Welcome to the weekly Cleveland marathon. This was another pretty busy week. I'll try to remember all the important stuff.
Last Friday evening I attended a baby shower via Zoom. It was for my good friend Jeanine's son, Kalvin and his wife. (Kalvin is the same age as Tanner and they were very good friends growing up.) It was pretty fun. We played three games and I came in 2nd place on two of them. No prizes for me! 😂 I really enjoyed seeing Jeanine and Kalvin, even if it was just on a screen.
Saturday morning I had volunteered to help sort donations for Afghan refugees. Our stake has teamed up with another church and some other organizations to gather needed items for these refugees...there are about 100 arriving in the Frederick area in the next month. Our church building is one of the drop off sites for donations and Saturday was the first donation drop off day. It turns out they asked for more volunteers than they really needed, so I didn't end up staying long. I will be helping again tomorrow morning; maybe they will have more need for helpers tomorrow. Afterwards, Frank and I ran some errands. We dropped off a brake light bulb for another member of our ward at her house--she hasn't been feeling well lately so just needed someone to buy it for her so she wouldn't have to go out. We also picked up Frank's new contact lens prescription and then we went to a shoe store to get Frank some new Sunday shoes. The pair that he had that matched his suit were falling apart. He found some nice ones and he also got some new shoes to go with his work pants (Docker style pants) which replaced two more pair of really beat up shoes. Frank hates buying new shoes so he always wears his shoes until they are holey and the soles are falling off. I was so happy to get rid of three pair of ratty shoes!! After that we were going to check out a new cookie store that just opened up in Frederick called Crumbl. I guess it's big in Utah, but this is the first one we have out here. When we drove by, however, we could see that it was literally PACKED with people and there was a line going out the door, so we decided to try another day when the novelty has worn off. We went to the grocery store and got some donuts instead!
On Sunday we were up early because Frank had bishopric meeting at 7:30 and Seth and I had to be at the church at 8:15 for Frank's ordination / setting apart. Jared asked me to take a photo of Frank in a suit on his way to church so I took this one:
Doesn't he look great??
Frank's good friend, Greg Baird, ordained him a High Priest. Then one of the counselors in our stake presidency set him apart as the 2nd counselor. He gave Frank a very long blessing that was really amazing! I wish I could remember it better, but basically he gave him every blessing I could want for Frank. I feel really grateful for that!! We were both surprised that he gave him not just spiritual blessings but temporal blessings as well. Frank conducted Sacrament meeting and he did a good job. He didn't have to stay after church for very long and he only had one meeting (ward council, via Zoom) so the afternoon wasn't too hectic. Frank hadn't slept well so after his meeting he took a long nap.
We had the missionaries over for dinner that evening. We had a good time...we really like the Elders serving in our ward right now. They are a lot of fun, but serious about missionary work too. It was nice we didn't have to rush as much because they are allowed to stay longer at the homes of bishopric members! After the missionaries left, we got online to reserve tickets for our visit to the Arizona War Memorial. The tickets for the day we are planning to be there opened up that night, and we weren't sure how big the demand would be so we wanted to get on to reserve them right away. We didn't have any trouble doing that and we are excited to visit this special place.
Because Monday was President's Day, Seth didn't have school but that is not one of the days Frank gets off, so he had to work. He worked from home so he was around but down in his office most of the day. It wasn't really a day off for me either--I still needed to grocery shop and do laundry and all the usual things. At least I didn't have to get Seth to Seminary or to school, and I did get to sleep in a bit!
One of my ministering sisters came to visit me on Tuesday evening. I always enjoy her visits and she is a great listener and also very thoughtful. She knows we are planning a trip to Hawaii and she brought me a pretty fabric wrap that she got in Hawaii years ago for me to borrow for the trip (makes a good swim suit cover up).
I did my usual VITA shift on Wednesday. Once again, we weren't overwhelmingly busy and all of the tax returns I did were simple, so that was nice. We are having to reschedule a lot of people this year because they don't have information about either their stimulus payment or the their advance child tax credit payments. We can't complete their return if they don't know the amounts they recieved for either of those things. Some people get really upset / annoyed by that, but most people are understanding.
On Wednesday evening we all went to the church for the combined YM / YW activity. We had mini soccer and basketball clinics because our stake has a youth sports program beginning soon where they will be playing those sports, as well as volleyball. We had some women in the ward who are really good at soccer and basketball come teach the kids, so I really didn't have to do much except watch / help out with little things when needed.
Yesterday was busy because I had a presidency meeting in the morning and a song practice in the evening. Frank also had to work last night...another data base test. He says it went well. He got home about 1:30 this morning from that.
This morning Seth was up getting ready for Seminary / school as usual. They had asked everyone to bring food to share at Seminary this morning and he wanted to take a pizza, so we were warming one up in the oven. I had just put the pizza in the oven and went upstairs to change out of my exercise clothes when Frank informed me that he just got a text message saying there was a 2 hour delay! What??? It was raining a bit, but nothing more. Frank said when he came in at 1:30 am it was raining but cold and starting to get a little icy. That's all we can figure, is that there was ice on the roads. That meant there was no Seminary, however, so guess who had pizza for breakfast? Frank went back to sleep for a while but Seth and I were both wide awake by then so we stayed up.
Seth is home from school now. I spent the morning updating the finances. Frank is on Zoom doing a job interview right now (same company I mentioned last week). I'm interested to hear what he finds out from this interview.
I did a lot of reading when I could this week and I managed to finish Ben-Hur last night. It was pretty good. We had a couple of nice weather days this week, with temperatures into the 50s or 60s. We enjoyed those while they lasted! Yesterday it got colder again (but not super cold) and it rained a lot. Today the high was 51, so that's not too bad either. Looking ahead, it looks like we will continue to have some colder days mixed in with somewhat milder days and a few nice days. I'm glad we are getting to the end of winter! I feel like I am always cold, though. My feet in particular feel cold a lot. (They are really cold right now, as a matter of fact.) A lot of times I think it's colder in the house than it is outside. Good news, though...we just got the call today that our windows are done and we were able to schedule the install for March 10th. They offered to install them on March 4th, but that's the day Seth is getting his widsom teeth out so we didn't think that would be a good day to do that. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and they will actually be installed that day. And then maybe our house won't be so drafty and I won't be so cold!!
We've been watching the news from the Ukraine with dismay / concern. I have a friend who is from the Ukraine and she has a lot of family there. I texted her yesterday morning to ask if she had heard from her family, and she said she had. Her parents are actually in Switzerland with one of her sisters, so they are out of harm's way. A couple of her sisters and their families are still in the Ukraine but she says they live near the Polish / Romanian border so it is quiet in their area for now. I'm sure she is very worried about them, though!
Our local school board met this week and voted to lift the mask mandate in the schools starting today. Masks are still encouraged, but not required. We told Seth he didn't have to wear a mask anymore and he said he was going to wear one anyway. He said "I'm used to them now. I think they're kind of comfortable." Crazy kid!! But whatever, I don't mind if he keeps wearing a mask...he will probably get sick less often. I asked him when he got home how many kids wore masks and he said most kids still wore them. Only a few didn't. I was a little surprised by that.
Jared and Jessie have been on the road all week and they arrived in Cary, North Carolina yesterday and were able to check into their new apartment. I expect that they are very busy moving in because I haven't heard anything else from them except that they arrived! Jared was good about checking in with me each night to let me know where they were and that they had arrived at that night's destination safely. Thankfully, Jared made the trip without a lot of discomfort...thank you to everyone who prayed for him! Hopefully we will be seeing a lot more of them in the future, now that they are only about 5 hours away from us.
That's all I can think of to tell you about us this week!
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