We had another fairly busy week. Last Friday evening, Frank and I went to a store looking for cushions to put on our kitchen chairs. We had a coupon for that store which expired that day and Frank has been wanting to get cushions for the kitchen chairs, so we decided to see if that store had some. They did, so we got some.
Saturday the 11th was really busy. I had another stake choir practice that morning although this time it was at the stake center which is a lot closer to our house. After the practice, I went to the grocery store to pick up some sandwiches I had ordered for a youth meeting being held on Sunday. Then I came home long enough to eat some lunch before going to get a haircut. Meanwhile, Frank was busy doing some work for a client. After I got home, he went to the store to get a part for one of our toilets and then he replaced the part. That toilet has had something wrong with it for a while and when we got our most recent water bill it was $100 more than usual, so we decided we'd better try to fix it. Hopefully that will solve the water problem too. I was busy for the rest of the day with usual Saturday chores, plus I filled out a survey for a study that Frank and I are participating in for a research team at the University of Maryland. The survey was supposed to take 60 to 90 minutes, but it took closer to 3 hours! (When Frank filled out his survey it took over 2 hours for him to do it too.)
Seth spent the entire afternoon and evening working on school work. He had fallen behind in a couple of his classes and had a lot of catch up work to do. He did stay focused, got a lot a done, and didn't even complain about it, so that was nice. I just hope next time he doesn't get behind in his classes. We took Seth out to dinner that night and let him pick where we went...he chose Outback Steakhouse.
On Sunday we had our usual 2 hour meeting block (plus Frank had bishopric meeting and ward council before that) and then afterwards we had a meeting for all the youth. Our stake usually does a stake Youth Standards Fireside, but this year they asked the wards to have a standards night instead. This was our standards "night" (it was actually at lunch time). Since it was lunch time, we served a meal and everyone ate while we had the meeting. We had previously asked the youth to write down standards-related questions they have. For the meeting, 5 questions had been chosen and a youth had been assigned to answer each of the questions. They did a good job. Then we had some time that was open for youth to ask any questions they would like to ask for the adults to answer. After that, we played a game using the rest of the questions the youth had submitted...they were questions geared more toward what boys want to ask girls and vice versa. For this game, a question was posed and then the girls had to write down what they thought the boys would answer and the boys had to write down what they thought the girls would answer (kind of Newlywed Game style). I think the youth had a lot of fun with that.
Jared came over to do laundry and have dinner with us on Monday. (Jessie was skiing with a friend so she didn't come.) They had plans for Wednesday evening so that's why they didn't come that day, as they usually do. They are both feeling better now. Jared was able to return to work on Thursday (he doesn't work Mondays or Wednesdays and they asked him to give it a little more time before coming in so he didn't work on Tuesday this week). Jared stayed after dinner and joined us for family night activity and treat, which was fun.
Tuesday was Valentine's Day; we don't usually make a big deal of that and this year was no different. We gave Seth a card and some candy and Frank and I gave each other cards. Frank also got me some roses. They are beautiful and I've been enjoying them all week.
We didn't have youth activities on Tuesday evening this week...the meeting we had on Sunday was our youth activity for this week. It was nice to have that evening free but I missed seeing the girls. Jared stopped by for a few hours on Tuesday afternoon...he had dropped Jessie off at class and did a little bit of shopping but it wasn't time to pick her up yet so he came over to hang out with me. The sink in our bathroom has been clogging up so he took the pipe apart and unclogged it for me. Unfortunately, he did something wrong so now the pipe is leaking. Frank tried to fix it that evening but it's still leaking a little and he hasn't had time to work on it since then. In the meantime, we have a bucket under the sink to catch the water. It's not a lot of water...just a small leak. Hopefully Frank will have a chance to look at it again soon.
I worked at VITA on Wednesday. It was really busy and I didn't even have time to eat lunch. I met a few new people...volunteers that I didn't work with last year. (Or last week either.) I completed quite a few tax returns but one taxpayer didn't like the end result...she didn't think she was getting a big enough refund, and thought I must have made a mistake somewhere. I tried to explain to her that the tax laws changed and many people are getting a smaller refund this year, mainly because of changes to the child tax credit, but she didn't understand. I felt frustrated that I wasn't able to explain to her better. I finally told her she was welcome to take a copy of her return and get it checked by someone else before getting it filed, and she decided to do that. It's too bad because she'll probably have to pay someone else to check it, only to find out that it was right all along. Oh well, I tried! Seth got out of school 2 hours early that day because it was midterm. On Wednesday evening Frank and I had a Zoom session for the study that we are in. We had to fill out some more (shorter) surveys and we also had a couple of recorded conversations. I have no idea what they are really trying to figure out from this study! We have to fill out surveys every evening for the next 2 weeks...much shorter than the first one, thankfully!
Yesterday Frank came home from work early because he wasn't feeling well...he's having possible kidney stone symptoms. He seemed to be in quite a bit of pain yesterday but thankfully it hasn't turned into anything really bad (and he seems to be a bit better today than yesterday). He tried calling our doctor yesterday but there must be something wrong with their phone system because he was on hold for over 2 hours and never got through. That was frustrating!! Today he worked from home. Hopefully he will feel a lot better soon.
This morning we took cereal and juice in to Seminary...they have breakfast every Friday and ask families to provide cereal and juice. Most of the cereal got eaten but there was a lot of juice left over. I went to the temple this morning. The DC temple was closed for the last 2 weeks for maintenance but opened again on Tuesday. I'm glad I made appointments weeks ago (before it closed) to go today to do initiatories and next week to do an endowment session, since it is super busy right now. It was raining a lot today but miraculously the traffic wasn't bad. I really enjoyed being in the temple again!
I talked to Scott a couple of times this week. After a lot of thought and prayer he decided to quit his job, which he did on Monday. He could use continued prayers because he is struggling with some depression and he's also just trying to figure out what direction his life needs to take. He has been applying for some new jobs.
I can't think of anything else to say about this week so I'll finish up with a sunrise photo from yesterday.
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