Weekly Review April 26 '24

I'm starting this post kind of late tonight, so I will try to keep it brief. I probably won't succeed. 😅

We ended up spending most of the day last Saturday (the 20th) buying a car. Frank's old car had nearly 250,000 miles on it and the engine wasn't sounding very good (in spite of regular oil changes). We've been worried about it for several months, so he's been looking around. Because he commutes about 100 miles / day, he really wanted to get another hybrid vehicle. He found a 2022 Prius with pretty low miles for a good price at a dealership in Baltimore, so we decided to go look at it. We decided to buy it, so about 5 hours later (why does it always take so long???) we drove away in a new Prius. It's even the same color as his old Prius! 

Goodbye to the old Prius (it was a good car!):

New (to us) Prius:

We stopped on our way home for "lunch" (around 4:00 pm). We did enjoy talking on the drive to Baltimore and back, and having a meal together. Just didn't enjoy the long wait while they worked out all the details. Thankfully, I brought my laptop and my Seminary bag along so I was able to work on a few things while we waited. When we got home, I worked on a lot more things until bedtime. I also got a call from one of the counselors in our bishopric asking me if I would give a talk this Sunday. How fun! (Not!)

On Sunday we had most of the usual things...church in the morning, Frank had his self reliance class in the afternoon, and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games in the evening. I had some set up I needed to do for Monday morning's Seminary lesson, so after dinner everyone helped me with that. We started talking about King Benjamin's sermon to his people this week (starting with Mosiah 2 on Monday) and I decided I wanted the kids to sit in a "tent" the first day, kind of like they were some of King Benjamin's people gathered at the temple in their tents to hear him talk. (It would have been fun to leave up the tents all week, but there are too many wards using our building to do that.) Rather than set up little tents, which would have been challenging (locating that many tents as well as setting them up) and probably distracting, I had the idea to use some big canopy tents (luckily our ward has two of them and they were in the attic at the church building and Frank has a key to the attic so it wasn't very complicated). 

I took those photos Sunday evening after we set up the tents; unfortunately, both my team teacher and I forgot to take photos of the kids in the tents during the lesson the next morning. It went pretty well and the change in the set up of the room helped the kids to be a little more awake and alert.

On Sunday afternoon the couple who teaches the adult Sunday School class in our ward called to ask if Frank or I or both of us would substitute for them in two weeks (May 5th). I was the one who answered the phone (because Frank was at his class) and I think they were a little surprised when I didn't immediately agree to do it. I told them I would have to talk to Frank about it because I could not take on that job by myself so either he would need to do it or we would need to do it together. Just seems like when it rains, it pours. Could everyone please wait to ask me to do extra things until this summer when I don't have Seminary to worry about??! There's only 2 weeks left of Seminary so I feel like I'm so close, but I still have just as much work to do these next 2 weeks as I have had the rest of the year. Anyway, Frank said he could either do it or we can do it together so we'll be doing that the Sunday after this one.

I already talked about Monday's Seminary lesson. Afterwards, my team teacher and I were talking and realized it would be easier if I taught Wednesday's lesson (we had a guest teacher lined up for Tuesday) and she taught Friday's lesson, instead of each of us doing part of each of those lessons, which is what we originally planned. The bulk of Wednesday's lesson was already planned so it wasn't a huge deal for me to have to do it and overall it was better because then I was finished teaching Wednesday morning and could start focusing on next week's lessons and preparing my talk, but it did mean I needed to do some additional preparation work before Wednesday morning. I didn't get anything done on that on Monday because I had lots of household chores to complete and after Seth got home from school I had to take him to the dentist. (Just his bi-annual cleaning and check up). Then I had to make dinner and we had family night, and by the time all of that was done it was time for bed.

Tuesday was our 32nd wedding anniversary and Frank took the day off so that we could spend some time together. We certainly didn't have the whole day to sit and gaze into each other's eyes, unhampered by other responsibilities 😆 but we did go to lunch together and we got a lot of things done that we needed to do. Plus, Frank helped me get some of my work done too and we were able to talk a lot while we did other things which was awesome so overall it was a really nice day even though it was also crazy busy. 

Besides the regular Tuesday household chores, we also had a long discussion about summer plans and decided that we are going to go to Florida for the Bracken family reunion in July and to Utah in June, and we even got our flight to Utah booked. We were also busy getting quotes from car insurance companies. I've been saying for years that we really need to switch car insurance companies because we've been paying a ridiculously high price for our insurance, especially considering that we are both good drivers with clean driving records. But you know how it is...it's not urgent, so other things always get in the way and we never got around to making the switch. However, when we took the old Prius off our insurance and added the newer one, our annual premium increased another $2000! There's just no way we're going to do that. We've got a few quotes and the quotes are coming in over $1000 less than the annual premium we've been paying, so we will definitely be switching, we just haven't had time to make a final decision yet. 

In addition to all of that stuff, I had also signed up to take dinner to a family in our ward because the mom in the family had surgery last week. We got so busy that I almost forgot to put dinner in the oven in time, but thankfully I remembered in the nick of time. Frank helped me with that too, and then he made our dinner while Seth and I delivered the meal to the family in our ward. I was just getting ready to deliver the dinner when Tanner called me needing help with a tax return issue. I couldn't take care of it then, of course, but I talked to him enough to understand what the issue was and told him I'd talk to him the following day to help him with it. By the time we got through the dinner hour and dishes, it was nearly 8:00 pm and I still needed to finish preparations for Seminary the next morning, so I was up until about 10:00 pm doing that. It was a crazy day, but I did go to bed feeling like I got a lot done, at least!

I guess I forgot to mention that we asked the dad of one of the girls in our Seminary class to teach on Tuesday morning. He did a good job, and the boys in our class who are in his ward really seemed to enjoy having him teach. We haven't had a lot of guest teachers from that ward since we aren't in that ward ourselves and don't know a lot of the people in that ward. On Wednesday morning we went through two scenarios...one as a follow up for the lesson I taught on Monday (mostly about Mosiah 2:17...service) and the other as a follow up for the lesson our guest teacher taught on Tuesday (mostly about Mosiah 2:41...blessings for obeying the commandments). For the second scenario, we had the kids divide into groups and asked them to find a scripture or General Confernce quote to help answer the question of the girl in the scenario (I'm obeying the commandments, but I still have problems. Why aren't I being blessed?) We invited the sister missionaries who are serving in our ward to come help with this part so that we would have an adult to sit with each group and to help them as needed. Overall, it went pretty well.

During the day on Wednesday I worked on Tanner's tax problem and called Dan to get some advice about it from him. Tanner was at work most of the day so I didn't talk to him, but I did get a few answers to his questions and texted him to let him know. I got my Seminary lesson for this Monday prepared as well. That evening, I had book chat. I completely gave up on finishing the book before book chat, but I'm going to continue reading it because I'd like to finish it. We had a pretty small turn out for book chat because a few people in our group are out of town and at least one other wasn't feeling well. There were only 6 of us and 3 of the 6 of us hadn't been able to finish the book but we still had an interesting discussion, and those who had finished it said it was well worth reading. They said the book got a lot better at about page 150 and I'm only on page 61, so I have better things to look forward to! Now we are going to read a book called Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. 

My plan for Thursday was to work on my talk, but I didn't end up getting that done at all. I needed to hem Jared's temple pants for him first because he was planning to go to the temple this morning. I started working on those but I got interrupted a lot (both Scott and Tanner called and I did want to talk to both of them!) and it also ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I should have just done a regular hem, but my machine has a blind hem stitch so I decided I wanted to do that. I've done it a couple of times before, but it's been years since the last time I did so I had to re-learn how to do it and I ran into some issues and had to do some unpicking and in the end I didn't finish them until after Seth got home from school. (I did go to the grocery store right after Seminary which took some time too.) After I finished the pants, I still had laundry to fold and vacuuming to do and dinner to prepare...you get the idea...so in the end I only had a few minutes to work on my talk before it was bedtime. (Actually, it was after bedtime...I didn't get to bed until around 9:00). We stayed up a bit later than usual because Frank was doing maintenance for all of his clients.

Frank was able to work from home today. I spent the morning and early afternoon preparing my talk and I finally got it done. I struggled quite a bit with this talk because instead of giving me a topic, they gave me a Conference talk. I found it challenging to give a talk about a talk! I had a hard time figuring out how to organize my thoughts. (I did listen to / read the talk several times this past week.) I finally figured some things out and I do feel pretty good about it, overall. I'll be glad when it's over, though.

After I got my talk figured out, I spent the rest of the afternoon / early evening getting the budget / finances caught up, as well as making dinner. (Frank helped.) Now it is nearly 10:00 and we are pretty tired and ready to go to sleep. (10:00 feels really late when you get up at 3:30 am.) 

I'll finish up with this ugly photo of my foot. On Monday morning, I knocked a jar of jam off the top shelf of the refrigerator and it landed on my foot. Ouch!! Thankfully, the jar was plastic (not glass) and it wasn't very full, but it still gave me a pretty decent bruise (which doesn't show up very well in the photo). It's been tender all week but not too bad...I've even been able to exercise every morning although wearing shoes is slightly uncomfortable. 

Weekly Review April 19 '24

 I guess I'm doing better this week because I am getting this post written on Friday instead of on Saturday, like the previous two weeks. I don't feel like I was very productive this week. At the end of every day I would wonder why I didn't get more done. 

Going back to Sunday (the 14th)...I had choir practice before church because we were singing prelude music for our ward conference. It wasn't our best performance (we didn't have much time to practice) but it went okay. Our meetings were really good. I had been asked to substitute in nursery, but there is only one nursery age child in our ward and her family didn't come on Sunday so I went to the meeting that the stake RS presidency taught for all the sisters instead. Frank started an emotional resiliance self-reliance group on Sunday. Our former bishop (released last fall; Frank was one of his counselors) decided to have a group for men in the ward and he asked Frank and his other former counselor to attend. There are a number of other men in the group too. The group will meet for twelve weeks. He seemed to enjoy the first meeting. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games that evening as usual. That's always fun!

 I don't know if I've mentioned that Jessie has been applying to graduate schools. She applied to 3 schools and she has been accepted to 2 of them and is waiting to hear back from the third one. Last week she found out that she had been accepted to the second one, which is her top choice, so of course she is happy about that and we are excited for her. This school is in Tyler, Texas. The other one is in Chicago. The school she is waiting to hear from is in Towson, Maryland. If she gets accepted to Towson and she decides to go there, they will not have to move. Otherwise, they will be moving of course. As I mentioned, the Texas school is her top choice but there are advantages to staying here so if she gets accepted to Towson, they will have to weigh the pros and cons. We'll be sad if they move, but happy for Jessie, of course! Meanwhile, Jared is in the process of getting set up through BYU-I online so that he can finish his associate's degree. He only has a few credits left to get that degree.

Monday and Tuesday I taught Seminary, as usual. I taught about forgiveness (Enos) on Monday and Tuesday's lesson was about identifying gospel principles in Jarom & Omni. For Tuesday's lesson I decided to try something to make it more fun. I divided the class into three groups and each group read the chapters looking for gospel principles. For every principle they found, I gave them 2 popsicle sticks. Each group built a "temple" out of their popsicle sticks and at the end of class we voted on which "temple" was the best. Everyone got a treat, but the winning team got to choose first. I was pleased that all the kids participated and seemed to have fun. It was also good for us as teachers because we realized that the kids don't have a good understanding of what a gospel principle is, so we will be emphasizing gospel principles more in the future. 

My team teacher took a few photos too so I am actually in a few of them! (Proof that I exist!)😂

I actually didn't get a photo of the winning team's temple...I thought I took one, but it didn't come out.

My team teacher and I were surprised on Tuesday evening when we were contacted by the mom of one of our Seminary students...the student who decided to stop coming in January...to say that her daughter was thinking about coming back to Seminary and would that be okay? Of course it was okay with us! She started coming the next morning and attended for the rest of the week. We are happy to have her back. 😊

On Wednesday morning we had guest teacher for Seminary--we asked our stake Seminary supervisor to teach. She did a great job and it was good to chat with her afterwards. That day I got one of my Seminary lessons for next week prepared. My team teacher and I also spent quite a bit of time discussing our schedule for the last 3 weeks of Seminary. We decided to do something a little different with our doctrinal mastery lessons next week and that mixed the schedule up a bit. We did get everything figured out, though. We have a guest teacher on Tuesday next week and then on Wednesday we are each doing part of the lesson. I mostly know what I want to do for my part, I just need to work out a few details. On Friday we are working together again, but we aren't sure what we are doing yet so I will still have some work to do on that next week when we figure out exactly what we are doing. 

Seth had a doctor appointment on Wednesday afternoon after school...just a medication check-up. That evening Frank took Seth to his YM activity while I went to a VITA end of tax season celebration. We met at a restaurant for pizza and wings. (The United Way pays for the meal for all the volunteers.) It was fun...I got to see some of the other volunteers whom I have worked with in the past but didn't see this year because we volunteered on different days. It was a really nice day so we ate outside on the patio and it was really pleasant. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday except that I made a breakfast casserole to take to Seminary this morning because I had signed up to provide breakfast. I didn't bake the casserole until this morning, just mixed it up yesterday. I brought doughnuts and fruit for breakfast as well. We had a doctrinal mastery review this morning which means we played games to help the kids learn / remember the doctrinal mastery verses. We played one game that involved shooting baskets (they are looking at phones sometimes because they are looking up scriptures in the Doctrinal Mastery app):

 After Seminary, Jared and I went to the temple together. We did initiatories so we didn't see each other much while at the temple but we had plenty of time to visit on the way there and back. We took my car but Jared drove and it was nice for me to have a break from driving (plus I wasn't trying to stay awake!) It's rainy and rather chilly today but the temple grounds still looked beautiful.

We went to the distribution center so Jared could purchase some white pants. When we got back to the house, he tried them on and I marked them so that I can hem them for him. Then we had lunch together and talked some more before he had to leave. 

I tried to read the book for book chat this week (It Couldn't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis) but I haven't made much progress. I haven't had a lot of free time to read in the first place and when I have had time I've been hampered by the fact that I'm tired so I'm fighting sleep! The book is not boring...I actually think it's pretty interesting...but it's not fast moving or super engaging so it's just hard for me to stay awake. It's also not an easy read...the kind of book you have to really concentrate and focus when you're reading it if you want to understand it. I very much doubt I will finish it before book chat on Wednesday but hopefully I'm at least put a dent in it. 

Frank had his annual performance review at work this week and he received "exceeds expectations" so he was pleased about that. He always works really hard so it's nice to be recognized for that. He has been really tired lately...his CPAP is not working very well. We have been trying to get him a new one for months (literally since last October, I think) and supposedly the new one will be here in the next couple of weeks. For Frank's sake, I really hope so! You wouldn't believe the run around he's been getting and all the hoops he's had to jump through to get to this point. It's really frustrating. 

Seth drove to Seminary nearly every day this week so he's getting in some practice. He is doing okay and I'm seeing improvement in some areas. We just need to get out more often, to give him practice at different times of day and on different types of roads. (He hasn't tried the freeway yet, for example.) He took the SAT a few weeks ago and got his score today. He did pretty well...scored in the 80th percentile. 

I was asked this week if I could help with cooking for Girls' Camp this summer. I helped in the kitchen a few days last year and one of the women I worked with then is in charge of the food this year and asked me if I can help. She would actually like me to stay for the whole week, if possible. Frank and I have been discussing it to see if that will work. It looks pretty likely that I will be able to go...if not for the entire week, at least for most of it. I really enjoyed working with all the women in the kitchen last year so I would like to do it even though I know it will be a lot of work.

I haven't given an update on Tanner lately so I'll do that to finish up. I actually can't remember what I have shared previously, so I will mention that at the beginning of March he filed for divorce. He didn't want to do that...he was hoping they could work things out...but Darlee would not communicate with him at all so he felt like he didn't have much choice. Darlee got a lawyer so Tanner had to get one too. There was a lot of silence for a while but he finally got a response from her lawyer last week and they are working out some minor negotiations. Hopefully they will come to an agreement soon and if so it may only take a couple more weeks. We are sad about it...they have made it clear that they don't want any contact with him. We do care about Darlee and want to know how she is doing but unfortunately it's not going to be possible for us to keep in contact with her. We thought she would be part of our family forever so this feels very heart breaking to us too. 

Tanner is coping really well, overall. He's definitely had some really difficult days but I think it was harder for him when he was "in limbo" and still hoping there was a chance things could work out. He has a little more peace and closure now and has been able to focus more on moving forward with his life. He has been meeting with a life coach and has been setting some good goals. He started exercising regularly about a month ago and he is actually training to run a half marathon at the beginning of June. He also started a new job this week. About a month ago he went to see his former mission president, just to get caught up with him. When Tanner mentioned that he was looking for a better job, his mission president, who owns Mr. Mac (a retail chain that sells men's clothing, particularly suits), said "I know what kind of missionary you were and I would be totally willing to hire you." Tanner said he would think about it, and a few days later his mission president emailed him and said "I was completely serious about hiring you. Let me know if you are interested." They talked some more and Tanner decided to accept his offer. He gets a lot more hours at this job than his last job and he also has the potential to earn commission on top of his hourly rate (which is pretty good to begin with). We talked to Tanner on Tuesday and he said his first day of work went really well, and he really likes it so far. He even sold about $800 of merchandise in the couple of hours that he wasn't getting trained. Hopefully things will continue to go well there. It is good to see him making some positive changes. 

Oh, and here are a few wildlife photos. On Sunday there was a duck in the common area behind our house and then on Monday I saw a goose out there. (Haven't seen much since then, though, except for the usual squirrels and rabbits.) I also saw a fox out there last week but it ran away before I could get a photo.

Weekly Review April 12 '24

 I'm a little late posting this week...it turned out to be fairly busy. After I posted last week's review, I noticed that we have a lot of daffodils growing in our backyard flower bed, so I took a few photos:

On Sunday, we enjoyed the last two sessions of General Conference. It's always so good!! Jared & Jessie came over to watch the second session with us and to have dinner. We played a game together after Conference ended, before I had to leave for choir practice. Our Ward Conference is tomorrow and the stake leaders asked our ward choir to provide some prelude music, so we needed to have a practice for that. Most of the sopranos in our ward are out of town or weren't able to come so I got recruited to sing soprano this time. 

We didn't have Seminary on Monday morning because my team teacher was out of town (took one of her daughters to see General Conference) and we also thought it would be nice to give everyone a day to adjust to going back to school before having to get up even earlier for Seminary. I definitely enjoyed not having to get up as early! We were still up fairly early since Seth has to be at school at 7:20. 

Frank had a business trip this week...he went to a convention / conference in Las Vegas. He left Monday morning and got back Friday evening, so I did the "single parent" thing all week. It's a lot easier to do that with one teenager at home than it was when I had 3 little boys, but of course I missed having Frank here and was very happy when he got home last night.

Monday afternoon was the solar eclipse, as you all know. I would have liked to drive up to the path of totality, but ultimately decided not to. It would have been a five hour drive, one way, and we wouldn't have made it home until super late and I did have to teach Seminary on Tuesday morning. (I know a few people who did drive up to northern Pennsylvania and they said the traffic was so bad coming home that they didn't get home until 2:00 am Tuesday morning.) We were in the 90% zone where we live, so I was hoping it would be fairly impressive here. I was disappointed about that, though...I didn't notice much difference between this solar eclipse and the 2017 one, when I was in Arizona. I can't remember now what zone we were in for that eclipse, just that it was less than 90%. Seth and I sat in camp chairs on the front lawn and watched through our eclipse glasses, and it was pretty cool to see the sun covered except for a sliver. It did get slightly darker and slightly cooler, but nothing significant...I don't think we would have noticed anything if we hadn't known the eclipse was happening. Just goes to show how powerful the sun is...it was 90% covered, and it was still really bright outside. The other cool thing is that we saw the same crescent shaped shadows that we noticed during the 2017 eclipse. 

A sky shot at the beginning:

A really bad selfie; I couldn't see what I was doing, of course!:

Eclipse "shadows":

A sky shot near around the time the eclipse was at its peak; sky color is slightly darker; sun looks pretty normal but my camera is pretty pathetic:

Frank had a stop in Nashville enroute to Las Vegas, and his plane got pretty close to the path of totality. The sky got fairly dark and there was a cool sunset effect:

Frank also sent me photos of his hotel room after he got to Las Vegas. It was pretty posh...and so big!

View from his window:

On Tuesday we returned to our normal Seminary and school schedule. I didn't have trouble getting up in the mornings, but I was definitely more tired during the days and had to take naps on both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons because I literally couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I taught lessons this week about Jacob 5 and 7. 

I took this photo of a squirrel on our deck railing on Tuesday. It was lying on the railing for quite a while, not moving. I was kind of worried about it, but eventually it moved! 

On Wednesday I did my last VITA shift. It was pretty busy and quite a few people with appointments had more than one appointment because they needed tax returns completed for more than one year. We had a few no-shows, though, so I ended up completing only 2 tax returns. However, I reviewed at least 6 other returns so I was busy most of the time. The first return I completed took a long time because the taxpayer didn't speak English. She had an interpretor which was enormously helpful--it just took a long time for me to explain things and then for the interpretor to translate for her, get her response, and then translate her response to me. It was kind of fun, though.

Wednesday evening Seth had YM and I had to take him since Frank wasn't here, so I was up later than usual. I took my Seminary stuff over to the church with me and worked on one of next week's lessons while Seth was at his activity. Seth is trying to get more comfortable with driving on the road and he drove home from the church that evening. He drove to Seminary on Thursday and Friday mornings as well. He is still in the beginning stages of learning, but he is improving. I can tell he's nervous (me too!!) but I can also tell that he has accepted that the only way to get more comfortable with driving is to practice. 

The weather warmed up a lot on Tuesday and Wednesday...it got up into the low 80s on Wednesday...and when we got home from the activity at the church on Wednesday evening the house was so warm that I knew we would be too uncomfortable to sleep if I didn't switch on the air conditioning. I called Frank so he could walk me through the procedure of switching from heat to air conditioning. (I've done it with him before, but never alone and I couldn't remember all the details.) The air conditioner came on for a while and cooled things down. It hasn't been on much since then but we also haven't needed the heat. Today is cool and breezy, but pleasant. Last night and this morning it was very windy and we had a wind advisory but the wind has calmed now.

On Thursday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah which is always fun and a good chance to talk a lot of things out. That evening when I was getting ready for bed I noticed that there wasn't any hot water. I immediately suspected that I had made a mistake when switching the heat to the A/C. I called Frank again and we figured out the problem...we had miscommunicated about which gas valve I should turn and instead of turning off the gas to the furnace, I had turned off the gas to the hot water heater. With Frank's help I got the gas back on and the pilot light for the water heater lit. By morning we had plenty of hot water, thankfully! I'm really glad I noticed the problem Thursday night instead of Friday morning when I needed to take a shower because I am NOT a fan of showering with cold water.

Our ward's bishopric made a hot breakfast for our Seminary class Friday morning. We also had two visiting class members...one from out of town (she used to be in our ward) and one who is in our ward but she attends a different high school so she goes to a different Seminary class near that high school. (Her teacher had surgery so her usual Seminary class wasn't meeting that morning.) 

It rained that morning and as I was leaving the church, there was a rainbow:

 

I went to the temple Friday morning also. I actually had time to take a short (20 minute) nap in between Seminary and when I needed to leave. I wasn't sleepy on the way to the temple, but I still struggled a bit with sleepiness while I was there. I'm still glad that I went! The temple grounds were so beautiful. When I got there, it was wet and cloudy but by the time I left it was sunny:

Last night I took Seth out to dinner...let him choose where we went. He decided to go to the Olive Garden so he could get unlimted soup, salad, and bread sticks. I wasn't very hungry so I brought most of my entree home and Frank and I ate it for lunch today. 

I spent a lot of yesterday (after the temple) finishing up one of my Seminary lessons for next week. Today I prepared the other one. Frank and I went to the library this morning so I could turn in a book that I had finished and pick up another one that I had put on hold. It's the book for book chat--it took me two weeks to get it so I may not have time to finish the book before we meet next time but I will try. 

I'll finish up with a few photos of some trees in our parking lot out front. They have bright pink flowers and a lot of the petals were blowing off this week so there were bright pink petals scattered all over. It looked really pretty. (Better in real life than in the photos.)