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:
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