Weekly Review April 4 '25

 It's April and we have been having plenty of April showers the last few days. We've also had a lot of ups and downs in temperatures...we had a few really warm days at the beginning of the week (so warm that the house got really hot but I didn't want to switch over to A/C because I knew it was going to get cold again.) And it did...down into the 30s one night. I definitely needed my coat for a few days. Now it is starting to warm up again. Typical spring weather! The trees around here kind of exploded into bloom this past week and it's so beautiful. 

This is our next door neighbor's tree; I have a love / hate relationship with it. This tree is very beautiful, but it also drops leaves, flower petals, buds, etc. all over my front walk which then get on our shoes and come off all over the floors in the house. We also have to rake leaves in our yard because of this tree--we don't even have a tree in our yard! There are trees like this all over Frederick as well as trees with all different shades of pink. I wish I could get photos of all the beautiful sights I see as I am driving around. The last few days, we have had stormy skies and the white and pink blossoms next to the gray / blue sky look amazing!

Another thing I love about spring is hearing all the birds singing. Last week Jared mentioned an app that Jessie has on her phone that will help identify a bird by it's song. I thought that sounded cool, so I asked Jessie to let me know the name of the app. (It's called Merlin, if you're interested.) I got the app on my phone a few days ago and it is kind of addictive! I hear birds singing and I have to go outside to record them and see what the app pulls up. I have heard 12 different kinds of birds so far. 

Well, on to the events of this past week. On Saturday morning I went to a RS activity. It was a cake decorating activity and it was a lot of fun. We did a similar activity about 6 years ago and I really enjoyed that one, too. When we arrived, we were asked to sit at tables according to which month we were born in. Then we had a spiritual thought and learned some cake decorating tips. After that, each table had a cake to decorate. Since there weren't a ton of people there, some of the tables combined but we had three people at the July table. We decided to make a flag cake in honor of our birth month. It was fun! At the end, our bishopric came and judged the cakes. Our cake got second place. 😁

These are my friends Rebekah and Cecily, who also have July birthdays.

Here are some of the other cakes:

Here's a better view of our cake:

This is the cake that won 1st place. The bishopric said it made them think of "the covenant path". 😇

Table full of cakes:

At the end, we all got to eat a piece of cake and since there wers so many cakes, a bunch of the extras were given to ward members in need. 

Bragging note: when we did this activity last time, the June / July table won 1st place for a cake we decorated to look like a watermelon, so we July girls are 2 for 2 creating winning cakes! 😄

I ran a few errands on the way home from the activity and then spent most of the rest of the day working on Seminary lessons. I really struggled with the second lesson and never really did get it to a point that I was happy with it, but it went okay. 

Sunday morning we went to church as usual. That afternoon, Frank was leaving for a business trip. He went to a convention in Las Vegas and he has been gone all week. He is actually on the plane now, waiting to take off for his homeward journey. I will be really glad to see him tonight! Frank usually drives himself to the airport and back when he goes on business trips, but because of his leg, I offered to drive him there and pick him up this time. I knew that would mean less walking for him. We left for the airport a few hours after we got home from church. After I dropped Frank off at the airport, I drove straight to the church and got there just in time for choir practice. We are working on songs for Easter Sunday and for an Easter Cantata that the three wards that meet in our building are doing. We are singing three songs for Easter and one for the Cantata. After choir, I came home and finished making dinner. Seth doesn't usually have mission prep class on fast Sunday, but he told me at dinner he had just found out that they were having it that evening. (I think they decided to skip this Sunday instead, since it's General Conference.) Seth's friend Henry wasn't going either so he couldn't catch a ride with him, but since Seth could tell I was really tired, he said he would skip mission prep that week. I was exhausted and really couldn't face another drive and staying up late, so I was grateful that he was willing to take the week off. 

I didn't sleep great on either Sunday or Monday nights. They weren't terrible...I was not lying awake for hours either night...but I woke up briefly 3 or 4 times each night and I also woke up about 2:15 on Tuesday morning and didn't go back to sleep before the alarm went off at 3:30. The house was hot, too, as I mentioned. That probably contributed to my restlessness. I slept with a fan on all night and Seth slept in the guest room those two nights because it was too hot in his loft bed, up by the ceiling. Those two nights of restless sleep meant that I was really tired on Tuesday. I decided to take a nap around 9:30 that morning. I usually set an alarm so I won't sleep too long, but this time I didn't set one and I was shocked when I woke up 3 hours later! I definitely didn't expect to sleep that long. That meant that the rest of the day I was insanely busy trying to get everything else done. Seth decided to skip the YM activity--again, he could see that I was really busy and stressed and knew it would save me time and I'd get to bed earlier if he didn't go to the activity and he wasn't particularly interested in what they were doing for the activity. I told him I don't want to make a habit of skipping activities (and classes, meetings) but I was really glad I didn't have to take the time to take him to the church and pick him back up. I was still up pretty late trying to get everything done. Besides usual chores (cleaning bathrooms and planning next week's meals), I was also trying to compose an email for the Seminary parents and of course there's always Seminary lessons to prepare. I wanted to work on our income taxes, too, but I ran out of time for that. In the middle of everything else, Tanner called me, so I talked to him too. (Always happy to talk to my boys!)

I guess I kind of skipped Monday, so I'll got back to that. I had a friend visiting from Utah (she used to live here) so I set up a lunch with her and several of her friends. I enjoyed it, but it was an awkward set up because there weren't any tables big enough for all of us so we had to sit in two booths, back to back. I didn't really get to talk to the people at the other table from me. Oh well! It was still fun. 

I spent the rest of Monday doing chores and finishing preparations for my Tuesday lesson. I also read through my lessons for next week, but didn't have time to do more than that. Seth worked on Monday afternoon / evening, as he usually does. I thought about going to a Lacrosse game for one of the boys in my Seminary class but the weather forecast looked iffy, so I decided to go another night. That turned out to be a good decision because there was a lot of rain and thunder and the game ended up getting cancelled. I got to talk to Jared that evening instead, and get caught up with him.

Wednesday morning we had a guest teacher in Seminary, which is always fun. We asked the father of one of the boys in our class to teach and he did a great job. After Seminary, I had my tax shift as usual. It was really busy because we are getting close to the end of the tax season and so if people don't bring everything they need to their appointment, rather than ask them to reschedule, we tell them they can come back anytime to get their return completed and we squeeze them in. Very hectic, but it feels good to be helping a lot of people. I helped two elderly widows who are sisters complete their returns and it was really challenging because although they could speak English quite well, it was clear that they don't understand it all that well. (They were Asian; I'm not sure what their native tongue is because--like I said--they didn't understand me or the questions I was asking them very well.) Besides the language barrier, they also couldn't see well at all so I had to fill out their information forms for them. It was crazy, but I finally got everything done. I stayed late to do it, though, and got home at the same time that Seth got home from school. 

Between Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening I managed to get Monday's Seminary lesson planned but still need to make Power Point slides and prepare some other things. I also read through my lesson for Tuesday again and made a rough plan but realized that I couldn't really do serious planning until after this morning's lesson because my topic for Tuesday is really similar to this morning's topic and I was worried I would duplicate too much of what was taught today. I do want to get Monday's lesson completed tonight and as much as I can of Tuesday's lesson too because I won't have much time to work on lessons over the weekend. (Really looking forward to General Conference, though!!) I expect that I may end up doing a lot of Tuesday's lesson prep on Monday, but hopefully I will get a little done tonight or in between Conference sessions. Thankfully, I don't have to prepare any lessons next week because the week after next is spring break. I am definitely ready for a break!! I've been in a bit of Seminary burn out lately.

I planned to focus on our tax returns on Thursday and I did get quite a bit done, but not as much as I would have liked. I had to do some research to try to understand what to do about the old car trade in / new car purchase. I did find some things that helped and most of that is done, I just need Frank to help me finish because he has the detailed information about car mileage and so forth. Besides finishing our income tax returns, I also need to do an information filing for the business (but have to finish the income taxes first because I need information from those for the filing) and I keep forgetting that Seth also needs to file a return so I need to help him with that. Well, he actually isn't required to file since his income from last year was well below the threshhold, but he had taxes withheld by the state so it would be nice for him to get those taxes back. The other thing I did yesterday was I went to a teaching appointment with the missionaries. It didn't go super well, but that's how missionary work is sometimes. 

I actually wasn't feeling too great yesterday--I was tired and had some intestinal issues. I started taking calcium supplements this week and I had the thought to look up any side effects of taking calcium or having too much calcium in the system. (Pretty sure that "thought" was a prompting.) It turns out that some of the side effects of having too much calcium in the system matched what I was feeling, and I'm pretty sure that's why I wasn't feeling great. I've decided I must be getting a decent amount of calcium in my diet, so I'm not going to take as much of the supplement as I was taking. I actually didn't take any today, and I am feeling a lot better. Not sure why my doctor didn't warn me about side effects / "overdose". That would have been nice to know. 

Last night I finally remembered to sit down with Seth and figure out a time for him to take his driver's test. We got an appointment set for early in May. We could have done it as early as next week, but he hasn't been doing a lot of driving lately so we wanted to give him some time to get more practice.

This morning our bishopric made breakfast for the Seminary kids. After Seminary I had a long talk with a mom of one of the Seminary kids and I also got the budgeting done. As I mentioned earlier, Frank is on his way home now, and I will be leaving in a few hours to pick him up. (Seth may come too, and he might do the driving if he does.) I have talked to Frank every day and I think he's had a pretty good week and enjoyed the convention and classes that he took. His leg is still hurting, but not any worse than it was. He took crutches with him and has been getting around with those. Hopefully he will be able to get some more rest once he's home.

That is all of the news from us.