I'm ready for Seminary early today, so I'm getting started on this week's post at 5:15 am. 😀
When I wrote last week, I was trying to get my Seminary lessons for this week done. I really wrestled with the first one so I ended up working on it most of the day. (I'm sure there were more distractions, too.) I was part way done with it when I had to stop for a bit. I had signed up to take a meal over to a family in our ward--the mom had really extensive surgery about a month ago and is still recovering. I actually made most of the dinner the night before...I was making lentil ham soup for us, so I just doubled the recipe so I could take soup to this family. That kind of soup is better the day after you make it anyway--there's been time for all the flavors to mingle. Frank went with me to drop off the dinner and I got to visit for a few minutes with the mom to get caught up on how she is doing. She was really happy to get the soup because she loves lentils and they are good for her, too. I was happy that I got the chance to serve someone (in a way other than teaching lessons!) and grateful that it worked out for me to be able to help someone else without it taking a lot of time. I had been wanting to help this family in some way but feeling overwhelmed by my busy schedule and getting over being sick. Kind of hard to explain, but I feel like the Lord knew my desire and helped open up a way for me to serve that was possible for me to do.
When we got back from dropping off that dinner, Frank helped me make our dinner and after eating I got back to working on my Seminary lessons. At that point, the first one just started coming together and I finished it quickly. It was probably 7:00 pm by then but I decided to just look over the second lesson to get a start on it. To my surprise, I looked it over and knew exactly what I wanted to do so I started putting it together and finished the whole thing in a couple of hours! That was pretty awesome!
I felt kind of giddy on Saturday because for the first time in a long time, I didn't have one or more Seminary lessons to prepare. What to do with all my free time??! 😆 I ended up preparing most of our tax return (some of the information we need isn't available yet) and I also went to the fabric store to get fabric for a few more pillow covers. I meant to get fabric to make Easter or spring themed pillow covers, but all the Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day fabrics were on sale so I ended up getting fabric for those instead even though I knew it was too late to make the Valentine's ones for Valentine's Day this year and it's unlikely I will get the St. Patrick's Day ones done in time either. Plus they had some cute winter themed fabrics so I got some of those, too. I guess I'm all set for next year...I have a whole year to get these pillow covers done! I really need to go back and get fabric to make some for this summer, though. I might be able to get those done in time to use them this year. Meanwhile, Frank was gone for several hours working on some technical stuff to help prepare for stake conference, which is this weekend.
Now I am back from Seminary so I will finish this post.
Sunday was quieter than usual because Jared & Jessie didn't come over as they usually do. (They were out of town...came back on Wednesday and we will see them on Sunday.) We did play a game with just the three of us, though!
My Seminary lesson on Monday went really well again. The kids really are getting better at participating, which is great. (Some of them still sleep through the whole thing!) On Monday we were supposed to review some things as part of the lesson so I decided to set up a quiz in Kahoot in order to review those things. The kids really enjoyed that and got quite competitive! One boy who is on the autism spectrum doesn't look up or participate much (although I know he is listening most of the time) but he really enjoyed the quiz and I saw him laughing and smiling which made my heart happy. I didn't end up teaching on Tuesday because it snowed that morning and school was cancelled, but I taught the lesson I had prepared for Tuesday on Thursday instead. My team teacher combined her Thursday and Friday lessons because they were both from the same chapter (2 Nephi 5) and taught them this morning. My Thursday lesson also went really well. Here's a photo of the white board from part of our discussion on Thursday:
I am grateful that Seminary seems to be going better on a more consistent basis. We are also seeing changes in some of the youth. Not all are good--a few are not coming as often or seem to be more "checked out" when they are there--but many other changes are good. More of the youth seem to be more comfortable in class so there is a better feeling and atmosphere and as I said before...more of them are sharing comments. There is one boy who made it really clear at the beginning of the year that he didn't want to be there and was only there because his parents were forcing him to go. For a lot of last semester, he chose to go in another room in the building rather than joining our class. This semester, he has started to attend nearly every day. He still doesn't want to participate much but he is there and he also seems to be in a much better mood than he was before. He usually sits in the back so when I'm not teaching he is usually sitting near me and he often says good morning to me and asks me how I am doing. This morning my stomach was growling kind of loudly (I don't eat breakfast until after Seminary) and he offered to go get me some food (parents take turns sending in breakfast items like muffins on Fridays). I thought that was really sweet! It has taken a long time to get to this point, but it is so sweet to see some progress with this class!
Back to Monday...I felt like I had a productive day, getting chores done and I also washed and ironed all the fabric I purchased on Saturday. I haven't made any more progress with those projects, though. We had family night and for treat we splurged and bought some Crumbl cookies. We've been enjoying them all week...yum!!
The forecast for Tuesday was a bit "iffy" and we weren't sure if we were going to get snow or just rain. We wanted to make a decision on Monday evening about whether or not to hold Seminary Tuesday morning so that the youth and their parents wouldn't have to get up in the morning before finding out if there was going to be Seminary or not. (The school district doesn't usually make a decision until 5:00 am but we need to be up and getting ready by then.) Because of the timing of the expected storm, it seemed fairly likely that there would be at least a 2 hour delay, so we finally decided to go ahead and cancel...we figured if the storm didn't materialize and school went forward as usual, no one was going to complain about one less day of Seminary and a few extra hours of sleep! It turned out we made the right decision, though. It rained hard overnight but the 5:00 am decision by the school system was to have a 2 hour delay with a re-evaluation at 7:00 am. Around 6:00 am, the rain turned to snow and the decision was made to cancel school. The snow came down quite hard at times that morning and we got an inch or more of snow. I think if the timing had been different, we may have had school but since the heavy part of the storm was happening right around the time that the school started, they decided to cancel.
I took these photos around 6:15 am, shortly after it started to snow:
The sun came out later in the day and by afternoon most of the snow had melted. Frank missed the whole thing because he left for work early, when it was still raining, and he didn't get home until late afternoon when all of the snow had melted.
I spent the day getting the usual chores done but I also read the scripture blocks for next week's Seminary lessons and I taught Monday's lesson to Seth because he was too tired to get up on Monday morning for Seminary. (He didn't sleep well the night before.) I have done that a couple of times with him...taught him lessons that he missed...and I really enjoy doing the lessons with him one-on-one. He also seems to enjoy it, which makes it even better!
On Wednesday we had a guest teacher for Seminary, which I always enjoy. This teacher is a sister in our ward who recently retired--she was a counselor / therapist for LDS family services. The lesson was on Nephi's Psalm (2 Nephi 4) so we thought she would be a really good teacher, since she has a lot of experience helping people deal with emotions and would be able to give the youth some good suggestions of how to do that. And we were right...she did a good job.
I did my third VITA shift on Wednesday too and it went well. I completed three tax returns and talked to a fourth taxpayer but he didn't have all the documents he needed for us to file his return so he had to reschedule. I meet so many different interesting people while I am doing this volunteer work. It is sometimes amazing to me the stories I hear!
Wednesday was Valentine's Day so there were a few treats and cards exchanged. I took treat bags in for the Seminary students. Frank got me these flowers:
(I already had the salt & pepper shakers...they just happen to be in the photo too.)
For the youth activity that evening, they had a chocolate blind taste test. Seth was in charge of running the activity but he didn't have to prepare everything. (Other people bought the chocolate, etc.) I was asleep before he got home but he reported to me on Thursday that the activity was a lot of fun and a great success. He also brought home this pretty little bouquet for me:
The YW president had made a bunch of them and told them to take them home to their Moms...nice!
Yesterday I got all the chores done and then worked on one of my Seminary lessons and got it done. I still need to prepare the other one today. Frank went over to the stake center last night to set up all the technical stuff (audio visual) for stake conference. He was working with a few other people but there was a lot to do so he was gone for about 3 hours and I stayed up an hour late to wait for him to get home. He's going to have a busy weekend, I'm sure.
We have another snow storm predicted for overnight tonight. We're supposed to get around 3 inches or more of snow. It's supposed to be done snowing by 5:00 am, so hopefully the roads will be cleared before we need to go anywhere.
In between everything else, I have done quite a bit of reading this week. I finished reading another book called Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. Kind of like Tom Lake, it was interesting and I liked some things about it but other things I didn't like. Yesterday I started reading a book called Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri. It is autobiographical and is told from the point of view of a middle school boy who is a refugee from Iran living in Oklahoma. It's fairly good so far, although somewhat random the way it is written. There have already been some good profound statements made, though.
On Saturday I got a text from Scott telling me that the 2 year old son of his good friends, Caleb and Corinne, had passed away that morning. He was really close to this little boy (and his parents) so of course this was really devastating for Scott. It made me feel really sad, too. I ordered some flowers for his friends and Scott took them over to them on Saturday evening. They are coping as well as can be expected. The little boy had some health problems...he had surgery on his heart a couple of times when he was an infant...but he was doing better and his death was completely unexpected. He was having trouble breathing that morning so they took him to the ER and when they were walking in, he stopped breathing. The doctors tried to bring him back for an hour, but weren't successful. I talked to Scott yesterday and he is really sad but doing okay. Please keep him in your prayers and Tanner too because things are still really difficult and uncertain for him.
That is all the news that I can think of for now. Today Seth gets out of school 2 1/2 hours early so he will be home in about an hour. I'd better go get some more things done before he arrives.
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