Weekly Review November 22 '24

 We had a pretty busy week. Last Friday evening we went to Costco and found a new coat for Seth because his old coat is getting too small. There's been a few days this week that he has needed it, so it's a good thing we got him one. After we bought the coat, we got some food for dinner and took it home to eat. Seth enjoyed some screen time while Frank and I finished watching the first season of 24. Neither one of us liked the ending much...after all that! We decided we don't really want to watch another season (at least not now) so we chose a different show to start watching together this week. It's called Madame Secretary. Hopefully we'll like this one better.

Saturday was super busy. I did some ironing, sewed some buttons back onto a couple of my shirts / sweaters, got out the November salt & pepper shakers, finished my Seminary lesson for Tuesday, practiced the ukulele, swept & mopped the kitchen floor, sewed the borders onto both of January's pillow covers and got them ready for quilting, and went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. Seth went to work in the afternoon. I can't remember what Frank did all day, except that he helped me with some of my things and he played games with Seth for a while.

Frank woke up Sunday morning with a really bad headache so he didn't go to church. We had been asked to help in the nursery that day so I got another sister in my ward to help me with that. There are only 2 kids in the nursery so it was pretty easy and I enjoyed it. Our ward had their Primary program which is always so sweet and heartwarming. I had choir practice after church again. More people came, but there still weren't many sopranos, so it looks like I'll be singing soprano for this song. Frank felt pretty rotten all day, unfortunately. There was a stake priesthood meeting that evening so he asked one of the counselors in our bishopric to take Seth to that since he wasn't feeling up to going himself. 

Frank still didn't feel very well Monday morning so he took the day off. Thankfully, he was better by Tuesday and able to go to both work and his temple shift. Meanwhile, I taught Seminary Monday and Tuesday mornings as usual. Monday's lesson was from Ether 6 and compared the Jaredite's journey to the promised land to our journey through mortality. On Tuesday we talked about following the prophet to avoid spiritual captivity (based on Ether 7 - 11). The lessons went okay, although I would like to see more participation from the class. I think everyone is really ready for a break! Both my team teacher and I have felt discouraged the last few weeks but we are trying to focus on the positive things--and there are positive things each day. 

Seth was really tired this week for some reason and he didn't go to Seminary on Monday or Thursday. He went to Seminary on Wednesday but he was really tired and kept his head down on the table for most of the lesson, (unusual for him) although he did make a comment or two. We had a guest teacher that day and as always I loved seeing a different teacher in action and learned a lot from him. The lesson was about avoiding secret combinations and as he was telling the story of Jared, Akish, and Jared's daughter, he said that he didn't want to keep saying "Jared's daughter" so he gave her the name of "Suzie Q" and called her that name throughout the lesson. Now every time I read that part of the Book of Mormon from now on, I'm going to think of Jared's daughter as "Suzie Q"! 😂

I guess I'll finish up talking about Seminary for this week and then go back to some of the other things we did. I always really enjoy my team teacher's lessons on Thursdays and Fridays, and so often I learn new things or have sweet little moments with the spirit. On Thursday when my team teacher was finishing her lesson and sharing her testimony of the Book of Mormon, I had this really strong impression that I needed to share mine too--to be a second witness--so I did, and in that moment I felt like we were doing exactly what we should be doing as teachers and that it will make a difference for some of the youth, even though it's almost never apparent that we are making an impression on them at all. I am thankful for those moments, and for another moment I had this morning. Before Seminary, I was reading scriptures and the Come Follow Me section for this week sent me to the Church handbook to read a section about principles of leadership. The last paragraph said this: "Your success as a leader is measured primarily by your commitment to helping God's children beome faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Because all people have agency, some may choose to depart from the covenant path. At times this may discourage you, but as you turn to the Lord, he will lift and comfort you. You can know that the Lord is pleased with your efforts as you feel the Spirit working through you." I can honestly say that I am committed to trying to help the youth in my class become faithful disciples and that I am putting my best effort into doing that. I also regularly feel the Spirit as I prepare and teach. So reading that paragraph was very comforting to me. I'm grateful for these tender mercies!   

Families take turns bringing in breakfast on Fridays and today we had crepes...they were super yummy!! 

Okay, back to the beginning of the week...for family night on Monday I taught a short version of that morning's Seminary lesson because I didn't want to prepare yet another lesson and Seth had missed Seminary that morning so it wasn't a repeat for him. 😊Then we played Aggravation and I lost, but managed not to get too aggravated about it. 😉 On Tuesday I took Seth to get a haircut right after school and then he wrote thank you notes for the two people who wrote letters of recommendation for his college applications (one of his teachers and our bishop). I also helped him make some cookies to give to our bishop with the thank you note (because we felt bad for asking him to do the letter at the last minute). Seth took the note and cookies to the YM activity that night to give to our bishop. For the activity that night they had a combined activity with the YW and they did an iron chef competition. When I went to the church at 8:00 to pick Seth up, I got roped into being one of the judges for the competition and sampled an appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert for each of 4 teams. I had to score them on creativity, ingredients, presentation, and flavor. It was quite a whirlwind of tasting...we usually were still trying to finish one thing when the next team was bringing up their next dish for us to taste (there were 3 other judges besides me). They all did a good job and nothing tasted nasty but it felt like I ate a whole extra meal and I wasn't even hungry! It also took a while so we didn't get home until 9:00 and I got to bed late. 

On Wednesday evening I had book chat, so I got home late that night too. (But I always love book chat!) We discussed As I Lay Dying, and now we are going to read I Conquer the Castle by Dodie Smith. We aren't meeting again until January because December is a really busy month for everyone. One of the ladies at book club gave each of us a box of homemade chocolates as a Christmas gift--so nice!

Today we saw our first snow of the winter although it didn't stick. When I left to go to the temple, a few flakes were coming down but it didn't really last long. When I left the temple it was raining and as I headed north I started to see really wet snowflakes hit the windshield. The snow soon turned back into rain and it is still raining. 

In between everything else, I have been working on my Seminary lesson for Monday (I only have to teach one lesson since we only have 2 days of Seminary next week) and quilting pillow covers. I finished quilting one of them and have started on the second one. I'm pleased that the quilting part is going quickly. Ready to quilt:

I'll take photos of them again after I've finished quilting both of them. 

I'll finish up with a few photos of a sunset, morning sun on mist, and some pretty fall colors.

Weekly Review November 15 '24

Today is definitely a gray November day. The colder weather seems to have caught up with us this week, although it's certainly not miserably cold. We got some rain this week also...including yesterday and today...which is good since we've had a really dry autumn so far. 

As usual, I can't remember a lot about last Saturday. Frank had to do some work for a client and was gone a few hours doing that. Seth helped sort food at the food bank for a couple of hours and then he went to work. I didn't have Seminary lessons to prepare for once, since I had already completed them, so I felt like I would have a lot of time to get a lot of things done but it didn't really turn out that way. I did weed the front flower bed which desperately needed it so I'm glad I got that done. Frank and I watched a couple of episodes of 24. We did not stay up to watch the BYU / U of U football game--it started way too late for us. 

I was glad to hear Sunday morning that BYU won the football game although it certainly wasn't a decisive victory. I'm glad I missed watching the game since it sounds like it was a real nail biter. We did record it, so maybe we will watch it sometime but we haven't had a chance to do that this week.

Sunday I had choir practice after church--we are learning Amazing Grace. All the sopranos except for one 9 year old girl were not able to attend so the choir director asked me to sing soprano. I may be moving back to alto if more sopranos come next week, so I practiced the alto part as much as I could as well. I talked to Jared in the afternoon and my Seminary team teacher and I went to visit one of the boys in our Seminary class. He has a health problem that makes it really hard for him to attend Seminary a lot of the year. We visited to see how he is doing and also to encourage him to complete makeup work every week so that he doesn't have to do a lot of makeup work all at once at the end of the semester. We had a nice visit with him and his family. They are all really lovely. Frank took Seth to mission prep class that night so I was able to go to bed on time which was wonderful.

I taught lessons on Ether 1 and Ether 2 on Monday and Tuesday this week. They went okay overall. I had a little bit of time to sew on Monday and Tuesday and I was able to finish sewing the 2nd quilt block for January's pillow covers. 

I spent quite a bit of time on Tuesday trying to decide what fabric to use for the borders for both of the January quilt blocks. I asked for feedback from both Seth and Frank. Frank was at work and then at the temple, so I had to send him photos of the different options and it took a while to hear back from him and to clarify what he said so I didn't get anything else done on those that day (or since then) but I do think I know what I'm going to do now. On Tuesday I also finished reading the book for book chat (As I Lay Dying) I'm glad I got to revisit this book because I actually enjoyed it and I understood it a lot better than I did when I read it in high school. I understand now why my English teacher thought it was such a great book.

On Wednesday morning we had a guest teacher for Seminary. It's always really nice when we have a guest teacher because I always learn something (often more than one thing) from watching the way they teach. It's nice for the kids to have a change too. This teacher did a great job calling on kids to answer questions and he wasn't afraid to tell them that they needed to pay better attention, which I loved. 😊He brought donuts, so the youth were happy about that and at the end he sang and played the ukulele for the closing song (and got the kids to join in after the first verse) so that was awesome too.

I spent most of Wednesday working on Seminary lessons for next week and I had brief outlines for both lessons by the end of the day. I got a call on Tuesday that my wedding ring set was ready for pick up so Frank and I went to pick it up on Wednesday afternoon (he works from home on Wednesdays). I'm really happy that I can wear it again now!

When we took it in to be resized, I was surprised to discover that it was originally a size 3 1/2. I thought it was a size 4. Wow, I used to have tiny fingers! I thought I would need to get it resized to a size 5, but we got it resized to 4 1/2 and it fits perfectly. 

On Wednesday night Seth and I went to a financial planning meeting at the high school about filling out the FAFSA. I haven't filled one of those out for quite a few years and I can't say I've missed it. 😂 The process is simpler than it used to be, at least. I'm almost positive Seth won't qualify for any government financial aid, but he needs the FAFSA for a lot of scholarship applications too (and he may not get any scholarships either, but it's worth trying). 

Yesterday morning Seth hit his head on the door on his way into Seminary and got a cut and a bump on his forehead. I put a bandaid on it and gave him some ice and he was fine by the time Seminary ended.

I spent most of Thursday getting household chores done and I also got to talk to Mom on the phone for a while. Seth had to work that evening. Frank worked on maintenance and I worked more on Seminary lessons and got most of Monday's lesson prepared. I still need to work out some details and finish Power Point slides for Tuesday's lesson but I'm getting there. 

This morning in Seminary we played games to review the Doctrinal Mastery scriptures.

Most of the kids participated well and seemed to enjoy it but a few didn't play. It's kind of discouraging to see that happen. Afterwards my team teacher and I both agreed: "It doesn't matter what we do, some of them just don't want to be here." We have to remember to focus on the positive instead of the negative. 

After Seminary I went to the temple as I usually do on Fridays.

There was not a lot to do to update the finances (for once!) so I got that done quickly today. It will be nice to have some down time this evening.

Scott took the licensing test for selling health insurance yesterday and he passed it, so that is great news. 😁 Today Seth got an acceptance letter from BYU-Idaho, so that is great news too! 😊I didn't expect them to make a decision that soon. It is nice to know that option is open for him, and I think it is a really good option but we'll see what Seth decides. (He's happy about it too, though.) 

I'm pretty sure that is all the news from us for this week.

Weekly Review November 8 '24

This week was not as busy as last week, but it felt really busy for some reason. I think mostly I am still trying to get caught up after last week. 

Both Frank and I woke up fairly early on Saturday morning. Frank needed to do some work for a client, so he left after eating breakfast. I went out on our deck and saw a few deer. Can you spot them in the photos?:

Also, the sunrise was pretty nice:

I worked on Seminary lessons and took Seth to work. When Frank got back, he had some more work to do and I still needed to work on Seminary lessons so we ate lunch and then put in a couple more hours of work. I got my two lessons for this week planned and started on some of the other prep (such as making power point slides) but didn't get everything done. Frank and I wanted to go on a date that afternoon, though, so that's all the work that I did on lessons that day. 

For our date, we went to the mall to do a few things and then got some dinner (soup and sandwiches) and brought it home to eat while we watched a few episodes of the show we've been watching together (it's called 24). At the mall we got some nice hand soap at Bath & Body Works, browsed the books in Barnes & Noble, and took my wedding ring set to a jeweler's to get it checked / repaired if needed, cleaned, and resized. I've been wanting to do that for quite a while and we finally got around to it. I haven't been able to wear my ring for over a decade because it got too small (or more accurately...my finger got too big!) A few of the prongs need to be replaced and the resizing takes some time too so I won't get it back for a couple of weeks. We were kind of shocked at how much it is going to cost...$400! I think the ring originally cost between $500 and $600. 😅It will be nice to be able to wear it again, though.

Seth had a long day at work (11:00 to 7:00) and when he got home he was only home long enough to change into his Halloween costume and eat something before he left for a stake youth Halloween party. A family in our stake has this party every year but he has never wanted to go. The parents of this family are the mission prep class teachers, though, and through that class he knows a lot more kids in the stake now too, so he wanted to go this year. We are pleased that he is getting out of the house more and spending more time with kids his age. Thankfully, one of his friends in the ward was able to drive him to the party and back so that we didn't have to do that. They had a pretty big group of kids from the ward going together. While he was gone I cleaned the kitchen floor but I can't remember what else I was doing all evening. The party lasted until 11:00 and Frank was too tired to stay awake much past 9:00 so I waited up for Seth to get home. I was really struggling to keep my eyes open by the time he got home!

I didn't have choir practice on Sunday so it was a pretty relaxing day. I got a lot of Seminary lesson prep work done and finished up everything for Monday's lesson but still had things to do for Wednesday's lesson. That evening there was a stake youth fireside. Parents were invited too, but I was too tired to go so Frank dropped him off (he got a ride home with another adult in our ward) and stayed up until Seth got home. I went to bed shortly after 8:00 and had no trouble falling asleep!

Monday morning I taught a Seminary lesson about Mormon 7. It went okay,,,I feel like Mondays are never my best days. I feel like the kids are tired and feeling the weight of a whole week of Seminary / school / etc. ahead of them. Last year, the week immediately after Daylight Saving Time ended, I felt like I got a whole new Seminary class. Everyone was a lot more awake and cheerful! I've been disappointed...that hasn't happened this year. The rest of Monday was busy with the usual household chores and I did some more work on my lesson for Wednesday, although not as much as I would have liked.

We all got a break on Tuesday because it was election day and there was no school. Frank had to get up early, though, so I still woke up quite early. I was happy to get an early start because I had a lot to do. My lesson for Wednesday required a lot of advance preparation. It was set up as rotations, with self guided activities at each rotation, including a doctrinal mastery review at one of them. I had a lot of work to do to prepare all the different materials for each station as well as some doctrinal mastery review activities. Everything took longer than I expected so I ended up spending most of the day on preparation and felt somewhat frazzled but by late afternoon I finished everything. Seth went with me to the church to help me set up tables and chairs (I needed them in a different format than we usually have them). Actually, he did all the setting up while I made a whole bunch of copies of things needed for the lesson. Besides Seminary lesson prep, I didn't get much done but I did manage to get meals planned for next week also. (I didn't need to vote, because I did that last week...so glad I made that choice so I had less to do on Tuesday!) Seth mowed the lawn. It was a really beautiful day with sun and warm temperatures. Our whole week has been like that, actually. It's hard to believe it's November! I'm sure the cold weather will arrive soon; I'm definitely enjoying the nicer weather while it lasts. 

Frank got home late Tuesday night, as usual, because he did his temple shift after work. My Wednesday lesson didn't go as well as I would have liked, especially after all that preparation, but I hope at least a few of the kids got something out of it. I wasn't actually teaching, just giving them the opportunity to go through information on their own. Some of them put in a lot of effort and some didn't. After I got home from Seminary, I focused on preparing next week's lessons. I did get both lessons outlined by the end of the day and yesterday I created all the Power Point slides, so I'm mostly prepared for next week. I would like to put some more thought into exactly how I want to do some of the activities so that they are more engaging, but I'm grateful to have the bulk of the preparation done. 

On Wednesday evening we took a meal to a guy in our ward who was in a car accident last week. He wasn't badly hurt, thankfully, but he has a couple of broken ribs so it's good for him to get some rest. Seth drove to his house and back--it's about 20 minutes from our house so he got in some driving hours. He has almost 50 hours now, so we are slowly working our way up to the required 60 hours he needs before he can take the driver's test. The sky that evening during that drive was beautiful, so I took several photos:

Yesterday was a productive day; I got all the household chores done as well as making Power Point slides for my lessons. Seth had to work from 5:00 to 8:00 last night. It was kind of a bummer he had to work because our ward had a youth baptism temple trip last night so he had to miss that. That evening I took a break from Seminary prep and all my other work and watched a couple of episods of 24 with Frank. 

Today I went to the temple as usual but I went an hour later than I usually do because our ward RS was having a temple trip and they chose the 11:00 session instead of the 10:00 session (which is what I usually do). There were only 6 of us there, but it was nice to be in the temple with some familiar friendly faces!  

(I'm a little surprised how far the sun moved in the couple of hours I was in the temple!)

This morning when I left the church after Seminary, I went a different way because I wanted to go to a gas station to fill my tank before going to the temple. I looked to my left as I was turning onto the main road, and I saw several emergency vehicles with flashing lights at the intersection I normally would have gone through (if I had been going toward home instead of toward the gas station). That concerned me a bit since that was the direction the car Seth was riding in would have gone, so I texted Seth to make sure he had arrived at school okay. He was fine, but it turns out the accident at the intersection involved one of the other youth in our Seminary class. (He got his driver's license over the summer, so he drives himself to Seminary and to school.) Thankfully, he is okay and everyone in the other car was okay too. I'm not sure how much damage was done to his car, though.

After I got home from the temple this afternoon, we had an appointment to talk with a life insurance agent because the term life insurance we purchased 20 years ago is expiring soon, so we need to figure out what to do next. Scott referred us to this agent, and Scott was on the call too because Scott is learning how to sell insurance. He just finished taking a class and will take a test to get certified soon. 

Seth just finished two weeks without taking his medicine, and he's decided that it does help him enough that he wants to start taking it again. He has managed somewhat well without it, but he has noticed that it is harder to focus and to remember things. I think it was good for him to do this experiment and to realize that the medicine does help him.

Just a few thoughts for history's sake about the presidential election this week. I've been really troubled by some of the things I've been seeing on social media. I think it is totally fine to be upset / dismayed about the election results and concerned about the future. I don't think it's okay to say hateful and / or judgmental things about people that may have voted differently than you did. Are we really at the point that we determine someone's worth completely on how they choose to vote? I know and love people who voted for Harris and I know and love people who voted for Trump. They are all good people! It honestly scares me that so many people (I hope it's not really that many...it just seems like it is a lot) are condemning others instead of realizing that we all have different life experiences, perspectives, problem solving stategies, circumstances, and so many other factors that influence our decisions when it comes to voting. If we don't agree, we should be listening to each other and trying to understand each other better. (We may never agree, but we can at least try to understand better and to respect a different point of view.) Otherwise, the disagreements and rifts will continue to grow. 

Okay, I will get off my soapbox now. 😁That's everything I've got for this week. 

Weekly Review November 1 '24

 This week has been super busy and my brain feels like mush, but I will do my best to remember the important stuff and to keep it simple. 

Last Saturday (October 26th) started out with a haircut for me. Seth worked from 11:00 to 3:00. I got my second Seminary lesson for this week planned and got a lot of the prep work done but didn't finish all of it before the BYU football game started. We watched the game until it was time to leave for our ward's Trunk or Treat. 

For the Trunk or Treat, we originally planned to dress up in dinosaur costumes and to decorate our trunk with a dinosaur scene using the many plastic toy dinosaurs that we have leftover from our boys' growing up years. That plan fell apart when 2 of the 3 dinosaur costumes we ordered failed to arrive. There was some kind of issue with the box being damaged or something like that so they were returned to the sender before they ever got to our house, and there was not time to order anything else so we gave up on that idea and thought we'd just go without costumes or trunk decorations, but the day before the Trunk or Treat I got the idea for us to dress up like BYU fans. We have quite a few BYU blankets, too, so we decided to drape those all over in the trunk. I thought it would be cool to have the game streaming on Frank's iPad and asked him if there was a way to do that, and he said there was, so that's what we did. It was great because we got to attend the Trunk or Treat AND watch the game! Guess what? Our trunk was a pretty popular place with a lot of other people at the Trunk or Treat...many kept stopping by to check the score and one friend from our ward parked himself in one of our chairs the entire evening to watch the game. (After we invited him to join us.) There were a LOT of people at this event because 3 wards were participating. Besides the Trunk or Treat for the kids, there was a chili cook off, hot dogs and cornbread to eat besides the chili, games for the kids, and awards for costumes, trunk decorations, and chili. They announced three winners for the trunk decorating contest and then surprised us by saying "And honorable mention goes to the Clevelands for having the BYU game streaming at their trunk". We even got a large Hershey's chocolate bar for a prize! Haha, we definitely weren't expecting to win anything!

Dark photo where you can see the iPad screen pretty well but not us very well:

And lighter photo where you can see us and our candy bar prize pretty well, but not the iPad screen very well:

On Saturday I also told Seth if he wasnted to dress up for Halloween, he'd better figure out what he needed and order it. At his high school, it's a tradition that the Seniors are allowed to dress up for Halloween (no one else is allowed to dress up) and they have a costume contest. He'd been talking for over a month about wanting to dress up and what he wanted to be, but he hadn't done anything about getting his costume yet. He wanted to dress up like scarecrow from Batman...a version that is similar to one in one of the Batman video games series.  He got on Amazon and found a couple of things he needed (a brown robe and part of his mask), but the hat he wanted wouldn't arrive in time and he also wanted a burlap sack type of mask. I (foolishly) agreed to make those two things for him. Moms do crazy things for their kids sometimes!

Sunday was a bit more restful than usual because there was no mission prep class that night. I did have choir practice before church because we sang in Sacrament meeting that day. I talked to Jared in the afternoon and also read scriptures and did some more Seminary lesson prep. There was no school on Monday (end of term...teacher work day) so I didn't feel as pressured to get to bed early but I still went to bed fairly early. I didn't sleep super great, so I "slept in" until about 6:00 am on Monday.

Monday was not a relaxing day, though. I had all the usual chores to do...grocery shopping, vacuuming, laundry...plus I bouth donuts for family night treat, took Seth to the fabric store with me to get the materials we needed for his hat and mask, and we also spent quite a few hours finishing his last two essays and both of his short responses for his BYU application. I'd like to say that we got his application submitted that day, but he was still waiting on his teacher recommendation so he couldn't submit it yet. (More on that later!) That evening we played golf on the Wii for family night activity and even though I don't particularly like playing Wii golf, I am apparently pretty good at it (or just really lucky...the more likely reason) because I always win and this time I even got a new high score (only 1 over par). It all evens out, because whenever we play Mario Kart on the Wii, I dismally lose.

Tuesday's sunrise:

On Tuesday we were back to the usual Seminary and school routine. Tuesday's Seminary lesson was about the prophet Mormon (Mormon chapters 1 & 2) and it went a lot better than I thought it would. I still had some prep to do for Wednesday's lesson that afternoon, along with all the regular chores (meal planning, cleaning bathrooms, etc.) AND I needed to do some research about some of the candidates / issues on the ballot so that I could vote at least somewhat responsibly. But before all of that, I needed to take a nap because I had only had about 4 hours of sleep. Frank had something going on at work that morning that meant he had to be there about 2 am, so he got up and got ready and left for work around 1:00. Unfortunately, I woke up when he left and didn't go back to sleep. I really hate it when that happens! I slept for about an hour and a half and then I was able to function, at least. Frank came home around 11:30 and he took a nap as well (longer than mine). I did manage to get everything on my list done before the day ended. I took Seth to YM and did some shopping while he was there, which finished up my lesson prep for the next day.

Wednesday's Seminary lesson was a review of the doctrinal mastery scriptures. I gave each of the youth 3 mini cans of play dough, a paper plate, and one of the doctrinal mastery scriptures. They had to read the scripture and then create a "sculpture" that represented the meaning of their scripture. When they were done, they filled out a paper that had fill-in-the-blank versions of all 12 doctrinal mastery scriptures and then they looked at all the sculptures and tried to guess which scripture went with each sculpture. I think they enjoyed this activity and it was a fun change for me too. They were quite creative and did a great job on the sculptures. 

Sculpting (as you can see, even when we do something fun, some of them choose to sleep instead):

Filling in the blanks:

Sculpture / scripture match guessing:

All the sculptures:

Some close ups:

"Wickedness never was happiness": (Alma 41:10)

"Ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." (Ether 12:6)

"Charity is the pure love of Christ." (Moroni 7:45-48

"Be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect." (3 Nephi 12:48)

"It is upon the rock of our Redeemer...that ye must build your foundation." (Helaman 5:12)

"Come unto me and be baptized...that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost." (3 Nephi 27:20)

"If men come unto me...then will I make weak things become strong unto them." (Ether 12:27)

After Seminary on Wednesday, I voted. (Both Frank and I decided to take advantage of the option to  vote early.) It was nice because there was not a line...I was able to walk right in and vote and finish quickly. (Frank wasn't so lucky...he went last week in the afternoon and there was a really long line.) After voting, I spent most of the rest of the day sewing Seth's hat and mask. I didn't have a pattern, but with the help of a couple of YouTube tutorials and a whole lot of math, I managed to make a pretty decent hat. (I don't think I've used the pythagorean theorem or a protractor since I was in high school!)

In process (I took photos because I thought it was kind of ridiculous how much stuff I needed just to make one hat!):

Making a pattern piece for the hat's cone:

A bunch of math equations / formulas:

Finished hat and burlap mask:

Seth was happy with the result, and he also thanked me several times (he's growing up!)

Wednesday was a beautiful day, by the way. I took these photos that morning:

And this one when the sun was going down:

That evening we went to tithing declaration, so we are done with that for another year.

Thursday was Halloween, of course. My Seminary team teacher did a fun Halloween-themed doctrinal mastery review game at the end of class:

I took this photo from the deck after Seminary:

I also took some photos of our street because it was looking very appropriate for Halloween with decorations and tons of fallen leaves:

Seth texted me from school to say that he won the award for "spookiest" costume. When he got home, he explained how it happened and I had to laugh at his smart stategy. There were several different categories in the competition including cutest, best group, best character (from a book, movie, game, etc.), heroes and villains, most creative, and spookiest. (There were a few others...I can't remember all of them.) His costume could have fit under best character or heroes and villains as well as spookiest but he quickly assessed the situation and noticed that there were about 26 people competing in the "best character" category, several competing in the heroes and villains category, and only one competing in the spookiest category! He decided to join that group and then one other person showed up who wanted to compete in that group too but that was it, so there wasn't a lot of competition. The prize was a bag of candy and he shared it with the other two people competing in his category, which I though was nice of him. Here he is in his full costume, after he got home:

Seth had to work that night so Frank and I passed out candy to the trick or treaters. It was another beautiful day with very unseasonably warm temperatures...it was 77 degrees! We sat outside all evening and it didn't get cold even after the sun went down and a breeze started blowing. Most of the neighbors sat outside too and we enjoyed visiting with them. We didn't get many trick or treaters...maybe about 50 or so...and by 7:00 hardly anyone was coming by and it dwindled down to nothing shortly after that so by 7:30 we closed up shop and Frank went to pick up Seth from work while I got ready for bed.

This morning we got a little bit of rain. Our ward's bishopric provided breakfast for our Seminary class:

It's a good thing, too, because I wouldn't have had any breakfast otherwise. The morning got a bit crazy because Seth spilled water all over his pants during breakfast and needed to go home to change before school but he also had to get into school early to talk with his teacher about his college application recommendation (I'll explain a little about that later) so I had to take him to school and wait while he talked to his teacher, then take him home to change, and then take him to the CTC for his first class. It wasn't all bad; there was a pretty spectacular sunrise that I got to see during that process:

After all of that, I went back home for just a short time before I needed to leave again for the temple. The temple grounds looked beautiful today, with all the trees different colors:

They are starting to put up the Christmas lights too (hard to see in the photo, but there are a few blue/green lights on one tree and some purple / pink ones on another tree):

Coming out of the temple:

I did an endowment session today and struggled to stay awake for some of it, but it was still nice and I had a few sweet moments when I had certain things stand out to me in a way that I hadn't noticed before. 

I mentioned Seth's college application teacher recommendation earlier. Without going into all the details, I'll just say that we've been working all week to try to work out some kinks with that. When he checked with his teacher on Tuesday to see if he had written the recommendation yet, his teacher had written it but ran into some snags with submitting it. After some back and forth with his teacher and his counselor, which took a couple of days, we finally figured out that they just hadn't understood BYU's unique way of submitting recommendations. Seth took some screen shots of the directions for submitting a recommendation on BYU's website and sent those to his teacher and his counselor. His teacher was able to get the recommendation completed today. However, when Seth tried to submit his application, it still said something wasn't complete and the only thing that wasn't checked was the recommedation tab. When we looked at it again the only thing he hadn't done was a third recommendation, which both he and I thought was optional, but apparently it isn't. I still don't know how it happened that both of us were completely under the impression that it was optional! We solved that problem by (very apologetically!!) asking our bishop to submit a recommendation which he very graciously did at the last minute so Seth got his application submitted this afternoon...in the nick of time, because tonight at midnight is the deadline. So frustrating that in spite of all our efforts not to put it off until the last day we still ended up submitting it the last day, but I'm just glad that process is finally over!! We are 99% sure he won't get accepted to BYU, but I think going through the process has been a valuable experience for Seth so for that reason, it was worth the effort. 

In between all of that craziness, I haven't been able to do much preparation for next week's Seminary lessons. I've read the scripture blocks twice and read each lesson at least once, but that's about it. I will definitely be working on lessons tomorrow. Hopefully it won't take all day. 

I have also managed to read a little bit of the book for book chat here and there this past week and I have been pleased that I am actually liking it. I'm definitely getting more out of it and understanding it a lot better than I did the first time I read it! Kind of nice to realize that I've learned a few things in the last 40 years. 😄

On that happy note, I will sign off until next week.