Weekly Review March 15 '24

 This week was fairly busy; I feel like I had something "extra" nearly every day. Last Saturday I spent most of the day preparing Seminary lessons. I kind of went down a rabbit hole with the first one which took way too long but I really enjoyed it...there was so much good stuff in 2 Nephi 27! (The Follow Him podcast, which I listened to earlier in the week, really helped me see a lot of that good stuff.) The second lesson came together quicker, thank goodness. The first lesson was on the restoration of the gospel and the Book of Mormon in particular. The second lesson was about identifying and overcoming the tactics of Satan, which was a super interesting topic, actually. Both lessons went fairly well...the second one probably better than the first one. I was concerned about how awake the kids would be--with the daylight saving time shift--and they were pretty tired but it wasn't as bad as I anticipated. 

Anyway, back to Saturday...I did manage to get a few other things done besides preparing lessons, and then we set our clocks forward an hour and went to bed. I usually struggle a lot with the shift onto daylight saving time but I haven't had as much trouble with it this year (for which I am very grateful!). Or maybe I'm just used to feeling tired and trying to stay awake all the time. 😅At any rate, I didn't feel more tired than usual. I did notice that I woke up to my alarm nearly every day this week, which rarely happens. (I usually wake up at least a few minutes--if not an hour or more--before it goes off). I'd say I've been woken up by my alarm maybe 10 times this whole school year until this week. So I'd say my body was definitely feeling the need for more sleep at night! 

On Sunday we had church as usual although that was our last meeting with our ward as it now stands. On Sunday we will find out what changes have been made. Rumor has it that we will be losing a handful of people and gaining others (more than we're losing), but will not lose any youth and if that is true then we will still be in the same ward since Seth is in the youth category. I guess we will see what really happens on Sunday, though! After church my team teacher and I had a phone call meeting where we planned out the rest of the Seminary year. We figured out what lessons we'll be teaching each week and also chose guest teachers for the weeks that we have 5 days. That's actually only 3 weeks because the next two weeks the kids have Friday off of school, the week after that is Spring Break for us so we have no school, and the week after that we aren't starting Seminary until Tuesday because my team teacher is going out of town the weekend before and will be flying home on that Monday. Because of that, we decided to give everyone a day off from Seminary to help them ease back into the school schedule after Spring Break. After that we have three 5-day weeks and the week after that is the last week of Seminary! (It's actually a 5-day week too but one of those days we'll be doing the assessment and the last day will just be a fun day so we don't feel like we'll need a guest teacher that week either.) Eight more weeks until Seminary is done, and one of those weeks we're on break...but who's counting? 😂 We have another four weeks of school after that...Seminary ends earlier because the Seniors finish early and graduation happens weeks before school gets out. I still think that's strange, but that's how they've always done it around here. 

That was a long tangent, sorry!! Also that afternoon our good friends Aaron & Susie Schlenz stopped by to visit us. They used to live in Maryland and were in our ward for years and our kids and their kids were good friends. They live in Texas now but Aaron had a conference for work in DC so they were here for that. We had a great visit with them! Jared & Jessie came over Sunday evening for dinner, to do laundry, and game playing, as usual. We played speed Uno and everyone had fun.

It rained most of the day on Saturday and the river was up quite a bit on Sunday:

It was also super windy on Saturday and Sunday both, and the temperatures were in the 40s so it felt really cold. It warmed up during the week, though, and most of the week has been warmer than usual. Yesterday and today both got up into the 70s, which is particularly warm for this time of year. (I didn't even wear a sweater to Seminary this morning!) It's going to drop back down to more seasonable temperatures soon though. You know I'm never going to complain about unseasonably warm temperatures, though! 

I mentioned that I had something "extra" nearly every day this week. On Monday I went to lunch with my friends Michelle and Crystal...we served together in the YW presidency recently. We realized that we don't get the chance to talk to each other much anymore, so we decided to go to lunch together. It was really great to get caught up on how they are doing and what's going on in their lives. We talked for so long that I picked Seth up from school on my way home.

On Tuesday I went shooting with Jared, Jessie, and Jessie's mom, Tracy. Jared taught us a lesson first and then we shot for a while. I've only been shooting once before and it was a year ago, so it felt like I was starting all over again but I do feel like I got a little more comfortable with it and learned a few new things like how to load the gun. I'm feeling a bit more motivated to try to go more often so that I can keep learning. Jessie took a few photos that she shared with me:

I guess I didn't do anything "extra" on Wednesday, but I worked my VITA shift as usual. We had enough volunteers again, which was nice, but I did have kind of a crazy day because the taxpayer who came in for the first appointment of the day arrived several minutes late and then he had a pretty complicated return--he had a regular job, plus he was an Uber driver and a Door Dash delivery person, and he also worked as a contractor for several months before he got hired as an employee at his regular job. Oh, and he was in college too and had expenses related to that. It took a long time to sort all of that out so I ended up completing only 2 returns that day. I did do at least one review too...I can't remember now if I did more than one. 

Seth had YM as usual that night. Frank was busy doing some work for clients, so I dropped Seth off but Frank picked him up so I was able to go to bed. For their activity they made pies (in honor of "Pi Day", a day early) and they delivered one to one of the YW leaders who just got released. 

I forgot to mention that we had a guest teacher for Seminary Wednesday morning. She taught Seminary for years...as a matter of fact, she taught at least two of my older kids, if not all three of them. She's a great teacher and we had a good time. At one point, she had a couple of the boys attempting to juggle (part of an object lesson). 

Yesterday my "extra" thing was to take Seth to the orthodontist. Everything looks good with his teeth and he doesn't have to go back for a year. Other than that, I got regular chores done and I also worked a lot on one of my Seminary lessons for next week and got it mostly done. I'm not super happy with it...I wish I had ideas to help it be more interesting and meaningful...but at least it's mostly prepared. I can think about it over the weekend and I maybe I will come up with something to make it better. 

Since yesterday was "Pi Day", we had pizza for dinner and I made a chocolate pudding pie also:

This morning Seth drove to Seminary. It was his first time driving on a major road (something besides a residential neighborhood road) and he did okay but definitely needs a lot more practice. It was a good time to try it since there isn't a lot of traffic at that time of day. He did get us there without hitting anything or anyone, so I call that a win! 😉 The family who provided breakfast this morning went all out and brought cereal, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, and strawberries as well as juice and milk. I spent a good portion of the day preparing my second Seminary lesson for next week and I have an outline completed for that one too. I'm glad to have that done...I still need to prepare Power Point slides for each lesson, but getting the outline done is the hard part. I was able to get the finances caught up before Seth got home from school too which I was happy about. Now Jared is here visiting and playing games with Seth and I will be starting to make dinner soon.

I did a little bit of reading this week...I decided to start reading The Unsinkable Greta James for book chat, even though I haven't finished Atlas of the Heart yet. So far, Unsinkable is pretty good. I don't remember now how I ended up doing this, but this week I watched videos the Church made of the interiors of both the Manti and St. George temples (which were both renovated recently). They are both so beautiful!! I have been in the Manti temple a few times (a long time ago) but I've never been inside the St. George temple. I'm mentioning this because I just wanted to comment on how inspired I am by these pioneer era temples. The early pioneers had so little to work with...both technologically (building equipment and methods) and resources. It's amazing to me that they were able to build these beautiful buildings with such incredible craftsmanship and attention to detail. What a labor of love for the Lord and His work! I'm sure they made huge sacrifices to build these temples. 

I'd better end there so that I can go make dinner.