When I wrote last week, I was feeling pretty sick. I didn't feel better on Saturday the 7th...if anything, I felt worse. This caused me some distress about Seminary since I teach on Mondays and Tuesdays. I texted my team teacher and we figured out a plan in case I wasn't well enough to go on Monday but thankfully I made a miraculous recovery on Sunday. I woke up still feeling rotten and didn't go to church but I took a nap in the afternoon and woke up from that nap feeling a whole lot better. By Monday morning I was almost completely back to normal. I am thankful for that tender mercy!
Back to Saturday, though...Frank went to the store to get me some juice and soup which I really appreciated. Frank and Seth set up the tree and decorated it...my contribution was to unpack ornaments from the boxes that they handed to me. I did a lot of reading and made a lot of headway on the book chat book (I Capture the Castle). As a matter of fact, I finished the book on Wednesday. I liked it--especially because the ending was not predictable. I don't think I did much of anything else on Saturday. Frank got Chinese food for dinner for all of us. We had a fantastic sunset that night too.
We got three new ornaments for the Christmas tree this year. Here they are:
As I mentioned earlier, I didn't go to church on Sunday. Frank sent me the link so I could sign in and listen to Sacrament Meeting, but he was trying out a new laptop with the camera system that day and it didn't work well at all. I could not hear any of the music...the only sound that worked was the sound from the microphone. (It did work well, though...good volume and very clear). The main problem was that the video feed was way behind the sound so nothing matched and the video and / or the sound went out completely more than once. With all the distractions and the times things cut out I missed a lot of what was said in the talks and I felt really sad to miss the music (couldn't remember the hymn numbers they announced by the time we were singing and since I couldn't hear the music I couldn't even play the hymn on my phone instead). I definitely couldn't sing either! I remember thinking by the end "well, this is a good object lesson. Sometimes our choices lead us to being cut off from the blessings we want." My choice to stay home from church cut me off from being able to participate in worshipping with my ward. Don't get me wrong...I didn't feel guilty; staying home probably was the right choice since it gave me a chance to rest and recover and I wasn't sharing my germs with others. Just a good reminder why I want to make the effort to go whenever I can!
After church we watched Music and the Spoken Word. That evening I had a Seminary training meeting for the new curriculum--thankfully, that was a Zoom meeting so I could still attend. After that, we watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional.
Monday's Seminary lesson went remarkably well...or maybe I just had a better attitude about it. I remember there were plenty of kids who didn't open their scriptures or do anything I asked them to do (as usual!) but for some reason it didn't bother me as that sometimes does. I just kept calling of them anyway, and managed to get a few really great comments. Tuesday's lesson was still a mess in my mind--I hadn't felt up to working on it over the weekend--so Monday afternoon I had to finish preparing that lesson. It went okay too.
Seth worked on Monday afternoon. He doesn't work again until this coming Monday. That seems to be the trend lately. Seth got up for Seminary as usual on Tuesday but then he started feeling sick and threw up before it was time to leave, so he ended up staying home that day. (From both Seminary and school...he also didn't go to the YM activity that night.) He didn't seem to feel too bad after taking a long morning nap, though, and he never threw up again. Meanwhile, I had agreed to take a friend to get an x-ray done (she needed a ride) that morning. I knew it would take a while, but it ended up taking quite a bit longer than I anticipated. When she got there, she had to check in and then wait for them to call her up to process her paperwork. Then we had another wait until they called her back to get the x-ray. Then I waited a really long time for her to come back out. She thought they were doing one x-ray of her right elbow, but they actually did multiple x-rays of her whole right side. She was pretty wiped out by the time she was done and I took her straight home so she could take a nap. The whole adventure (including travel time) took over 3 hours. I felt like I needed a nap by then too, but didn't have time.
On Tuesday evening Frank didn't go to the temple because he had some work to do for a client. I went to a band / orchestra / choir concert at Seth's high school because two of my Seminary kids were performing (one in the choir and one in the orchestra). My team teacher came too and we sat behind the kids' parents and enjoyed talking with them a bit before the concert started. The choir program is definitely different from my high school choir experiences...the choir only had 27 kids! It was actually an elective class--not an auditioned choir. Many of the kids had Hispanic or Arabic names and at the beginning when they introduced the choir they mentioned that many of the kids were learning how to sing, many were learning English, and some were learning both! They did do a pretty nice job and there was a sweet feeling about them...I could tell the kids are good friends and all were doing there best. They sang some fun songs, too, although I was disappointed that this was a Winter Concert, not a Christmas Concert. The choir sang one Hannukah song and one Christmas song (Feliz Navidad). Everything else was more contemporary tunes but they were kind of nice. I particularly enjoyed Flander's Field. I really liked the band and orchestra numbers as well...they each did three songs. Then at the end the band, orchestra, and choir combined to perform "Sleigh Ride" which apparently is a tradition they do every year. It was fun.
On Wednesday morning we had a guest teacher for Seminary--one of the brothers in our ward. I think the kids really enjoyed listening to him. When I emailed him the night before to make sure he didn't need anything, he said all he needed was a strong cup of hot chocolate (then he said "just kidding!") I realized that getting him a cup of hot chocolate would actually be pretty easy so I surprised him with one and he was pretty tickled about that. The rest of Wednesday I got caught up on the household chores that I didn't have time to do on Tuesday. I tried to work on Seminary lessons for next week too but didn't make much progress. That evening I went to a piano recital for one of the other Seminary kids in my class. (He's actually not a member of our church but has been meeting with the missionaries for months and he has attended Seminary very faithfully all school year. He really knows his Bible and makes great comments!) This recital was at Walkersville High School (not Seth's high school). Seth came with me too. This young man doesn't have a lot of family support--he lives with an uncle and a cousin; his parents are living in another country, I think. My team teacher had an event for one of her kids so she couldn't attend the recital and the family in our ward who bring him to church and support him in other ways couldn't attend that night either, so it was good that Seth and I were available to go. The recital was for a piano and a guitar class. There were only about 6 piano students and I'd say this young man was the most advanced although he plays by ear, not by reading notes. He dressed up in a suit and looked very sharp, and he did a nice job! We gave him a ride home afterwards. I enjoyed the guitar performances too...they were quite good!
Yesterday I did all the usual Thursday chores (vacuuming, laundry, grocery shopping) and also tried to work on Seminary lessons but still didn't make a lot of progress because there were a lot of distractions. I do have a basic outline for Monday's lesson but need to fill in a lot of details and all I've done for Tuesday's lesson is read it a couple of times. So I will have a lot of work to do on Seminary lessons this weekend. Oh well! Those are the last two lessons I will have to prepare this year. I'm looking forward to a 2 week break from lesson preparations. One of the main distractions that happened yesterday is that I got a call from a member of the high council asking to stop by to talk to me about YW camp. That got me anxious as I suspected I was going to be asked to be in charge of cooking...and I was right. I didn't say yes to him, but I didn't say no either. I expressed a lot of concerns and asked a lot of questions and he said he would try to get answers to my questions and asked me to think about it for a few days. I want to help out, but helping with the cooking last year nearly killed me...it was so exhausting and my feet gave me a ton of trouble. Of course, last year I was the assistant and all I had to do was show up and help--I didn't have to do any of the planning, gathering equipment, shopping, etc. Now they want me to do all of that too and I honestly don't know if I can do all of that, either mentally or physically. I did tell him that I just don't know if I can teach Seminary and be planning this at the same time--just too much on my mental plate! I mean, just thinking about the possibility yesterday made it impossible for me to focus on the two Seminary lessons that I need to be preparing right now.
Today I went to the temple and was so glad to back! When I was sitting in the session today and my thoughts strayed to the YW camp dilemma, I suddenly just felt very peaceful about it. I don't know what that means, exactly...whether it means I should accept the assignment and it will work out or if it means it's okay for me to say no. 😊 But at the moment, I'm just grateful to be feeling less stressed about it.
After I got home from the temple, I updated the finances (which thankfully didn't take all day like last week).
We've had some rain and some fog this week. The last couple of days have been really cold. In between everything else, Frank and I have been trying to get Christmas shopping done and we did get most of it done. The hardest person to shop for is Seth because all he wants is Legos and Mega Blocks, and we'd like to get him something besides that, so we have been racking our brains for ideas and then trying to decide what things he might like without asking him because it would be nice to surprise him with some things that he is not expecting but that he would like. I'll let you know after Christmas if we were successful! I also have no idea what to get for Frank--probably because Frank doesn't know what he wants either. He has a wish list, but most things on his list are just things he is thinking about and not really sure if he even wants them! I have this challenge every year. 😟 I am still working on getting Christmas cards sent out--hopefully those will be going out by Monday. I completely forgot about our secret Christmas service that we usually do every year until yesterday and it was already too late, so I guess we won't be doing that this year. 😞😢I do feel somewhat relieved about what we've been able to accomplish this week, though. Hopefully by this time next week all I will have left to do is some wrapping and some baking. I will definitely be feeling giddy at that point because I will be done with Seminary for the year! I really do love my Seminary class, but I ready for a couple of week off!
Between last week and this week, Seth and I managed to complete his FAFSA and get it submitted also. It's actually a LOT easier than it used to be since they use last year's tax return data instead of this year's (I used to have to estimate what our income, taxes, etc were going to be for the year and then go in later and add corrected data after we filed...it was the worst!!) AND they import your tax data directly from the IRS now instead of having to enter all the data manually. Thank you to whoever decided to make those changes!
We are looking forward to seeing Ben, Dee and Brennan next week end...they are coming out here for a wedding for one of Brennan's friends...as well as Jared & Jessie, who are arriving on Saturday and will be here for a week. Merry Christmas, indeed! 😊
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