by being able to add an "A" to the word "Jar" and then getting the letters to play the word "Risky" on a triple word score. Plus I also managed to go out first, so I didn't have to subtract any tiles from my score and got to add 14 points to my final score from everyone else's unused tiles. I didn't actually play that well the rest of the game so I was surprised to end up winning in the end. 

After finishing our game, it was late afternoon so we packed up all the food and cleaned everything up. We had to wipe down everything in the bathrooms and the kitchen and sweep and mop the entire floor (very large) so that took quite a while. We took all the food back to Dawn's house and then ate some leftovers for dinner. We visited some more and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving which I haven't seen since I was a kid so that was pretty fun. Once again, we got back to our hotel exhausted!! 

We all slept really well that night and woke up feeling more rested. We visited with Frank's mom and dad a bit that morning and then went to get some lunch. After that we drove up into Pisgah Forest to see Looking Glass Falls. 

We returned to our hotel for a while and Frank took a nap. Then we went to Dawn's house again for dinner...more leftovers from the day before, all very yummy! Frank's parents came also so we were able to visit with everyone. We also watched the movie Tangled. Then we said our goodbyes to everyone because we were leaving early the next morning to come home. 

The drive home was mostly uneventful. There was an accident on the freeway that slowed things down for a while in southern Virginia, but overall we made pretty good time and got home by about 5:00 pm. We unpacked and ordered some dinner and Frank picked it up. Seth enjoyed having some video game playing time since he didn't get any over the weekend until then. After Seth went to bed, Frank and I started watching the BYU football game. I watched until early in the 2nd quarter, but after BYU scored their first touchdown of that quarter I decided I was too tired to stay up anymore. To my surprise, Frank ended up watching the whole game, which means he was up until after 2:30 am. I watched the highlights and read the recap this morning and I'm really glad I didn't stay up since it sounds like it was a pretty stressful game to watch! I'm glad BYU won in the end. 

That brings us to today, which was a fairly normal Sunday...I had a class presidency meeting before church as usual and Frank got his temple recommend interview. For part of YW, we went in with the Primary to practice singing a song because we are all singing at the town of Walkersville's Christmas tree lighting on Wednesday. 

Now we need to move into full "get ready for Christmas" mode!!

Weekly Review November 19 '21

We had quite a bit going on this week. Let's see if I can remember it all. Last Friday Frank decided that he wanted to go see a movie so we all went to see The Eternals (new Marvel movie). It was fairly good...I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. (I'm not a huge fan of going to movies in the theater and would have preferred to stay home, but wanted to spend some time with Frank). I did not enjoy how cold the theater was nor did I enjoy the movie theater food. (It was a last minute decision to go to the movie and we didn't have time to eat dinner before we left so we got food at the theater.) In spite of that, it was a fun family outing.

Saturday was the annual "Scouting for Food" drive in our area and the youth in our stake helped sort food as it was delivered to the food bank. Each ward had a two hour shift and our shift was from 11:00 - 1:00. We had to provide an adult for every 10 youth who attended from our ward. We only ended up with 10 youth. One of the moms had volunteered to go but then realized she had another commitment for part of the time so I volunteered to go instead. Wow, that place was just innudated with food!! It was gratifying to see how many people donated food, but it sure was chaotic and messy! There were piles and piles of bags to open and sort through...so many that it was sometimes hard to walk around. We stayed a half hour extra and there was still a ton left to sort when we left. Another adult took some photos of Seth and of me, and shared them with me:

Frank woke up with a pinched nerve or something like that so he was really hurting all day. It's still bothering him, actually--it's just not as bad as it was at first. He stayed home from church on Sunday because it was so painful to walk or sit or move. He has worked really hard this work, though. He worked from home the first couple of days but by Wednesday he was working in the office / at restaurants all day. I'm just glad he's gotten a bit better as the week has progressed. 

On Sunday our ward's Primary did their Sacrament Meeting program and they did a great job, as always. The first little girl who got up said enthusiastically "My name is Gigi and I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Jesus is the BEST!!! Oh, and I love my mom!" It was so cute!

Seth had an orthodontist appointment right after school on Monday. The othodontist says his teeth are looking really good. He'll still have braces for a while, though. He has molars that haven't come in yet so next time they're going to do an x-ray to see what's going on with the molars.

Frank and I decided a while back that we are going to go to Hawaii next spring to celebrate our 30th anniversary. We finally had a chance to start planning and on Tuesday got our plane tickets purchased and a few other things. So now we are really going!! Our original plan was to send Seth to Utah while we were gone, but on Tuesday we decided that it would be really nice for Seth to spend a few days in Hawaii too. (We sill stay longer.) However, we didn't like the idea of Seth flying from Utah to Hawaii all alone (although he is flying from Maryland to Utah alone--something about going across the ocean and it being a longer flight just wasn't comfortable for us) so we got the idea to see if Scott would be able to come with him. Not surprisingly, Scott was more than happy to come with him, so now we will get to spend a few days on Oahu with Scott and Seth and then we will spend the rest of the time on Maui, just Frank and I. We are super excited!!! I mean, honestly when we were trying to make all the plans I got kind of stressed about all the things that could go wrong (bad weather, delayed flights, lost luggage...) plus I always feel anxious about spending money even though we have enough saved up. But yesterday I was looking up some of the places we want to go and it all looks so awesome, so now I am really excited!! We still have a lot of details to settle but we will get most of those things figured out in the next couple of weeks. Frank wanted me to come visit him when he lived on Maui back in 1991, but practical and responsible me wouldn't go because I was working and in school. I told him we'd have to go back to visit together sometime and it's always been a goal of ours so finally a little over 30 years later we are actually going to do it! We wish our other boys and their wives could come too but...they're working and in school! 😅

After spending all evening planning our Hawaii trip, I was so wired by the time it was bedtime that I couldn't sleep. I didn't get to sleep until after midnight and then I woke up at 3:00 am and never went back to sleep. So that was not much fun. Sleeping badly seems to have been the theme of the week too because I haven't slept all that great since then. Frank has had some bad nights too...especially last night when he slept from 9:30 to 12:30 and didn't go back to sleep at all until he was able to take a brief nap sometime between 5:00 and 6:00. Then he was up again and has been working all day. Hopefully we will both sleep better tonight.

We had a combined YM / YW activity on Wednesday night...we played Jeopardy. There were four teams and it got quite loud and competitive! Seth got pretty upset by the end and there were a few frustrating things that happened but overall it was quite fun, and Seth shook it off and was happy again before we got home.

Today they had "pajama day" at Seminary which means Seth wore pajamas to school too. Apparently, they don't care if he wears pajama pants to school. The dress code is very strict about things like he can't wear a hat or hood, but pajama pants are fine. 😜 

Our Seminary carpool boy still didn't make it to Seminary this week and at this point, after talking with his mom, we've agreed that we are just going to plan to take Seth to Seminary and pick him up every day unless they contact us and say they'll pick Seth up. It's just easier for us to plan to take him than to find out at the last minute that we need to take him. I took Seth to Seminary and to school every day this week and most days I came home in between but yesterday I stayed to talk with my friend Rebekah and this morning I ran errands while he was at Seminary. My car needed gas and I had a couple of things I needed to get at the store and 6:00 am is an awesome time to do errands because not many people are out. 

We have had pretty nice weather most of this week--it did rain last night--but today it is a lot colder and it's windy too. The house feels colder to me than it did last winter and maybe I'm not imagining it since Frank says he thinks it feels colder too. We really do need to replace our windows soon...I think that would help a lot. 

Speaking of replacing things...on Sunday after I got home from church and was changing my clothes, I was startled by a loud popping noise. Looking around, I discovered that the wire shelf that runs around our closet (which is also a clothes rod) had popped out of the wall on one side. We had to remove some things from the shelf and move some of the clothes into the spare room closet and Frank used his camera tripod to prop it up until we can get a replacement. Since we have to get a new shelf anyway, we are planning to look around and might get some sort of new closet organizer with shelves or something. I'm not sure yet. 

I finished the audio book I was listening to last week (Whole in Christ) and I have started listening to the first book in a fiction series by Gerald Lund called Fire and Steel. (The first book is called Generation Rising). It's a historical fiction series set in Germany around the time of WWI. I haven't gotten very far into it yet.I am also reading another Newbery book--Daniel Boone. I didn't expect to be reading it anytime soon because it's out of print and very hard to locate (and expensive). However, Amy found a copy of it on a website for less than $7 and she knew I was looking for a copy so she bought it and had it sent to me. Isn't she awesome?? The book arrived on Saturday and it's less than 100 pages long with a lot of pictures so you'd think I'd be done with it by now but I didn't even get a chance to start reading it until Wednesday. I will probably finish it today or tomorrow. It's definitely not politically correct in this day and age as it is mostly about fighting the "red savages" (Native Americans) but it is mildly interesting and some of the writing is quite poetic. I enjoyed reading about the Boone family crossing the Potomac River at Harper's Ferry...been there, done that many times!

That's all I can think of to tell you about us this week (I feel like I'm forgetting things...) so I will finish up with some photos of some of the pretty fall trees around our neighborhood.

Weekly Review November 12 '21

This was a fairly calm week, but we did have a few things going on. Frank had to work last Friday night...he got home about 2:00 am on Saturday. In spite of that, he got up fairly early and went with Seth and I to help with a service project. It was our ward's "Day to Serve" and our project was cleaning up trash in the neighborhood where are church building is located. We were some of the first people to arrive and we were assigned to help clean up trash in a large open field. There really wasn't much trash in the open part of the field, but when we went into the trees on the edges of the field we found quite a bit of trash. We were able to fill up a very large heavy duty trash bag with the stuff we picked up. 

That afternoon I met with two friends to practice ukulele. Then we watched the BYU football game which was fun since BYU won the game. 

Sunday was fairly relaxing...my class presidency didn't have a meeting since a few of the girls couldn't come. We've been adjusting to the time change, but it hasn't been too bad. (I think the change in the spring is always harder for me).

The weather has been quite beautiful all week, with above average temperatures. It is going to get colder again tomorrow, though. It rained last night and this morning but now it is sunny and gorgeous again. I feel so fortunate that we are having such nice weather. 

We played Jenga for family night activity on Monday. I took some pictures:

That last photo was taken right before the tower fell over, so you can see how tall it got. I think we did pretty well! Seth won the game since he was the last person to move a block without knocking over the tower. I was in charge of the treat and since we had some cream cheese and some pumpkin puree that needed to be used, I decided to try making pumpkin cheesecake. It turned out pretty well, I think. At some point later in the week I got the idea to put chocolate syrup on top. It was even better!

On Wednesday afternoon I had a YW presidency meeting. We have been trying to decide how to divide the classes next year...3 classes, 2 classes, or 1 class? We all prayed about it and pondered and we all got the same feeling about what we should do, so that's pretty awesome!

I had an online tax training course on Wednesday evening, so I missed most of the YW activity. The training was going over all the changes in the tax law since last year--good info to know! The training ended shortly before Seth needed to be picked up from his activity (they watched kids for the RS, who were also having an activity that night) so I went to pick him up. The YW had not finished their activity yet so I joined in for the end. One of the girls in my class taught drawing techniques. Even for the short time that I was there, I was super impressed! She did such a good job teaching and she is incredibly talented!!

Yesterday evening I took Seth clothes shopping again and we were able to get everything else he needs besides snow boots. 

The boy we carpool to Seminary with didn't make it to Seminary all week (he is really busy with a school play right now) so we had to drive Seth to Seminary every day as well as pick him up afterwards. Frank took him a couple of times and took him the other days. Most days I dropped him off and went back later to get him...it's pretty chilly in the mornings so sitting in the car for an hour is not an attractive option. But yesterday I did stay and my friend Rebekah was there too so we got to talk while the kids were in Seminary...that was fun!!

I have continued to do a lot of reading. I read another Newbery winner this week which is called When You Trap a Tiger. It is actually this year's winner. I finished it yesterday. It was really good...I even cried a little near the end! Finishing that book means I am 2 books away from reaching my goal of reading all the Newbery winners. It has only taken me 20 years! 😃 It is good to get to this point, though, because now I will only need to read one per year to keep up. I have continued to listen to audio books too. I finished the biography of M. Russell Ballard, which I enjoyed immensely, and now I am listening to a book called Whole in Christ, which is also really good. 

To finish up, here are a few pictures of a naughty squirrel making a mess on one of our neighbor's front steps, plus a few more of pretty fall colors:

Yes, he chewed a hole through the pumpkin and then started scooping out the insides. I think he was burrying seeds in another neighbor's lawn too, so she may get an unexpected pumpkin plant next year like we did once!

Weekly Review November 5 '21

 Last Saturday our ward had a Trunk or Treat / Halloween Carnival; the YM / YW were in charge so it was pretty busy for me. We got there early to set up our carnival games (and Seth was helping to set up the haunted house). During the carnival itself, I helped run the "cupcake walk". All the kids seemed to have a good time and it was fun to do that for them. The youth all did a great job helping. 

My girls!:

Our games:

Guess how many candy corn in the jar

Fish pond ("Sink or Swim")

Knock over the cans ("Cans for Candy")

Graveyard (cupcake) Walk

Here is the floor for the Graveyard Walk:

(Note to self: next time, tape down the cards to the floor! Every toddler wanted to pick them all up!)

The other YW class set up an obstacle course, among other games. It looked really cool! I was so impressed with what a great job they did (can't really tell from the photos):

They also did this game:

Signs for the obstacle course:

The "guess how many" game was very popular!

The other YW class also set up this duck pond game:

Lots of kids waiting to go through the Haunted House (and our bishop in a wig):

For the cupcake walk, we asked for 3 people to volunteer to make a batch of cupcakes. The ones who volunteered all made these amazing masterpieces!:

Meanwhile, Frank spent the day in NC helping / visiting with his parents. He had a busy day, too.

When we got home from the carnival, I stayed up pretty late watching the first half of the BYU / Virginia football game. I just couldn't stay awake past halftime. When I woke up Sunday morning I checked the score and I was thrilled to discover BYU won the game by quite a bit, since BYU was actually behind at the end of the first half. I probably saw the worst part of the game for them which is too bad but I enjoyed watching all the highlights. 

On Sunday we had our usual church meetings. Since it was a 5th Sunday, all the youth met together and I helped with the lesson...just a short part of it. Frank left NC for the drive home fairly early on Sunday morning so he arrived home around 2:00, while we were at church. It's nice to have him home again! That evening was Halloween and we debated a bit about whether or not we would hand out candy (we had plenty of leftovers from the Trunk or Treat). We finally decided to turn on our porch light and to answer the door if anyone came, but we didn't open the door or sit outside like we usually do. We don't get very many trick or treaters in our neighborhood anymore anyway. Last year, with all the Covid stuff, we only had 2 or 3 kids come by. This year was better, as I expected, but we still only had about 25 trick or treaters come. Seth enjoyed handing out candy to the kids who came. 

When Frank came back from NC, he brought a quilt that his mom made for us. She made it a few years ago but it wasn't big enough for our bed so she took it back and added more to it so now it is big enough. 

She used lots of different scraps to make this quilt and I love how colorful it is!! Many of the fabric scraps remind me of clothes that I wore when I was a little girl. It was a great time to get an extra quilt to add to the bed since it got colder this week.

The rest of this week has honestly not been all that eventful. Frank has been pretty busy with work, Seth with school, and me with YW stuff and household chores, but we haven't done much out of the ordinary besides taking Seth shopping last night to get some clothes. He is growing like a weed and needs lots of new things already. Last night we were able to find him some new Sunday shoes and a white dress shirt. We still need to get him a new coat, winter boots & gloves, some long sleeve tshirts (he's basically grown out of all his long sleeve shirts since last winter), and a couple more pairs of jeans. 

For my YW class activity this week we learned how to knit. We were going to learn how to crochet too, but we ran out of time. The YW president knows how to knit and we both know how to crochet. (Actually, I used to know how to knit, but it's been so long that I've forgotten everything I ever knew). The girls were good sports and really tried hard to learn...and did pretty well for their first attempts!

I was supposed to have a presidency meeting yesterday but we ended up having to postpone it until next week. However, I had some things I've been wanting to discuss with the president, so I we talked on the phone for about 45 minutes. It was a good productive discussion though!

I did quite a bit of reading this week. I finished the book for book chat (The Midnight Library)...it was really good; had a good message. Then I started reading another Newbery winner called Hello, Universe, and I finished that book last night. It was a really good book too.

Mostly I feel like I got caught in a time warp this week because I don't feel like I got a lot done besides the basic chores and I feel like I should be getting a lot more accomplished. The days just whiz by and I don't know where they go!

As I mentioned above, the weather got a lot colder here the last couple of days. I turned the heat back on on Sunday and we've had freeze warnings the last 3 nights. It's getting into the low 50s during the days and down below freezing at nights. It has been mostly sunny so it looks like it's going to feel nice until I go outside and realize how cold it is! It's not really too bad though and next week is going to be a bit warmer again. All things considered, it's pretty nice weather considering it's November. It's just harder to get out of my warm bed in the morning when I know it's going to be cold out there. The leaves are turning colors rapidly now and lots of leaves are starting to fall also. 

That is everything I can think of to tell you about us this week.