Weekly Review September 29 '23

Here we go with categories again. I don't think there's a lot to report this week, but we'll see.

Frank: He was in the middle of moving offices at work when I wrote last week. Things are still a bit chaotic in the new space...some people still don't have internet access, etc...so it wasn't a super productive week for his department. He didn't have to work any extra hours over the weekend which was fortunate because he actually was sick all day on Saturday. He was a lot better on Sunday and seems to be fine now. Frank had a dentist appointment Wednesday morning...just his biannual checkup...and his teeth look great.

Weather: We had a lot of rain over the weekend and we've continued to have some rain throughout the week. Most mornings when we got up, we could tell it had rained sometime in the night. We definitely need the moisture, so that's good. Seth is going to have to mow the lawn again soon...I'm sure he's not going to be happy about that. Temperatures are still pretty moderate, with cool or chilly mornings but mostly pleasant temperatures during the days. 

Seminary: This is still dominating my life but not quite as much as before. I teach two lessons next week plus I'll be putting together a General Conference Jeopardy game for one of the other days. I got the two lessons mostly prepared by Wednesday and it's getting a little easier to prepare lessons...I'm not taking quite as much time. It definitely feels like less of a mental weight to prepare lessons two at a time instead of trying to figure out five! I'm still not sleeping very well and had one night this week when I only slept from 8:00 to 11:00. If I get 5 or 6 hours of sleep, that is a good night. It's discouraging and exhausting but I hope at some point I will start sleeping better. In the meantime, I can really relate to the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with an angel all night! I feel like that's what I've been doing nearly every night for the last 4 weeks. I've had the chance to talk to a couple of my friends this week who have taught Seminary in the past and they all say it is really hard at first and it gets better, so that is encouraging to hear. Since I got my lessons for next week prepared by Wednesday of this week, yesterday was a much more relaxing day for me. It's the first day since Seminary started that has felt "normal" to me. All my days used to be like that. I am enjoying the kids and we have some good times. I have also had a lot of inspiring moments. I'm learning a lot and I'm grateful.

Seth: He found out on Saturday that he had to give a talk on Sunday. (It was a mix up related to the change in bishopric.) He wasn't thrilled about that, but let's be honest...he wouldn't have prepared his talk before Saturday even if he had known about it earlier! He did a pretty good job on his talk; it was just pretty short. Seth had Monday off of school which he enjoyed. (And I did too since that meant I didn't have to get up super early!) He's still trying to get caught up with some of the school work he missed when he was sick last week. Yesterday he didn't get up for Seminary so he had to walk to school (I don't get home from Seminary in time to take him to school.) On Wednesday he went to YM...they had a combined activity with the YW and they learned some Polynesian dancing. 

Clothes: In spite of the fact that I purchased quite a few new clothing items while I was in Utah, I ended up doing more clothes shopping last Saturday. That's because most of the things I bought in Utah are for summer / milder weather. I realized these last few weeks when it has been chilly in the mornings that I don't have a lot of Sunday clothes for colder weather. I mean, I have plenty if I only need to wear them once a week, but now I wear Sunday clothes 6 days a week! I was able to get a couple of long sleeve shirts / blouses and some sweaters, including a few cardigan sweaters which I can wear over the top of other things that I already have. Hopefully that will be enough to keep me going through the winter months. 

Book Club: I had book club last night. We discussed Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Now we are going to read The Spanish Daughter by Lorena Hughes. I put it on hold at the library but I'm third in the queue so I'm not sure how soon I will get it. I enjoyed book club but I was the first one to leave, since it was already past my bed time. 

Temple: Our stake is having a stake temple night tonight. Frank works a few miles from the temple, so he is going to go straight to the temple from work. I got a ride with a friend in my ward so I will meet Frank at the temple and we will be able to ride home together. I'm looking forward to going to the temple but hope I will be able to stay awake!

That's actually all I can think of for this week. I told you there wasn't much! I'm really looking forward to General Conference this weekend.

Weekly Review September 22 '23

 I'm going to do categories again this week. That just seems to be working better for me lately.

Frederick Fair: The county fair started last Friday and goes through tomorrow. Frank got admission tickets, a parking pass, and ride tickets for free from one of his clients, so we decided to take a break from our work and went to the fair for about 4 hours on Saturday afternoon. We had enough admission tickets that Jared & Jessie could get in too and we tried to coordinate with them to go together, but that didn't work out. We did actually end up being there at the same time for about an hour, but didn't see each other. Anyway, I enjoyed visiting the arts & crafts building (to see all the quilts, crocheted items, etc. as well as photography) while Frank & Seth looked at vegetables and small animals like chickens and rabbits. Then they joined me at the arts & crafts building for a while. After that, we went to see the larger animals like goats, pigs, sheep, and cows. Frank and I took a ride on the ferris wheel, and we all had a few fair treats. It was fun to get out of the house for a while and it was a beautiful day. 

I got a kick out of this cross stitch piece:

Some of the quilts:

Ferris wheel:

Seth is standing under the overhang of that building (in black shorts and black tshirt):

The fair from above:

Weather: Seth actually had to mow the lawn on Saturday because we had enough rain that it started to grow again. This week has still been mostly dry although we've had some rain. Most days have been sunny with cool temperatures in the mornings and pleasant during the days. I'm starting to pull long pants and sweaters out to wear some days, but it's not cold, just cool. We have a tropical storm coming in tomorrow and it looks like we'll have lots of rain and cooler temperatures all next week. 

Seth / School Schedule: Seth was sick this week and missed two days of school. That's pretty unusual for him. When we woke him up Tuesday morning he was all stuffed up and he said he'd been awake a lot in the night so he wanted to skip Seminary to get a little more sleep and then get up for school. I went to Seminary without him but sometime during Seminary he texted me (I was teaching, so didn't see it until the end of the class) that he had thrown up and he had a splitting headache, so he had decided not to go to school. He felt feverish to me when I got home, but according to the thermometer he didn't have a fever. (I'm not sure the thermometer was working properly though...I think it needs a new battery.) Seth didn't throw up again, but his head definitely hurt quite a bit that day and he was quite congested. He also woke up with a stiff / sore neck on Sunday and that was still bothering him too. He was well enough to go back to Seminary and school on Thursday and he seems to be mostly back to normal now. It wasn't a great week for him to be sick because today is midterm and he missed two tests which there hasn't been time to make up yet. (Not to mention missed assignments which also need to be turned in.) Today they had a very short day...got out 3 1/2 hours early. He will be able to take the missed tests next week and I'm sure his teachers will work with him on getting missed assignments in since he was absent two days so in the end it should all work out okay, I hope. Since Wednesday was one of the days that Seth stayed home sick from school, he didn't go to the YM activity that evening. We never got an email about it, so I have no idea what they did. Last night I needed to make some copies for my lesson this morning, so I convinced Seth to come with me to the church to do that and then he got to practice driving in the church parking lot for about 20 minutes. He is doing better...getting more comfortable with it.

Seminary: This was my week to teach and it was definitely a challenging week still although it wasn't any worse than last week. I feel like Seminary is an emotional roller coaster ride for sure...I seem to be down in the dumps, then pull out of it and hit a big high, and then go shooting back down again. I always seem to hit the lows mid week, and then start to feel a lot better at the end of the week. Lack of sleep probably has a lot to do with that! I still had a rough time sleeping a lot of nights this week, although I am starting to fall asleep earlier at least. I'm usually asleep by 9:00 at the latest, and most nights I was asleep between 8:00 and 8:30. Most mornings I still woke up hours before I needed to (I had another night where I woke up at midnight and didn't go back to sleep) but yesterday I woke up only 30 minutes early and today I slept until 10 minutes before the alarm was supposed to go off. That means I got around 7 hours of sleep both of those nights, which is pretty good! Lesson preparation still took a lot longer than it should but I had some experiences this week that helped me adjust my thinking a bit. I spent a ton of time on Wednesday preparing Thursday's lesson and was feeling really discouraged that in spite of that I didn't feel like it was very well prepared. I thought it was going to be boring. I wanted to look at it some more and try to make it better, but then I had the distinct impression that I needed to leave it alone. I kept having that feeling over and over. So I did leave it alone, and then the lesson went really well. That helped me feel a lot calmer about today's lesson. I only had a few hours yesterday to prepare today's lesson but I kept feeling like that would be okay, and miraculously it all came together rather quickly. In some ways, it almost seems better for me if I have a time limit...lesson prep seems to fill up whatever time I have to give it! I feel like I am constantly learning new things and figuring things out, which is somewhat encouraging...I really am hopeful that in time things will be a lot better. It has definitely been a lot harder and a lot bigger adjustment than I anticipated! But in spite of that, I have seen a ton of tender mercies and know I am getting a lot of inspiration and help. 

Overall, my lessons went well this week...some were better than others. I'd say Monday and Thursday were the best days. One thing we have figured out is that most of the kids in this class will not volunteer answers to questions, but if you call on them they will usually give a pretty good answer. So I tried calling on people instead of just asking questions to the group as a whole, and that seemed to really help. I don't really like doing that because I worry I am going to put someone on the spot or embarrass them, but so far they have responded well. I tried a variety of different things this week to keep them engaged like object lessons, music, using white boards to answer questions, and breaking into small groups. I feel like after these three weeks I am starting to really see their different personalities and they really are great kids and make me laugh. On Monday I used cinnamon rolls for an object lesson. I was teaching a lesson about going to divinely appointed sources (scriptures, prophets, prayer, etc.) to get answers to their questions. To help them recognize the importance of getting information from trustworthy sources, I showed them the cinnamon rolls and asked who wanted one. Of course everyone did! Then I asked "what if I told you that I was walking in downtown Frederick and found these cinnamon rolls in a box on the sidewalk with a sign that said "Free", so I decided to bring them to give to you?" There was a pause and then one of the boys said "I'll take my chances!!" That made me (and everyone else) laugh. Of course, after making my point that even things that sound good or look good might not actually be safe (they need to know the source), I told them that I actually made the cinnamon rolls myself, they were perfectly safe, and that they could each have one at the end of class. Overall, the kids are quite good natured most of the time and I am enjoying them.

Visual from one of my lessons this week, to help the youth memorize the reference and key scripture phrase for one of their doctrinal mastery scriptures:

After the last two weeks, both my team teacher and I have decided that teaching a week at a time is harder than we anticipated, so we are going to try splitting things up now...I will teach Mondays and Tuesdays and she will teach Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays, we will try to have a guest teacher. (This is something our stake encourages us to do and we haven't had a guest teacher yet because we wanted to get into a routine first.) There's no school on Monday so we only have four days next week. Originally we were going to teach two days each but because of the way the schedule was going to fall and with General Conference next weekend and some of the things we're planning to do for that (hard to explain), my team teacher actually offered to teach next week. Right now she is planning to do that, although I told her once she gets into planning if she decides it's too much, I can teach at least one day. We'll see how that goes. Even though I will teach the same number of lessons however we decide to split things up, for some reason teaching 2 or 3 lessons each week seems a lot less overwhelming than teaching 5 lessons one week and 0 lessons the next week. I'm interested to see if it actually is less overwhelming in practice! I honestly have no idea how anyone taught a Seminary class all alone. I can't imagine having to teach every day, every week, for a whole school year. Only doing half of the days has nearly killed me. 

Well, you can see that Seminary is still taking most of my mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical energies. I hope you aren't all getting tired of hearing about it. Maybe I will be able to talk about something else eventually!

Frank: He's having a busy week because at work their entire division is moving to another building. The building he's been in is going to be demolished to make way for a new road (or something like that). They started packing things up yesterday and the move is supposed to be happening today. He may have to put in some extra hours this weekend so that things are ready to go in the new space on Monday. Unfortunately, he doesn't like the new space all that much. He will be in a cubicle in the new space...in the old building he had an office with a door. His foot seems to be mostly better now; we're grateful for that. He has continued to be really patient and supportive and helpful while I've been navigating the adjustment to Seminary, which I really appreciate! He has been enjoying a rest from having a church calling but he has to meet with someone on Sunday morning so it looks like he'll be getting a new calling soon.

Other stuff: I was able to go to the temple yesterday. I am planning to go on Fridays this school year, but since Seth got out 3 1/2 hours early today there wasn't time for me to go today. The session I was in yesterday was almost completely full...maybe only 1 or 2 empty seats and I was sitting in the next to the back row on the men's side because there were a lot more women than men. It was really cool to see the temple so busy! I always, always love going there!!

 I got to talk to both Scott and Tanner again this week. It is always good to hear from them! Scott really needs prayers that he will find a job. (He has a small part time job, but he really needs a full time job...and one that is somewhat flexible because he is also planning to go back to school.) 

Jared and Jessie are coming over for dinner tonight. Last Friday when they were here, Jared started getting a lot of messages from people at his work. Sadly, there was a suicide at the shooting range where he works that afternoon. Jared was supposed to work on Saturday but the store and range were closed. He went back to work on Monday. I'm really grateful that he wasn't working the afternoon this happened but sorry for those who were. It must have been really tramautic. Jared worked extra hours this week to fill in for people who weren't feeling up to going in. 

On Sunday, our bishop told my team teacher and I that the stake president had contacted him to say that they are going to mount a television on the wall in the RS room and he wanted our input on where it should go (since we teach in that room every morning, and often use the television). We are pretty happy about that! It will be so nice to have the television there instead of dragging the television cart from the library to the RS room every morning. Not sure how long it will take to actually get the new television mounted...I'm not holding my breath...but it's nice to know that it's in the works. 

I've probably forgotten something, but that is all I can remember to report this week.

Weekly Review September 15 '23

I think categories is going to be the way to go this week again. 

Update on Frank's foot: He went back to the doctor on Monday and found out that he was supposed to have been taking the anti-inflamatory medicine twice a day...the pharmacy messed up and put "take as needed" on the bottle. The doctor prescribed a different anti-inflamatory medicine which seems to be helping. It still isn't totally healed but it looks better than it did. He was able to work from home Monday through Wednesday to give him a chance to rest his foot and keep it elevated. He was able to go to work yesterday and today (although he is working from home this afternoon because he had to go do some things at their data center and it is about halfway in between our house and his office, so he just decided to come home rather than go back to his office.) 

 Sleep: It was still a really bad week for sleeping. I can't remember details anymore...it's all a blur...except that I woke up around 2:30 one morning and another morning I woke up at midnight. (Never went back to sleep either of those mornings). I even tried Melatonin a couple of nights and it did help me fall asleep faster, but I didn't stay asleep long. I tried not to take naps during the day, hoping that I would sleep better at night, but I took a two hour nap on Wednesday because I just couldn't cope anymore without a little more sleep. I did finally sleep well last night, though. I went to bed at 8:00 and woke up at 3:00. I know that's still super early but that adds up to 7 hours of sleep which felt pretty fantastic after all those bad nights. 

Seminary: This still consumed most of my week but yesterday and today have been better. I didn't teach this week--my team teacher did--but I teach every day next week so I was trying to prepare all my lessons for next week. I'm still not done, but I have quite a bit prepared. I wanted to get one lesson prepared each day but things didn't go the way I planned. The same as last week...the lessons are quite challenging and time consuming to prepare and I just kept running out of time. Plus I was tired of course and just not very efficient. We also had a parent get really upset with us for sending out a photo of the September calendar...she's blind, so couldn't see the photo, which we knew but instead I sent her a text message letting her know what day her daughter was assigned to do the devotional. I just didn't think to send her the rest of the information on the calendar (other devotionals, who was bringing breakfast on Fridays) because it didn't really pertain to her but she wanted all the information and felt like we had thoughtlessly excluded her. I saw her angry messages (which she sent to the entire parent group, not just to the teachers) when I woke up way too early on Tuesday morning so that wasn't a great way to start the day and I was in tears and distracted and unable to concentrate for most of that day, which didn't help with my need to be preparing lessons. (We did get things smoothed over, though.)

All in all, it was a really rough week and I felt totally overwhelmed for a lot of it. However, things started to get better yesterday. It didn't start great--still not enough sleep--but when I was lying awake trying to go back to sleep I started praying (not the first time I did that this week, believe me!) I had a calm feeling come over me. I have also been praying for help all week, but I started asking specifically what I could do to manage my time and balance things out better. I asked "please show me how to make this work". Then all day on Thursday I kept having ideas come into my head. Things like "read the lesson and then think about it while you do housework" and "set a timer for an hour, work on your lesson until it goes off, go do something else you need to do and then come back to your lesson and set another timer" and "break down the tasks instead of trying to do everything at once" and "work on it in little increments, like when you are waiting at appointments". Then another thought came to me: "set your alarm for 30 minutes earlier in the morning." That seems crazy, but I thought about it and realized that in the back of my mind I've been anxious that getting up at the time I planned was not going to be enough time to exercise, shower, and get to Seminary on time. I have always been on time so far, but I've been getting up at least 30 minutes (if not hours) before my planned wake up time and I usually haven't been ready to go way in advance. (The mornings I woke up really early, I got up and worked on lessons for a while before getting ready). If I set my alarm 30 minutes earlier, my subconscious mind won't be worrying that I'm not going to get up in time and I might sleep better. So I tried it...I set my alarm for 30 minutes earlier before I went to bed last night and it worked! I slept solidly until shortly before the alarm was supposed to go off. I'm getting up earlier, but if I go to sleep around 8:00 and actually sleep, I will get a good night's sleep every night. I'm feeling profoundly grateful for those many little answers to my desperate prayers!

The actual classes this week went really well, overall. Every day is a little different and the kids are more attentive and responsive some days than others. We're figuring out what works and what doesn't work. I feel like we are getting them to open up more, though. I was really pleased that some of the kids who hadn't commented on anything yet started volunteering comments this week...and really good comments, too! My team teacher Tammy is a really good teacher and I am learning a lot from watching her. We also end up talking after Seminary nearly every morning for about 30 minutes, discussing how things went and ideas we have and how much we're struggling with lesson preparations (she's encountered the same difficulties as I have) and so forth. I am super grateful to have such a wonderful team teacher! I also have a couple of really sweet friends who have sent me really kind words as well as positive comments their kids have said about Seminary which has been really comforting. 

Weather: We've had some rain here and there and the temperatures have cooled off a lot. As a matter of fact, the last couple of days the mornings have been a little cool. The days are very pleasant and that has been nice!

Other stuff: I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah on Monday. She went out of town for a couple of weeks shortly after we returned from Utah so we hadn't had a chance to talk for quite a while and had to get all caught up on everything going on in our lives. It was nice!

Seth had an orthodontist appointment on Thursday after school. They just wanted to check his retainers. They look good, and he doesn't have to go back for 6 months. 

There was a RS activity Thursday evening and I wanted to go...it sounded fun...but I wanted to sleep more! And since I actually did go to sleep early and slept well, I don't regret that decision.

This morning we had signed up to take breakfast in to Seminary. We took 3 boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk, and most of it got eaten so I guess everyone liked it.

Today after Seminary I went to the temple to do initiatories. I was able to take one of the sisters I minister to plus her husband with me. They are in their early eighties and aren't comfortable driving to the temple anymore so they were happy to get a ride down there and I was happy to have some company for the drive. It was really sweet, too, because this sister was able to do initiatories for her sister who passed away a few years ago. 

On Sunday we got a new bishopric, as I mentioned in last week's post. Frank got an email from a member of the stake presidency on Saturday asking to meet with him Sunday morning so we wondered a bit about that but he just wanted to officially extend a release to Frank. Anyway, our new bishopric will be great, and Frank is happy to get a rest. The whole meeting was testimonies from the outgoing and incoming bishoprics. Frank did a great job!

Speaking of Frank, he's been really awesome and patient this week offering me sympathy and support and doing lots of things to help me, including making dinner one night. 

Seth went to YM on Wednesday evening but since neither Frank and I had to be there, I'm not sure exactly what they did...Seth says they did a 'boys vs girls Jeopardy kind of thing". Frank and I went grocery shopping while he was gone. 

Last Saturday was a busy but good day. We watched the BYU football game and we all went through our clothes and weeded out things that we aren't wearing or that don't fit. Actually, Frank and Seth just did their sock drawers, but it's a start.

I talked to both Scott and Tanner this week; it was good to get caught up with them. Tonight Jared & Jessie came over for dinner. We weren't a very lively group because all of us are tired, but it was nice to see them. 

That's all the news from us for this week.

Weekly Review September 8 '23

 I think it's going to be easier to report this week by using categories. 

First, an update on Frank's foot: It did improve over the first couple of days after he got the antibiotics. He tried to rest it as much as possible. He was able to go to church on Sunday, although he was limping, couldn't wear his Sunday socks or shoes, and he skipped his after church meeting (ward youth council) to go home and put his foot up. It kept improving earlier this week, but around Wednesday he started complaining that his toe was hurting again. It was really bothering him last night, too. He had a follow up with our regular family doctor this afternoon. Our doctor is somewhat concerned. He took a photo of Frank's foot and wants to see him again on Monday to check his foot again (and compare it to the photo). He also said the antibiotic he's been on isn't working well enough so he prescribed a more powerful antibiotic, and ordered Frank to keep his foot elevated as much as possible over the weekend. Hopefully this new antibiotic will make a difference. Thankfully, his ankle is a lot better than it was so he's not in as much pain as he was last weekend but of course we'd like to see this infection knocked out for good.

Seminary: This pretty much consumed my whole life this week. I spent last Friday evening preparing my second lesson (I only had to teach twice this week) and got it mostly figured out. In spite of that, I still feel like I spent a lot of the day on Wednesday fine tuning both lessons and finishing up extra little tasks like choosing an opening song for each lesson. Then after my first lesson on Thursday morning, I decided I needed to make some more adjustments to Friday's lesson, based on what happened on Thursday, so I spent a lot of Thursday figuring all that out. I'm really not obsessing about teaching the perfect lesson or doing anything elaborate and I have no idea why it's taking so much time. I think it's mostly that it's all so new to me. I'm not used to the lesson formats yet, it's hard for me to judge how much time things are going to take, and it's tricky not having a paper manual (I can't jot notes in the margins). There is also a whole technology piece since I need to connect my laptop to a television to show video clips and I've also been getting a crash course on all the digital scripture marking features of gospel library. It's all added up to a lot of time. Plus I don't know a lot of the kids very well yet so I'm having to figure out what works and what doesn't with this particular group. I'm sure I will be able to prepare lessons more quickly after some practice. At least, I'd better figure it out because otherwise I will get nothing else done for the next couple of years (or however long I have this calling). I didn't have any appointments or other responsibilities this week either (besides usual household chores) and certainly not every week will be like that so I will have less available time to work on lesson preparations.

On Sunday after church my team teacher and I met for a couple of hours to do some final planning and discuss several things. I also passed on information to her that I got at the training the week before as well as some thoughts I had during stake conference. Seth wasn't too happy that we met for that long because he was waiting for me to take him home after the ward youth council meeting ended, but he survived.  

When I wasn't actually actively working on Seminary lessons this week, I was thinking about them and a lot of other Seminary related things and I had a pretty rough couple of anxious days. I started feeling a lot better on Wednesday afternoon and when I was teaching I felt pretty calm. I actually felt more anxious on the days I wasn't teaching, who knows why! I definitely prayed a lot this week and feel like those prayers were answered, so I'm grateful.

So in spite of how it may sound. Seminary actually went pretty well this week. My companion teacher taught on Tuesday and Wednesday and I taught on Thursday and Friday. Since Tuesday was the first day, she planned some games to help us all get to know each other better. She based the games on the travels of the Apostle Paul and had them move from one room to another...each room represented a location Paul traveled to and she told a story about what happened to him there and then had a game that related to that. (She's super clever; I would never be able to think up something like that!) I think the kids mostly enjoyed it. We had 22 kids that had committed to probably come and all 22 of them came on Monday. We had 2-4 kids missing each of the other three days this week, but they were different kids each day so overall, most of the kids were there every day and those who missed days didn't miss a bunch. On Thursday I taught a lesson about the Resurrection of Christ based on the truths taught in 1 Corinthians 15 and today we worked on memorizing the scripture reference and key scripture phrase for 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 ("As in Adam all die, even so in Christ will all be made alive"). On Thursday I ran out of time to do the last section of the lesson which is why I decided to adjust Friday's lesson. I did feel like both lessons went pretty well though and my team teacher is awesome and gave me good feedback including telling me what things she thought I did well, which is always good to hear. 

The class is good...they are good kids! Out of those 22 kids, we only have 6 girls so it's a whole lot of boys. Our biggest challenge is going to be getting them to participate well. I knew this would be the case, since I attended Seminary last year about 4 or 5 times and was surprised at how little they talked or answered questions. A lot of them kept their heads down on the table and were probably napping. It seems like they have gotten into a pretty passive mindset about being responsible for their own learning the last couple of years so that is a mindset we are trying to change. They actually did pretty well overall this first week although getting them to answer questions wasn't too easy. We'll keep working on that! The parents take turns providing a breakfast treat every Friday and today we had donuts...that seemed to help them all wake up a bit more! 

Sleep: This was NOT a good week for sleeping. I went to bed between 8:00 and 9:00 every night but I had a hard time falling asleep (usually didn't fall asleep until 10:00), I was restless and woke up a few times briefly most nights and every night I woke up hours before the alarm was supposed to go off (at 4:00 am). Tuesday I woke up at 12:45 am! Wednesday was 3:00ish I think, Thursday was 3:30 (my best night) and this morning I woke up around 2:30. I did take a two hour nap on Tuesday after Seminary from 8:00 to 10:00 am, but have not had any naps since then. So yes...I'm tired! 

Exercise: I exercised every day but Monday (might as well...I was awake anyway!) It does help me feel better, both physically and emotionally.

Weather: After having a few beautiful days last week, this week was super hot and miserable. Most days were real scorchers with highs in the mid to high 90s and heat indexes over 100. We had severe heat warnings a couple of days. This means that I picked up Seth from school every day because I didn't think it was nice to make him walk home during a severe heat warning. Yesterday wasn't quite as hot and I was going to let him walk home but then happened to check the weather and discovered we were under a severe thunderstorm warning. It looked like it probably wouldn't hit until after he got home, but I started to hear rumbles of thunder so I decided I'd better go pick him up. I'm not positive he would have made it home before the storm hit so it's a good thing I did that. The wind really blew and rain really came down for a good 15 minutes. It rained a bit more later that evening so the grass is looking slightly revived (but not much). It's looking fairly possible that we'll get more thunderstorms tonight, and there's a chance of rain in the forecast for the next 3 or 4 days so hopefully we'll get some more rain.

Jared & Jessie: They come over for dinner last night. We enjoyed spending some time with them but we didn't get to play a game together because Frank had some work to do for a client and I was still trying to make adjustments to my Seminary lesson. Jared also wasn't feeling really great...he had some stomach issues going on and he also had a tooth ache. His stomach is feeling a bit better today and he texted me some questions about our dental insurance so hopefully he made an appointment with a dentist to get his tooth looked at. Jessie is starting a new job on Tuesday. She will be working at our eye doctor's office. Her mom works there too so that will be nice for her. 

Labor Day: Frank had the day off work and Seth didn't have school so we went out to breakfast together. It was nice to have some family time. 

And a few odds and ends: On Saturday a girl who grew up in our ward got married (she's around Tanner's age). Several women in our ward were asked to make a food item to help with the reception. I made a sweet potato casserole. I took the casserole and a card over to the church shortly before the reception started but I didn't stay because Frank wasn't feeling well. The medicine he was taking for his foot was causing him some issues with his stomach. He's doing better now, though. 

We found out on Wednesday evening that our new bishopric will be sustained this Sunday. Frank hasn't heard anything else so we're assuming he isn't going to be in the new bishopric. Unless, of course, they are waiting until the last minute to call him (that's what happened last time) but we doubt that will happen again.

Today I was able to go to the temple. I was concerned about driving there and back on so little sleep, but ultimately decided to go anyway. Miraculously, I didn't get sleepy during the drive there or back and I was only slightly sleepy during the session. I'm so glad I went...it was wonderful to be there again!

I can't think of anything else that happened this week, so I will end on that happy note.

Weekly Review September 1 '23

 When I left off last week, I was getting a few things done before heading to the adult session of our Stake Conference. I took dinner with me and Frank and I ate together at the stake center and then attended that meeting. The meeting was excellent and I had a number of thoughts about things related to Seminary. My only complaint about the meeting is that the air conditioning in the chapel was broken so it got pretty warm. You know it has to get really warm for me to complain...I usually freeze at church when the air conditioning is working properly.

On Sunday we went to our own building to watch a broadcast of the general session of confernce. That meeting was also really good and I had more thoughts come to me about Seminary. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner that evening. Jared came too...Jessie wasn't feeling great so she didn't come. We enjoyed visiting with both Jared and the sisters. 

This week I didn't have any appointments or events on my calendar but I have still managed to keep pretty busy, and a couple of things came up as the week went on too. Frank made an appointment for us to talk with our financial advisor on Wednesday midday. The advisor had reached out to us last week to see if we could talk...we both opened up Roth IRAs at the beginning of this year and the balance in both of them had reached a point where we could decide what investment strategy we wanted them to use for those accounts. We also had a couple of other questions we wanted to ask. The meeting was only 30 minutes and via phone call, so we didn't have to go anywhere, which was nice. 

I made an appointment to go to the temple on Thursday morning but I wasn't able to go. That's because Frank woke up Thursday morning with his right foot / ankle hurting a lot. You may remember his big toe on his right foot was hurting a couple of weeks ago but x-rays didn't show any problems. It gradually got better but on Wednesday Frank mentioned that it was bothering him a little bit. By the time he and Seth got home from YM on Wednesday night (they combined with the YW and cleaned toys & organzied things in the nursery), he mentioned that his ankle was hurting too. He didn't sleep very well Wednesday night and woke up Thursday with his foot hurting enough that he could barely walk on it. I decided I needed to cancel my temple appointment so that I could take him in to have his foot looked at. He didn't want to wait to get an appointment at our doctor's office after it opened up, so I took him with me to drop Seth off at school at 7:00 am and then took him straight to the ER and dropped him off. I came back home to shower (I had just finished exercising when Frank woke up) and to get some other work done and Frank and I kept in touch through texting so I would know when to pick him up. 

It turns out he has cellulitis, which is a skin infection caused by bacteria that enter a crack or break in the skin, such as a scratch, bite, or cut. It can become pretty serious if not treated. Chances are that he already had the infection a few weeks ago when he saw the doctor but that doctor (not our usual family doctor; another one in the practice) didn't follow up after the x-rays didn't show any issues, so now it has moved into his ankle. The ER doctor prescribed antibiotics as well as pain medication and a medication for nausea.  After I picked him up from the ER, he had some lunch and then took a nap. Later on, I picked up his prescriptions and ran an errand for him...took some computer cables to one of his clients. Frank stayed down the rest of the day with a very painful foot. 

It probably sounds like I didn't have much to do this week, but I did. I got up really early a few mornings and I think doing my exercising in the morning is going to work out best. I'm going to try it that way, anyway, and see how it goes. All of the usual grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning, etc. always seems to take up plenty of time. On Tuesday evening Frank and I made a trip to Costco and I did grocery shopping Wednesday evening (instead of Thursday morning) since I was planning to go to the temple on Thursday morning. Frank had some things to do at the church Wednesday evening before YM and Seth didn't want to go over that early so after I got ready to go to the store, I took Seth over to the church before going grocery shopping. We were still early so we took about 20 minutes for him to drive around in the church parking lot, to get in some more practice. He needs to learn to ease into braking a little better! We will keep trying to find opportunities to practice. He needs to get more comfortable before trying to drive out on the roads.

The rest of the week I dedicated to scripture reading and Seminary preparations. That took a lot of time. I had a long list of things to do for Seminary, and I worked through a lot of the list. At the training on Saturday I found out from the other Seminary teacher in my stake that there was a pacing guide and some training available from our coordinator on a platform called Canvas. I tried logging into Canvas but couldn't find anything for our area. After a few email exchanges with my Seminary teacher friend, I decided to contact our area coordinator's admin to get some help. She responded that she must have forgotten to invite me to our local group. She sent me the link, and then I was able to log in and get to the right information. I'm grateful for her help, but I also feel frustrated that I found out this information from another teacher. I wouldn't have even known it existed if this other teacher hadn't mentioned it to me. It seems to me that when a new teacher is called, the new teacher should get an email with information about training resources with links to all those resources. I've never gotten anything like that. So I admit...about the middle of the week I was feeling super overwhelmed and upset about Seminary because I was also struggling with lesson preparations. On Wednesday I was finally able to figure out the first lesson I need to teach next week and get it mostly prepared, and after that I began to feel a little better. This calling is going to keep me humble, though, that's for sure!! I have to keep reminding myself that it's okay if I'm not able to go through all the training and watch all of the S & I broadcasts before I teach my first lesson. There is just so much good information out there to help that it can get overwhelming. I have to remember that I will continue to get training and continue to learn and improve for the entire time that I have this calling.

We have had some really hot and humid weather since we got back from Utah, but on Thursday the humidity and temperatures dropped and it was so beautiful! Temperatures between the 70s and 80s with low humidity is definitely my happy place! One concern, though, is that it's been very dry. We've had hardly any rain and our lawn is looking brownish. Seth doesn't mind that since it means he doesn't have to mow the lawn very often, but I hope we aren't going into a drought. We usually get quite a bit of rain in the fall, so hopefully it will start raining soon. Meanwhile, the cicadas seem to be very happy with the dry weather, if the volume of their "songs" is any indication. They are really loud this year! It's supposed to get really hot again this weekend and stay hot all next week so I'm trying to enjoy these few really nice days that we have.

I was hoping to go to the temple this morning but I didn't sleep well last night so I knew I wouldn't be able to drive down to the temple and back. I also felt that I should be home to help Frank if he needs it. He is working from home today. He had a bit of a restless night also and his foot is still quite painful. Hopefully the antibiotic is doing its work, though, and if so he should start to see some improvement over the next few days. 

Now I still have plenty of Seminary preparations to do as well as updating the finances, so I should get going on those things. We had a beautiful sunset on Wednesday night, so I will finish up with a few photos of that.