I didn't write a post last Friday because we were out of town. It's been a busy and eventful couple of weeks.
Saturday June 27th: I didn't have a lot of things I had to do (besides sweeping & mopping the kitchen floor and I wanted to practice ukulele for a while), so I spent quite a bit of time working on the dollhouse. The next step was putting in the porch mid floor (porch roof / balcony floor), but I realized I needed to use two trim pieces that hadn't been painted yet, so I painted the first coat on those pieces. After the first coat dried, I sanded the pieces and then painted the second coat. I also painted the second coat of the tower front and painted the first coat of all the window frame pieces and touched up the paint on the porch railing pieces. After the second coat of paint dried on the two trim pieces I needed to put in the porch mid floor, I glued the porch mid floor and the two trim pieces onto the dollhouse (Frank helped me a bit).
Weights & tape removed after adding the tower front and top sides and ready for the next step, which is adding the porch mid floor:
Besides working on the dollhouse, I also prepared a survey for the upcoming reunion meals, made dinner & ate it while watching an episode of Once Upon a Time with Frank, and went on a short walk (also with Frank). When we went on our walk we accidentally locked ourselves out of the house, but fortunately one of our neighbors has a key to our house and they were home, so we were able to get back in quickly. I started reading John Adams also, and it is really good. I spent a good 15 minutes just studying the family tree in the front before I even started reading the book! I get so fascinated by family trees. There are so many "stories" hidden between the lines, when you look closely at the names and dates. I'm such a family history geek!
Sunday June 28th: I slept in, which was really nice for a change. I tuned into the Sacrament meeting for one of the other wards because I thought one of the boys in my Seminary class might be speaking before leaving on his mission. I found out he wasn't speaking, but the first speaker was one of the other boys in my Seminary class, so I listened to his talk and it was really good! (I later found out from the boy leaving on his mission that he had not been asked to talk, which is strange, but he said he would share his testimony on July 5th instead).
After church, I got set apart for my new calling and then waited for Frank to be done with his meeting (he was attending the YSA Branch Sacrament meeting) and we came home together. The sister missionaries serving in the YSA Branch came for dinner that evening; we really enjoyed getting to know them.
I did not get released as a Seminary teacher that day, and the new teacher was not sustained either. I assumed that it would happen while I was in Florida, but my team teacher texted me on Sunday (July 5th) to tell me that the high councilman came to our ward and several Seminary teachers were released and a few new teachers were sustained, but I was not released and the new teacher for our class also wasn't sustained. She said "I could see the faces of the bishopric notice and wonder about the oversight, but not be able to do anything about it..." So strange! Maybe they will do it this Sunday? It's not really a big deal for me, but for the new teacher it would be a lot easier for her to be able to talk about it and to start planning openly.
Monday June 29th: Unfortunately, I woke up around 2:00 am. Around 4:00 am, I gave up on going back to sleep and got up. After exercising, breakfast, showering, and grocery shopping, I took a 1 1/2 hour nap.
I did some work on the dollhouse--I sanded all the window frame pieces and then painted the second coat on all of them. (I forgot I was actually planning to assemble the frames before painting the 2nd coat--whoops! It's not a big deal, though. I may need to do a little bit of touch up after assembling them, but it probably won't make a big difference.) All that sanding took a long time and it was a lot of work!
Other things I did on Monday: talked to Scott, read John Adams, and traded out the S & P shakers (got out the ones I use in July; I did it early since we were leaving on July 1st). We also had FHE (played Quixx--Frank won--and had donuts).
Tuesday June 30th: I woke up about 4:00 am which was an improvement from Monday. I did the usual morning routine (exercise, breakfast, shower) and also the usual chores (cleaned bathrooms, planned meals). I also did the laundry (one day late because we were leaving on a trip and I wanted to have as many clean clothes as possible) and packed for our Florida trip. That evening there was a RS activity. I debated not going to that since there was a lot to do at home, but I decided to go for two reasons: to support the activity since I'm the activities committee chair now (even though I didn't plan this activity) and because it was a good chance to see friends and socialize before being gone for a while. The activity was a "movement" activity. Two young adult girls who are home from BYU for the summer taught us some basic exercises that will strengthen our cores and different parts of our bodies (based on a class that they took at BYU). It was actually pretty helpful; I think I will try doing some of these exercises regularly after they send us some written instructions.
Wednesday July 1st: Day one of our Florida trip. Frank and I both woke up early, so we got on the road by about 5:30 am. We drove to Savannah, Georgia that day--arrived at our hotel about 5:30 pm. It was a long drive, but really didn't feel that long. The traffic was pretty good. We did stop more often than we usually do (for restroom breaks, gas, food) which is why it took longer to get to our destination. We had our first experience stopping at a Buc-ee's, after hearing so much about them from our Texas relatives. 😂 There is one Buc-ee's on I-81 in Virginia; it's been there for a couple of years and we have meant to stop there more than once on our trips to NC, but it just never worked out that it made sense for us to stop when we were driving by it. This time we did stop, and we were duly impressed with the number of gas pumps, the huge & very clean restrooms, all the snack / food options, and the spaciousness of the store.
On our other trips to Florida, we have stayed in Florence, SC on the way there and back, so the GPS sent us all the way down I-95. On this trip, we decided to stay in Savannah, GA instead and we were surprised that the GPS sent us down I-81 to I-77 instead, before eventually connecting us up to I-95. It was interesting to go a different route, though, and this route took us through both Statesville and Cornelius NC, which are two areas I served in on my mission. Here are a couple more photos from our trip that day:
Also self explanatory; taken around 1:45 pm
We were in six states that day: Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
At the tail end of our trip, the RS president called me to talk about activities. We got to the hotel while I was still talking to her. After checking in, we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. We also talked to Jared that evening.
Interesting weather note: although it was definitely uncomfortably hot and humid in Florida, it was actually hotter in Frederick than in Florida while we were gone! Frederick was hit by a huge heat wave the day that we left, and had temperatures in the low 100s with high humidity that meant heat indexes up to 112 for four or five days. Lots of extreme heat advisories / warnings. Crazy!
Thursday July 2nd: I slept until 7:00 am, which was awesome but meant we didn't get on the road until about 9:30. We arrived at the place we were staying (near Frostproof) around 4:30. We stopped at a couple more Buc-ee's along the way; they were both VERY crowded. Jared told us we had to try the banana pudding, so I took this picture to show him that I followed his directions:
We got a kick out of this sign that we saw several times on the drive that day:
While in Florida, we stayed at a camp owned by a church; they don't have camps the week of July 4th, so they rent out their houses / apartments for a really great price. We stayed in a little apartment that had a living room, small kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom. Frank's parents were in the apartment next door to us and his sister Dawn & her husband Mike stayed in a little 2 bedroom house on the property too. (We actually rented the same house when we went to Florida 2 years ago). Here's pictures of our little apartment:
The property where we stayed was right across the street from a lake. This was the view from our front porch:
Nice, right?!
After settling into our place, we went to the store to get some groceries. Frank's parents and Dawn came too. After dropping our food off at our apartment, we went to Frank's Aunt Linda's house for a short visit. We sang Happy Birthday to Frank's mom and they gave her a cupcake because her birthday was a couple of days earlier.
We picked up some pizza for dinner on our way back to the apartment which we ate with Dawn & Mike.
Friday July 3rd: I woke up at 2:30 and couldn't go back to sleep, which was frustrating but seems to be a regular part of my life. We were planning to get up at 5:30 because we were going to Sea World that day, and wanted to get there when it opened. Frank's cousin Philip is a verteran and he was able to get free tickets for us. Dawn, Philip, his girlfriend Wonnie, and Wonnie's sister and her husband all came too. I'm glad we got there early, because it turned out to be a very hot & humid day (heat index about 103); it wasn't too bad the first few hours we were there, but it got worse as the day went on. I only agreed to go because there were "air conditioned exhibits", but I wasn't too impressed with the air conditioning. The indoor spaces were definitely cooler than outside, but they still weren't super comfortable. (The penguin exhibit was the only place that was cool, and it was COLD! Which felt good at first, but quickly become uncomfortably cold for people in shorts, sandals, and t-shirts.) We also ended up spending a lot of time outdoors, just walking from one exhibit to another, plus the shows were all outdoors. I did enjoy seeing the marine animals and the dolphin and orca shows were pretty awesome.
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I'm glad we got to go, but I have decided that I am never going to a Florida park again in the summer! (Unless it is a water park.) I would like to go to Universal and to Legoland, but it is going to have to be in the fall, winter, or spring!
Frank got an unlimted meal pass for the day, but other than an early lunch, he didn't eat anything because a lot of the restaurants didn't accept the pass and the ones that did had 45 minute long lines to get food. That was pretty frustrating. We left the park around 3:00; by then it was much more crowded than when we arrived (another reason I'm glad we went early).
We got back to our apartment around dinner time and warmed up some frozen dinners we bought at the grocery store the day before. After dinner, I took a nap. After I woke up, we went to Lake Wales to the Super Walmart to buy soda and a watermelon to contribute to the potluck reunion lunch the next day. Frank's parents came with us. There was a beautiful sunset and a rainstorm while we were driving to Lake Wales. The sky still looked pretty when we arrived at Walmart:
When we got back to our apartment, someone was shooting off a few fireworks nearby.
Saturday July 4th: Happy 250th Birthday, America! We spent the morning doing some laundry. How patriotic! 😂 Then we headed over to the Bracken Reunion around lunch time. As always, there was lots of delicious food and lots of visiting.
After the reunion, we returned to our apartment for a nap. Then we went to Frank's Aunt Linda's house to see the fireworks. The city of Frostproof sets off their fireworks over a lake right across the street from his aunt's house, which is super convenient for us! Before leaving for Aunt Linda's house, I changed from my Bracken Family t-shirt to this shirt, which was an early birthday present from Frank:
While waiting for the fireworks, we enjoyed another beautiful sunset.
Sunday July 5th: I woke up at 3:00 am, which--once again--wasn't awesome but at least I had no trouble getting ready for church on time. 😉 I opened presents before church:
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