Finally, I only have one week's worth of events to report! Also, I have no pictures to add except these ones:
I took those photos last Friday morning (August 11th) but forgot to include them in my mammoth post last week. I've been waking up early (usually when Frank gets up) most mornings since we got home from Utah, but seeing awesome sunrises is one of the compensations. It's just as well that I'm waking up early since I'll be needing to do that every day when school starts.
Last Saturday (August 12th) was a pretty busy day. Seth and I went to help clean the church first thing that morning. Frank didn't go since his foot was still hurting but there were plenty of people there to help. After we finished cleaning, Seth drove around in the parking lot for a little while so he can start learning how my car works. That was the first time he's ever driven a car and he did okay but will need a lot more practice, of course, before he's ready to drive on the road. Frank finally heard back from the doctor about his x-rays while we were gone and everything on the x-rays looked normal so we have no idea why his foot has been hurting so much. It is still hurting, but it has improved some as the week has gone by so hopefully in time it will be completely better.
Seth mowed the lawn on Saturday and he and Frank spent quite a bit of time playing games together (I think they were playing online with the other boys at various times as well). Meanwhile, I practiced ukulele, cleaned the kitchen floor, ordered birthday presents for Scott and made a trip to JoAnn's to get some thread. One of the new blouses I got in Utah had a button fall off the first time I wore it so I needed to sew the button back on but I didn't have the right color of thread. I went ahead and added reinforcing stitches to all the other buttons as long as I was at it (a few of them looked pretty loose) so hopefully no more buttons will fall off that blouse anytime soon. While I was at JoAnn's, I also looked for some specific fabrics that I would need if I am going to finish the quilt blocks I got from Mom while I was in Utah. (She started making a quilt as a teenager but never finished it.) I did find some possibilities but didn't find everything I was looking for. I spent the rest of Saturday going through all my notes and emails about Seminary and made some lists of everything we still need to do to prepare for the beginning of the year and emailed those lists to my team teacher.
It was nice to attend church in our own ward on Sunday for the first time in a month. I went to RS and enjoyed it, but I also missed going to YW. I miss spending time with the girls and I miss talking with the other leaders that I've been working with. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment for me! After church it was nice to relax and have time for scripture reading and family night. I also watched a church movie called An Ensign to the Nations which I have seen several times in the past but not recently. It has been a favorite of mine since the first time I saw it. It tells the story of the growth of the church in several areas of the world. It was made in 1997 as part of the sesquicentennial celebration of the pioneers arriving in Utah so it's pretty old now and one thing that is interesting about watching it now is to realize how much more the church has grown since then. For example, when they talked about the growth of the church in South America, they talked about the church growing from only 1 member to over 2,000,000 in South America and then mentioned that there are 3 temples in South America with 3 more announced. Six temples in all of South and Central America?? Now there are hundreds! Anyway, I enjoyed watching it again and I even got Seth interested in watching some of it with me although he was too restless to watch the whole thing.
The rest of the week has been pretty busy for me but it's been good to get back into a somewhat normal routine. I've been able to exercise every day and get all the regular chores done. Seth has been busy because he has Driver's Ed every day from 3:00 to 6:00 pm. It's an online class, so I don't have to take him anywhere but I've been keeping an eye on him and making sure he's staying focused. He has also been checking on the neighbors cats every evening after his class ends and I have gone with him to do that every day except Wednesday (on Wednesday Frank took him and then they went to the church right after for the YM / YW activity).
Most of my spare time this week has been occupied with doing things to get ready for Seminary. On Monday morning my team teacher, Tammy, and I met together to go through the list of things we need to do and divided them up and also made plans to do a few things together. We have an informational meeting for the students and their parents on Sunday evening so we planned that too. There was a lot to discuss and decide so our Monday morning meeting lasted about 3 hours. On Tuesday morning we met together again...this time we had a brief meeting with the sister missionaries serving in our ward so they could show us what they do to mark their scriptures (so we can pass that on to the Seminary kids). We talked about marking both physical copies of the scriptures and digital copies of the scriptures and I learned a few things. After talking with them, Tammy and I went around to drop off flyers about the information meeting and welcome treats to all the incoming freshmen, as well as to a few of the older students who are a bit "on the fence" about whether or not they will come to Seminary this year. We didn't let anyone know we were coming, but miraculously we found everyone at home except for one freshman girl (and we did get to talk to her older brother and her mom...she was just babysitting somewhere so she wasn't home). We were well received and it was really great to meet all the new students and get to know them just a little bit. One set of twin brothers live on base at Ft. Detrick, so we had to get passes to go to their house which took a bit of time but we were able to meet them too so it was worth it. Meeting with the missionaries and all of those drop off visits took all morning on Tuesday as well. On Tuesday evening I attended an online Zoom meeting which was a training on how to use Wise 2, which is the program used to take Seminary attendance and record reading and so forth.
Since Tuesday, I haven't had any more meetings for Seminary but I have spent quite a bit of time creating some documents (like a birthday list of all the kids in Seminary) and preparing a power point presentation for our information meeting on Sunday. We also decided which student we wanted to ask to be the Seminary class president for the semester and I talked to her mom to get her approval and then talked to the student and she agreed to be the president so that was good too! So all in all, it was a busy week getting things ready for Seminary but we have mostly gotten through our "to do" list now, so I'm feeling a little less overwhelmed. Now I just need to start preparing lessons...! That's overwhelming in and of itself.
I mentioned earlier that Frank and Seth went to the YM / YW activity on Wednesday night. They had a Capture the Flag Nerf Gun War. I think Seth had a lot of fun but his legs have been sore since then because he spent the whole evening "tactical crouch running", as he calls it. While they were at the activity, I decided to go grocery shopping. I normally do that Thursday morning but I had a really big list this time and I just thought it would be better to get it done early. I'm glad I did...Thursday was a lot less hectic than it would have been. (My list was larger than usual because it was my turn to take treats for book chat so I needed to get stuff for that, I need to make treats for the Seminary information meeting on Sunday so I had to buy stuff for that, and Frank is getting a colonoscopy on Wednesday so I had to get a bunch of clear liquids and other things like that for him. The colonoscopy is just routine, since he's over 50 now, so need for concern.)
Thursday evening I had book chat. I barely managed to finish the book a few days before...thank goodness it was pretty short, because it was not an easy read. We read The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and I had to read many parts of it 2 or 3 times before I felt like I was beginning to understand what he was saying! I still think I missed a lot and I didn't have much to say at book chat but thankfully other people in my group are more intelligent than me and so I understand it a lot better now after our discussion. (Although everyone admitted that it was hard to follow and many others had to read things through multiple times to understand it, just like I did.) I brought a variety of snacks including some "homemade vegan Snickers bars". Rachelle gave me that recipe while I was in Utah and I decided to try it. They were pretty easy to make and actually turned out to be pretty tasty. Everybody liked them. One of the members of our book club has celiac and some other food allergies and she appreciated that she could eat these. The next book we are going to read is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
Today I slept in until 7:00 so I feel like I haven't been able to get as much done. I updated the budget which thankfully took a lot less time than it did last week! Our kitchen water faucet quit working this morning (it has a motion sensor feature and requires batteries) but with a little bit of text instructions from Frank, Seth and I were able to figure out how to change the batteries so it's working again. Jared & Jessie will be coming over for dinner tonight so we are looking forward to seeing them again. We haven't seen them since we got home from Utah because they were gone to a family reunion all last week with Jessie's family.
I'm really grateful that Mom's surgery went so well this week (even though the delay to get it done was crazy!!) and that she's recovering so well with very little pain.
That's all I have to report this week. School starts on Wednesday so I'm sure next week will be eventful.
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