Yesterday got busy so I'm late getting this week's post done. It wasn't a super busy week but there were a few extra things going on.
Last Saturday I figured out what I was going to do for this week's Friday Seminary lesson. I didn't get it completely done, but I had it all planned and just needed to do a few things to prepare such as make copies and cut out some things. I got the reguarl Saturday chores done too. We had the Sisters over for dinner that evening. They didn't have a car that day, so I picked them up at their apartment and took them back home afterwards (they live pretty close to us). We enjoyed having them over; one of the Sisters just transferred in so we got to know her a little bit. After dinner I spent the rest of the evening reading and managed to finish Nightingale, the library book that was due the next day. I liked it overall, although it dealt with difficult topics and a lot of sad things happened. At least it ended feeling hopeful, so I liked that.
On Sunday I skipped choir practice because they are preparing songs for Easter and I'm not going to be home for Easter. However, when I talked to the choir director later at church, she asked me if I would be willing to come to practices to help the rest of the altos learn their part, even though I won't be here for the performance so I guess I'll be doing that. Frank needed to stay after church to help a sister in the other ward set up a television for their Primary's singing time, so we took two cars to church and Seth and I came home right after the meetings. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner as usual and we actually played two games instead of just one. We played a game called Dead Ringer first...I came in last for that game...and then we played two rounds of a game called Bank, and I won both rounds. Kind of funny!
Monday's Seminary class was kind of funny because we had a record number of kids arrive on time but then several of them immediately put their heads down on the tables and went back to sleep. My team teacher took a photo because there were so many in a row:
One of the boys even started snoring...not really loud, but enough that we could hear him. That kept the kids who were awake pretty amused! (But it was a bit distracting too.) It turned into a perfect totally unplanned object lesson, though. The lesson topic was witnesses of Christ and for part of the lesson we talked about the importance of having more than one witness and how that makes something more credible. At the end of class when everyone was preparing to leave, a few of the kids were good-naturedly teasing the snorer. A little embarrassed, he tried to deny that he had been snoring and claimed it was one of the boys next to him that snored, not him. I immediately said "Sorry, Jayramiah...there's a whole class full of witnesses that can testify that you were the one who was snoring!" He actually fell asleep a couple more days this week (not when I was teaching) and snored some more. Maybe he has a cold or something! Hopefully he won't be as tired this coming week.
Seth had a YM planning meeting on Tuesday evening. Frank was busy doing work for a client that evening so I dropped Seth off at the church and Frank was able to pick him up after he was done doing work for his client. I was grateful he was able to do the pick up so that I was able to go to bed!
We had a guest teacher for Seminary on Wednesday, as we often do. We asked a member of the Spanish ward to teach since we have boys in our class from that ward. This guy speaks English fluently as well as Spanish...his parents came here from Spanish speaking countries but he was raised in the United States. He actually grew up in our ward and is the same age as Scott (they were good friends). He did a great job with the lesson...it's really awesome to see many different teaching styles and since he is a lot closer than we are to the age of the kids in our class he could relate to them in a different way than we can.
I did my fifth VITA shift on Wednesday and it was even busier than last week. I'm not sure who is doing the appointment scheduling but whoever it is, they are not doing a good job scheduling appointments according to how many volunteers are working. I was the only volunteer scheduled (the director of the program is a paid employee, not a volunteer) until 1:00, but there were 4 taxpayer appointments scheduled every hour. How is that supposed to work? The director mentioned to his boss that we were overscheduled when his boss came in around 10:00 and his boss made some calls and found another volunteer who was able to come in which helped a bit but we were still short handed and a lot of the taxpayers had to wait quite a while. Most of them were really patient and understanding about it, but it feels stressful to me when I know people are waiting, even if they are being nice about it. I'll be honest...I feel frustrated with the director because he isn't great at managing these situations (I feel like I'm the one apologizing to taxpayers and trying to keep track of who needs to be helped and who hasn't been helped yet when that should be his job) and I don't understand why he isn't checking the volunteer schedule and the scheduled appointments ahead of time instead of realizing that morning that we don't have enough volunteers scheduled. Okay, sorry...enough ranting! I ended up staying nearly an hour late to help with the backlog and I completed 5 tax returns and reviewed at least 2, so I got a lot done. I hope next week is better but it doesn't seem all that likely. Seth had YM that evening and they did some sort of scripture chase activity but I haven't heard a lot about it because I was asleep before he got home.
Thursday always seems to be the day I regroup and get caught up on things. I got caught up on all the chores and also prepared next Monday's Seminary lesson and finished final preparations for Friday's lesson. I haven't figured out Tuesday's lesson at all yet, so I will be doing that today. On Thursday evening I had book chat. We always have fondue at our February book chat meeting and it was delicious as always! We discussed The Book of Charlie and everyone really liked it. Now we will be reading The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith. I don't have a copy from the library yet so in the meantime I have been reading another one of the books that I got from the library back in January (I only have this one and one other left!). It's called Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. One of the main characters is an octopus, believe it or not! It's sort of a mystery and I like it a lot so far, except there's quite a bit of language.
My lesson yesterday went pretty well. We did an activity where the kids were given two scenarios and they had to choose which doctrinal mastery scriptures would help the person in that scenario and explain why. They did a good job with that. Then I had a couple of puzzles for them to do which helped them review all the doctrinal mastery scriptures for this semester. One puzzle was a crossword puzzle and the other one was a tarsia, which is a bunch of smaller triangles that need to be put together to make a large triangle. They seemed to enjoy these puzzles and did well with them, too. We had to end early because one of the ward's bishoprics made breakfast for our class so we wanted to give the kids time to eat it. They brought a breakfast casserole and bagels & cream cheese. It was really good.
After Seminary I spent most of the morning / early afternoon updating finances. I did a couple of other smaller tasks and got started on this post but didn't have time to finish it. I also took a short nap because I only got about 5 hours of sleep Thursday night and Frank and I had a temple appointment Friday afternoon. I was meeting Frank at the temple (he was going there straight from work) so I knew I would be driving both to the temple and then back home, so I wanted to be alert. Yesterday was our stake temple day but we actually didn't attend one of the sessions specifically for our stake because they were all in the evening. Since Frank gets off work by 3:00, we decided to go to the 4:00 session. (We did see our stake president and his wife because they were coming up the stairs, headed to the first stake session, when we were coming down the stairs after our session ended.) It was really nice to be in the temple with Frank...I go alone fairly often but don't get to go with him nearly as often. Taking that short nap really did help too--I didn't get sleepy at all during our session or while driving to the temple and back. Our session was quite small; only about 16 patrons. That is really unusual, though. It must have been the time of day because the sessions I attend regularly in the mornings and the ones we sometimes attend in the evenings are always really full. We stopped on the way home from the temple to get some dinner. We tried one Mexican restaurant in Gaithersburg but the wait was really long so we ended up driving back to Frederick and going to Cafe Rio.
That's about all I have to report this week and I have a long list of things to do today so I will just finish up with a picture from our front yard that I took yesterday.
These little daffodils bloomed on Thursday. It's pretty early to have flowers blooming but we've had some mild days this last week so I guess they decided that it's spring. We've been seeing (and hearing) a lot more birds lately too. We still get plenty of cold days but overall the temperatures are getting milder so I guess spring is on its way.
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