Weekly Review November 30 '25

 I am a few days late getting this week's post done because we were out of town and didn't get home until last night. 

Last Saturday (November 22nd) was a busy day. I did sleep for 7 hours straight the night before, so that was pretty great! I had stake choir practice in the morning and gave a ride to a mother in daughter in our ward who are also singing in the choir. When I got home, Frank and I went on a long walk (a couple of miles). The weather was fairly nice, so we wanted to get in a good walk while we had the chance. Also that day I did some online Christmas shopping, practiced all my choir songs (for both stake choir and ward choir), reviewed Monday's Seminary lesson and contacted a few of the youth in my class to ask them to help with it, planned one of my lessons for the week after Thanksgiving, practiced the ukulele, cleaned the kitchen floor, and listened to the first half of the BYU football game. (We went to bed after the first half because we were too tired to stay up later.) I also contacted a photographer about getting a family photo taken in December, but she has not responded to me yet (over a week later) so I need to try to contact her again tomorrow. 

On Sundary the 23rd, I had choir practice before church and the choir sang in sacrament meeting that day. We sang "Our Prayer to Thee", which is one of the new hymns. President Nelson wrote the words. During the meeting, everyone who spoke took a few minutes to share some sweet memories of Brother Whipple, our friend who unexpectedly passed away earlier that week. After church we got to talk to Jared. I also did some Seminary lesson prep. We invited a sister in our ward over for dinner and enjoyed dinner and visiting with her most of the evening. She is about my age and was my ministering sister for many years. We talked about planning for retirement, among other things. She is one of my favorite people!

My Seminary lesson topic for Monday morning was "Love, Share, Invite". I asked two of the youth in the class to share their conversion stories. One of them joined the church a year ago and the other was baptized in August. The girl who was baptized a year ago actually made a little slide show with pictures to tell her story and it was really sweet! The boy who was baptized in August moved recently and hasn't been able to come to Seminary since then but I asked him if he would be willing to text me his story and he did. It was really beautiful!! I was so grateful for these two youth who were willing to share their experiences and feelings. It really brought the spirit into the class. 

After Seminary on Monday I stayed for a few minutes to use the piano to go over a part of one of the stake choir songs that I was struggling to learn. It helped a little; I need to do that again tomorrow! I went to the store on the way home to get a few things that we needed for our trip. I also got a couple of ingredients to make muffins for Seminary the next day and I got some rolls for the funeral luncheon for Brother Whipple's family. I came home and got laundry done and made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins while listening to podcasts. After Frank got home, we went on a walk and took the rolls to the sister in our ward who was coordinating everything for the luncheon. (The funeral and luncheon were on Wednesday and we couldn't go since we were leaving for NC on Tuesday afternoon, but we wanted to do something to help.) On the way home, the sky looked really cool so I took a few photos:

I have a cloud book, so I looked it up and I think those bright rainbow-y lights on either side of the sun are called sun dogs.

Frank took Tuesday through Friday off work. I had Seminary Tuesday morning but since we only had two days that week, Tammy taught the second day. We talked about the trek west, and for part of the lesson we went outside and read some scriptures while standing in the cold, to get a very brief idea of how the pioneers might have felt. My picture of the kids is very blurry (it was darker than it looks in the photo so I think the camera lens stayed open for a while) but the sunrise was pretty awesome!:

After Seminary I came home and got the bathrooms cleaned and then finished packing for our trip. Seth had a class that ended at 12:40, so we planned to leave after he got home. We got on the road by about 1:15 and drove to Christiansburg, Virginia. We arrived around 5:00 pm, checked into our hotel, and then went to the nearby Cracker Barrel for dinner. I was really tired and fell asleep around 8:30. Unfortunately, I woke up around 4:00 am on Wednesday, but that's not too surprising since that is close to my usual schedule. At least we were able to get on the road fairly early. 

We drove the rest of the way to Brevard Wednesday morning. On the way, we were able to connect via Zoom to watch Brother Whipple's funeral--it was really nice. We also talked to Tanner and wished him a happy birthday. When we got to Brevard, we went to Frank's parents' house first to visit for a while. Then we went to the grocery store to get a few items and then went to Dawn's house (Frank's sister) to visit and to start preparations for Thanksgiving dinner. We made a chocolate pudding pie and also made banana pudding to be used later. We went back to Brevard so we could take Frank's parents to dinner. Their car was in the shop so Frank dropped Seth and I off at the restaurant and then he picked up his parents and brought them back to the restaurant. We went to a Mexican place that was really good and enjoyed spending some more time with his parents. After dinner, we went back to Dawn's house where we used the pudding we made earlier to make a layered banana / vanilla wafer / whipped cream dessert. We also helped Dawn make devilled eggs and turkey rolls (sliced turkey wrapped around cheese and stuffing and covered in gravy), and we put a ham in the oven to cook slowly overnight. 

I woke up pretty early on Thursday morning too, although not quite as early as Wednesday. After breakfast (free at the hotel), we went back to Dawn's house to help make mashed potatoes and some macaroni & cheese. Then we loaded everything up in the cars and went to the church, which is where we had our Thanksgiving meal. Besides us, Frank's parents, and Dawn & Mike, his brother James and his sister Becky and her husband John and son Kenny were there. (Her daughter Nicole came later...she had to work most of the day.) Frank's mom also invited a couple from across the street to come and we enjoyed getting to know them. There was plenty of food and it was all yummy! After eating lunch, we played some games. We played Bank for a little while and then we started a game of Mexican Train (a domino game) that lasted until about 8:30 pm! (It's a very long game.) We had a lot of fun, though. We were so full from lunch that we kind of forgot to eat dinner (we nibbled on leftovers a little bit) so by the time we packed up all the food and cleaned up and got back to the hotel, we were pretty hungry but we had enough snacks that we were able to get enough to eat. (We had some nuts and trail mix which are at least a little bit healthy, thankfully.) As usual, I forgot to take any photos but I do have this one of Frank with his parents and siblings:

We actually slept in on Friday morning (7:00 for Frank, 7:30 for me) which was really nice for a change. After breakfast, I worked on Seminary lessons for a bit and got my second lesson for this week planned. Then we went to Frank's parents house for another visit and his aunt Nikki and her husband were there so we got to visit with them, too. Then we got some lunch and went for a drive up into Pisgah National Forest and up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway for a little ways. It was very cold so we didn't stay up there for long. 

Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest

Blue Ridge views:

Many of the rocks were covered in icicles:

We stopped at the ranger station on the way back down. There was a gift shop and Seth and I each got a Blue Ridge Parkway calendar. I also got a sticker for my water bottle and some postcards.

We went to Dawn's house after that for a last visit with her. Then we went back to Frank's parents house to say good bye to them. We got some sandwiches for dinner and then crashed at the hotel. I got Power Point slides prepared for both of my lessons for this week. We wanted to get an early start on Saturday so we didn't stay up late. 

We got on the road about 8:30 am on Saturday and spent most of the day driving home. We ran into a few slow spots in the afternoon, but mostly we moved along pretty well and we were able to get home by 5:00 pm. We listened to the BYU football game on the radio while driving home and were glad that BYU won that game too, especially after such a bad beginning. Next week's championship game is going to be pretty interesting! 

After we got home, we quickly unpacked and ordered Chinese food for dinner. We also got the laundry going and after dinner Frank & I went to the store to get a few groceries. Then I planned the meals for this week and we stayed up pretty late (about 11:00 pm) waiting for all the laundry to get done so we could fold it and put it away. It was an exhausting evening, but we got everything done. 

Today has been a lot more restful although it's still been busy. I didn't have choir practice this morning but Frank had to be at the church early to set up his computer for the first ward's sacrament meeting broadcast. He came back home after that so that we could go to church together a little later. I listened to most of this week's Follow Him podcast last night and this morning while I got ready for church. Since we got home from church, I have been busy with final preparations for Seminary tomorrow, reading scriptures, practicing choir songs, and talking to Jared (besides writing this post). 

It will be interesting to see how this week goes--there is a pretty high chance that we will get some snow overnight on Monday, so I'm not sure if there will be Seminary on Tuesday or not. We actually got a little bit of snow / sleet this morning, but it wasn't enough to stick or cause any problems with the roads. It looks like winter is here to stay, though. 

Bring on the Christmas joy!!

Weekly Review November 21 '25

I'm getting a late start on this week's blog post, so I will try to keep it brief. There was quite a bit going on this week so that's not going to be easy.

Last Friday (after I wrote last week's post) we got gyros for dinner from a local Greek Orthodox Chuch (they sell them a couple of times per year and they are really good) and watched an episode of Once Upon a Time. After that, we joined the Zoom call to celebrate Mom's 90th birthday. It was great to see everyone, to share memories of Mom, and to sing some favorite family songs. 

On Saturday I had stake choir practice, followed by a RS luncheon / activity. For lunch there was a variety of soups, salads, rolls, and pies. I made a banana cream pie to take to that. We also talked about spiritual gifts and did a few activities related to that. The rest of the day was spent mostly doing Seminary lesson preparations. I finished preparing Monday's lesson (besides making a few copies, which I did on Sunday) and figured out a plan for Tuesday's lesson. We did not stay up for the BYU football game (way too late, and we were really tired) but were glad to find out Sunday morning that BYU won the game. (I completely forgot about it but Frank remembered to look it up.) 

Sunday morning I had choir practice; I'm starting to learn the songs a lot better thankfully. The YSA ward had stake conference somewhere down in DC and Seth didn't want to drive down there so he came to church with us. After church I took a nap and also talked to Jared; Frank went on a ministering visit. Seth went to the church with me to help me set up tables for Seminary (the YSA ward usually does that for us). Seth went to mission prep that evening.

On Monday morning I taught a lesson about the 2nd Coming. Actually, it was two lessons related to the 2nd Coming combined into one lesson. It went pretty well. When I got home (after buying groceries), I finished preparing Tuesday's lesson which involved going back to the church to make some copies. I also had some planning things to do related to Seminary--quite a few emails to send and text messages to answer! I took some time to practice the songs for stake choir and I got to talk to Scott for a while too. When Frank got home, we went for a walk. I had a very slight sore throat all day (I noticed it the most when I was practicing the songs) but it didn't turn into anything serious, thankfully! For family night activity we played a couple of rounds of Bananagrams and Frank won both times. Seth went to the YSA FHE afterwards. 

Frank didn't go to work on Tuesday because he had a rough night. He woke up sometime in the early hours of the morning choking / coughing (something went down his windpipe...not sure if it was from his CPAP or what). He was coughing pretty violently for quite a while and then he wasn't able to go back to sleep for a few hours. Thankfully, I did go back to sleep quickly after Frank came back to bed and I knew he was okay. Although Frank took the day off work, he ended up doing work for two clients--one of them that is about an hour and a half away from here, so that took a good chunk of his day. 

I felt like Tuesday's Seminary lesson didn't go so great, but Tammy said it was really good which was nice to hear. It was an "assess your learning" lesson, which we have periodically. I enjoyed listening to podcasts that day while I got household chores done. Besides the regular Follow Him podcast, I've also been listening to the Voices of the Restoration series that they do with Gerrit Dirkmaat and enjoying that a lot. When Frank was driving home from his client, he called me to tell me that he had just found out that a friend in our ward, Wally Whipple, had passed away the night before. This was a total and complete shock. Brother Whipple and Frank were good friends. They have cooked food for ward activities together for decades. (His other cooking friend, who moved to Alaska several years ago, was killed in a car wreck in June--so sad to lose them both this year!) Brother Whipple died in his sleep--not sure of all the details yet; it might have been his heart. He was a really kind man who quietly served in many ways. We will miss him a lot! 

On Tuesday I also got to talk to Tanner, I read through my next Seminary lesson (for Monday), and we talked to Dawn to do some planning for Thanksgiving. For Christmas this year we have decided to simplify a lot--each of us is going to give to only one person. Since we will all be together this year, it seems like a good year to try something new. We also want to spend less on "stuff" this year and have a little more to spend on things that we will be doing together as a family. I think it's going to be a lot of fun! Jared figured out a rotation of who is giving to who and sent it to us on Tuesday. I am giving to Seth, Frank is giving to Tanner, and Seth is giving to Scott. 

We had a guest teacher Wednesday morning as we often do. We chose this guest teacher with the topic in mind (Religious Freedom) and she did a great job. She is very involved in the community in civic matters and has a real passion for standing up for religious freedom. She brought a flag and we all said the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of Seminary!

I felt really tired after I got home, so I took a nap before attempting to work on Monday's Seminary lesson. That helped a lot and I was able to get Monday's lesson almost completely prepared. Frank and I went on a walk and that evening I had Book Chat. (And Seth had Institute.) We discussed Where the Lost Wander and now we are reading Heidi, which I actually have never read. I got a digital copy for only $1 and just started reading it tonight. One of the women in my book club had a baby with her. All her children are grown and she explained that this baby belongs to a sister in her ward who is getting deported and is currently in ICE detention. The sisters in her ward are all taking turns taking care of this baby since his mom is gone. (The baby's father works and is also going to school two days a week.) It was a good reminder that every immigrant--illegal or not--is a person with a family and a story. 

I didn't sleep well Wednesday night so I was tired on Thursday but really didn't get a chance to take a nap. (I did go to bed a little early on Thursday night and slept well.) While getting household chores done, I listened to more podcast episodes. I finally had a chance to put away my summer clothes and move all my winter clothes into my closet (they've been in the guest room). I also read through my two Seminary lessons for the week after Thanksgiving. I want to get started on them since we'll be traveling next week and I won't have a lot of time to prepare them then. After work, Frank had to go back to do more work for his client that is 90 minutes away, so he got home pretty late. 

Today I went to the temple to do Initiatories. The process was quick today (more workers than patrons), so I was done in about 30 minutes. It's always great to be in the temple, though, no matter how long I'm there.

 

After I got home I got the budgeting done which took a while because we'll be gone next Friday so I basically had two week's worth of things to do. Tonight Frank and I went out to dinner and then went to the mall so I could get my wedding ring checked and cleaned. We did some browsing at Barnes & Noble also. 

That brings you up to date on us. I have a busy day tomorrow too so I should post this and go to bed!

Weekly Review November 14 '25

Happy 90th Birthday to Mom!!! That is quite an achievement.

After writing in my post last week that I should take notes about what we do throughout the week, I decided to do just that. Hopefully that means it will take me less time than usual to write this post because I won't be spending a lot of time trying to remember what we did.

On Saturday morning, Frank and I both got haircuts. I went straight from the haircut to the stake center for stake choir practice. During the week, the choir director sent us recordings of all the songs so I listened to them and that helped me to be a lot more familiar with all the songs which helped make practice go better for me. We also had a lot more people show up for this practice, thankfully! As so often happens when I learn choir songs, I am starting to love the songs as I learn them more. 

The rest of Saturday continued to be busy with a walk, Seminary lesson prep, listening to part of the BYU football game, and having the missionaries over for dinner. I tried to do lesson prep while listening to the BYU game which didn't go too well, as I should have known. And of course, the game was frustrating and a big disappointment that BYU lost. Oh well! I did finish preparing my lesson before the day was over. 

On Sunday morning I had choir practice before church, as I will for most Sundays for the rest of 2025. We are practicing a song we'll be singing in a few weeks as well as starting to learn songs for Christmas. We started learning an arrangement of Star Bright, which is very pretty but also quite different from the hymn book version. I'm actually quite familiar with the hymn book version even though it's one of the new hymns released this year, so it's been a little challenging for me to learn a new arrangement, but it's coming along. 

Our ward had their Primary Sacrament Meeting program on Sunday which was really fun and sweet as it always is. Two notable things that happened: one dad was helping his little girl with her part by whispering her line in her ear. They got about halfway through when she suddenly stopped cooperating and refused to say the rest of her line. After a few attempts to coax her with no luck, her dad finally finished her part for her. It was something along the lines of "Heavenly Father and Jesus want me to be obedient." The irony caused the whole congregation to laugh! The other thing was really sweet. One little boy (about 8 years old) finished giving a talk and then he said "Before I sit down, I have one more thing I want to say." (Going off script...I wondered what might be coming! 😂) Then he said something like this: "Yesterday I was waiting for my dad to pick me up to take me to piano lessons (his parents are divorced). My mom and sister and everyone were still asleep. Since I didn't have anything to do, I started thinking about Jesus and how he suffered and died for all of us..." at this point, he stopped talking and started crying. One of his aunts happened to be sitting nearby, so she got up and comforted him and then he finished saying a little more about Jesus. It was really touching to me and I know to a lot of other people too because I saw a lot of people wiping their eyes. I thought how beautiful it was that this little boy had obviously had a testimony building moment the day before, and that he wanted to share it with us. 

I felt like both of my Seminary lessons this week went well. On Monday I taught about Doctrine & Covenants 130, which was different because there were three different truths to talk about (most lessons focus on one main truth). On Tuesday we talked about Caring for Our Physical Bodies (one of the life prep lessons). It was set up as a lesson with rotating stations--they learned about body image at one, sleep habits at another, exercise at another, and healthy food choices at a fourth station. Sometimes rotating stations don't go really well with this class, but with this lesson they did seem to go well and there was good discussion and everyone stayed awake and seemed to enjoy it. 

The weather this week has been colder and not nearly so nice as last week although we still have had some nice days. We went on a walk on Monday but it was not very pleasant since it was colder and a bit windy too. We had the wind blowing in our faces on the return trip, which wasn't so nice. After Seminary on Monday a couple of kids in the TJ carpool didn't have a ride to school. This has happened 4 or 5 times in the last few weeks so Tammy and I decided that we needed to send out an email to the parents about it. We try to stay out of the carpool arrangements because we want the parents to be responsible for that, so up until now we have just asked the kids who have been left behind to check in  with their parents about it. Since that didn't seem to be working and when they get left behind we end up taking them to school (it's that or leave them there to fend for themselves, which we don't feel good about) we decided it was time to communicate directly with the parents. I put together an email and we did get two responses from the parents. One of them apoligized profusely and said she'd been meaning to talk to us about it because she was aware that her son had been left behind a few times. She thought she had the problem solved, but realized now that it hadn't been solved but assured us that she would make sure it didn't happen again. It was really nice because she said things like "you shouldn't have had to write that email" and "I'm so sorry that you have had to drive them to school...that isn't part of the job description!!" 

I spent a bit of time on Monday trying to help one of the boys in our Seminary class / ward get a ride to a place he needed to go on Tuesday. (He sometimes contacts Tammy and I to see if we can help him with a ride. His parents do not live in the States and he is pretty alone in the world so has to figure out a lot of stuff on his own.) This particular ride was to a place an hour away and he needed to stay for two hours and also needed a ride home, so it was a bigger deal and neither of us could do that. I decided to loop in some of the ward leaders to see if we could find someone in the ward who could help. In the end, he actually found his own ride with a friend so that felt like kind of a waste of time but I guess if he feels like we love him and are trying to help him, it's not a waste. He is actually moving to another part of Frederick and won't be in our ward anymore and doesn't appear to have a way to get to Seminary so unfortunately Monday was his last day to be in our class (unless something can get worked out). I'll really miss him because he is an earnest seeker of truth (just baptized in August) and he asked great questions and made great comments in class. We sent around a card for everyone to sign on Monday and from the comments the kids wrote, I can tell that they really appreciate him too. That was sweet to see that.

Tuesday was not just colder, it was also super windy, so we didn't go on a walk that day. Seth's classes were both cancelled again (for different reasons...sick teacher and car trouble for the other one) but he once again forgot to check his messages, so he didn't know they were cancelled until he got to campus. Maybe some day he will start checking messages regularly! I tried to start some Seminary lesson prep that night but only managed to read through the lessons. I was so tired by 7:00 that I could barely keep my eyes open! I was already in my pajamas when we heard the doorbell ring. I asked Frank to get it since I was in pajamas, but it turns out it was for me. The mom who had sent the really apologetic email about the Seminary carpool the previous day brought me a tin of Danish butter cookies and apologized again! I was very surprised and thought this was definitely going above and beyond! Those cookies are addictive, too...I have eaten so many cookies the last few days! Fortunately, Frank likes them too so hopefully between the two of us we will eat them all soon and then I can go back to trying to eat healthy again. 😅 

On Wednesday we had a guest teacher in Seminary and that is always fun because every teacher is different and interacts with the kids in a unique way and I always learn from them and get new ideas. Although I slept well Tuesday night, I got home from Seminary and felt so tired that I had to take a nap--and slept for about an hour and a half. Frank and I went on a walk that afternoon and I got one of my Seminary lessons planned and started jotting down ideas for the second one. 

Yesterday was pretty busy. Our stake Seminary supervisor had arranged to visit our class that day. Then when she arrived, she told us that she had just heard from the area CES coordinator and he was on his way to our class too! I was really glad that Tammy was teaching and not me!! She is a lot more poised than me and she did a great job, as always. They really weren't there to watch her and critique her...the idea is to get to know our class a bit and to offer support to us as teachers, and it was actually a pretty relaxed and even fun atmosphere. The stake supervisor did a devotional at the end of class and she brought candy and rice crispy treats. The CES coordinator brought donuts, so the kids were really spoiled that day. (And Tammy and I got donuts too!) 

The stake Seminary supervisor is doing her devotional. The CES coordinator sat with the kids (which I thought was cool)...he's in the purple shirt and wearing a tie. 

Donuts!:

After Seminary, my day was full with regular chores, a baptism, and a play. I tried to fit some Seminary lesson prep in there too. (Started preparing Power Point slides for Monday's lesson.) The baptism was for a woman named Sherry...Frank and I attended one of the missionary lessons for her a few weeks ago. She is a really sweet lady. Her son and her son's father both attended which was really cool. The play was at one of the local high schools and I went to it because one of the girls in my Seminary class was in it. Many of the YW leaders and girls in the ward were attending also. (Tammy was there too.) It was actually two one-act plays, and they were both really fun and clever and the kids did a great job. The first one was called Oz and was an adaptation of the Wizard of Oz. The second one was called How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse. I was up later than I like to be, but it was worth losing a little sleep to enjoy the plays and to support the girl in my Seminary class.  

Today we played some games to help the kids learn the DM scriptures better; that got a bit competitive and that was fun! 

Because I was up later than usual last night and remembering how sleepy I got at the temple last week, I decided not to go to the temple today. I also have quite a bit of Seminary lesson prep to finish and tomorrow is going to be pretty busy so I felt like I needed some time to work on Seminary lessons today. 

I just wanted to finish up by mentioning that I had a sweet experience this week with Come Follow Me...through the regular weekly study as well as Seminary lessons and listening to the Follow Him podcast. One of the big topics this week (as most of you probably already know) was plural marriage. I have never fully understood the commandment for the early saints to practice plural marriage (still don't) and I've never loved the idea (although I haven't struggled with it a lot either), but I feel like studying this topic this week really helped turn my heart even more to my ancestors--many of whom accepted the invitation to live the law of plural marriage. I have felt so grateful to them for having the great faith to obey this very difficult commandment. They definitely passed on a legacy of making sacrifices and being obedient even when it's hard, and I have had the feeling all week that I have been greatly blessed because of their faith, obedience and sacrifice. I feel like my feelings about this part of our history have shifted this week from something I felt kind of uncertain and slightly embarrassed about, to something that is beautiful to me and that I will always be grateful for and proud that it is a part of my heritage. 

In the Follow Him podcast, I also really loved a quote from Spencer W. Kimball that was shared:"...have you ever seen someone who has been helpless for so long that he has divested himself of every envy and jealousy and ugliness in his whole life and who has perfected his life? No pain suffered by man or woman upon the earth will be without its compensating effects if it be suffered in resignation and if it be met with patience. Sickness sometimes is a great blessing. People become angels through sickness." As I listened to that quote, I thought of Aunt Karen, and I said out loud "I have known an angel like that." It hit me really hard in that moment, and I cried for a few minutes feeling grateful for her, too. I guess it was my week for crying with gratitude; not a bad thing! 😊I want to record this thought here while I'm thinking about it. When I thought of Aunt Karen this week, I remembered that when I was at her funeral as an 18 year old, I was startled to realize that she had been in pain so much of the time. It really wasn't obvious to me...partly because I was a self absorbed child / teenager, but mostly because she didn't complain and was even very cheerful most of the time. She hid her pain so well. I remember this made a deep impression on me and as I listened to others talk about the kind of person she was, I had a strong desire to be that kind of person myself. But I also remember realizing at that time that the trials she had suffered--poor health, lots of pain, no opportunity to marry or have children--had been a major contributing factor to her becoming the wonderful person that she was. Or maybe I should say the way that she chose to handle / endure those trials was the major contributing factor, not the trials themselves. It was definitely impressed on my soul at that time that if I wanted to become like her, I was going to have to go through hard things and accept those hard things with humility and faith. I'm so thankful that because of her, I learned that lesson when I was young. I can't say that I always have accepted trials with humility and faith, but without that moment of realization as a teenager, I'm sure I would have handled them much worse than I did. I was born with the tendency to be a complainer who wants everything to be fair and I've also been really good at self-pity! Because of Aunt Karen, I have been learning to be less that way.

Well, enough rambling about my inner thoughts. I haven't taken many nature photos this week (the colors are starting to fade) but I will finish up with one:

Weekly Review November 7 '25

Time for my weekly attempt to remember what we did the past week. I really should take notes during the week because I have the hardest time remembering! I haven't always been like this. I must be getting old and senile. Or maybe it's just lack of sleep. Or both! I did sleep a lot better this week, actually--I'm very grateful for that. On Saturday night I went to bed at 9:00 and I didn't wake up until 6:30. And since that was the night that we "fell back", it was actually as if I had slept until 7:30--10 1/2 hours! Wow, that felt amazing! The rest of the week I have mostly been sleeping until my alarm goes off in the morning and even though I usually wake up once or twice a night, I have always gone right back to sleep so that has been really great.

Back to last Friday...we had kids coming by to trick or treat for a couple of hours. Seth mostly took care of that for us and Frank and I watched several episodes of Once Upon a Time. I woke up fairly early on Saturday so I got up and read scriptures and also went outside to see the sunrise. There was one deer outside, very close to our yard. It looks a lot farther away in the photos than it actually was. It (she?) was close enough when I first went outside that I could hear it chewing.

I went to a stake choir practice that morning...it was the first practice for a Christmas program our stake is doing in mid-December called "Lessons and Carols". The choir director explained that it is patterned after a similar program they do at Oxford University every year. I thought I was going to be learning arrangements of traditional Christmas hymns, but it didn't turn out the way I expected at all. The choir will be singing 4 songs and I am only slightly familiar with one of them ("Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming"). I'd never heard of the other three and they are all somewhat challenging pieces so I hope that I can learn them. Also not expected...hardly anyone showed up for the practice. There were about 3 or 4 tenors, 3 or 4 basses, one other alto besides me, and also only 2 sopranos (one of whom is 8 years old). I've sung in a lot of other stake choirs, and we usually have a lot more people than that. It was only the first practice, so hopefully more will come tomorrow. The rest of the day was busy with household chores and Seminary lesson prep. Frank went with me to the church to help me make some copies and a few things like that. 

Frank and I had temple recommend interviews with a member of the stake presidency on Sunday morning. We had to go to the stake center for that. We went straight to our church meetings from there. I got to talk to Jared for a while that afternoon as I usually do. Seth was feeling sick so he didn't go to church. (He laid low all day but thankfully felt better on Monday and has been fine since then.) I had some set up I needed to do for my Seminary lesson on Monday, so Frank went with me to the church again to help me do that. We also went on a short walk together after dinner. Sunday evening sky:

My lesson topic for Monday was Faith in Jesus Christ to Build Self-Reliance. It focused on overcoming obstacles to attaining self-reliance by turning to the Savior for help. The lesson talked about obstacles in our way feeling like "mountains" and referred to a quote by Pres. Nelson about moving our personal mountains through our faith in Jesus Christ. I decided to put a "mountain" on each table (really a stack of 5 hymn books) and I gave each table 6 Lego blocks. When the youth arrived, I told them they needed to build something out of Legos to help them get over their "mountain". They could earn extra Legos for every question they answered throughout the lesson. That worked out well...I didn't have to call on anyone throughout the entire lesson. They kept raising their hands to answer questions because they all wanted to get Legos. It was great! I'm sad that I forgot to take photos of their creations at the end of class. Tammy did take a couple of photos during the lesson that she shared with me. She didn't catch me in good moments (I had my eyes closed in one and didn't look happy in the other one) but you can kind of get the idea. I had more fun than the photos show. 😂

The girl reaching into the bag of Legos had just answered a question, and I was listening to someone else answer a question. And yes, that girl on the end is on her phone and not paying much attention to the lesson...definitely happens 😅:

For Tuesday's lesson we played games to help them learn the DM scriptures so that was fun too and easy to prepare. 

We went on a walk every day this week, I think. The fall colors are so beautiful right now and the sky looks so pretty, so I keep taking pictures. Monday evening:

I took these photos Tuesday morning after Seminary. I startled the little bunny when I came home on both Monday and Tuesday mornings. I haven't seen it since then, but I'm kind of glad about that because I think it was eating some of our grass seed that was just spread out on Friday to try to help fill in the bare spots on our lawn.

On Tuesday Frank didn't do his temple shift--he decided he wants to take the next few months off to give his shoulder more of a rest so that it can heal. His shoulder is definitely better than it was, but it's not completely better and he notices it bothers him quite a bit for many of the things he does when he's working at the temple. We ended up going out for dinner on Tuesday evening because Scott called me around the time I usually start making dinner and then when I got off the phone I realized I had forgotten to run the dishwasher earlier that day so we didn't have very many clean dishes. When Frank suggested we go out to get something, I was more than happy to do that. I don't like cooking!

On Wednesday I got one of next week's lessons completely prepared except I need to make a few copies still. Pictures from our walk and the sunset from our front and back yards (after our walk) on Wednesday:

No idea what kind of bush (tree?) this is, but those purple berries look pretty cool.

On Thursday I got most of my second lesson planned, but I still have a lot of work to do on that one. 

Our ward bishopric made breakfast for our class this morning. It was really good! We had a very small class today, though--only 10 kids! Our numbers tend to dwindle a couple of months in as the kids get more tired and there has also been a lot of illness going around lately. Besides that, three of the kids went on a college visit to SVU today.  

After Seminary, I went to the temple. Since I didn't go last week, it felt like it had been a really long time since I'd been there! In spite of all my good nights this week, I still got a bit sleepy. I still enjoyed being there, though. Also, the mom of 2 of the kids in my Seminary class was there and we've been wanting to talk to her and been unsuccessful at contacting her, so that was a blessing that I was able to see her and talk to her in person. 

Pictures from our walk tonight:

The mornings have been quite chilly (this morning there was frost on my car windows) but the days have been quite nice, mostly. One day earlier this week it got up into the low 70s. It is cooler now, but still fairly pleasant. We are trying to enjoy the mild weather and to get in as many walks as possible before it gets too cold. We had a wind and rain storm in the night on Wednesday night although it was more wind than rain. The wind was loud enough that it woke me up, although I didn't stay awake for very long.

Seth didn't have classes on Monday or Tuesday because on Monday his teacher was sick (he only has one class that day) and on Tuesday they cancelled classes because it was election day. He forgot to check messages both mornings, though, so he found out there wasn't class when he got to class and no one was there. Maybe someday he will learn to check his messages every day! Seth worked most of the day today and he has a shorter shift tomorrow. 

I've done a little bit of reading this week...just some old favorites from my childhood. I've also been watching a few videos made by a British family where they watch videos about America and react to the things they are learning and the videos have been pretty funny a lot of the time. I keep wondering if an American family did the opposite--reacted to videos about England--if people in England would find that funny. I've learned a few things that I didn't know about England while watching these. For example, they said that the fall colors in America are way better than they are in England. They claim that in England most of the leaves just turn brown and die. Sounds pretty dismal, and makes me appreciate even more how beautiful everything is here right now.

To finish up, here is a photo I took of the house behind our house this evening. Apparently, our neighbors want to skip over Thanksgiving and go straight to Christmas: