Weekly Review June 24 '22

 This week turned out to be quite busy, although as usual I am having a hard time remembering many details. I really need to jot down notes or something. On Saturday I had an appointment to get my hair done and Frank and Seth both needed haircuts so the lady who cuts my hair (she's also in our ward) gave both of them haircuts while my color was processing. Seth hasn't been great at taking care of his hair (washing it properly or combing it) so we had her cut his hair really short. He prefers it long and messy but I think he looks so much better with it short! He will be cooler, too, with less hair on his head. 

I can't remember anything else I did on Saturday besides the usual chores, but I know I was pretty busy all day. Frank took Seth out to try riding the bike but they were both mad at each other before they even left so that didn't go very well. I told Seth that he and I would try again on Monday.

Sunday was Father's Day and our bishop was out of town so Frank didn't have a lot of meetings. They did have a brief bishopric meeting via Zoom that morning which gave Seth and I the chance to put out Frank's cards and gifts. I totally forgot to wrap them on Friday while he was at work so they weren't wrapped but Frank's not too concerned with the niceties so that's okay! I was still getting ready for church when he came back upstairs after his meeting so I didn't get to see his reaction to anything and I forgot to take any pictures. He was happy with what he got, though, which was a small cast iron skillet and a really tiny refrigerator (big enough to hold six soda cans...it's more like a small ice chest that can be plugged in!) I got the refrigerator because he needs to have healthy snacks at work and most of them need to be refrigerated. There is a refrigerator for all the employees at his work, but he was told that things get taken out of the refrigerator all the time. He really needs to be able to grab a protein shake or some celery or something when he feels like his blood sugar is dropping and that won't work if he goes to grab it out of the refrigerator and it has disappeared!

The 2nd counselor in the YW presidency and the YW secretary were both released on Sunday. The secretary hasn't been able to do much since she had a baby a few months ago and the other counselor is going to be a temple worker so doing that and being in a presidency was too much for her. (She is going to be a Primary teacher now). I will really miss working with both of them!! A new secretary was called, but we won't be getting a new counselor for at least a few months. We are also down one advisor still, but a new advisor was called for my class at least (and she is the RS president that was just released so that will be awesome!!) The new secretary is also great...she was my secretary and then one of my counselors when I was RS president so I've worked with her a lot and know she is capable, dependable, very kind, and spiritually strong. We have some great people, but it is going to be a bit of a juggle since we have 3 classes and need to have 2 adults for every class lesson and class activity. The youngest class doesn't have an advisor or a counselor right now, so the rest of us are going to have to fill in a bit.

Frank actually had Monday off work because the state of Maryland gives all their employees all the federal holidays off, and Monday was the Juneteenth observation. He didn't lie around relaxing all day, though...he had work to do for some of his clients. I kept busy with all the usual things I need to do on Mondays (laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming...) plus I also took Seth to the park to try riding the bike. Before we did that, though, I watched 3 or 4 YouTube videos about how to teach someone to ride a bike. I had been thinking about taking him out and feeling frustrated because I know how to ride a bike myself but had no idea how to teach someone else to do it. (Our other three kids kind of picked it up on their own but Seth hasn't been able to do that.) Then I got the idea that I could probably find some instructions online and sure enough...there are a lot of videos about how to do that. There were some really good ideas that I thought might work, so off we went to the park. That first day we didn't make much progress. Seth wasn't feeling motivated to try very hard, so we didn't stay long. I talked to him about it afterwards, though, and explained that part of learning to ride a bike is mental. He needed to decide that he could do it and that he wanted to do it and be willing to stick with it. We talked about some things that might motivate him, and he agreed to try harder the next day.

Tuesdays are always really busy with household chores but Seth helped me with some of them so by early afternoon I had some time to take him to the park again. Things went better this time. I gave him some instructions and watched him for a while and gave him more instructions but then I just felt like I needed to stop telling him what to do and let him experiment a little bit--let him get a feel for the bike and what he was comfortable with. He was trying to ride on a path in the park and he kept veering to the right so he would end up on the grass. (At this point he was just "coasting" down the path...which had a slight incline...trying to learn how to stay balanced.) After that happened a couple of times, he said "Mom, I feel like it's easier for me to stay balanced when I'm on the grass." I had noticed that he was not putting his feet down as much when he was on the grass too so I told him to go ahead and try to pedal on the grass the next time. (He still started out on the path because it was too hard for him to get going on the grass.) He tried again a couple of times and the second time he was almost successful in getting both feet onto the pedals without losing his balance. After that he wanted to go home (mostly because it was hot and there were a lot of gnats flying in our faces) but I could tell that we were starting to make some progress. 

 (In the photo above, he has one foot on the pedal and he's using the other foot to push himself along, like you would on a scooter.)

On Tuesday evening I had another budgeting session with the sister in my ward I've been helping. We were supposed to meet on Saturday but she had some things come up so we rescheduled for Tuesday. That took all evening...she is a talker, so it is challenging to keep her focused. It was bedtime by the time we were done.

I decided to take Seth to the park first thing on Wednesday morning before it got too hot. This time he was able to start pedaling when he was on the grass! After he had done that a few times, I told him to try to stay on the path and try pedaling on the path and he was able to do that too. Sometimes only for a short distance, and he usually ended up in the grass eventually but before we left he was able to pedal several feet up the path, and I was even able to record it:

I'm thrilled that he is starting to get the hang of it, and Seth looked pretty happy about it too!! Now he just needs to practice a lot so he has better control of the bike and gains more stability and confidence. We need to work on braking and a few things like that too. But he's on his way! It's hard to explain what a big deal this is to us. Up until now, Seth would completely refuse to get on a bike at all (or if we could convince him to sit on it, then he would refuse to do anything else). He just wouldn't even try. I'm hoping that this experience will encourage him to try other new / hard things and that he is realizing that it feels really great to set a goal and to achieve it. 

At lunch time Seth and I did some community service. (Or tried to, anyway.) The county provides lunch service for children at some of the parks in the area during the summer. A group of area churches, including our ward, helps provide volunteers to serve the lunch. This week was our ward's week to provide the volunteers and I had signed Seth and I up to help with that on Wednesday. It turns out the lady in charge didn't know it was our week to help so she asked a couple of friends to come help her. There were two other members of our ward besides Seth and I that had signed up to help so there were 6 women and one teenager to help and they really only needed 2 or 3 people so there wasn't much to do, especially since not that many kids came to get lunch. We were there for 2 hours and only 20 kids came during that time. I have helped in past years and we were much busier and needed more people but it's really petered out for some reason...probably because of Covid. 

On Wednesday afternoon we went through Seth's summer clothes so we could figure out what he still needs. He is going to FSY next week so he needs to have enough clothes to make it through the week. It turns out that he has plently of shirts (although ALL of them are blue, black, or white) but he only has 4 pairs of shorts so we need to get to the store in the next few days to get him some more. 

There was a combined YW activity that evening and my class was in charge. First we did some service...we cleaned the church kitchen. That was my idea...I got the idea at the activity a couple of weeks ago when one of the girls injured her finger and we were looking in the freezer for some ice (there wasn't any). I noticed that the freezer was filthy / crusty. It was so nasty!! I was a little surprised but glad when my class's president agreed that cleaning the kitchen would be a good idea for an activity. I did sweeten the deal by suggesting that we go to Rita's for a treat afterwards (gelato / flavored ice place)...I think that helped! We actually had 8 girls show up even though a few were out of town so that worked out great. Enough to get a lot done, but not so many that we were in each other's way. We actually got a lot done in 30 minutes and I was surprised that the freezer cleaned up pretty quickly. It turned out to be a pretty fun activity and of course everyone really enjoyed the treat afterwards.

Yesterday was really crazy and I'm not sure why. I ran out of time to take Seth out to ride the bike. Thursdays are fairly busy with the chores I need to do but I was also trying to get a few more things done too and I felt like I was interrupted constantly by text messages that I needed to answer. A lot of those dealt with YW things...there was one conversation that came up between a couple of girls at the activity the night before that we needed to address, for one thing. I was also trying to send an email to the EQ and RS presidents with an update on my budgeting meeting on Tuesday night. Seth's friend Lyndon (from church) came over for the afternoon so they could play more of the new Star Wars game together. He wasn't any trouble and actually kept Seth occupied, so that was nice. One of my ministering sisters was scheduled to come over in the evening and I was still trying to get that email written to send to the EQ and RS presidents before she arrived when I got an email for the stake camp director asking me if I would be willing to be the Level 1 leader at camp instead of a camp mom. What???? Camp is two weeks away!!! I was an assistant level leader six years ago so I know how much work is involved. So then I was wrestling with that decision in my mind while I was trying to do other things. As someone who has been a leader and needed willing helpers, I really wanted to help her out. But I looked over my schedule for the next 2 weeks and really didn't feel good about it. My ministering sister was kind and talked it over with me. 😊 I finally decided that for a lot of reasons this is one of those times that I just have to say no. I sent off a response really early this morning and after that I stopped fretting about it and feel more at peace. I just got an email back and it sounds like they found a leader so I think things will be fine. 

This has not been a great week for sleeping for me. I have been awake a lot most nights. Last night I didn't get to bed until nearly midnight and I woke up at 3:00 am and have been awake since then. (I might take a nap later!) I had at least one other night that I barely slept (can't remember which night it was now) so after Frank left and I exercised, ate breakfast, and showered I went back to bed for a few hours. Even then, I was getting up for the second time around the same time Seth got up! (He sleeps until nearly 9:00 am most mornings although today he surpised me by waking up about 5:30.) He has a hard time falling asleep at night so even though he goes to bed when we do, he often doesn't fall asleep for hours.  

We are enjoying nightly (and sometimes early morning) deer sightings behind our house. We found out one of our neighbors is putting out food for the deer so that explains why we keep seeing them! Last night I got these photos of deer and just to make it extra fun there is a rabbit in some of the photos too!! (There were actually 2 rabbits out there at one point, and 3 deer, although I didn't get them all in one picture.)

(There are 3 deer in that last picture...one of them is mostly hidden behind the hill.)

Just a couple more pictures to finish up this week's post. It rained a lot yesterday and on Wednesday evening. I took this photo when a storm was coming in on Wednesday:

I've been working on a color by number the last few weeks and I finally finished it:

Weekly Review June 17 '22

This was our first full week of summer vacation, and we kept pretty busy. Seth is always asking me what day of the week it is...he's having a hard time keeping track of that now that school is out. 

As I mentioned last week, we all went to see Jurassic World: Dominion on Saturday morning. It was a pretty good movie; I thought they wrapped up the series pretty well. I liked the new movie theater a lot...much more comfortable chairs and more space, plus a tray for food attached to each chair also which makes snacks less awkward to juggle. I didn't actually get any snacks but I had a few bites of Frank's and Seth's. 

Sunday was fairly busy because I had choir practice before church and I also went to Ward Council with Frank in the afternoon. The choir sang in Sacrament meeting and I was asked by the choir director to say a few words to introduce the song before we sang. It wasn't our best performance...we could have used more time to prepare...but more than one person told me afterwards that they really enjoyed our song so that was good to hear. I went to Ward Council because the YW president had a lot of family visiting because her daughter just came home from her mission a few weeks ago and she spoke in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. The 2nd hour of church was different because the stake leaders wanted to have a meeting with all the adults so instead of going to YW as I usually would, I went to the adult meeting and another stake leader taught all the YM and YW together. And just to further complicate things, they taught the Sunday School lesson instead of the YM/YW lesson so now this Sunday all the youth are meeting together again and we're teaching them the YM/YW lesson they should have had last week. The meeting for the adults was a discussion about how we can make our homes a center for gospel learning and also how we can help our children develop qualities that will help them be more resilient. This discussion was prompted by the fact that our stake leaders are seeing a lot of missionaries in our stake struggling and / or coming home early from their missions. We could have talked a lot longer on this subject, but had limited time.

Seth met with our bishop for his annual birthday interview right after church, and I met with a member of the RS presidency for a ministering interview. Seth got his temple recommend renewed and the bishop also talked to him about setting some goals for this summer. Seth told him he wanted to set a goal to learn to ride a bike. Our bishop told me about this goal after the interview and offered to loan a bike since Seth doesn't have a bike anymore. (We gave up buying bikes for him after 2 or 3 of them never got used). I'm glad Seth has decided to give bike riding another try. I hope he is successful this time!

On Sunday afternoon Tim, Izak, and Zane came back to stay with us for a couple more nights. We took them on the same walk that we went on with Amanda, Jonathan, and Andrew a few weeks ago. All the boys (including the adult ones!) enjoyed skipping rocks and trying to hit targets across the river with rocks. Later on, we went out on our deck so that Tim could see fireflies for the first time. We saw fireflies and as a bonus we also saw a couple of deer! They were on the hill behind our house eating. It was hard to see both of them because it was fairly dark and one of them was standing behind the other one, but if you look closely at the picture you will see more than four legs:

Tim and boys were here until Tuesday morning but they had a packed schedule on Monday so we only saw them in the morning...we went to bed before they got back on Monday evening! As a matter of fact, I don't think Frank saw them at all after Sunday evening because he left for work before they got up on both Monday and Tuesday mornings, and as I said...we all went to bed before they got back on Monday evening. They were able to visit a bunch of people from Izak's mission. They also went to the Air & Space Museum and to Antietam. I don't know how they managed to get all of that done in one day! We enjoyed getting to see them, even if it was only for a little bit. We think it's so cool that Zane's ultimate frisbee team won the national championship!

I had something going on nearly every evening this week. On Monday there was a farewell gathering for a family in our ward who is moving (same family who have the 2 youth that we had a farewell party for last week). We met at a park and people brought fruit or desserts to share. It was quite hot and humid that day (actually it's been that way most of this week) so it was a bit uncomfortable, but still fun to visit with a lot of people. 

Seth went to play with the carpool boys on Tuesday afternoon, He was supposed to go last week, but I didn't put it on my calendar so I forgot!! We rescheduled for Tuesday and Seth seemed to have a good time. I had a class presidency meeting via Zoom while he was gone...we figured out what we are doing for activities the next couple of weeks. On Tuesday evening there was a RS activity. A sister in our ward who is from Peru taught us how to make a Peruvian dish called Causa Limena de Pollom. It is basically chicken salad between layers of mashed potatoes. It was really yummy! I admit I didn't pay really close attention to how to make it...I got distracted talking to other women...but I have the recipe if I ever want to give it a try. It's a bit complicated and I am a lazy cook so it's not incredibly likely that I will ever make it, but who knows? I did have fun and I'm always uplifted when I can spend time with other sisters.

While I was at the farewell party at the park on Monday evening, I was eating a brownie and my crown came off! I called the dentist on Tuesday morning and they got me in to have the crown replaced on Wednesday morning. I'm glad I didn't have to wait too long because my tooth was feeling really sensitive to cold after the crown came off. They polished up the crown a whole bunch to improve the bite (even though I just had that done 2 weeks ago). I ended up having to have that side of my mouth numbed up before they replaced the crown because they had to clean up the tooth really well and since I was feeling a lot of sensitivity to cold they thought it would be pretty painful. When I got home, I was thirsty so I drank some water and it was a really strange sensation to do that when part of my lip was numb. It felt like part of the cup's rim was missing!

On Wednesday evening there was a YW activity. My class combined with the older class and we watched a movie. It was a modern Christian version of Beauty and the Beast that someone in Utah filmed and it was incredibly cheesy and very mediocre acting but we had fun laughing at it. The YM are not having activities most of the summer but we in the YW presidency feel like it's important to have activities, even though we will need to combine a lot of times because we won't have a lot of girls around. 

Originally I was going to be busy last night too...I was going to meet with the sister in my ward to talk about budgeting again...but she wasn't feeling well so we postponed it to Saturday. Instead, Seth and I took some things to Goodwill and then stopped at our Bishop's house to borrow a bike so Seth can start trying to learn to ride a bike. Our bishop and his family are going out of town for a couple of weeks, so we thought it would be a good time to borrow a bike since no one else will be trying to use it. They have a son Seth's age, so that's the bike we borrowed. During the day yesterday Seth helped get all the chores done and he came with me when I went grocery shopping so he could pick out a Father's Day card for Frank and also help decide about a couple of gifts. After we got back from shopping, we went to a play group at the park. A sister in our ward sets this up every summer and even if you don't have kids, everyone is invited to come and visit. She has a son near Seth's age so he was interested in going so he could hang out with his friend. I'm in favor of Seth getting out of the house and getting some fresh air and exercise whenever possible so I was happy to take him. Plus I always enjoy visiting with the other women. There was only a small group there this week but it was still fun. We ended up bringing Seth's friend home with us so they could play Seth's new Star Wars video game together for a few hours. 

Today I helped with cleaning at the moving family's house. I signed up to help for an hour but they had everything almost done so after being there for 30 minutes there was nothing else to do. I came home and had a phone conversation with the YW president for an hour or so because we had some things we needed to discuss. Then I got the budget caught up. 

Frank had a fairly busy week...besides work, he had to help with tithing on Tuesday (they couldn't do it on Sunday because the church's website for that was down), he did maintenance for his clients last night, and he had other work to do for clients on other days as well. At work, his access was granted on Wednesday so he could finally start doing more things for his job. He's mostly just been going through training and learning some things but he hasn't always had a lot to do, so he's been a little bored. That is starting to change now and he is glad to have more to do. 

We are all adjusting to Frank's new schedule...we eat dinner an hour or more later than we used to so I always feel like the evenings are short. (It's time for bed already??) Frank usually calls me when he leaves work and we chat for a while so his drive home is a little less tedious. I've been trying to get up with him and make his breakfast while he showers, but I have had a lot of bad sleeping nights this week so a couple of mornings I have not been able to get up with him. I have been making his lunch for the next day every evening. It is challenging to come up with a healthy lunch that is either good cold or that heats up well but I am working on it. 

Frank just got home from work a few minutes ago. I need to go make dinner and I can't think of anything else significant that happened this week so I'll sign off now.

Weekly Review June 10 '22

 Happy first week of summer vacation for us! I am happy that I don't have to get Seth to Seminary or to school and that I don't have to nag him about homework. It is nice to be on a more relaxed schedule although I haven't been sleeping in. I actually keep waking up really early but that's okay because I prefer to get an early start to my day.

When I wrote last week, Seth was working on a homework assignment for his English class. He ended up putting in several hours getting it done and then I checked it and made him change some things. He wasn't very happy about that but he did cooperate and with my help he finally got it done and submitted. He wasn't fully convinced that the changes I was telling him to make were actually right or necessary and he told me he would be upset with me if I messed up his grade. But guess what? When I checked his grade on Monday I discovered that he got 100% on that assignment. So there you go...I think he is more convinced now that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to English assignments. 

On Saturday Frank and I got some shopping done at Costco (never fun to go there on Saturday, but we couldn't avoid it this time). I also cleaned out all the cabinets in our bathroom...we had accumulated a lot of stuff in there and they were a disorganized disaster. That turned out to be a bigger job than I anticipated so it took the whole evening, but it looks great now. I got so busy doing that, though, that I forgot to clean the kitchen floor as I usually do on Saturday evening so on Monday I cleaned the kitchen floor and cleaned all the bathroom floors too while I was at it. 

On Sunday morning I went to my first choir practice since before the Covid-19 pandemic started. It was really lovely to be singing with other people again! We will have another practice this Sunday morning before church and then we will sing during Sacrament meeting. Frank had both Ward Youth Council and Ward Council meetings to attend after church so he was pretty busy. This is his month to conduct, so he is also planning Sacrament meeting topics and asking people to speak. For Seth and I, Sunday was pretty restful once we got home from church.

I was quite busy on Monday. besides sweeping and mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, I also vacuumed or swept all the other floors. I bought groceries as well and started laundry and read scriptures. I got all of that done before lunch time. I went to lunch with my friends Rebekah and Starr. Starr moved to Utah last summer, but she is visiting right now so we went to lunch so we could visit and get caught up on her life. I enjoyed having lunch with my two friends a lot, but I had a mishap on the way there. We had chosen to go to a restaurant in the historic downtown area of Frederick so I had to park in a parking garage and walk a few blocks to the restaurant. On my way there, I tripped over an uneven spot in the sidewalk and went down hard. I had so much forward momentum that even though I threw out both of my hands and was able to break my fall, I still hit my face on the sidewalk! It was really strange...I remember having this split second realization that even though my hands had hit the pavement, I wasn't stopping and I knew I was going to hit my face. I wasn't running or even walking very fast so I still can't figure out why that happened! Anyway, I landed harder on my left knee and hand than on my right knee and hand, so my left knee looks the worst. My right knee has a few small bruises and cuts but my left knee has an abrasion and large bruises all over it. Both hands got slightly skinned and I had small "road rash" spots on my chin and right cheek. The injured places on my hands and face barely show up and my cheek hasn't bruised either although it still feels slightly tender. I am really glad I wasn't wearing my glasses (I wear them more often than not these days) because it's fairly likely they would have been broken (and could have caused more injury to my face, too.) My screen saver on my phone did get a big crack in it...my phone was in my purse and my purse was on my shoulder when I fell. I'm glad it was just the screen saver instead of the screen...I've had this phone for only 3 or 4 months.

I was able to go on to have lunch with my friends and I was okay but I suspected I would feel worse later and I was right. By Monday evening I noticed that both arms were hurting from my wrists all the way up to my shoulders and into my chest. They felt even worse on Tuesday, which didn't surprise me a whole lot. And Tuesday night a spot in my upper back started hurting too so I didn't sleep very well that night...no matter which way I turned, something hurt! On Wednesday I spent a lot of the day walking around (more on that later) and although I didn't feel bad then, by the time I got home in the late afternoon I was starting to hurt all over and I just collapsed for a few hours. Then I had to go to the YW activity. When I got home from that, I took 2 Ibuprofen and went to bed. That seemed to help a lot...I slept well and when I woke up on Thursday my arms were barely hurting and they have continued to improve since then and are feeling pretty much back to normal now. I'm sure they just got really jarred from the fall and needed some time and rest to heal. Although my left knee still looks terrible, it doesn't hurt all that much, thankfully. It looked like this on Monday:

Like this on Tuesday:

And like this yesterday:

This seems to be one of the fun things about getting older. I don't think I've tripped and fallen down for a couple of decades, but this is the third time I've fallen and injured myself in the last 10 months! I feel like I used to be able to stop myself from falling when I tripped, but now I just go down...hard! However, I keep thinkng how much worse it could have been...what if I had broken both my wrists? I'm thankful it wasn't worse!

Well, I didn't mean to go on and on about that, but it had a fairly big impact on my week. Meanwhile, the last day of school for Seth was Tuesday. He got out two hours early on Tuesday but I had totally forgotten it was a 2 hour early release day so I was surprised when he showed up at 12:30 instead of 2:30! When he got home from school on Monday he had to clean his room because Tim's family was coming to visit and one person needed to sleep on the trundle bed in his room. He had so much stuff on his floor that there was no room to pull out the trundle. I did tell him weeks ahead of time that he was going to need to clean it before they came but of course he put it off until the last minute. I helped him a little bit and we managed to fill an entire garbage bag with just trash--papers and things like that--to throw away. We also filled a small box with items that he has outgrown to give away. There is still a lot of stuff in his room, as you can see from the pictures, but it is so much better than it was before. His entire floor as well as the upholstered chair (which pulls out and becomes the trundle bed) used to be covered with stuff:

Frank also had a busy week, of course...he started his new job on Monday. He has been experimenting with leaving the house at different times in the morning to figure out when the traffic is the best. He seems to be enjoying his new job so far although of course he is mostly going through training and getting things set up. His boss says after he gets through the initial training he can work from home one day per week and he can also choose a time to come in and a time to leave on his days in the office...he can start working as early as 7:30, or he can come in later and leave later. Since he wakes up pretty early most days, he will probably work 7:30 to 3:30. He has enjoyed being able to leave work at work...when he comes home, he doesn't have to do anything for work. He has continued to do quite a bit of work for one of his clients though so he's still been pretty busy. 

On Tuesday evening I had book club and Frank had a Bishopric meeting (his meeting was via Zoom). Tim & Rachelle and kids were coming to stay with us that evening so I left book club early. We discussed West With Giraffes which everyone loved. After I left, they chose the new book which is A Gentleman in Moscow. I read that book earlier this year and I loved it, too. The day they chose to meet next time is the first day of Girls' Camp so I probably won't be able to go unless I don't have to be at Girls' Camp until later in the day. I don't really know what the schedule is like yet. 

Tim and family arrived around 8:15 and it was fun to have them here with us! We're glad they didn't mind being crowded into our little house. Tim & Rachelle got the guest room, Zane slept on the trundle in Seth's room, Gwen slept on one of the living room couches, and Izak slept on an air mattress in the living room. Everyone claimed they slept great; hopefully they weren't just being nice!! We enjoyed visiting that evening and again in the morning. (Frank went to work before they woke up, though.) They planned to go to Gettysburg that day before heading to Philadelphia for a concert so Seth and I went with them. Or more accurately...we caravaned with them, since we took our car and they took theirs. Seth and I have been to Gettysburg many times, of course, but it is always very moving to visit there and it is so beautiful there as well! Of course our main motivation for going was to spend more time with Tim's family and we enjoyed visiting with them whenever we stopped. It was a really nice day...sunny and pleasant, not too hot. But as I mentioned before...it was a little too much for my still recovering body! I'm glad I went in spite of that, though. 

Seth and I got home around 4:00...we hadn't had lunch, just a few snacks, so we stopped to get some food on our way home. Then, as I mentioned before, I collapsed on the couch for a few hours until it was time to go to the youth activity. 

When we were leaving to go to the activity, we discovered that there was a beautiful rainbow. I took several photos both before we left home, on the way to the church, and once we got to the church. If you look closely, you can see in some of the photos that it was actually a double rainbow, although the second one was really faint. 

The youth activity was combined for all the YM and YW. We were having a "farewell party" for a brother and sister because their family is moving to Utah soon. (Have I mentioned that I am really tired of people in our ward moving to Utah?? Our ward has shrunk to half its size in the last couple of years!) I mean, I know people have to do what is best for their families but it sure is sad to see so many people move away. Anyway, for the activity we had a chicken dinner (from Roy Rogers...Frank picked up the food and they still gave him a 20% discount even though he doesn't work there anymore) and then played dodgeball, because these two youth really like sports. I feel like such a spoil sport, but there was no way I was going to play dodge ball with my achy body!! Besides, I was worried that I would fall and get hurt again. I can't even walk down a sidewalk without getting hurt, what are the chances I could play a game like dodgeball on a hard gym floor without getting hurt? It was fun to watch, though, and I wasn't the only leader who chose to watch rather than play. 

There's not much to say about Thursday. I got the regular chores done (grocery shopping, laundry, vacuuming) with help from Seth. I got some other little things done like trading out the salt & pepper shakers (I still had Easter / spring sets out). Even though I actually slept well Wednesday night, I was feeling sleepy in the early afternoon so I decided to take a quick nap and I was shocked when I woke up a couple of hours later! I have no idea why I needed a long nap like that. Today I had a YW presidency meeting which went really long so that took up the whole morning. Thankfully I was up early this morning so I got most of the budget done before the meeting started and I was able to finish it up quickly after the meeting. Tonight I am going to watch Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom because I haven't seen it yet and we have tickets to see Jurassic World: Dominion (the sequel) tomorrow morning. I'm getting to the point where I really don't like going to movies in the theater but Frank and Seth really want to see this movie and want me to come with them. We're trying out a new movie theater so maybe I will enjoy that more...I've heard it's pretty nice. 

Seth has been mostly vegetating in front of a screen the last couple of days but next week he will have much more limited screen time and we're going to set some goals for a few things for him to accomplish this summer. This summer is looking busy and I feel like it's going to go by really quickly. I am happy to report that I saw fireflies for the first time last night! That is one of my favorite things about summer in Maryland.