Weekly Review March 25 '22

 Is it spring? Some days it feels like it, but other days it doesn't. Today temps are in the mid 50s but it is cloudy so it doesn't feel very warm. We've had a few really nice days but mostly this week has been kind of wet and chilly. However, a few trees have started to bloom this week and we are hearing and seeing a lot of birds, so the signs of spring are there even if it doesn't feel very warm a lot of the time. 

We had another pretty busy week although my calendar doesn't have a lot on it. Frank was definitely a lot busier than I was, though. He's had a lot going on with work and has put in a lot of late nights. After we got back from Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon (around 3:00), he unpacked and then went downstairs to his office to do work and worked solid until midnight. Then of course he had to be up early for bishopric meeting and ward council. That's how a lot of this week has gone for him. Is it any wonder that he is sick now? At first he thought he might just have allergies but he's been really congested and not feeling great since Wednesday, so I think he's got a bad cold or the flu or something. He did take an at home Covid test, and that was negative. Even though he isn't feeling great, he has still been working a lot...just working from home. There's some issues with the new database that he's been working on all day today.

I guess I should go back to last Saturday and finish telling about our trip to Philadelphia. As planned, Seth and Frank went with me to the temple on Saturday morning to see if Seth could do some baptisms and they did let him join a larger group that was already there so while I was in my endowment session, he got to be proxy for 4 baptisms...3 of them were family names I brought with us...and Frank did the confirmations. They finished before I did so they walked back to the hotel and changed and packed everything up except for my suitcase and then walked back to the temple to meet me when I finished. 

It was wonderful to be back in the temple again! We are all so glad that we got to go!

We walked back to the hotel so I could change clothes and then we checked out and headed home. I took a few photos of the hotel...one in the lobby and the other in our room...because I thought the signs on the walls were kind of clever:

I took some photos from our hotel window on Friday night too, after I wrote last week's post:

The trip home went smoothly and was uneventful...we stopped in Delaware to get some lunch, but other than that we didn't need to stop. As I mentioned, Frank worked the rest of the day; I kept busy finishing the usual Saturday chores. I don't remember much about what we did on Sunday after church except that we had family night. Frank took a nap after he got home from doing tithing and I wanted to take a nap but I wrote an email to our kids instead. On Sunday morning I looked out my bedroom window and saw these two geese walking across the common area:

The rest of the week was mostly business as usual. I did get the personal property tax return filed for the business on Monday. My VITA shift on Wednesday was kind of crazy because the first two appointments I ended up not being able to complete the returns. The first lady had an incorrect W-2 (she moved during the year so her company sent her one for each state that she lived in but the total income for the two states added up to a lot more than her total federal income for the year). The second lady had an item on her return that was out of scope for our program. Then the third hour I was there all of the appointments no-showed, so overall I spent the first 3 hours I was there with not much to do. We (the volunteers) were all just sitting there talking to each other and hoping someone would show up soon. Then at noon all 5 of our appointments showed up and a few of them were people who didn't speak English so then I was really busy the last two hours completing a tax return for a couple who spoke Spanish, who also needed to get ITINs (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) for their two children so that they could claim them as dependents on their return. I filled out the application to get ITINs for their children as well as completing their tax return. I had an interpreter there for the beginning as we were sorting through all their stuff but she had to leave shortly after that so it was tricky communicating with them after that when questions came up! Then to finish their return I had to help them prepare to mail it--they couldn't efile because of the ITIN applications--so I had to call a number to get an interpreter for that part. It wasn't ideal to not have the interpreter there in person since I was pointing to lines to have them sign and stuff like that and of course the interpreter on the phone couldn't see what I was doing. But we got it all done in the end and they seemed to be grateful!

Frank didn't go to YM on Wednesday evening since he wasn't feeling very well but Seth and I both went to the church for activities. All the YW classes and the YM were working on their movies because the "film festival" is next week so we all need to finish up. My class went to Goodwill to purchase some clothes for costumes and then we came back to the church and got one scene filmed. We are meeting again tonight at 4:00 to continue filming. Hopefully we will get most of it done! 

I had a YW presidency meeting yesterday morning so between that and the regular chores I kept pretty busy.

This is the last week of the 3rd term for Seth so he's been pretty busy getting all his assignments in. I hope someday he will learn not to procrastinate! He is done with everything now though and he has Monday off from school. I'm pretty happy that we only have one term left of this school year. I am ready for summer!!

Frank and Seth are ministering companions now and they visited two of their families this week...one on Tuesday and one last night (Frank wore a mask last night). Frank told Seth that he would give the lesson the first few times and then Seth will have a turn. I am happy that Seth is starting to see what it means to be a ministering brother. Unfortunately, we haven't had hometeachers or ministering brothers visit us for over a decade (all of Seth's lifetime that he can remember) so he doesn't even really know what a hometeacher or ministering brother is. 

This morning some guys from the company that installed our new windows came over and fixed our shutters on our house so they look better now. 

I talked to both Tanner and Jared this week. I only had a few minutes to talk to Tanner so we didn't chat extensively but he seems to be doing well. I talked to Jared for longer; he was calling to report the results of a visit to a specialist. He was hoping to get his surgery scheduled soon but the new specialist doesn't agree with the one in Utah. Based on Jared's symptoms, he thinks it's highly possible that Jared has Crohn's Disease, and if so just doing surgery to remove the fistula will not solve the problem. So instead, they are going to do some testing (bloodwork, MRI, colonoscopy) to try to get a firm diagnosis. If he has Crohn's Disease, he still may need surgery but there are some other treatments they can try also. I've been doing a bit of online research on Crohn's Disease and it doesn't sound very fun. Jared defninitely has a number of the symptoms. It's a chronic disease and not really completely curable, but there are medications that can really help and can possibly put it in remission for long periods of time. Everybody please keep him in your prayers! He has a lot of discomfort from the abscess / fistula and hasn't been able to work a lot so that makes life challenging for them. Fortunately, Jessie's new job seems to be going really well and she enjoys it.

That's all the news from around here (or at least all the news I am remembering right now). To finish up, here's a photo of the new bishopric that the bishop's wife took a few weeks ago. Frank is definitely the tallest one (but the bishop has the most hair)😂!

Weekly Review March 18 '22

 This week's post is coming to you from Philadelphia. We are here this weekend to go to the temple. Frank is at a session now and I will be going to a session tomorrow morning. We weren't able to get an appointment for Seth to do baptisms (all the appointments were taken) but we're hoping that maybe if he and Frank go over with me tomorrow with the family file cards that I printed up for him that they might squeeze him in. It's worth a try, anyway. Seth had a 2 hour early release from school today so we left shortly after he got home from school (around 1:00). We got here around 3:30 so we made good time for once. The traffic is always bad coming into Philadelphia, but we were early enough that we didn't hit the really bad rush hour traffic. We are staying at a hotel that is within walking distance of the temple. After we got here and checked into our room, we got some food at the restaurant downstairs and then Frank left to go to the temple. We are on the 23rd floor of the hotel. Here are some views from our window:

I guess I should back track now and tell you about the beginning of the week. We have been pretty busy. On Saturday (the 12th) it snowed. We only got an inch or so and it didn't stick to the roads much but it was also really cold and windy so we just stayed home. I was pretty busy doing stuff for YW and I also got our tax returns filed. 

On Sunday I was originally going to have 3 meetings after church but a couple of them got cancelled so I only ended up having one...a class presidency meeting. Frank had a lot of meetings, of course. He had bishopric meeting and ward council. He had another meeting that evening but he missed that one because he had to go to work for an overnight digital menu install. He got home earlier than he originally expected, but it was still the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of emergencies on Monday so he was able to rest a bit. 

On Monday afternoon a sister in my ward came over so I could help her with her taxes. She had asked me about the place I volunteer, but when I told her where it was she said she wouldn't be able to get there, so I told her she could come to my house and I would look over her taxes and see if I could figure them out. It turns out that her taxes were pretty simple, so we were able to get both her federal and her state taxes completed and filed that afternoon and she was happy about that. 

That evening we had to make some final decisions about our summer schedule because the next day was the day we could register Seth for FSY and we needed to choose which week to send him to that (we had three choices). Since plane ticket prices are climbing, we went ahead and purchased tickets for Utah. We are looking forward to seeing all you Utah folks this summer!

My friend Rebekah, who is in my book club, got the movie Ben-Hur from the library and invited me to watch it with her. I went to her house on Tuesday and we ate lunch together while we watched about 2/3rds of the movie. (It's 2 hours and 40 minutes long!) Then Rebekah came to my house yesterday and we watched the rest of the movie. I enjoyed seeing it again...haven't seen it since I was in high school, and I had forgotten most of it. The movie deviates from the book quite a bit, but we still enjoyed it. There are some things I like better about the movie and other things that I like better about the book. 

Frank was really busy on Tuesday with work--he worked all day and into the evening. He wanted to go to a regional Primary training meeting that was at the stake center by the temple (the Primary is one of his repsonsibilities) but he had too much work to do. 

Wednesday was really busy for me as usual...I worked at VITA during the day and had a YM / YW activity that evening. We were pretty busy at VITA...we had a couple of people come in who needed 4 years worth of taxes filed. That was kind of crazy, but we got them done. For the YM / YW activity that evening we talked about goal setting and then watched the Face-to-Face broadcast that introduced this year's theme (Trust In the Lord). The broadcast was really good. We got there early because Frank was in charge of setting up all the technology stuff. Frank & Seth were assigned to bring lemonade and I brought cookies and unfortunately there was a lot of both of those things leftover. I put a bunch in the cookies in the freezer. Maybe I should try freezing the lemonade too since there is about 4 gallons of it!!

Frank worked all day on Wednesday but he had to go back to work after the activity was over becuase they were installing the new database at one of the stores that night. It was only supposed to take about an hour so he thought he'd be home around 11:00 pm but there were a lot of problems so he didn't get home utnil about 3:30 am. Then he had to be back at the store at 5:00 am when they opened up. He was hoping he'd only be there for a short amount of time but he didn't get back home until about 9:00 am. He got maybe an hour or two of sleep but then he had meetings and other work to do so he never did get to go back to sleep until bedtime last night. He was exhausted, of course! He did sleep solidly all night long last night, though. 

Meanwhile, I had book chat last night. We discussed Ben-Hur and now we are going to read Dune. 

I think I mentioned that Frank had a job interview last week while he was in Las Vegas (they did the interview online). They contacted him on Monday and want to do a second interview, this time in person. He'll be doing that the week after next. 

Frank's dad had surgery on Tuesday to remove his gall bladder. It went well and he is recovering, although recovery will take a while. 

That's all I can think of to tell you about this week.

Weekly Review March 11 '22

My brain was feeling like mush when I wrote last week. Thankfully, I don't feel that way today. 

Last Saturday morning (the 5th) I had a hair appointment at 8:00 am, so that's the first thing I did. We did a couple of things differently this time...instead of just touching up the roots, the stylist pulled the color all the way to the ends so it looks quite a bit darker. We did that because next time I'm getting highlights. The stylist also cut my bangs shorter than she's been doing lately (at my request; they've been too long and hard to deal with). It took me a few days to get used to both the color and the bangs, but now I'm happy with it. Frank was busy that day cleaning in his office and moving his desk away from the window, in preparation for the new windows being installed this week. He was also busy packing because he was leaving for a business trip the next day. He went to Las Vegas for a convention (something to do with restaurant technology). He left Sunday morning and was gone until Wednesday evening. 

Frank attended bishopric meeting on Sunday morning but after that he needed to go to the airport. He left around the same time that Seth and I left for church. We had a pretty quiet day after we got home from church...no extra meetings or anything. It actually got up to the low 70s that day, so it was a nice day but for some reason I was really cold all day. It was colder inside than outside.

Because Frank was gone, I decided to make dinners that Seth would like and eat with him rather than following Frank's diet. Well, Seth liked the main dishes, anyway! I made a green salad on Monday to go with the sausage rice casserole he likes and I made him eat some of that each night. (We had sour cream enchiladas and lime pork fajitas other nights.) We had pretty quiet days while Frank was gone...just mostly getting the usual things done. I did get a number of errands done on Monday. That evening, Seth came with me to Costco--I needed to stock up on chicken, salmon, and shrimp--and then we went to Dairy Queen to get ice cream cones. A pretty decent rainstorm came through while we were driving to Dairy Queen but by the time we got home it was mostly gone. 

We didn't get to talk much to Frank while he was gone because he was 3 hours behind us so the timing was always off. He was busy at the convention during the day and by the time he finished at night we were in bed asleep. But we did talk briefly a few times and texted a bit. We were happy to have him return home on Wednesday evening.

I did my usual volunteer shift at VITA on Wednesday. It was raining hard most of the day so it was a good day to be indoors. We were busier than we've been the last few weeks, but not overwhelmingly so. I kept pretty busy the whole time I was there. On Wednesday evening I had a RS activity--the YW were invited to this activity too. Seth had YM as usual; they worked on their movie for the upcoming film festival. For RS we were celebrating the RS birthday and we had a service auction. I didn't actually bid on anything but it was amusing to watch other people have bidding wars and such. The YW really seemed to enjoy themselves! I submitted sewing lessons as my service to be auctioned off and one of the girls in my YW class won that, so I will be giving her some sewing lessons. I think it will be fun! I gave a ride to the church and back to my friend Rebecca and her daughter Melanie for this activity. Rebecca is blind, so she obviously can't drive and it made it easier for her family if her husband didn't have to drop them off (she has younger children). I enjoyed visiting with her a bit on the ride to the church and back.

Yesterday was eventful because we had the new windows installed. The crew arrived around 9:00 am and they were done by about 4:00 pm. There were windows and doors open the whole time they were here and it was about 50 degrees yesterday so it got really cold in the house and I was freezing all day! I kind of expected that's how it would be, though. They did a good job with the windows but we aren't happy about what they did to our shutters. They had to remove all the shutters and when they put them back up they didn't hang them up the way they were before. The shutters were hung on screws that were behind the shutters so that they didn't show. I don't know why they didn't just replace the screws and hang them back up, but instead they drilled screws all the way through the shutters into the house. That means we have a bunch of extra holes in our house now, and holes in the shutters, and the screws are showing on the front when they used to be hidden behind the shutters. Frank has been talking to the company today to try to get that resolved, and telling them that they need to replace the shutters for us now. Hopefully he'll be able to work that out. The windows do look really nice and the house is much warmer today than it's been in a long time, without the heater having to run much, so we're happy about that. 

Old windows in our bedroom (see the condensation between the panes?):

This is how the house looked during the install, when I went to get us some lunch. It was amazing to me what a mess the yard was!:

New windows (I took these photos this morning):

The blinds we had on the old windows are not going to fit in the new windows so we are going to have to buy new ones. In the meantime, we felt pretty exposed last night with no blinds or curtains on any of the windows. (We had to take down the curtains of course and we couldn't hang them back up until today because the caulking on the new windows had to dry for 24 hours first.) I washed the curtains today and we hung them back up so at least we have those now, which will have to do until we have time to get more blinds. I didn't hang Seth's curtains back up though because I'm going to get him some new ones. I've never replaced the Noah's ark themed curtains that have been hanging in that room since before he was born. I think he has grown out of curtains with cute little animals on them now! 😉

I've been gathering donations for Ukraine the last few weeks. My friend Renata has a connection with a Ukrainian School in Bethesda that is shipping needed items to Ukraine every few weeks. She let me know about it and I spread the word to our ward because I thought people would want to donate, and I was right. Last night I took a trunk load of donations over to Renata for her to take to the school tomorrow. I may be doing this again if more people donate. Renata was really grateful! It feels good to do something to help Ukraine, even if it's not much. 

Frank injured his leg when he was on the way home from Las Vegas. I'm not sure exactly what happened...he just tweaked it somehow when he had to stand up to let someone sit in the middle seat on the airplane, and he was standing at a weird angle. He definitely wins the random injury award...I feel like he is constantly getting these odd injuries! His leg is quite painful and he's been trying to rest it as much as possible. 

When I had any free time this week, I was reading. I finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow on Saturday night. On Sunday I started reading another book that I got from the library as a suggested reading for book chat. It is called Educated but Tara Westover. I finished reading that book last night. I finished it quickly because it was hard to put down. I'm not sure how to describe it except to say that it was astonishing. The author was writing about her own life, so it was a true story and it was just really crazy! Or actually, her parents were crazy (mentally ill would be the more correct term) so that made her life crazy. Her family was LDS, but believe me...most of the time I didn't recognize the beliefs / lifestyle she was describing. She grew up in Idaho on the side of a mountain. She was homeschooled (sort of...she really didn't get much education at all), they considered dresses above the knee or without a high neck to be immodest, her parents thought medicine and doctors were evil, and her dad was constantly expecting the world to end so he was stockpiling food and other supplies. You get the idea! The book is very well written but the overall story was pretty disturbing and I spent a lot of the time feeling really angry with her parents and some of her siblings (even though most of the time the author wasn't angry with them). It was definitely worth reading, though.

I rescheduled Seth's wisdom teeth removal with the oral surgeon but they didn't have any openings very soon so that's not going to happen until the end of April now. It's too bad since that will delay him getting his braces off but there's not much I can do about it.

That sums up our week...the most memorable things anyway!

Weekly Review March 4 '22

 My mind feels pretty muddled today, but hopefully I will be able to compose a coherent post about our last week. Why does my mind feel muddled? Well, it's been a frustrating / stressful day. Seth was supposed to get his wisdom teeth out today but...he didn't. He had one of his stubborn / anxious / freak out moments and refused to let them put in an IV. We all tried to talk him into it for a good 20 mintues but finally had to give up. The teeth have to come out, though, so now we have to reschedule the procedure and go through this whole process all over again. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it!! He insists that he just needs time to mentally prepare himself. I hope that's all it is. In the meantime, this day has been a bust since I wasted 2+ hours of my time taking him there (it's 30 minutes away and when we got there, they informed us that they were running behind and we'd have to wait 30-45 minutes...I wasn't happy about that either), he missed Seminary and school today for no reason, he fasted half the day for no reason, and I haven't accomplished much since we got back because my mind has been muddled so I can't concentrate. Can I go to bed and start this day over again??

The rest of the week went much better than today, thankfully. Last Saturday (the 26th) turned out to be really busy. I went to the church in the morning to help sort donations for Afghan refugees. We still didn't have a lot of donations coming in, but I had a nice visit with the other people who came to help. After I was done there, I just had time to have lunch before I needed to leave again...this time to go to a baptism. The baptism was for an 8 year old girl in our ward...her older sister is in my YW class, so I wanted to go to show support for the family. I'm really glad I went because not only are baptisms always really sweet but the older sister in my class was called to be the 1st counselor in the class presidency at the beginning of the year but had not yet been set apart and the bishop decided to set her apart right after the baptism. So I was able to be there for that, too. After I got home from the baptism I thought I would have a few hours before needing to go to the adult session of stake conference that evening. Frank had a leadership meeting at 4:00, but I didn't need to go to that meeting. We planned for me to make dinner and bring it over to him when his meeting ended at 6:00; then we would have time to eat together before I had a song practice at 6:30 followed by the adult session at 7:00. But shortly after I got home from the baptism, the other counselor in the YW presidency texted me saying "did you see the email that just came from the stake executive secretary saying that counselors in ward presidencies are invited to the leadership meeting too?" (Originally, only presidents were inivited.) At first I thought there was no way I could make that work last minute, but ultimately I decided to make the effort to go. It just meant that we had unhealthy McDonald's for dinner instead of the healthy meal I was planning to make! I'm glad I went because it turned out that meeting was almost entirely focused on the youth, so there was a lot of great information for me in that meeting. It was also nice that Frank and I were able to go to the meetings and come home together instead of taking two cars. Both meetings were excellent and I think our song went pretty well too. We had one of our area authorities, Elder Pace, come to this conference and he brought his wife with him. It just so happens that his wife (whose maiden name is Margaret Watson) grew up in the same ward with Frank, so he got to talk to her and that was fun for him, of course. So that was Saturday...by the time we got home it was time to go to bed.

Sunday wasn't quite as busy. We had the general session of stake conference in the morning--we went to our own ward building for that because they broadcast it to the buildings in our stake. That meeting was good too but I admit I had more trouble focusing for that meeting. Afterwards, we did have a few more meetings over Zoom. I had a class presidency meeting with my YW class, and Frank and Seth had a meeting with the bishopric and all the YM quorum presidencies (there are so few boys in YM that they meet all together). Then Frank had bishopric meeting via Zoom also. 

The rest of the week has actually been pretty routine, with all the usual things going on except that Seth had an orthodontist appointment on Thursday after school and of course he had the oral surgeon appointment today. At the orthodontist yesterday they said that all he has left to do is to move his teeth together (bite is correct now and teeth are straight; there are just some small gaps between them) so they put a different kind of wire on his teeth. Of course, that means his mouth / teeth are quite sore today. They said it's possible they can remove the bottom braces on his next visit (which is in 6 weeks) and then possibly the top braces the visit after that. Well, that was dependent on him having his wisdom teeth removed and molars exposed today, which didn't happen, so I'm sure that will push back his braces getting removed. Another reason why I wish that had happened today as planned! 

Frank had a quite busy week with work. He had to work last night because two contractors were doing jobs at one of the restaurants after hours. It wasn't too bad, though...they got done a lot sooner than he anticipated so he was only gone from 7:00 to 10:00. When I wrote last week's post, he was in the middle of a job interview. That interview went well. They are still very interested in him but have interviews to do with other candidates before they narrow it down. I'm still concerned that if he got that job he would need to travel down there a lot more often than I'd like. In the meantime, he was contacted yesterday by another place. He applied for a job there a few months ago and had given up on it since he never heard back but I guess they are just moving a lot slower than we anticipated. He has an interview set up with them on Monday. This job would also require commuting, but not nearly so far. 

I have to report that we played Mario Kart for family night activity on Monday because I actually won!! Yes, me!!! This is a really big deal because I'm no good at video games. It took me 10 years to reach this point. 😂 I was so astonished that I had to get photographic proof:

Yes, I know it says "Peach" instead of "Annette", but who else in my family would play as a girl?? You can see it was close...I beat Frank by only 1 point and Seth (Yoshi) by 3 points. But after 10 years of being way behind those two, it felt pretty good to be in the top spot! It may never happen again!

My VITA volunteer day went well again this week. Once again, we weren't very busy. But I actually kept steadily busy and completed 4 tax returns. They were all pretty simple so they didn't take long. Too bad 3 of the 4 taxpayers had to pay instead of getting refunds. That doesn't happen very often...as a matter of fact, those were the first balance due returns I've encountered this year. Never fun for the taxpayer, but they all took it in stride, thankfully.

For youth activities this week my YW class planned our movie for a film festival that we are doing with all the YM / YW at the end of the month. We had to start all over on the plot because we previously chose to do a Russian themed film. With everything going on with Russia right now, though, we thought maybe that would be in bad taste. So we started all over, planning with a totally different idea. The YM played kick ball and had donuts...Frank was in charge of bringing the donuts. Luckily, he found plenty of people at the church who were willing to eat a donut so we didn't bring any home with us!

When I finished reading Ben-Hur last week, I started reading another book called A Gentleman in Moscow. It was one of the books I checked out of the library to suggest that we read for book chat. We chose Ben-Hur instead, but I figured since I was done with that I might as well read this book since I had it. (Plus it sounded really interesting so I wanted to read it.) I'm glad I decided to read it because it's a fantastic book and I am enjoying it immensely. I will probably finish it in a couple more days. It is super interesting, clever, funny, but also poignant. I definitely recommend it if you want a good book to read. 

That is all the news from these parts so I will finish up with a photo I took while I was waiting for Seth to get out of Seminary yesterday morning.