Weekly Review October 18 '24

This week felt long to me; I'm not sure why. 

Last Saturday Frank and I went out for breakfast to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the day we got engaged. 

After we got home, I worked on Seminary lessons for a while and finished up my preparations for this week. Then we watched the BYU football game. This is the first game this season that I've been able to watch the whole thing and thankfully BYU won so it was mostly fun to watch. When we were at breakfast we were talking about the day we got engaged and realizing that we hadn't taken any photos on that day so we decided it would be funny to try to re-create a scene from that day and take a photo of that. We did go to the BYU homecoming game together that day (in 1991) and sat in the student section in the north end zone. We got engaged early that morning but decided not to tell anyone but instead wait to see who noticed that I was wearing a ring on my left hand first. Turns out no one noticed until that evening so during the game Frank was watching my parents through binoculars (they were in the opposite end zone) and when he thought they were looking our way through their binoculars, I would hold up my left hand and we would both point at the ring. They never saw us (probably not possible at that distance, even with binoculars) but that is the scene we decided to re-create in our photo. We used a shot of the student section in the north end zone from that day's game (in 2024) as a backdrop for our photo. The lighting isn't good but you get the idea:

On Sunday after church I had choir practice and we also had family night (except for the activity / treat) and Seth went to mission prep. It was my turn to take him but Frank was sweet and took him instead so that I could go to bed. 

My Seminary lesson on Monday was about the gathering of Israel. I never felt super great about it, but it went okay. On Tuesday we had the guest teacher that I mentioned last week, so I didn't have to teach but helping her get things wrapped up on Monday afternoon / evening was indeed rather stressful. It all worked out okay in the end. Her lesson was definitely different from what we normally do but she said some really good things and some of the kids really seemed to connect with her so that was all good. I was helping with Power Point slides and such so I stayed up front with her and my team teacher took this photo of us:

Back to Monday, Seth actually missed both Seminary and school that day because he got sick. He got up and got ready for Seminary but then started feeling sick to his stomach. I had to leave him at home to go teach and he threw up while I was gone. He felt bettter after that, but stayed home to make sure he wasn't going to be sick again. He didn't have any more trouble and by midday he was fine, so I had him work on some of his college application stuff. 

That evening Seth and I went to a marching band showcase because two of the members of our Seminary class are in his high school's marching band. My team teacher went too...actually, she picked us up and we all went together. They were the third band to perform but we stayed until intermission, so we saw five bands perform. Their band was definitely the largest and I thought the most visually pleasing. They sounded great, too. I was actually surprised a bit at how small most of the bands were. Nothing like the photos I've seen of Amy's kids in their band performances at their high school. The temperatures on Monday were in the 50s and it was windy so we actually got pretty cold. I had worn a hoodie and a coat, and I was really glad I did. My team teacher brought a blanket and even with all those layers I still got cold. (But it wasn't too bad.) None of my photos of the marching band are very good but I do like this one of the moon and the sunset:

Before we left for the marching band showcase, Frank had started to feel sick to his stomach and he threw up while we were gone. (Seemed to be the theme for the day, and I was the lucky one he did not get sick that day at all!) He started to feel better on Tuesday so we think it was probably a side effect of one of the medications that he's taking (it sometimes causes him to feel nauseated). We had planned to do the activity / treat part of family night after we got back from the showcase, but since Frank wasn't feeling well we had to postpone that plan.

Frank was able to go into work to attend some meetings on Tuesday (later than usual, though...he left after I got back from Seminary) but he decided he probably shouldn't do his temple shift, so he let his supervisor know that morning that he wouldn't be there. I took Seth to YM that evening as usual. While he was at his activity (they played volleyball and practiced a song), I met with the Elders in our ward because they are going to help with part of our Seminary lesson on Wednesday. I explained what we want them to do and they are excited about it (and we're excited to have them come!) 

On Wednesday I got plans for next week's 3 Seminary lessons done. I still need to create Power Point slides and a bunch of things like that, but I haven't had much chance to work on them since then. I feel pretty good about Monday's and Wednesday's lessons, but Tuesday's still feels really rough to me. I'll be working on all of those either tonight or tomorrow. Our stake Seminary supervisor visited our class Wednesday morning and afterwards gave us some good feedback and we got a chance to ask questions and pass along ideas of things we need (like training on the new curriculum that's starting in January). She is new this year but taught Seminary for many years and she has been really great and very helpful. 

Wednesday evening I had book chat. We discussed Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner and there was a lot to discuss about this book so I didn't get home until after 9:00. Now we are going to read As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. I actually read this book when I was in high school and I remember I definitely didn't like it, but I'm willing to give it another chance. Just maybe 56 year old me will get more out of it than 17 year old me did! I remember it being very confusing and not making a lot of sense, but that's about all I remember about it. My library only has one copy of the book, so I had to request it through inter-library loan again and probably won't get it for another week or so.

Yesterday Seth had to work after school. Frank and I made dinner together and then watched a show together while we ate dinner. A few weeks ago we started watching a show called 24 together. It's interesting because one season covers a 24 hour period and each 1 hour episode covers 1 hour of that 24 hour day. We watch 2 or 3 episodes together each week, so it is going to take us a long time to get through one season, but we are enjoying doing this together.

Today there isn't school (teacher professional learning day) and Frank works from home on Fridays so we all got to sleep in. Nice! I met with my team teacher at the church for about an hour so we could plan the schedule for the rest of the semester and we made a list of possible guest teachers. After that I took Seth to the doctor for his 6 month medication check. Seth doesn't feel like his medicine is working as well as it used to but he also doesn't feel like he needs it as much so after this term ends (end of next week) he is going to try not taking his medicine for a few weeks and see how it goes, and we have a follow up visit with his doctor after that. We are planning to let his teachers know ahead of time that we are doing this experiment so that hopefully they will be more willing to work with him to get caught up if he starts to struggle. We'll see how it goes. 

Other than all that, I've been doing all the usual household chores and trying to encourage Seth to work on his college applications. He did do a few things this week without my reminding him to do it, like turn in a form to his counselor and talk to his CTC teacher about an issue we've been having with viewing his grades online. It's always encouraging when he does something like that...maybe he will figure out how to be an adult someday! 😊

That's all I can think of for this week. I'll sign off with a few photos of pretty clouds I took on Monday.