Weekly Review November 17 '23

 I'm starting this week's post on Thursday evening and will finish it up tomorrow sometime. We had another busy week. Hopefully I will remember at least some of what we've done. 

I'll start with Frank...he has barely had a free moment, I think. On Saturday he made another trip down to Waldorf to do some work for the client with the bad computer virus. He was gone for most of the morning. He is mostly done with that project and hasn't had much more to do for them but tonight he is doing maintenance for all his clients and he has also been busy this week with his church calling. We've been getting new televisions with carts for our building so he put one of those together this week. Seth helped him with some of it. There is also an organ workshop at our building tomorrow and Saturday and he had to do some set up for that. He will be gone on Saturday from 8:00 to 3:00 because they want someone on hand at the organ workshop in case they need IT help. 

I haven't had many free moments myself--that seems to be my normal life now. I woke up early on Saturday when Frank left to go to his client's. I mean, actually, it was a couple of hours later than I usually get up, but it was still early. I actually don't remember now what I did all day--just that I was busy. I know I finished up Seminary lesson preparations and started working on next week's Seminary lesson. It will be a doctrinal mastery review and we like to make it fun with doing some games, so I was looking up ideas for games. I did some sewing on the Christmas pillows I've been working on too, but not for as long as I would have liked because my stomach started hurting a lot. We had planned to take some friends out to dinner that evening and for a while I wasn't sure I was going to be able to go, but I decided to give it a try and while we were at dinner my stomach stopped hurting and hasn't hurt since. Strange, but I'm just glad it stopped hurting. 

I had a sweet experience Saturday morning when I was praying. I'd been realizing that all of my prayers lately have been very self centered...I feel like all I do now is pray for help, mostly with Seminary lessons. My prayers have just felt like me, me, me all the time. I was expressing regret for my selfishness when this phrase popped into my head: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God". The two lessons I had been preparing for Monday and Tuesday were about James 1:5-6. I knew having that phrase enter my head right then was Heavenly Father's way of telling me that it was okay...that He wants me to come to him in prayer, seeking help. 

On Sunday after regular church meetings I had choir practice. We are starting to practice our songs for Christmas. It's the first practice we've had in many months and I really enjoyed singing with a choir again and particularly singing Christmas music...my favorite! I always leave choir practices feeling happy. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner that night and we also enjoyed playing a game of Ticket to Ride.

My Seminary lessons this week went pretty well. My preparations for the next two weeks are not going so well. I just haven't made much headway with any of the 3 lessons I'm trying to prepare, and I want to have them done before tomorrow night. I have read all of them, more than once, and have thought a lot about them. I just haven't had the chance to get a plan down on paper for any of them, and I'm really wrestling with what I should do with each one. Hopefully they will begin to come together a lot more tomorrow. 

On Tuesday I talked to Mom on the phone...it's always nice to talk to her! I also did more sewing on the Christmas pillows and finished the second quilt block. 

I still need to add borders to both of the quilt blocks (the borders will be a dark green Christmas print) and then get some batting and some fabric for backing for each one. I'm hoping to get those things done before we leave for NC, because then I can do the actual quilting while we are on that trip (sounds like a good project for the car ride). 

On Wednesday a young sister in our ward came over for a few hours so I could try to help her with an accounting class that she is taking (through BYU-I). She's been really struggling with this class and someone told her I might be able to help her. I think I did help her a little bit, but she had a lot to go through and we didn't have time to do it all. She did seem to appreciate what we were able to do, though, and I told her she can call me with questions in the future. 

Last night Seth had a YM activity--they raked leaves for a family in our ward. Frank and I had temple recommend interviews with bishopric members and will do our interviews with a stake presidency member on Sunday. Our recommends expire the end of this month, so we are anxious to get that done. 

I talked with both Tanner and Scott this week on the phone, and we are excited that we will be seeing both of them late tomorrow! 

I'm still having some sleep issues and usually either wake up for an hour or more in the middle of the night or wake up an hour or two before I need to get up. It's frustrating, but there's not much I can do about it. I feel tired all the time and Wednesday morning I took a nap because I was trying to work on one of the Seminary lessons and I couldn't stay awake. I was reading some scriptures and writing some things down and I was literally falling asleep while writing! Well, it's helping me have more empathy for the youth in my class when they can't stay awake during Seminary. I can understand why they are so tired!

I guess this doesn't sound like I have been very busy, but with all of the household chores and trying to make headway on Seminary lessons, every spare minute has been filled. We have had cold mornings, including a few that I have had to scrape frost off the windows of my car, but the days have been fairly mild and the last couple of days have been very pleasant. Today it got up to 70 degrees! It definitely looks like fall though and some of our neighbors have even put up Christmas decorations already. I'm happy that Christmas is coming even though I haven't done anything to get ready for it. I think this year I am going to be simplifying a lot more than usual.

Both of Frank's parents have had Covid-19 in the last few weeks and both got quite sick and had to go to the hospital for some treatment (but were not admitted). We hear they are both doing better now, thankfully. We're looking forward to seeing Frank's family next week.

Now it is Friday afternoon. Last night the sister missionaries serving in our ward stopped by because one of them is being transferred and she wanted to say goodbye. 

Her companion said to us "Hey, I friended you two on Facebook and I noticed that one of you...I can't remember which one...is friends with my uncle." We asked his name and she said "Uncle Mike" Right then, I put "Mike" together with this sister's last name, "Rich", and I said "Oh! That's me! He was in my MTC district!" Such a small world. So then I had to take a photo with her so I could post it on her uncle's FB page and say "Hey, look who's serving in my ward!":

This morning we had a different set up in Seminary because they had all the chairs set up for the organ workshop already and we couldn't move them. It was kind of nice having everyone closer together, I think, although I doubt the kids preferred it...they like having the tables so they can put their heads down and sleep! I took a photo and only noticed afterwards that Seth noticed and looked right at the camera with a funny face:

Here's a few photos of the Seminary bulletin board:

After Seminary I went to the temple. When I got there, I could see that they are putting up the Christmas lights. Made me feel happy!! 

The lights don't show up well, but there are little white lights all over the green bushes:

Some of the trees have lost their leaves and others still have a few left:

I pulled over on my way home to take this photo from Beach Drive:

That's all the news and I need to work on Seminary lessons so I will sign off with a few more photos of autumn leaves:

Weekly Review November 10 '23

Last Friday after I wrote the weekly post, I got to talk to Mom for a while which was nice since I hadn't talked to her in a long time. After that, we went out to dinner. We ended up doing that because of a combination of two things...they didn't have a key ingredient at the store that I needed to make what I had planned for dinner, and I was too tired to think of something different to make. We went to Cracker Barrel, which is always a favorite for all of us. We tried some of their appetizers and now I think I'm addicted to their biscuit beignets. Yum!!

On Saturday I had a hair appointment and Seth did community service...it was the annual "Scouting for Food" pickup day, and the youth from our stake help sort all the donations coming into the local food bank every year. I spent the whole day after my hair appointment (and some time before) working on my Seminary lessons for this week. They didn't come together quickly as I had hoped and by dinner time I was pretty stressed out about all the other things I didn't get done. I was also upset because I had sent out a message to all the youth in the class asking them to read Hebrews 11 before Monday and Seth informed me that my message (about 4 sentences) was too long so no one would read it. I told him that I'm seriously concerned about the future of the world if this generation of youth does not have the patience (or can't focus long enough?) to read a message that is longer than a few words. It was just one of those days where everything felt like too much to me. (I have a lot of those days lately.) A couple of nice things, though...that evening Seth randomly gave me a hug. Surprised (he doesn't do that often), I asked him what the hug was for. He said "You just looked like you could use a hug." He was definitely right about that, and it did cheer me up. (Maybe there's some hope for the future of the world, after all!) The other nice thing is that I realized that I was repeatedly having a nudging to ask Seth to look at a quote for one of my lessons, so I did and we had a really great conversation about it. One frustration I've had lately is that the kids in my class seem to struggle to pull out information from / answer simple questions about quotes that we read during lessons. The nudging I kept having was to have Seth look at it with me so that we could model for the rest of the class how to analyze a quote. Doing that together at home was great because he wasn't under pressure to come up with an answer and I also felt less pressured and it was easy to come up with good follow up questions to respond to what he said (something I've been struggling with). After we finished, I asked him if he would be willing to model it for the class and he was totally on board. It went well in class so I'm thinking that occasionally I will ask one of the youth to go over a quote ahead of time, like Seth did. Hopefully that will help.

Anyway, I did finish up my lesson preparations for Monday and had most of Tuesday's lesson ready too but I stayed up until midnight getting them done. I appreciated that this fell on the weekend that we were going off of daylight saving time so I got an extra hour of sleep that I wouldn't have had otherwise!

Sunday was pretty busy because besides our regular church meetings, we had Jared & Jessie over for dinner and I had an inservice meeting for Seminary. I worked on Tuesday lesson preparations, too. The inservice meeting was at 7:00 pm and it was via Zoom thankfully, so I was able to go to bed as soon as it ended. We did enjoy our time with Jared & Jessie; played a game as usual.

My team teacher was out of town this entire week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, my friend Michelle came to help with Seminary. (She is the YW president I was just serving with before I got called to be a Seminary teacher.) On Tuesday and Thursday my friend Cindy came to help. (She & her husband were the heads of the food committe for Trek.) Michelle has a daughter in the class and Cindy has a son in the class. Michelle taught Wednesday's class and Cindy taught Thursday's class, so I taught on Monday and Tuesday as I usually do but also taught today. Michelle helped me with part of the lesson today. This week went really well, overall. The kids seemed to be a lot more alert and awake than they usually are...really, they felt like a different class! I'm assuming that this is because of the time change...their bodies haven't adjusted yet so it feels like 7:10 to them when class starts instead of 6:10. Unfortunately, it probably won't last, but I'm definitely enjoying it as long as it does! I think the kids also enjoyed the change of pace, having two different teachers than they usually do. I feel like we had a lot more fun together and that the atmosphere was a big more relaxed and comfortable. I'm hoping we can maintain that atmosphere even if everyone gets sleepy again. 

Both of my lessons on Monday and Tuesday were based on Hebrews chapter 11 and were about aspects of faith. I still had some preparation work to do for Tuesday's lesson on Monday afternoon. I got it done and wanted to do some set up that evening, but when we drove to the church to do it, we discovered that someone uses the RS room on Monday evenings (I think it may have been YSA FHE.) I decided I'd have to go in earlier than usual Tuesday morning to set up instead. We did leave our house earlier than usual, but not as early as I had hoped. Seth and I were surprised when we pulled into the church parking lot to discover that there were about 20 cars and a crowd of people in the parking lot. On closer inspection, those cars looked like police cars. (It was dark and they didn't have their lights on, except for a few headlights.) I told Seth to stay in the car and headed over to the crowd of police to find out what was going on. It turns out it was a large group from the sheriff's office. I spoke to one of them who told me not to worry...they were just using our parking lot to stage an operation that they were doing elsewhere, and everything at the church was perfectly safe. So crazy though!! I lost my extra time figuring out what was going on and then I had some strange issues with technology too and also had to take a few minutes to send a message to the Seminary parents to tell them not to be alarmed by the police presence in the parking lot when they arrived to drop off their kids. So we started about 5 minutes late that day, but it all worked out. Seth and a couple of the other kids who got there early helped me with set up. (I had created a "Faith Hall of Fame" for that day's lesson, which needed some set up.) 

I didn't have any time to prepare today's lesson until Wednesday. I did get most of it ready on Wednesday, with a few things to wrap up on Thursday. In the end, it went well and we had fun today. I was fairly stressed all week, though, because until yesterday I hadn't had a chance to do anything to prepare next week's lessons besides read through each of them once. Yesterday I got most of Monday's lesson prepared and today I got most of Tuesday's lesson ready. There are still a few things I need to wrap up for both of those lessons. Tomorrow I will start working on my lesson for the following week. I only have to teach one lesson that week because of the Thanksgiving holiday...the kids only have school on Monday and Tuesday. I don't feel like I have less to do though, because Scott and Tanner are arriving on Friday and spending the whole Thanksgiving week with us, and immediately after Thanksgiving I will be teaching two more lessons. I want to spend the time that they are here enjoying their company, not preparing lessons, so I am trying to get ahead. I'm hoping to have all of those lessons (the one for Thanksgiving week and the two for the week after Thanksgiving) prepared before they arrive on Friday night. I am trying not to think about the fact that I have done nothing to prepare for either Thanksgiving or Christmas yet! 

Okay, I promise this whole post will not be about Seminary. I feel like all of my posts are like this now...several paragraphs about Seminary and then one or two paragraphs about everything else that's happening in our lives. Well, it really does kind of dominate my life right now. I did do a few other things this week, though. On Tuesday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. This time we went to Bob Evans because it starts with a "B". (Last time we went to a place that starts with "A". It helps us make a decision about where to go.) I haven't been to Bob Evans in years and they had some new menu items so I tried one of those and it was pretty good. Rebekah and I hadn't had a chance to get caught up since right after Seminary started so it was nice to visit. 

On Wednesday both Frank and I had eye doctor appointments. We had appointments in January but got in early because of cancellations. I saw a different doctor than normal but I liked the one I saw. Frank is getting new lenses for his glasses (his eyesight is actually getting better!). My prescription for glasses has changed only slightly so I don't need to get new ones. I'm getting new contact lenses but they had to order a trial pair for me so it will be a bit before those come in. Those two rouge eyelashes on my bottom left eye have grown back in and were rubbing against my eye again, so she plucked those out. I guess I really do need to get those cauterized so they will stop growing back in. The funny thing is, they don't seem to bother me at all--my right eye was actually feeling really irritated that day, not my left eye! The blepharitis in my right eye has been really acting up this week so it's been red, goopy, and irritated. The eye doctor also said that my droopy eyelid on my right eye seems to be interferring a little bit with my peripheral vision, so if I decide I want to get it fixed, it is likely that my insurance will cover the cost. The doctor who can fix my eyelid is the same one who can cauterize those eyelashes that rub against my eye, so if I go in to get that done I can find out more about my droopy eyelid at the same time. 

Seth had YM on Wednesday as usual...they had a combined activity and played board games. I dropped him off and Frank picked him up. Frank has continued to be really busy this week doing work for his client who had the virus issue. He hasn't had to do as much as last week, but he has still put in quite a few hours. A few problems cropped up and he also is having to replace another computer for them (not related to the virus problem). He had to make another trip down there on Tuesday (didn't get home until late) and will be going back tomorrow as well. I think there is an end in sight, hopefully. 

Last night I went to a RS activity. I was super tired and waffled a bit about whether or not to go, because it sounded fun but I really wanted to go to bed. The main motivation that pushed me over into the "I'm going" category was that they were doing an escape room (which I have never done before) and I wanted to see what that was like because I think it would be a fun thing to do for a Seminary doctrinal mastery review. I considered it research for Seminary! It was a lot of fun and as always, spendng time with other women lifted my spirits a lot. The activity was very poorly attended, unfortunately. I don't think it was very well advertised--I didn't even hear about it until Saturday. We had fun with our little group, though. We had to work our way through 3 different rooms...and yes, we did successfully escape! We got these little handouts at the end, when we found the key and opened a box:

Yesterday when I was cooking dinner I noticed a strange rash on my right wrist. Or maybe it was a rash...I'm not even sure about that. There was a large red blotch on the top side of my wrist and what looked like scratches on the bottom side (kind of wrapped around from the top side to the bottom side.) I didn't remember scratiching it or hurting it in any way and it didn't hurt either. It's still there today but has faded a lot and now the red blotch is gone and it just looks like a couple of scratches. So strange!

Today I did not go to the temple as usual because I decided I really needed to take a week off and get some rest. I had a couple of bad nights this week (last night was one of them) so I've been exhausted. I was able to take a two hour nap after getting back from Seminary this morning and that really seemed to help. 

We have had some cooler days this week but we've also had a couple of unseasonably warm days. I never complain about those! When I am sitting inside and glance out the window, the whole world looks golden to me, with a few splashes of red. It's so beautiful, and my camera can't capture it but I still keep trying:

It's way past my bedtime and that's all the news I can think of so I'll sign off until next week.

Weekly Review November 3 '23

 Last Friday (October 27th) we went out for dinner with Jared, Jessie, and Jessie's parents. I just realized that we didn't take any photos of this event...oops! Jared chose a Peruvian restaurant called Santa Rosa. The food was pretty good; mine tasted better the next day (I had leftovers). We enjoyed visiting with Jared, Jessie, and her parents. 

I spent a lot of time on Saturday finishing up Seminary lessons, as well as preparing some things for the Seminary bulletin board. That evening our ward had a Trunk or Treat and game night. We don't usually dress up for the Trunk or Treat, but that morning I had the idea that we could dress up as Hawaiian tourists. This idea was partly inspired by the unusually warm weather. 

After handing out candy to the kids, we all went inside and played games for a few hours. It was pretty fun!

On Sunday afternoon my Seminary team teacher and I met at the church to put together a new Seminary bulletin board. I think it looks pretty nice, but I forgot to take photos of it. (I'll try to do that soon.) The board is focused on the scriptures...one side has visual cues for the doctrinal mastery scriptures and the other side has suggestions to make scripture study better. (There's a chalkboard in between two small bulletin boards.) 

We had a guest teacher on Monday for Seminary, so I taught on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. My lessons went okay. They'll probably never go as well as I'd like, but hopefully over time I will improve. I liked the topics I had this week which were Titles and Roles of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ understands us perfectly and knows how to help us. I always have really beautiful experiences while preparing lessons. I just wish I could help the kids experience at least some of what I am experiencing. And maybe they are...it's just hard to tell. My goal going into this week was that they would at least know that these topics are important to me, and I think I did achieve that goal at least. 

Next week I will be teaching 3 lessons because my team teacher is going to be out of town all week. I have two of the moms of some of the youth coming in to help me and they are each teaching a lesson so I don't have to teach all five, which is really helpful. Two of my lessons are on faith (Hebrews 11). I have spent a lot of time studying for these lessons but have not really prepared them at all yet. I'm hoping they will come together quickly...I do have a lot of thoughts and ideas about what I want to do but haven't fleshed anything out yet. And once again...I've had a lot of beautiful sweet experiences while I've been preparing. 

I'm not sure exactly why I've made it all the way to Friday afternoon without getting more lesson preparation done, but I did spend a lot of time this week on the phone with Amy, Scott, and Tanner and I don't regret that because I haven't been able to talk to any of them for a while. I also had to man the door for a couple of hours on Tuesday to pass out Halloween candy, and of course there are always all the household chores that need to be done. 

Besides that, I was basically a single parent all week. That's because on Monday one of Frank's clients' computer system got infected with a really bad virus so he has spent the entire week either at work or doing work for this client. He's been leaving early in the morning and coming home late at night. Seth didn't see him at all for a couple of days (he left before Seth woke up and got home after he was in bed) and I have barely seen him. He had to buy a new server and several new computers and install them, among other things. He's still not done with everything, but he has made a lot of progress and most of what is left he will be able to do remotely. (This client is about 90 minutes away from Frederick, so there has been a lot of travel time involved too.) This hasn't been easy for Frank, of course. I'm just grateful this didn't happen when he was sick and / or having trouble with his foot. He said today that his toe has been hurting a bit so he started taking the anti-inflammatory medicine again. Hopefully it won't get any worse. 

Seth enjoyed a long weekend with no homework, since it was the end of the term. He had time over the weekend to recover from the illness that he had so he is feeling better. I've actually had a bit of a sore throat all week and a little bit of congestion, slight cough, and an occasional headache but thankfully have never felt bad enough to be non functional. My voice got a little hoarse, especially in the mornings, but today it seems to be a bit better. A friend called me yesterday and she immediately asked if I was sick and said my voice sounded 3 octaves lower than normal, but it sounds better today. 

Seth had a mostly normal week with school and Seminary, and a YM activity on Wednesday evening. (They did weight lifting and he says he ran on a treadmill for a while too.) He helped hand out candy part of the time on Halloween.

Today I went to the temple as I usually do on Fridays. I did initiatories and I had three different temple workers say "these women must be so happy that you are doing this work for them". I woke up at 2:00 this morning so I was sleepy driving to the temple and back and while I was there too but I made it home okay. I also felt a bit dizzy at times while I was at the temple but feel okay now. 

My team teacher and I had kind of a crazy experience on Tuesday morning right after Seminary. As the last kids were leaving, a young man came to the church. He told us that he was looking for a church and wanted to know "What makes your church different from other churches?". We talked to him about prophets and eternal families, gave him a Book of Mormon, invited him to church, and connected him with the missionaries. Who knows what will happen with him but it was pretty cool to be able to talk to him.

That brings you up to date on our lives. The weather has gotten a lot colder this week; it was below freezing this morning. The trees everywhere look beautiful, though, and I have taken quite a few photos. I will finish up with some of those: