Weekly Review February 21 '25

It's been another cold winter week in Maryland....highs in the 20s or 30s and lows in the teens all week. Yesterday and today I noticed cakes of ice floating on the river behind our house:

Hopefully temperatures will be warming up soon. (I'm ready for spring.) We didn't get any snow this week, though, so for once we didn't have to adjust the Seminary schedule. It still wasn't a full week of school though since Monday was President's Day (day off) and today was midterm so school got out a couple of hours early. 

Last Saturday I went to a stake choir practice (the choir is singing at Stake Conference this weekend). I missed the first practice because I had a haircut appointment that conflicted and I missed the second practice because I forgot about it. (That's what happens when I don't put things on my calendar.) I decided not to sing in the choir when I realized I had missed half of the practices, but someone in my ward choir encouraged me to do it anyway so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did...both songs we are singing are beautiful and they aren't incredibly difficult so I feel like I have a decent grasp on them after one practice and a little bit of practicing at home. (No practice tracks available for my part, but I have recordings of both songs that I can listen to and by following along with my sheet music I have been able to learn a bit.) At the practice we had a brief discussion about the healing power of music and one choir member shared that there have been studies done that show that singing helps us heal all along a major nerve that runs from our head to our gut. I think that's why I always feel so great after going to a choir practice or after singing...because I've just had a healing experience. I love music so much!!

After the practice I went to JoAnn's to get a few yards of muslin because I realized I was going to run out before I finish all the pillow covers. When I got there, the parking lot was packed--hard to find a parking place--and the store inside was a mob scene. I've never seen so many people there! There were probably 40 or more people waiting to get fabric cut but I got on the list and thought I'd just browse the store while waiting. Then while walking around I discovered that the line to check out (after getting fabric cut) extended all the way from the front of the store to the back of the store and was winding around along the back wall. Never mind! I could see it was going to take hours just to buy 2 yards of muslin and I didn't have time for that, so I just left. I'm not sure how soon the store will close...maybe it has closed already...but I can get muslin while I'm out in Utah.

The rest of Saturday was very busy with some household chores, quilting, and Seminary lesson prep. I got both of my lessons completely prepared and I also finished quilting the first April quilt block. 

Sunday was restful and I don't remember much about it except that it was really windy in the afternoon and evening. (Some people lost power for a while, but we didn't.) Seth decided not to go to mission prep class and I was kind of glad because I didn't want to go out into the windy cold.

As I mentioned, there was no school on Monday for President's Day but Frank did have to go to work. (They bump the day off for President's Day to December so that they can have the whole week off between Christmas and New Year's without using any personal vacation days.) Actually, Seth worked on Monday as well...his usual 5:00 to 8:00 shift. He also did a lot of homework for his CTC class on both Saturday and Monday. I didn't have to get up quite as early as usual and didn't have Seminary of course, but I still had all the regular household chores to do. 

The rest of the week has been fairly uneventful. The temple reopened this week so Frank had his temple shift on Tuesday evening and I took Seth to his YM activity. I tried working on Seminary lessons for next week while I was waiting for him, but I was just too tired to do anything that took a lot of mental effort so I didn't get very far. 

Wednesday was busy because I had my VITA shift. My first appointment had to reschedule because he didn't bring everything he needed but after that I was able to complete 3 tax returns and review another one before my shift ended. Wednesday evening I had book chat. It was our annual "fondue night"...one member of our club who is a gourmet chef always makes chocolate and cheese fondue and the rest of us bring things to dip (I always bring keilbasa to dip in the cheese). It's so yummy!! Everyone really enjoyed Meditations and it was fun to discuss it. Now we are reading The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu. We don't typically read mysteries, but we were in the mood for something light after reading philosophy this last month. This book is set in Singapore in the 1930s, so that also makes it interesting. I've only read a few pages of it so far, but it's already been pretty entertaining.

I've been doing a lot of quilting this week and yesterday I finished the second April pillow cover:

I just need to sew the backs onto both of them, and they will be done. 

I haven't made much progress on Seminary lesson preparations this week so I will have a lot of work to do on lessons over the weekend. I'm teaching three lessons next week so I have a lot to do. I'm feeling a little bit burned out on lesson preparation lately so I keep putting it off. (Easy to do since there's always something else that needs to be done besides preparing lessons.) I'm trying to find ways to make the lessons more engaging and meaningful but haven't had a lot of luck with that yet. 

Today I originally planned to go to the temple but I had a restless night last night and I've had a slight sore throat and headache off and on the last couple of days so ultimately I decided not to go. I knew I would be fighting to stay awake. I took an hour nap after Seminary so I feel more rested now. I was able to get the finances updated before I started writing this post so now I'm done with the Friday chores and I can devote some time to Seminary lessons. 

This is a short weekly review, but I doubt anyone is going to complain about that. 😆