Weekly Review February 27 '26

Since I complain a lot about not sleeping well, I will start this post by reporting that I had another really great week of solid sleep. Two weeks in a row! I am very, very grateful! I did wake up an hour early on Tuesday. But other than that, the alarm woke me up every morning and I only had brief moments of awakening (if any at all) each night, and didn't even make any trips to the restroom during the nights. There's no telling how long this stretch of great sleeping will last, but I am thankful for anything I can get.

Last Saturday I got my hair cut first thing in the morning. When I got home, it was sunny and not miserably cold so I told Frank we should take the opportunity to go on a walk. We walked on the path beside the river and could see that it was a lot higher than it has been in a long time. 

I know--it doesn't look very pretty right now. It's muddy, and the trees around it are bare. But give it a month or two and it will be beautiful! (And much harder to see because of all the foliage that will have grown by then.) After our walk, Frank made some yummy chocolate chip banana bread (there were two very ripe bananas that needed to be used).

Seth went to the Stake Center on Saturday morning to help with set up (all the IT / AV stuff) for Stake Conference.  After getting a few chores done, I did some reading--I started reading The Daughter of Time and I also read a few chapters of Hillbilly Elegy. I've been reading both books a bit this week, but more of The Daughter of Time than the other one. It's a fairly short book and I will probably finish it in the next day or two. It's a mystery based on actual historical events, and it's pretty interesting. 

On Saturday I also started the dollhouse project. I set up a table in the spare bedroom, gathered some supplies, and took all the pieces out of the box and started labeling them. Now I am committed to completing this project because there is no way I am going to get all the pieces back into the box now! 😅I hope it doesn't take years & years. It will take months, at the least. I'm taking photos to document my progress, so here are before and after photos of my first day of work:

That evening was the adult session of Stake Conference. Frank had to got to our building because they were doing a test broadcast that night. I went over to our building to watch with him. Thankfully, the broadcast worked without any problems so we were able to enjoy the whole meeting. It was really good! I did a little bit of coloring while listening, but I also took notes.

I mentioned last week that we had a snow storm predicted for the weekend and that I hoped it wouldn't interfere with Stake Conference. We were fortunate that the timing of the storm shifted to later in the day on Sunday, so all the Stake Conference meetings were over before it started to snow. It did rain for most of the day. Seth helped with the IT stuff at the Stake Center during the meeting. Frank was in charge of the IT stuff at our building, so I went with him to our building to watch the broadcast from the Stake Center. This meeting was also really good and I took more notes. We had a visiting Area Authority Seventy, but I can't remember his name now. Elder Brady, maybe? He was a good speaker, even though I can't remember his name. 

Besides Stake Confernce, I kept busy reading scriptures, listening to the Follow Him podcast, talking to Jared, and creating Power Point slides for one of my Seminary lessons. We also had family home evening (the lesson part). Around 5:00 pm, the rain turned to snow and it started sticking right away. Shortly after 5:00 pm, the school district announced a 2 hour delay (with a re-evaluation the next morning) for Monday morning, which meant no Seminary. When we went to bed, about a half inch of snow had accumlated. When we woke up the next morning...there was still only about half an inch of snow! That storm didn't turn out to be much at all for us, but it just went further north than originally anticipated. I hear that places like Philadelphia, Providence, New York City, and Boston got absolutely creamed with snow and blizzard conditions. Glad it wasn't us! 

Since there wasn't much snow and the roads looked clear, Frank got up and went to work as usual on Monday morning. I tried to go back to sleep, but after about 30 minutes I decided to get up and jump into my day. We went to bed fairly early on Sunday, so I wasn't very tired and didn't need to take a nap later. Surprisingly, when the school district re-evaluated the road conditions that morning, they decided to cancel school. The roads were completely clear, so who knows why they did that! I got grocery shopping done but before that Tammy met me at the church so we could set up tables and chairs for Seminary on Tuesday morning. (The YSA Ward usually sets those up for us on Sunday after their meetings, but because of Stake Confernce, we knew that wouldn't have happened.) I also reviewed Tuesday's Seminary lesson and worked on the dollhouse project--read the directions, ordered some supplies that I am going to need, and explored some online resources that will be helpful. I also read my 2 Seminary lessons for next week. The lesson I had prepared for that morning will just never be taught, but it wasn't a total waste beacause I learned a lot while preparing it. 

After Frank got home from work, he contacted the surgeon about his shoulders. She made an appointment for him next week but in the meantime wanted him to get his shoulders x-rayed. She sent in a referral and he was able to get an appointment for that afternoon (he gets home around 2:00 because he goes into work so early). 

After dinner, we did family night activity and then Frank and I went to the library. I had a book on hold that I needed to pick up and he needed to re-activate his card. He tried to use it last week and it wouldn't work. When he went in, they told him it had been de-activated because he hadn't used it for so long, but they were able to re-activate it for him. The book I picked up at the libary is called Emotional Inheritance. One of the volunteers at VITA mentioned it during a conversation we had and I thought it sounded really interesting. I have only read the introduction so far because I'm focusing on getting the other two books read first. So I will write more about it when I actually start reading it.

My Tuesday morning Seminary lesson was a Life Prep lesson on Focusing on Jesus Christ in the scriptures. On the way home from Seminary, I stopped at our storage unit to get some empty bins so I would have something to put all the dollhouse pieces in. I need the table to actually work on the construction, so I needed somewhere to put all the pieces until they are needed. I did a little more work on identifying parts while talking to Tanner on the phone, but didn't have much time to work on it that day. I did do a little bit of reading and planned one of next week's Seminary lessons (besides regular Tuesday chores).

Pieces in bins after Tuesday's work:

Seth had a med check up with the doctor that day, but now that he can drive and he's 18 (considered an adult), he can take himself to those appointments. Frank came home late since he had his temple shift after work. 

Wednesday was my usual Seminary and VITA routine. We had a guest teacher for Seminary, which is always interesting. I love seeing all the different teaching styles. VITA was busy and I offered to stay late and was happily accepted. I got home around 3:00 pm again. I planned my 2nd Seminary lesson for next week after dinner that night. I also invited a guest teacher for 2 weeks from now and she accepted, but after learning that she is working full time and taking a class (plus being a mom of several children), I felt like I needed to talk to her about it some more. I was able to do that on Thursday morning during Seminary (one of her kids is in our class) and when I told her that I didn't realize how much she had on her plate and that I could ask someone else, she looked relieved and said that in her heart of hearts she really wanted to teach, but that she was feeling really overwhelmed right now. I sent another invitation out on Thursday afternoon but I haven't heard back about that one yet. I'm sure it will all work out somehow.

Tammy used a fun program on Thursday morning as part of her lesson that allows the kids to scan a QR code with their phones and submit answers to questions. I tried to use the same program for one of my lessons last week, but it didn't work even though we had tested it out the day before (I realized after class that the internet had gone down). Anyway, she set it up so that their answers would form a word cloud. I thought it was really cool!:

Hopefully, I will be able to use this for some other lessons (and hopefully it will work next time!) I always really enjoy Tammy's lessons and was particularly touched by the spirit during this one. Also, the boy who gave the devotional hadn't realized it was his turn (not really his fault; we need to do a lot better at making sure they know when it's their turn) so Tammy just asked him to share a way that he feels God's love. He said "I feel God's love when I am passing the sacrament because I am representing the Savior". So Sweet!!

After Seminary, I got grocery shopping and other chores done (Seth always helps me with vaccuming, which is great) before going with Seth to his appointment with the GI surgeon. (He wanted me to go with him.) The surgeon told us that the MRI confirmed that he has a fistula, so he needs to have surgery to fix that. There are two different procedures they do, but she won't know which one he needs until she is in the surgery and can see how large the fistula is and exactly where it is located. It's outpatient surgery and should be a quick recovery. He won't be having the surgery until April sometime because there are no appointments available until then. We are waiting to hear back from the scheduler to know the exact day--we probably won't hear until sometime early next week.

After Seth's appointment, I finished preparing this coming Monday's Seminary lesson (Power Point slides etc.) and also finished the rest of Thursday's chores. After dinner, I finished labeling all the dollhouse parts. There are a lot pieces!

This morning it was very foggy when I left for Seminary and there was a thin layer of ice on all my car windows which was very hard to scrape off, for some reason. I had to drive a lot slower than usual to the church because the fog was so dense. It was still fairly dense after Seminary, but easier to see because it was lighter outside. The fog stuck around all morning but has cleared up now and it is sunny (which is nice because yesterday was a very gray day). Two of the youth in our Seminary class had their wisdom teeth removed yesterday so today Tammy wrote a get well note on the board for them and took a photo with the rest of the class standing around it. Then she sent it to them after class. They both responded with thanks and sent us photos of themselves with swollen cheeks! 

As usual, I got the finances updated before writing this post. I'm going to the temple every 2 weeks right now (during the tax season, since VITA takes up one of my days) so I didn't go today. I'm planning to finish preparing my 2nd Seminary lesson for next week so I'll have tomorrow free to do other things (like maybe some dollhouse sanding and painting). There's a slight possibility for some snow again next week...this time on Tuesday morning. Hopefully I won't end up with another prepared lesson that I don't teach. Originally, the forecast was for possibilities of snow Sunday night, Monday, Monday night, and Tuesday morning and we were going to get up to 3 inches, but now it has shifted to just Tuesday morning and less than an inch, so maybe we won't get anything at all. The timing is everything because less than an inch can still trigger a 2 hour delay if it happens to be in the morning and the roads get icy or slippery. I guess we'll see. In the meantime, tomorrow is supposed to be quite nice with a high of 62, so we'll enjoy that while it lasts.

That's all the news I can remember right now, so I will sign off until next week.

Weekly Review February 20 '26

We didn't have a lot going on this week, so this post will probably be on the short side. 

Saturday was Valentine's Day. Frank and I went out to breakfast to celebrate, as planned. We went to Cracker Barrel and after eating I browsed throught the store, as I usually do. They always have lots of cute S&P shakers, which I enjoy looking at. Here are photos of some that I really liked:

This one reminded me of one that I already have that is from Grandma Pew's collection. The mixer is one of the shakers and the bowl is the other one. Grandma's set has beaters that detatch and the beaters are the shakers (the mixer and bowl are just for show). 

This basket has several really small shakers--a bag of sugar, a stick of butter, a carton of eggs, a red refrigerator, a red television set, and shakers that look like those little paper salt and pepper packets that you get at restaurants sometimes. 

I didn't buy any of the above sets, but I did buy this one. It was just too cute!:

Frank and I exchanged cards and we got some turtle candy to share. I took photos of the card Frank gave me because he made it himself and I thought it was really clever:

After we got back from breakfast, I was busy the rest of the day planning my two Seminary lessons for this week and working on our tax return. The tax return is basically finished; I'm just giving it a little more time to make sure I haven't missed anything. After working on that stuff for most of the day, I wanted to do something fun so stayed up way too late watching a movie, but I enjoyed it.

On Sunday morning before church I read scriptures and listened to the Follow Him podcast. After church, I talked to Jared while Frank went on a ministering visit. After dinner, I had a teacher training meeting for Seminary which was really good.

I got to sleep in on Monday because it was President's Day and there was no school, so no Seminary. I still got up at 6:00, but that's sleeping in for me! Frank did have work (he got up at 3:30 as usual) and Seth had classes too. I made Power Points for my 2 Seminary lessons and also made cookies for my Seminary class--I promised to bring a treat for anyone who read Abraham 1 by Tuesday morning (one of the required readings and we were covering that chapter in Tuesday's lesson). We had family night in the late afternoon. That evening, Frank and I went to dinner with another couple in our ward. We went to a restaurant in the historic downtown district which was fun. We really enjoyed visiting with them! 

Tuesday I was back to my regular routine. I taught a Seminary lesson about the Abrahamic Covenant. After Seminary, I took a 1 1/2 hour nap because I woke up a lot the night before. I didn't lie awake for hours (thankfully!) but I did wake up briefly nearly every hour. I felt a lot more rested after napping. I went over my lesson for the next day, got all the regular chores done (on Tuesdays that's cleaning bathrooms and planning the next week's meals), read through one of my lessons for next week, and talked to Tanner. The temple opened again this week so Frank did his temple shift that night and didn't get home until after I was asleep. (I did sleep well every night this week other than Monday night, which I am very grateful for!)

On Wednesday morning I taught a lesson about Patriarchal Blessings. Then I did my usual VITA shift. Well, actually it wasn't usual becuase I stayed until nearly 3:00 pm, instead of 1:00 pm. That's because I ended up starting a return around 12:30 that took a lot of time. It wasn't super complicated, but there was one piece of it that entailed tracking down several pieces of information that were hard to find. I did finally find everything I needed and completed the return. The taxpayer was very nice and super grateful! I really enjoy all the people I work with at VITA. We joke around a lot but we also help each other and it is a lot of fun! On Wednesday evening I had book chat. Once a year, every February, we have fondue for our snack at book chat. One of the ladies in our group is a gourmet cook and she makes both chocolate and cheese fondue and they are so good! The rest of us bring different items to dip. We always have a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as pretzels, bread, pound cake, shortbread cookies, and keilbasa. I always bring the keilbasa! We discussed Flowers for Algernon and now we are reading a book called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. I haven't actually started reading it yet because I haven't had much reading time and I am still reading Hillbilly Elegy.

Thursday was busy with grocery shopping, vacuuming, and laundry as well as planning my two Seminary lessons for next week. I read the second one on Wednesday after I got home from VITA, but other than reading them, that is all I had a chance to get done until Thursday.

Today I went to the temple. My friend Rebekah was off work today so she came with me to the temple and then we stopped for lunch on the way home. We were on "R", so we went to Red Robin. It was nice to be in the temple again although I struggled a little bit with feeling sleepy. 

I spent the rest of the day updating the finances and I also watched an episode of Once Upon a Time with Frank while we ate dinner. 

We did have some warmer days this week and we also had a lot of rain. It rained on Sunday, Thursday, and today. You can see in the photo above that some snow has melted. I took a couple of photos on Tuesday to document the fact that a lot of snow had melted. In our front yard, there was only a tiny patch left:

(That patch is completely gone now.) The deck behind the house (north side) had more snow but a lot has melted and you can see a lot of grass in the common area behind our house:

This morning when I got up to exercise it was raining hard and then I heard this really loud noise. I thought "What was THAT?" and then I realized it was thunder! Haven't heard that sound in quite a while! The river has been frozen for the last few weeks but after the last few days of rain, it is running again (and a lot higher), with lots of ice chunks on top. I thought we had seen the last of the snow for this winter, but now we have a winter storm predicted for this weekend that could bring up to 5 inches of snow. If the timing of the storm occurs as predicted and we really do get that many inches of snow, then it is very doubtful that we will have Seminary on Monday morning. But I guess we'll see how it goes. This weekend is our Stake Conference and I'm hoping the predicted snow doesn't cause problems for that.

The only other thing I have to report is that Frank's shoulder has started bothering him again the last few weeks and is quite painful at times. He is going to have to go back to the doctor to see what to do about it now. Maybe just another cortisone shot, maybe some physical therapy, hopefully not surgery. 

Weekly Review February 13 '26

I'm going to start this week with a few categories. Then I will talk about a few of the daily events. 

Weather: It feels less like Siberia than it did last week, although it's still cold. We got a dusting of snow last Friday, after I finished writing last week's post.  Saturday and Sunday were extremely cold and windy but we had a few days with temperatures in the 40s midweek, so a good deal of snow has melted (although there is still plenty out there). When I drove to Seminary Monday morning, it was so cold that I remember thinking "I don't want to do this anymore!!" (It was about 8 degrees when I drove to Seminary and only 4 degrees afterwards--that was a very cold day.) Other mornings, I have gone outside and thought "This isn't so bad". Today is colder than the previous few days--it's only 34 degrees and it's mid day--but we are supposed to get some warmer days this coming week. I took a few photos in a parking lot on Monday, just to document some of the tall piles of snow left by the snow plows (and that are still around 2 weeks after the storm). These photos don't show the snow at it's highest--by the time I took these, quite a bit of melting had occurred--but it gives you an idea: 

These aren't the tallest piles I've seen, either. The next day, I was in a different parking lot and some of the piles were a lot taller than the cars.

Taxes: Last Friday (after I wrote last week's post), I started working on our tax return. I did a little more work on them on Saturday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I have all of our information entered into the tax software now except for some investment info (I was waiting on a document from our broker, but we just got it yesterday so I can enter that now) and the information for Frank's business. One snag I ran into that took some time is that I needed some information from one of our banks to enter some interest income (it was a small amount, so we didn't receive a 1099 from them, which would have had the information I needed). I had to call the bank and when I did, I was surprised when it turned into a two day process with several phone calls going back and forth. I did finally get the info I needed yesterday, though. I'm hoping to get the rest of the info entered into the software over the next couple of days so I can check one thing off my list!

Reading: I finished The Messy Lives of Book People on Tuesday morning. For a while there, I was worried that I wasn't going to like the book--it looked like it was headed in a direction that I wasn't going to be happy about--but happily it resolved in a good way and overall I enjoyed the book. I started reading Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance on Wednesday. I haven't progressed very far into it yet but it's pretty interesting, especially since Frank is from "the greater Appilachia area" and some of the things he describes are similiar to things I encountered when I was serving my mission in that area. I think there will be a lot of food for thought in this book.

Dollhouses: I don't remember what got me thinking about my still unmade dollhouse kit again (I've had it for a little over a decade now), but a few weeks ago I did start thinking about it and wondering if maybe I could find the time (and space) to build it. Over the last few weeks, I've been doing some research and I even found a series of videos that document the process of building the exact kit that I have. Watching those videos (I skimmed through some of them) has helped me realize that maybe I could actually do it. I noticed that there's a lot of steps that involve gluing something together and then letting it dry for a day or two before doing something else. (Same goes for a lot of painting steps--paint & then let dry). Although that means it will take a lot of time (I already expected that), it also means that it can be done it small steps that don't take a lot of time. And just seeing how it's done has helped me to feel less intimidated by the whole thing. I'm still not sure I'm ready to dive into a big project, but I'm thinkng about it! I definitely need to decide soon because the only available space I have to work on this project is the guest room, and I wouldn't want the guest room to be taken over by a project if someone decides to visit. That isn't likely to happen until sometime this summer, though (if at all), so if I start on this project soon, that would give me about 3 months to get hopefully the bulk of the project done before it's truly summer. We'll see how it goes. Frank has agreed to help me--at least some of the time--and I think it would be a fun project to do together.

Seminary: I taught on Monday and Tuesday, as usual. Both lessons went pretty well. I was particularly happy with Tuesday's lesson--I really struggled with the preparation process and didn't feel great about it, but it turned out a lot better than I expected, with some good participation. We had a guest teacher on Wednesday--a young adult--and he did a great job. I always love to see different teaching styles and it's great to see how each teacher brings unique strengths and life experiences to the teaching process. This teacher had the kids do a journal writing exercise that I am sure was so good for some of the kids in our class. I have not made much progress on my lessons for next week yet. I have read through both of them, and one of them I have read through twice, but that's about it. There's no school on Monday so I'm not teaching until Tuesday and Wednesday, so at least I have an extra day to prepare. I am actually combining parts of two lessons for Tuesday's lesson. Wednesday's lesson is a life prep lesson and there's some overlap with it and Tuesday's lesson, as well as with another life prep lesson I taught in January, so I've been thinking about how I can link all of these things together without being too repetitive.

This week Tammy and I have been encouraged to see some change in one of the girls in our class. She has never been super happy to come to Seminary and definitely sends off negative "I don't want to be here" and even "I don't like you" vibes. A few times, she has been quite rude to us. Last year, she put her head down a lot and wouldn't participate. This year she has had her head up and been alert every day, but still won't participate. As a matter of fact, sometimes she has spent the whole class talking to some of the other girls and it has been quite disruptive at times. A lot of days she is just on her phone the whole time, though, and is quiet but won't participate in any way--even something like reading a verse out loud. This week she has been participating a little more, though. She has read a few times when asked to do so and the last few days she has mildly participated in a few things (yesterday, for example, the kids were supposed to get up and walk around the room to read things posted on the walls and she did that. Normally she will just stay in her seat on her phone if we do something like that) and she has even answered a few questions when invited to do so, and gave some good answers. Today was also her turn for devotional, and usually she doesn't prepare something. Today when it was time for devotional, she did get up and she said she hadn't really prepared anything, but she wanted to give a report about her brother on his mission (who most of the kids in our class know because he was in our class last year). It was really sweet to see her do that, and it makes me happy to see her participating in any way. Sometimes it has been hard for me to love this girl because we don't have much positive interaction and it's hard to feel love for someone who doesn't like you. But the joy I have felt this week just seeing a little bit of improvement has helped me realize that I do love her--at least a little bit! I'm happy to see even a tiny bit of change, even if it doesn't last. 😉

Sleep: I slept GREAT this entire week! I woke up abour 45 minutes early one morning and didn't go back to sleep, but other than that I have been waking up with the alarm and most nights I didn't even wake up briefly in the night--I just slept solid from when I climbed into bed until it was time to get up. HEAVENLY!!

Seth: He's had the usual things this week--YSA FHE on Monday, Institute on Wednesday, work on Saturday (that's the only day they seem to schedule him to work anymore), and classes on Monday through Thursday. Today he is going to get an MRI (to check for a fistula). I'm sure we won't know the results of the MRI until he visits the surgeon again on the 26th.

Now I will share a few events that happened this week.

On Saturday, Frank helped with an openhouse for the family history center at our stake center. It was recently remodeled, so they had an openhouse when it re-opened. He also got a haircut. I practiced a song that our choir was singing the next day.

Sunday was our Ward Conference. I had to get there a little early for a brief choir practice before the meeting. We sang the song for the prelude. It was an arrangement of "Where Can I Turn for Peace?". I think it went well and our meetings were really good. We also got a new RS presidency, which is always interesting. After church, I talked to Jared. He sang a musical number for his sacrament meeting with a small group. He sent me a recording of their song, and it sounds really good! We had family night that evening (the lesson portion). Seth didn't have mission prep class because of parking issues--still too many huge snow banks covering all the potential parking places. We did the activity and treat portion of FHE on Monday evening, before Seth left for his other FHE. We played Candyland (haven't played that game in ages, but Seth wanted to play it) and ate donuts.

On Tuesday I got to talk to Tanner for a while. He is mostly doing well, although he's having a few health issues. (Nothing too serious, and he's got some appointments to try to get some treatment that will help.) I watched Pres. Oaks's BYU devotional which I thought was so good! Also, I really felt the spirit testify to me while he was speaking that he is the Lord's prophet now. It was sweet! Frank had a busy day--after work, he did some work for a client. That evening I went to a RS activity. There was a hot chocolate bar with a lot of treats and we did these funny mad lib things. The point of the evening was to laugh and have fun, and I definitely did that!

I had my second VITA shift on Wednesday. Once again, a new person was shadowing me for most of my shift. It went well and I had fun. Frank talked to his sister Dawn for a while that evening--she just returned from a trip to Florida with his parents, so she was telling him about their trip.

On Thursday I made Valentine's cupcakes for my Seminary class:

They were happy to get them this morning! Frank had a very busy day with a lot of meetings at work, followed by some prep work for Stake Conference (coming up next week; Seth helped with that too), followed by completing monthly maintenance for his clients. 

The temple is still closed, so I didn't go to there today. I did the usual financial updates this morning and tonight we have the missionaries coming over for dinner. Frank got me some beautiful red roses for Valentine's Day and tomorrow morning we are planning to go out for breakfast. 

We have been discussing our summer plans this week and will probably be attending the Bracken family reuion in Florida (as well as the Pew family reunion in Utah). We are still figuring out the details for Florida--how long we will stay, how we will get there (fly or drive), and if we will do anything else while we're there (besides visiting family, of course!) Seth needs to work, so he will not be coming with us, which is kind of sad--but going on a trip with just the two of us sounds kind of fun too. 😀

To finish up this week's post, here is a photo of yesterday's sunrise, which was quite nice:

Weekly Review February 6 '26

Greetings from Siberia! Well, actually we're still in Maryland--it just looks and feels like Siberia. Up until Monday the 2nd, none of the snow that fell on Sunday the 25th had melted because temperatures did not rise above freezing that entire time. On Monday, we did get a few hours of temperatures in the mid 30s and the sun came out as well so some of the snow started melting. We had a few other days this week that it was sunny with temperatures in the 30s for part of the day, so a decent amount of the snow in our front yard has melted (our house faces roughly south). There's still plenty of snow our there, though, and we may get a little more snow this afternoon / evening. There are still large piles of plowed snow / ice along all the roads. There are a number of places throughout Frederick where the right lane of a road just suddenly disappears under a big pile of icy snow and you have to move to the left quickly. Some of the piles in parking lots are several feet high--kind of unbelievable! We have another arctic blast this weekend with both a cold weather advisory and a high wind warning. The cold weather advisory is from 4 am tomorrow through 10 am Sunday, with wind chills as low as 10 to 20 degrees below zero expected. The high wind warning is for 4 am tomorrow through 7 pm tomorrow with winds 20 to 30 mph and some gusts up to 60 mph. Sounds fun, right? I am glad I don't have to go anywhere until church on Sunday afternoon. The good news is, we're supposed to get a few days with highs in the low 40s early next week and some high 40s / low 50s the week after that. I'm happy for anything above freezing at this point! I'm also grateful that we've had a few sunny days. Okay, enough about the weather!

On Saturday (the 31st) I worked on Seminary lessons for this week. After communicating with Tammy, we decided that it would still work for me to teach both of the lessons I had already prepared which I was grateful for--no wasted effort! Monday's lesson was completely prepared so I worked on finishing the preparations for Tuesday's lesson and I also started working on the lesson for Wednesday (but didn't do much of it). That afternoon, we went to a birthday openhouse for one of my good friends in the ward. She was one of my counselors when I was Primary president and then I was one of her counselors when she was YW president. We also worked together on the cooking crew at YW camp last summer (and will be doing that again this summer). Originally, they were going to have this birthday celebration at her house, but because of the snow there was nowhere to park on their street, so they moved the party to the church. They had a lot of snack foods to enjoy and a lot of card games to play. We ended up staying until the end and we had a lot of fun. Frank enjoyed playing speed Uno with a large group and I played a few games of Racko and a few rounds of Dutch Blitz. Besides that, we enjoyed visiting with others who came. On the way home, we stopped to pick up some dinner because we stayed so long at the party that it was dinner time and the dinner I had planned to make takes over an hour to prepare. Seth worked that day, but when he got off work (around 4:00) he did come over to the party for a little while. 

Frank playing speed Uno with a bunch of friends:

Sunday--it's finally February!! We are happy to leave cold, dark January behind even though it's still really cold and fairly dark. We're just happy to be getting closer to spring, even though I'm sure we'll get plenty more winter weather before we're done. I switched out the salt & pepper shakers, the front door decoration, and the pillow covers to February themed ones. We went to church and afterwards I had choir practice.

Monday--I taught a lesson about Enoch and it went great! The lesson included a hadout with 4 short activities and suggested that the kids complete the activities with a partner, switching partners for each one. Our class doesn't typically do really well working with partners / small groups, but they really rose to the occasion and communicated / discussed things with each other and they seemed to enjoy it! It was awesome to see that happen! When I left Seminary, there was a beautiful light pink sunrise and the moon was still out and very bright in the blue sky above the pink part of the sky. It was beautiful! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a photo. I stopped at WalMart on the way home to get a few groceries. After I got home, I took a nap because it was one of those "fun" mornings when I woke up at 1:45 am and never went back to sleep. After my nap, I reviewed my lesson for Tuesday and did some work on Wednesday's lesson. Seth went to his math and history classes for the first time that day. That evening we had family night before Seth went to the YSA FHE; we played the game Labyrinth. I stayed up a little later than usual to finish reading Mona's Eyes (I needed to return it to the library on Tuesday). I enjoyed the book--it was pretty good. I learned a lot about art, too.

Tuesday--For Seminary, I taught a lesson about building Zion, which went fairly well. Seth had his doctor appointment with the colorectal surgeon that morning, and he wanted me to go with him. The abscess had completely drained by then (thankfully!) but since he's had so many recurring abscesses in the same place, the surgeon wants to see if he has a fistula or not. She sent in an order for him to get an MRI, but that hasn't been scheduled yet. 

After we got back from the doctor, I spent the rest of the morning and the early afternoon preparing for Seminary the next day. It was a DM review and for one of the games I needed a whole bunch of random words cut out (each one on it's own little strip of paper). It took a long time to cut all those words out. I also discovered that my list of random words that wasn't supposed to have any duplicates did have a lot of duplicates, so I was trying to eliminate those as well which added a lot more time. I did finally finish getting everything ready, though. I managed to get all the regular chores done before bedtime too--Frank helped by making dinner and Seth helped by cleaning a bathroom. Frank isn't usually home on Tuesday evenings, but the temple is closed right now so he was home. While I was eating lunch, I started reading a new book called The Messy Lives of Book People. I haven't read much of it yet, but it's interesting so far. 

Wednesday--this day didn't start out so great because I woke up at 12:45 and was not able to go back to sleep. I was more frustrated about that than usual because Wednesday was also my first VITA shift, so I knew I would not be able to take a nap. It all worked out--I was able to teach Seminary (the games wen tpretty well) and my VITA shift went fine too. I actually enjoyed it. We have a lot of new volunteers and one of them "shadowed" me that day to see how we do things. We have a new system this year that is helping things run more smoothly. As it turned out, I only completed 2 returns but I reviewed at least 3 others (maybe 4?). Reviews were what was needed the most whenever I was ready to start something new, so that's what I did. After I got home from VITA, I was really tired / sleepy, but I avoided taking a nap since it was later in the day. I didn't have the brain power to do anything useful (like working on Seminary lessons for next week) so I watched a movie instead--one of the many versions of Little Women. I enjoyed that.

Thursday--thankfully, I slept great Wednesday night / Thursday morning. I remember waking up once, long enough to see what time it was and then I fell right back to sleep and didn't wake up until the alarm went off. Wow, I felt like a whole new person!! I wish I could sleep like that every night. The lesson Tammy taught in Seminary was one of the Life Preparation lessons and the topic was developing healthy thinking patterns. I have to say that how much sleep I get definitely has an impact on how healthy my thinking patterns are! (Which I was already aware of, even before hearing this lesson. I have to make a conscious effort not to fall into really negative thoughts when I am exhausted. And even then, it's challenging.) The rest of the day was busy with household tasks, as well as planning one of my Seminary lessons for next week. I'm teaching two Seminary lessons next week, but one of them is a Life Preparation lesson that I was supposed to teach the week it snowed, so it is already completely prepared. I still need to make Power Point slides and do a few other things to finalize the lesson I planned yesterday, but that shouldn't take too much time. 

Friday--I slept great again last night. I am always grateful for a good night's sleep. Two of the girls in my Seminary class have birthdays coming up--one tomorrow and the other on Monday--and their moms wanted to bring in breakfast to celebrate, so we had a very nice breakfast this morning. They even had tablecloths, flowers, and balloons! (We had the breakfast for the last 10 minutes, after the lesson.) Since the temple is closed for maintenance the next two weeks, I couldn't go there today. I got the budgeting done this morning. We also booked our flights for Utah for the family reunion this summer. Now it is early afternoon and I haven't had lunch yet, so I should go eat! This post is short, but there hasn't been a lot going on. I will finish up with a photo I took this morning of the sunrise. It was actually a lot prettier than the photo, but I wasn't able to get outside to take a picture until it had faded quite a bit. It's still pretty, though, and I love how trees look in the winter time, silhouetted against the sky: