Weekly Review February 6 '10

I'll start out with some photos. First of all, here's what happens to Seth when he doesn't take a nap:

He was sitting next to me on the couch one evening, playing with my hair and holding one of his trucks. Suddenly, he let go of my hair, turned around, put his face in the back of the couch, and fell asleep!! Here's another view:

He was all worn out; poor baby! The next photos are from our little snow storm Wednesday morning:

Beautiful, isn't it? All the rest of the photos are from our big snowstorm this week end:

Frank is ready to go out & shovel--he LOVES snow! (The more, the better!)

Our deck buried in snow.

Another view of the back deck.

Frank just finished shoveling--already more is falling.

Going out to measure the snow.

Winter wonderland

About 21" at that point.

When I left off last week, the snow was coming down. Now here we are again…with the snow still coming down! (It stopped for a few days in between, though.) Although we got 6 inches of snow last Saturday and the parking lot had not been plowed yet, we did have church on Sunday. I was glad about that because it saved me the time and trouble of having to decide whether or not to postpone the Baptism Fireside we had planned for Sunday night. (Besides that, I don’t know if we could have found another available Sunday to hold the fireside before at least one of the kids got baptized.) Sunday morning was a little complicated because Frank’s leg was still causing him a lot of pain, so he decided to stay home from church. I took Scott and Tanner over to the church early with me to deliver all the desserts (there was only room for three people in the car because of all the trays of parfaits), then went to choir for a few minutes, then drove back home to pick up Jared & Seth. As a result, I was a little late to church.

When they decided not to cancel church, they did let people know that if they weren’t comfortable driving on the roads to stay home, so I kind of wondered how many people would show up! As it turned out, there was a good sized crowd, and thankfully all but one Primary teacher made it there. My secretary was not able to get out from where she lives, which meant things were a little less organized than usual, but all things considered Primary went pretty well. We didn’t have a “munch and mingle” after all, but everybody who came to church did get a pudding parfait afterwards!

The Baptism Fireside later that evening went great. My counselors brought cookies & brownies for refreshments, so all I had to do was get the drinks—easy! I did have one mishap—the bag containing the soda broke when I pulled it out of the trunk and one of the liters hit the ground, the lid broke off, soda sprayed everywhere, and the soda bottle shot half way across the parking lot!! Fortunately, we still had plenty of punch. I think the kids and their parents really enjoyed the fireside and everyone who participated did a great job.

I spent too much time the first couple of days this week reading the book for book chat. It got really interesting, so it was hard to put down! I finished it on Tuesday, though. It was a fun and delightful book, so if you want a fun, quick read check it out. (Eat Cake by Jeanne Ray) Monday night we had family night activity (played a game called the A-maze-ing Labyrinth) and ate brownies. Frank had to get to bed early because he was working really early Tuesday morning.

That pesky ground hog, Puxatawney Phil, saw his shadow again on Tuesday! I blame him for all this snow we’re getting! However, I noticed that none of the other ground hogs saw their shadows, so maybe there’s hope. They said on the news that Phil has only predicted a shorter winter 15 times, compared to the over 100 times that he’s predicted a longer winter. (Something tells me they haven’t been using the same ground hog all that time…)

On Tuesday Frank’s car started having trouble again and the warning lights came back on. So on the way home from work (around noon) he stopped at the Toyota dealer for them to look at it. They thought they found the problem—cleaned the fuel injection system—but Wednesday morning he had trouble again. This time they finally came to the conclusion that it really was the hybrid battery system that was failing—you know, the really expensive thing I mentioned in last week’s post. Of course we weren’t happy about that, although I have to say that when all those warning lights came on last week I had a feeling that it was more serious than just needing a jump and an oil change. The Toyota dealer agreed to take the $300 off that we paid them on Tuesday to have the fuel injection system cleaned, so having the new batteries installed cost “only” $3200 instead of $3500. Unfortunately, the warranty on the hybrid battery system expires when you hit 100,000 miles (although they claim the system will last much longer) and our car has 117,000 miles on it. Frank did call Toyota to see if we could get any help paying for the repair—he’d heard that sometimes they do that for these batteries if they fail at close to 100,000 miles—but they denied our claim. Fortunately, our “government mandated savings account” (ie: federal income tax withholding) has more than $3500 in it so we’ll be ok. Yes, we would have liked to spend that money on something else (like new floors for our house) but at least we have a way to pay for the repairs. I took the car in on Thursday morning to have it fixed, which motivated me to spend the rest of the morning preparing our tax return. I still need a few documents to verify the numbers I put in, but once I get those, we will be able to file our return. Hopefully our refund will arrive before the credit card comes due!

As if the snow we got on the week end wasn’t enough, we got about 5 or 6 more inches of snow on Tuesday night. It was beautiful light, fluffy snow that melted rather quickly, so there was a 2 hour delay for the schools Wednesday morning, but school didn’t get cancelled—much to the boys’ disappointment! I had a Primary presidency meeting that evening, so once again—I was glad that things getting cancelled didn’t mess that up. (If school had been cancelled, all the church activities that evening would have been cancelled also.)

Because the car was getting fixed on Thursday and Frank had to take the Expedition to work, I didn’t have a car that day. (When I took the car in to the dealer, they provided a shuttle that brought me back home.) I called a friend in our ward whose son also attends the boys’ school to see if she would give Tanner & Jared a ride to school and back. She agreed, but somehow got the details mixed up so she thought she was only supposed to pick them up—not take them to school also. I had the boys all ready to go by 8:35, and then we waited…and waited…and waited! I finally called and left my friend a message, but when she didn’t call back soon, I ended up calling another friend to come pick the boys up. Needless to say, they were late for school! (They weren’t at all upset about it, of course—they were offering to just stay home.)

Frank and I went to pick up his car Thursday evening, stopping at Costco on our way home to get some groceries and diapers. Because of the huge snowstorm predicted for Friday / Saturday, it was very crowded—but not as bad as I had anticipated, thankfully!

Frank, Tanner and I were all up late Thursday evening working on Tanner’s science fair project. I nagged him about finishing it up for the last couple of weeks, but obviously, he didn’t listen to me! We were up until 11:00, and even then we didn’t finish it. By then Tanner was too tired to think straight and we discovered that the printer needed a new ink cartridge, so we just gave up and went to bed. When Frank took Scott to Seminary Friday morning, he stopped at Wal-Mart to get a new ink cartridge. I got Tanner up a little early and by working in a frenzy, we got everything done and printed up—but the boys were a few minutes late to school again. Are there any other parents out there who wish that science fair projects had never been invented?!! It doesn’t matter how much we try to prepare—we always end up with a lot to do the day before it’s due. Jared still has to do one this year, also—I’m not looking forward to that.

Tanner was tired on Friday, of course, but they had a very short school day. All the schools closed 3 ½ hours early because of the huge snow storm that was coming. We had to take Frank’s car back in that morning because they had not done everything Frank wanted them to do (they fixed the problems free of charge). After we dropped the car off, we went to the grocery store which was insanely busy (no big surprise). By the time we got out of there, the snow had started to come down and it was almost time to go pick up the boys from school, so we just went right over to their school. While we were waiting for them to finish helping with the car line (Tanner & Jared were both on safety patrol the last two weeks), the car place called back to say Frank’s car was done so we went by there to pick it up after we got the boys. Meanwhile, Scott had already gotten out of school so he walked home and was here before we got home.

Since all the kids were home from school early, Frank and I took advantage of the built-in babysitting and went to see the movie Avatar Friday afternoon. That was one of the things I promised Frank for his birthday, but we were beginning to wonder if we were going to make it to see the movie before it left the theaters! Because of the snow storm, there were only about 12 people in the theater. We enjoyed the movie a lot. It’s certainly not going to win any academy awards for plot (kind of a combination of Fern Gully and Dances With Wolves, but high tech on another world), but the 3-D special effects were about 10 cuts above any other 3-D movie I’ve ever seen. It was really amazing. I’m sure the boys would love it, although when we were talking about it afterwards we agreed that there was more language than necessary, a lot of violence and not exactly nudity (since it was animated) but let’s just say the animated Avatar characters did not have a lot of clothes on. By the time we got out of the movie, there was a good 5-6 inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down hard. We got a bite to eat and then headed home. The roads were very slick and we saw one car slide into a guard rail in front of us, another turn sideways, and then two or three others that had gone off the road. Thankfully, we made it home ok. When we looked outside before going to bed, the snow was still coming down hard. I wish there was a way to capture how it looked on camera, with the pinkish / orange sky, a couple of glowing street lights, all the white snow everywhere, and all the millions of flakes coming down! It was so bright and clear, but I know taking a picture wouldn’t work. The human eye is truly amazing, isn’t it?

This morning we woke up to about 18 inches of snow and it was still coming down hard. It seems to be winding down, now. I think we’ve got about 28” of snow, maybe more. Church has already been cancelled for tomorrow. This storm may actually be worse than the President’s Day storm we had 7 years ago; if not, it’s close. Almost everything is totally buried, but Frank did go out a few hours ago to clean off the Expedition, and he was able to get out to the main road by using the four wheel drive. The reason he did that is because one of our neighbors is about to have a baby and she’s been having contractions off and on the last few days. Nobody else on our court has a 4 wheel drive, so Frank said he’d take them to the hospital if they need to go, and he wanted to be prepared. It did take a long time to get the car “unburied”, so that’s not a job you’d want to do if you were in a big hurry. I have a feeling that we will be going out for a drive sometime today or tomorrow—Frank doesn’t like being cooped up, and he loves driving in snow! I’ll make him wait until it’s safer, though.

One of my ears has been plugged up all week—very annoying! I’m sure it’s just excess ear wax; I have that problem a lot. I know from experience that if I go to the doctor they won’t be able to clean it out either, so I’ve been putting drops in my ears every day to soften things up. I hope I will be able to hear again soon!

Frank’s leg has been doing better each day and today he even did some exercising on the Wii, so that’s a step in the right direction. Even though he hasn’t been able to exercise for a week, he’s been careful about what he eats and he’s been able to avoid gaining back the weight he’s lost. His pants are pretty loose now!

We hope Ben had a Happy Birthday yesterday! Everybody have a great week end and stay warm!

Thankful Thursday: Wounded, but not Dead

Ok, I know I haven't done a Thankful Thursday column in a really long time.

It's not because I haven't been thankful--I've just been too busy to write about my thankful thoughts! Creating this column has not been a total bust, though. As a matter of fact, I think this column has fulfilled its purpose--for me, at least. That's because even though I haven't had time to write about what I'm thankful for, I have been trying to look for things to be grateful for, which means I've been noticing those things a lot more than I used to. As a matter of fact, I've been living in a state of gratitude these last several months that I have never experienced at any other time in my life...and guess what? Feeling grateful is a really good thing!

So that brings me to today. Last night at our Primary presidency meeting, one of my counselors shared a scripture which fit perfectly with the rest of the events of my day. It's in Alma 58:39-40. In this chapter, Helaman is talking about the 2,000 stripling warriors. He says "...and the Lord has supported them, yea, and kept them from falling by the sword, insomuch that even one soul has not been slain. But behold, they have received many wounds..." My counselor pointed out that these young warriors were not protected from everything bad that could have happened to them, but they were protected from death (a miracle in and of itself), and they were grateful for that.

Well, yesterday Frank's car was having problems again. He took it in to be fixed and found out that the hybrid battery system has to be replaced, which is a major expense. When I say "major" I mean thousands of dollars major...and did I mention that the warranty ran out recently?

However, I am feeling grateful...yes, really! Grateful that this didn't happen a year ago...or even a month ago. If it had to happen, now is the best time it could have happened, with our tax return coming in soon. As He has done so many times before, the Lord has supported us in our efforts to keep the commandments and provide for our family. So, financially...we're wounded, but we're not dead!

I am pretty certain that if the same thing had happened a year or two ago, I would have been really upset, and spent a lot of time grumbling and feeling sorry for myself. Don't get me wrong...I'm not happy about it! But I'm looking on the bright side, which is not something I'm usually very good at doing.

I'm finding that cultivating gratitude in my life is a very good thing!

Weekly Review January 30 '10

We had our Ward Conference this week. Because the other ward that meets in our building also had ward conference, and normally our meeting times overlap, our meetings were moved from 11:00-2:00 to 1:00-4:00. It was not a good time change for Seth. He was tired, but wanted to stay awake which meant that he was constantly crawling under the benches and otherwise being disruptive, and he was crabby besides. I’m glad we don’t meet at that time every week! I really didn’t hear a word of Sacrament Meeting, and since I spent the other 2 hours in Primary, I didn’t really hear any of what the stake leaders prepared for us. I think I got most of the stake president’s talk in Ward Council, though. The choir sang and that went well in spite of the fact that we only had 2 practices (one of which I missed, because it was held at the same time as ward council). I did catch that the theme of the meetings was the importance of families. Well, I’m a firm believer in that concept already!

We had torrential rain and strong winds Monday morning, but the temperatures were in the low 60’s, so it really wasn’t so bad! It was especially nice in the afternoon when the rain stopped and the sun came out. Within a few hours, the temperatures started dropping, though, and they continued to drop a little bit every day so that by Friday we were in the very frigid teens. Brrrrrr!!

Monday evening we made a bunch of cookies—I was making white chocolate & macadamia nut cookies for book club, and Tanner was making chocolate chip cookie bars for family night treat. Frank helped Tanner with his, which I appreciated since I was trying to get laundry folded.

I had book club Tuesday afternoon; we discussed Pilgrim’s Progress, which was not an easy book to read, but it did make for a very interesting discussion. I actually didn’t finish it—the book is written in two parts, and I did finish the first part but I didn’t get very far into the second half. Now we are reading a novel called Eat Cake, which so far is very interesting and easy reading. For our potluck lunch next time, in honor of the book, we all have to bring some kind of cake! (Hopefully there will be some crab cakes or corn cakes or something, as well as the usual kind of cake, or it’s going to be dessert instead of lunch!)

I had visiting teaching appointments on Tuesday morning and Thursday evening, and my last appointment is tomorrow after church. We didn’t really intend to put it off until the last of the month—that’s just what ended up working out best with everybody’s schedules.

I’ve been busy this week with preparations for our baptism fireside, which is tomorrow evening. On Wednesday I took the boys to the church for basketball practice and while I was there I got a whole bunch of copies made for the fireside. After I got back, Frank went to the stake center to do some work on the computers; he picked the boys up from scouts after her was done there, and they all came home together.

I had lunch with my friend Rebecca on Thursday; it was nice getting a little caught up with her, but Seth was uncooperative there, also, and kept trying to escape the booth and run around the restaurant. Two year olds are so much fun!!

Friday morning we went and looked at a couple more houses. Both houses were priced within $5000 of each other, but the second house was MUCH larger. We actually like that house a lot, although the former owners had a thing for weird wallpaper. However, the property taxes on that house are huge! The asking price is the best price we’ve seen for the size of the house, though, and it’s in a neighborhood that we really like (right by our church), so we are trying to figure out if there’s any way we can make it work. So who knows…maybe we will actually take the plunge…but then again, maybe not!!

Frank has been really busy with work this week (don’t I say that every week?). He didn’t get home until 8:30 on Monday, and he’s been doing a lot of work in the evenings even when he’s home. We are thankful he has plenty of work to do, but a little more sleep would be nice! He didn’t have to work many hours on Friday, though, so as soon as the boys got home from school we went to the temple. There was one little hitch—the Prius died after Frank backed it out, and wouldn’t start again. We ended up pushing the car back into the parking space and we took the Expedition instead. After we got home from the temple (we did sealings, since neither one of us had much sleep Wednesday or Thursday nights; that seems to happen to us every time we try to go to the temple lately!), Frank gave the Prius a jump and then this morning he took it to get an oil change, and now it seems to be working fine except he has a brake light warning on still. Since the Prius is a hybrid, it has two batteries and one of them is very, very expensive to replace, so we are glad that it was not that battery that had the problems!

Today has been kind of a crazy day. Jared had a friend come over at 9:30, I had to be at the stake baptism at 10:00, the boys had to be at the stake center at 10:00 also—to help make desserts for our ward dinner tonight, and Frank was supposed to be at the stake center as soon after 10:00 as possible to help cook for the dinner. Frank stayed home with the younger boys (and Jared’s friend) while I took the older two to the stake center with me. We stopped at our church building on the way to pick up some serving carts, trays, and bowls that were needed at the stake center to help with dinner preparations. It started to snow right about the time we arrived at the stake center. The baptism was wonderful—they always are! When it was over, I took the older two boys home and Frank left to help with the cooking. However, the snow kept coming down, and by 1:00 they decided they had to cancel the dinner—again! This was our rescheduled “Christmas” dinner, which was also cancelled because of snow. Frank called me and asked me to come back to the church with the Expedition to help transport food / equipment. It took me a long time to get there because by then the roads were quite nasty and everyone was driving about 20 miles per hour. I ended up bringing home all the desserts that the youth had made (pudding parfaits, in cups on trays) and I am very proud of myself for getting them all home safely! Since there is not a refrigerator big enough to store them all in, we just left them out in the car—they’ll stay plenty cold out there! If church doesn’t get cancelled tomorrow, we’ll probably have a “munch and mingle” after church, and they will get eaten then.

The snow has continued to come down all day (and it’s still coming down). We have a good 6 inches accumulated out there so far. Although the ward dinner would have been nice, I’m kind of glad we don’t have to go anywhere else tonight! All the basketball games got cancelled also. All the cancellations made this day a lot less complicated than it would have been, so I’m grateful for that. Unfortunately, Frank slipped on ice at the church and pulled one of his inner thigh muscles pretty badly, so he is in a lot of pain and has spent all afternoon on the couch. I spent the whole afternoon trying to get the budget done—I got interrupted a lot! Because of the ward dinner, I hadn’t planned to make dinner tonight, but fortunately I cooked a big pot of pulled pork for sandwiches yesterday. It was supposed to be for dinner last night, but it didn’t get done in time so that worked out great—we had dinner all ready for tonight! (Yesterday we had to pick up a pizza for the boys and stopped at Taco Bell on the way home from the temple for us.)

By the way, Frank has lost about 10 pounds in the last few weeks. He’s really been watching what he eats and trying to exercise (not as much as he’d like—his work schedule keeps getting in the way). I’m proud of him for accomplishing that much! It seems to me like every time he makes progress he gets sick or injures himself, though, and that’s happened again today. I’m sure he won’t be able to exercise for a while, but hopefully he’ll be able to get back into the routine soon.

Seth has been pretty stubborn about going to sleep at nights lately. I’ve spent a couple of hours a lot of evenings trying to get him down lately. This week I’ve tried putting him down for a nap every couple of days instead of every day, and that seems to be helping. He is very delightful when he isn’t having one of his stubborn moments. I really see his imagination soaring. He is really funny, though—he imagines things like robots, monsters and dinosaurs all the time. Today he came to me whimpering with fright. I asked him if something scared him, and he said “Yes, the dinosaur scared me!” He also likes to “read” books—I read a book to him, and then he “reads” it to me.

Speaking of Seth, he needs to have a bath and then go to bed (this is one of the days he didn’t have a nap) so I’d better post this and go do that.

Weekly Review January 23 '10

This has been kind of a strange week because the boys were out of school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I don’t know why they plan these long breaks in the middle of the winter! I’d rather have them when the weather warms up. The break was supposed to coincide with the end of the 2^nd term, but since they had all those extra snow days in December, the end of term was moved back a day. That means Scott started new classes on Friday. Now he has Foundations of Technology, Biology, German 2, and English.

I’m glad in some ways that we had those days off because Tanner still wasn’t feeling his best, so that gave him more time to get better. The boys helped me with chores and played with friends—didn’t get a lot accomplished, although we did do some work on the weather merit badge. I don’t feel like I got much accomplished this week, either, although I did do a little bit more organizing and cleaning in my closet. I also took all the boys to get haircuts on Wednesday morning—they all look great now!

Scott hasn’t been feeling great the last few days—his throat is hurting and he has a tooth coming in that is also bothering him a lot. It’s actually one of his 12 year molars, believe it or not! It’s very late coming in.

Scott was supposed to get his patriarchal blessing on Thursday, but once again, the patriarch had to cancel. His wife is still in the hospital and they don’t know what is wrong with her. So we are feeling bad for him! We didn’t re-schedule an appointment yet; he is going to call us when his wife gets better. It’s been a bit disappointing to have it put off so many times, but Scott has handled it well.

Frank has been very busy with work this week again. I don’t feel like I’ve seen him much! Neither of us have been getting much sleep, either. Seth is not going to sleep until around 11:00 most nights (we put him to bed MUCH earlier) and he is waking up most nights, also. I’ve been trying to get him down for a nap earlier, but that hasn’t worked out most days. We’ve been waking him up from his naps, also, if he sleeps more than 2 hours. I know he’s not ready to give up naps completely yet, or I’d just do that. There are a few days this week that I would have skipped the nap except that we had evening plans and I didn’t want him to be crabby for that. So we’re just trying to work with it, but in the meantime, our sleep schedules are suffering!

Thursday morning I got my hair done and Friday morning I had a Primary presidency meeting. That was fun for Seth because both of those things took place at houses with little boys his age, so he got to play with cool new toys with friends both days. Thursday evening I took Tanner, Scott and Seth to the library—Tanner needed to get a biography for a school assignment, and the other two wanted to come along. By the time we got done there and headed home, it was sleeting but luckily the roads were not slippery. The sleet / freezing rain continued throughout the night, but the roads still weren’t bad, so school started at the regular time Friday morning (thank goodness!) It was pretty humid and cold, but the week end is supposed to be nicer.

Frank and I had planned to go to the temple Friday night, but since neither of us had much sleep the night before, we decided to try next week instead. We did go on a date, though—we went to eat at the Olive Garden (thanks again for the gift card, Mom & Dad!) and then we did some shopping—we got a few storage things for our bathroom and a copy of Turbo Tax. We also looked at tile and at wood stain because we are thinking about replacing the floor in our bathroom and re-staining the vanity. We did find some tile we like so we brought one tile home to see how it looks in our bathroom. We also saw a couple of stain colors that look nice with the tile, so if we decide to go ahead with that project, we know what stain to buy.

Today has been busy with basketball games (Scott in the morning, Jared in the afternoon; Tanner could have played in both games but chose not to play at all), lots of phone calls and e-mails for Primary, and more cleaning / organizing. Frank and I finished cleaning out our closet and the bathroom is mostly done also. Frank and I were looking at the floor in the boys’ bathroom and decided we need to replace it also—there’s quite a bit of water damage from the water the boys have splashed on the floor over the years. We might as well do both of them at the same time! Everywhere I look in the house, I see things that need to be organized—it’s hard not to get side tracked. But I’m trying to focus on my “one room a month”. I did get some things done in our bedroom today also, though. I’m planning to do that room next month, so I’m not getting too far ahead of myself.

Seth gave me a scare today. Earlier this afternoon Scott & Tanner took him over to the little playground in our neighborhood to play for a while. Later on, I was upstairs working in our room when I heard the front door open. I thought it was Frank and Jared coming back from Jared’s game, but after a few minutes I realized that I wasn’t hearing any noise downstairs at all. That’s when it occurred to me that the noise could have been Seth going out, not someone else coming in! Sure enough, when I went downstairs I couldn’t find Seth. I looked outside and called, but didn’t see him. I decided I’d better get my shoes and coat on so I could do a more thorough search, and while I was doing that I was combing my mind trying to think where he’d go. I thought of the playground, and I instantly knew that was probably where he’d gone. When I went back outside, I instantly spotted Seth across the street on the path leading to the playground. I’m not sure how I missed him the first time. There was a couple out walking their dog who had spotted him and were standing next to him. I’m pretty sure he crossed the street all by himself, though, and that is frightening to think about! I’m just glad he made it safely.

Tonight we realized we’d never had the chance to do the activity / treat part of family night this week since Frank was working late a lot of nights, so we all got in the car and went to Wendy’s for frosties. Frank took some photos on his cell phone while we were there; if I remember I will have him put them on the computer so I can post them.

Seth is starting to use the word “Tuesday” as well as Wednesday. Another new word for him in the last couple of weeks is “huge”, which he pronounces mostly without the “y” sound. “There’s a big truck…a huge truck!!” he’ll say. He also used the word “huge” to describe a certain part of Frank’s anatomy this week, which gave us a big laugh, although it wasn’t very complimentary!

Enjoy the last week of January! (I’m mostly glad it’s almost over…)

Weekly Review January 16 '10

Frank has one candle for each decade!!

Seth wants to serve the cake!

Anxious to "help"



First phase of "project organize 2010"--bathroom vanity!

Where did this week go? Time flies when you’re having fun…or just when you have a lot to do!

I did get a little bit of organizing done in the master bathroom on Saturday. I had to take Scott to get some new Sunday clothes (Scott’s outgrown clothes fit Tanner almost perfectly, so I didn’t need to get any for Tanner) that afternoon, so I was also able to get some small storage pieces to go in the vanity under the sink. It looks much better in there now—I should have taken a “before” photo! I also started working on the master closet, but I haven’t made a whole lot of progress on that yet. By the way, Scott looks very stylish in his new clothes! I couldn’t find a suit to fit him, so he got a sweater vest instead to go with his new pants and white shirt.

Primary went well on Sunday, although not quite as well as I would have liked. I guess some of the “newness” has already worn off. The Primary president in the other ward saw me before church and she told me how great our bulletin board looks—nice to hear! Frank ended up being up until 3:00 am Sunday morning (working) and then had to go back in before church to fix something else. He met us at the church, but only made it through taking the sacrament. He was so tired that he went home after that—but he didn’t get much sleep because he got several phone calls. One of them was from the stake patriarch, cancelling Scott’s appointment to get a blessing because he was sick. He re-scheduled that for this Sunday, but then on Saturday he called and had to cancel again, so now it’s supposed to happen on Thursday.

Our home teachers came that afternoon and then we had a guest for dinner—my friend Marci’s husband, David, who was here working this week. He was staying at their house (still hasn’t sold) and getting some work done on the house as well. He forgot I was planning to come over with laundry on Monday, which caused me a little bit of trouble because he changed the code on their keyless entry system, so I couldn’t get in. I was able to get in touch with him later in the day, so I was able to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Frank was able to get home early enough that day to buy a new thermostat and install it, so I was able to finish up the rest of the laundry at home. The dryer has worked fine since, so that must have been the problem. It is VERY nice to have a functioning dryer again!!

Tanner came home from school on Tuesday complaining that his throat hurt. Wednesday morning he said it still hurt and his stomach hurt, too. He didn’t have a fever, but he did look sick, so I kept him home even though my usual rule is they have to go if they don’t have a fever and are not throwing up! I just had a hunch that he really was sick, and I was right…by afternoon his temperature was 100. He ended up staying home the rest of the week, although his temperature was back down to 99.4 on Thursday. He just wasn’t feeling his best—his stomach was bothering him and he got congested and has a cough also. He did go in to school for a couple of hours on Friday afternoon to take an Algebra test, though. It was one of those “benchmark” kind of tests that all the kids have to pass at some point, so I didn’t want him to miss it, and his teachers didn’t want him to miss it, either! He passed the test, by the way.

One nice thing about having Tanner home was that while Seth was napping I could get some errands done. Actually, Seth didn’t get a nap on Sunday or Monday and he did well and then went to sleep early those nights, which was nice. So on Tuesday I decided to let him skip the nap again—he’s kind of in that “in between” stage where he’s starting to grow out of needing a nap. Well, I discovered that 3 days in a row was too much!! By 3:30, he was very crabby and by 7:00 he was coming completely unglued! I got him to bed shortly after that, though. So anyway, I was able to go out and get all the food and paper products for the Primary activity without Seth in tow, which was nice. I also did a little bit of birthday shopping for Frank, but gave up—he didn’t give me many suggestions for presents and the ones he did give me I decided he needed to pick out himself!

His birthday was on Thursday. The big 40!!! He got a “hoodie” and a couple of coupons—one for a trip to the movies, and another to pick out something else he wants. We also went out to eat—took the whole family this time—at a buffet place. Tanner was feeling well enough to go, but while we were at the restaurant I noticed that Jared wasn’t eating much. I asked him why not, and he said he didn’t feel very well! So he stayed home on Friday, as well as Tanner. He had a fever, but not a very high one. I made Frank a birthday cake on Thursday but by the time we got back from the buffet place, no one was hungry! So we did the cake part on Friday instead. Frank also got a gift card to his favorite restaurant from my parents and his parents called him that evening, so I think he had a nice day.

I went on a quest this week to try to find a replacement toy pot for the one Seth melted. I didn’t have any luck, though. Even E-bay and Amazon failed me! I did, however, find a really cool website dedicated to Fisher Price toys. It’s found at www.thisoldtoy.com. You can search for toys by model number, category, or year. For example, you can click on a year and get a list of all (or most—the lists aren’t complete) Fisher Price toys that were available that year. There are photos of most of the toys. Maybe that doesn’t sound too exciting to most of you, but to a person like me who loves toys, is into details, and is particularly nostalgic about old toys from childhood, this is a great site! I should warn you, however, that if you are like me, you can spend HOURS on this website. Incidentally, we had a lot of Fisher Price toys at our house when we were growing up—I’d say at least half of the toys for any given year (in the 60’s and 70’s) were toys I recognized as ones we had at home!

Frank had a lot of work to do this week—by Thursday he had worked 91 hours for the pay period, and it’s only an 80 hour pay period. On his way home from work on Friday he stopped at Barnes & Noble to spend the gift card he got for Christmas. I also had him get a book for me—a copy of the organizing book I read a few months ago and really liked. I intend to use it a lot, over an extended period of time, so checking it out of the library wasn’t too feasible. My visiting teachers came Friday also, so I had to banish Tanner and Jared to their rooms. It seems like every time my visiting teachers come, at least one of my kids is sick! They must think I have sick kids all the time, but really I don’t.

Tanner had a doctor appointment Friday afternoon to have a wart on his foot looked at. I set the appointment last week, not knowing that he would be sick, but since he was there anyway, we asked them to swab his throat. The strep test came back negative, though. They think he just has a virus. Frank took him to the appointment because Frank also had a wart he wanted the doctor to look at. The doctor is wrote out referrals for both of them to go see a podiatrist, but I haven’t made those appointments yet.

I was busy on Friday getting a few things finished up for the Primary activity, like making menus. The activity was Saturday morning. I got to the church about an hour before to help get things set up. The activity turned out great, I thought! When the kids arrived, we had a game for them to play—they had to guess which childhood photo went with which teacher. They also wrote thank you notes on the back of paper flowers which we put in vases to give to the teachers. Then we had brunch—fruit, muffins, yogurt, etc. The teachers got menus; they circled their choices and then the kids brought them up to us and we got the plates ready. After all the kids had served their teachers, then they got to eat, too. The teachers all brought several items representing their interests and hobbies to put on the center of their table for a centerpiece. While they were eating, the teachers talked about the objects they brought. We also had lists for the teachers and the kids of suggested questions to ask each other so they could get to know each other better. After everyone ate, we did a short little lesson on gratitude and then played a game with fun facts about the teachers—once again, the kids had to guess which teacher did what! Then we had a balloon relay with the classes and their teachers and then played “Do You Love Your Neighbor?” until parents came to pick up their kids. We had several parents help us put up tables and chairs, which helped a lot! Jared was feeling fine, so he came to the activity and he helped a lot with set up and clean up also.

On the way home, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get some things for Primary. I wasn’t home very long because I was going to a baby shower that afternoon for one of my visiting teachers, who is having twins. It was a bit of a drive to the shower location, so I got a ride with the Relief Society president, which was nice because we enjoyed visiting, but I also got home really late because after the shower she had to stop to visit a sister in the ward who’s been having some health problems. It was a longer visit than anticipated, but I enjoyed it anyways. This sister and her husband are both deaf, so another sister in the ward who knows sign language (actually, she’s one of my counselors) came along to interpret. Because of the “language barrier”, I’ve never been able to get to know this sister very well, so it was fun to see her on her “own turf” and find out more what she has to say, with an interpreter there. I’d never met her husband, either, but I found that they are both delightful people. Anyway, the shower was fun, with lots of yummy food, but it was long, so between that and the visit afterwards, I didn’t get home until about 7:30. I still had some Primary things to get done (print some labels, make invitations for the baptism fireside), so I spent the rest of the evening getting those things done.

While I was gone all day, Frank held down the fort at home. Scott had a basketball game (YM), but he got a ride to that since it was during Seth’s nap time. Our ward team is not very good, and true to form they lost their game by a lot. Scott didn’t mind except he felt frustrated that the other team fouled them a lot. They also have a deacon’s team this year, but Tanner was not well enough to play. They are letting the 11 year olds play with the deacons, but their game was at the same time as the Primary activity, so Jared couldn’t play either.

Now it’s Monday afternoon; I never got a chance to finish this up and post it! Seth didn’t sleep well on Saturday night; he sounded really “croupy”. We ended up putting him in a soft chair to sleep the rest of the night, so he was more upright and could breathe better, but he was still pretty restless and none of us got a lot of sleep. In the morning he was pretty perky, but he had an incredibly runny nose, so we decided he’d better stay home. Tanner also wasn’t sounding very well, so the two of them stayed home together. Frank came to Sacrament Meeting and then went home to stay with them. After church we didn’t have a lot going on, but we were all tired so we just relaxed. It rained a lot on Sunday and then it was really cold, but today it has warmed up a lot—feels like spring thaw! I’m sure it won’t last long, but it was nice to take Snickers on a longer walk today.

I hope you are all enjoying your Martin Luther King Day!

Weekly Review January 9 '10

If the whole year is like this week, then I’d say this year isn’t going to be too bad. Mostly, it was a good week, with a few not-so-great things sprinkled into the mix.

Sunday had the potential to be pretty chaotic at church, since all the kids were moving to new classes and most had new teachers and were meeting in new classrooms. But it didn’t turn out that way—actually, Primary went very smoothly and the children were probably the best behaved I’ve ever seen them! And our new little Sunbeams (all boys!) were little angels. It was really amazing, actually. We had them all stay in the chapel after Sacrament Meeting to match up all the kids with their teachers. I sent the Senior Primary kids off first, since they had class time first, and then I did the Junior Primary, starting with the youngest, and had their teachers take them down to the Primary room. That left me in the chapel until the last class went down to the Primary room, and I expected things to be noisy and chaotic when I got there, but everyone was sitting quietly in their seats waiting—it was so awesome!!! Besides that, we had a lot of new things to explain, like the new bulletin board, what we’re doing for spotlights this year, etc. so the kids had to do a lot of listening but they were so attentive and I felt like they were all really understanding what we are trying to accomplish this year. I am so excited about the theme for the year (I Know My Savior Lives) and I think they were catching on to some of that excitement. Anyway, I was absolutely thrilled with how everything went on Sunday. I’m sure we’ll have our difficult moments this year, but it was a great start!

After church was busy—Frank and Tanner went to collect fast offerings, Seth needed a nap, and people were dropping by. One of the fathers in the ward brought back our bowl (we took dinner to his family last week) and he said “By the way, can I pay you for the selection of my kids’ Primary teachers this year? We are more than thrilled with their teachers!” We do have a lot of really good teachers; I am very thankful! Besides, my counselors and secretary are awesome! Anyway, Seth took a long nap and we had family night before Scott and Tanner left for a fireside. I’m glad Frank took them and picked them up, because the weather was very cold and windy still. We had a yummy dinner that night, by the way, thanks to the Honey baked Ham gift certificate Frank got from a client!

Monday it was back to school and back to work for everybody. I wasn’t too thrilled when I spent a half hour looking for gloves and hats for everybody (it was still extremely cold); I still haven’t located Tanner’s hat and one set of gloves. Scott and Frank were disagreeing because Scott refused to wear a coat. Crazy boy! Apparently, it is totally not cool to wear a coat, or to use your locker either. Whatever! I talked to him later when he had calmed down and he admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea to use his locker to just drop off a coat in the morning and pick it up before leaving. However, since he hasn’t used his locker all year, he doesn’t remember his combination or even exactly where his locker is. So he’s supposed to try to find that out, but he keeps forgetting to ask. In the meantime, he usually wears a hoodie and jacket, and I’m sure he’s cold but I figure he’s old enough to make his own decision about that.

The other thing that happened on Monday is the dryer quit working. Actually, it still runs fine, but the clothes don’t get dry and they don’t even feel warm. Frank has been too busy until today to look at it and figure out what might be wrong. After doing some tests on it today, he thinks it’s just the thermostat. However, the store that carries the part closed at 1:00 today, so we’ll have to call about that on Monday. In the meantime, my friend Marci offered to let me use her dryer. She lives in Kentucky now, but her house has not sold yet and the dryer is just sitting there, so she said I could use it. It’s not the most convenient thing to make 4-5 trips over to her house on laundry days, but it beats going to a creepy Laundromat. I am grateful that I have a functioning washer and dryer in my own home most of the time—that’s a blessing I’m sure I take for granted!

For family night activity on Monday night we played a couple of rounds of bowling on the Wii. I had treat, but I refused to bring anything else sweet or fattening into the house—I just told everybody to take their pick from the abundance of sweets still sitting around. No one complained!

The rest of the week has not been quite as eventful. I’ve been really busy with Primary stuff; we are having an activity in a week. (The hardest part was scheduling the date—I’m not kidding! We had it on the calendar for January 30^th, and then the ward Christmas party got re-scheduled for that date. Then we found out the stake baptism was that morning also. I still haven’t figured that out yet—I’m not sure why it’s not on February 6^th.) Anyway, I’ve spent a lot of time on the computer and on Wednesday evening we had a presidency meeting.

While I’ve been busy, Seth has been getting into trouble—he put a button in the Wii, and he also ejected the Wii Fit disc and smeared fudge all over the back of it. Thankfully, Frank got the button out and I was able to clean the disc without destroying it! He also put his plastic toy pot in the oven—which he’s done before—but this time I forgot to take it out later, so the next day when I went to put biscuits in the oven for dinner, I discovered a melted toy pot! The sad thing about it was that Seth was there when I opened the oven and saw it—and he was very traumatized! It was like a friend had died; his little two year old heart was broken, and he was inconsolable for quite some time. I told him I would try to find a new one, but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible—we actually bought that toy for Scott when he was a baby. It was actually kind of a significant little toy in our family history, because it is one of the only toys we’ve ever purchased that was NOT for a birthday or Christmas. We bought it for Scott because, other than rattles, we really didn’t have any toys for him to play with. Imagine that! It’s hard to believe now, with toys overflowing drawers and baskets all over the house, that we ever had a house without toys! Seth also discovered the fudge and it’s gone now—Seth probably ate 80% of it while the rest of us ate the other 20%! Scott discovered him sitting on the couch with the bag of fudge yesterday. He looked at Scott and said “I like fudge!” (Yes, don’t we all!) Then just today I found Seth sitting calmly on the couch in his room, looking at a book with his discarded (messy) diaper sitting on the floor! He’s been tugging at his diapers a lot lately; I guess it is time to try potty training. I keep putting it off because he seems resistant to the idea, but if he is going to be taking his diaper off, then I might as well give it a try.

The boys were banned from computers all week and television one night, and it’s always interesting when that happens because they don’t quite know what to do with themselves. They usually spend the first hour or so making a lot of noise and generally picking at each other because they have nothing else to do. But by evening I had Tanner reading on my bed and Scott in Jared’s room teaching him how to fold paper stars. Seth was sleeping peacefully (the one night he went to bed at a decent hour). It was quiet…I thought “Somebody…freeze…time…now!” It was great!

It’s been a challenge getting Seth back on a normal schedule. We don’t usually party so much, but we were terrible this vacation, and he was up late almost every night! We’ve made some progress this week, though, and hopefully we’ll get him back to normal soon. He is growing so much and still surprises me all the time with things he says that show how observant he is. Like one day this week he said to me “bats and spiders scare people”. I have no idea where he picked up that information!! Then today I overheard him saying this while playing: “Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to my…” (I didn’t catch the last word.) He has been talking about monsters and robots a lot lately, and sometimes he pretends that there is a robot or a monster upstairs or in another room in the house. There seems to be a level of anxiety there, but when I ask him if he is scared of robots or monsters, he says no. Another cute thing he does is he uses the word “Wednesday” a lot. As in “I ate that on Wednesday” or “We’ll read that book on Wednesday”. I don’t know why that particular day of the week has stuck in his head above all the others.

It was really cold the beginning of the week, a little milder (highs in the 30’s) the middle of week, and on Thursday night / Friday morning it snowed. We only got an inch or two, but they still cancelled school on Friday. That means we’ve had 4 snow days now, and they only built 5 into the school year. If we have more than 5, they start taking away holidays and adding days on to the end of the school year, so I’m not too thrilled about that! With the snow, the weather has become very frigid again. I am not a winter person!

Jared went to spend the night with his friend Jack last night. Then Tanner was invited to Ryan’s house and Scott was invited to Joey’s, so it was just Frank, Seth and I here last night. Frank got home from work very late, actually. So we just watched some of the bonus features on the newest Harry Potter movie, and then went to bed.

Frank has been very busy with work all week. His boss told him on Friday that he is getting a raise. We don’t know any details about that yet, but we are just grateful that all his hard work is being rewarded; especially when things are so hard for so many people. I think I’ve said it many times already, but I will say it again—we are very thankful for the job he has now!!! He has had some difficult jobs over the years with bosses that are hard to work with, but working for Griffin has been a totally different experience. I also keep remembering that this was a job that just fell in our laps. What a blessing!

Tanner and I have been working on his science fair project yesterday and today. He is doing a project to see which temperature of water freezes the fastest—hot, room temperature, or cold. Frank had to go to work this afternoon and he won’t be home until late—he has to do some work at a place while they aren’t there. This afternoon I need to take the older two boys to get some new Sunday clothes. I noticed last week when they were passing sacrament that their pants look too short and their shirts look too tight. I was giggling about it, actually—they look so awkward sometimes!

I am embarking on a year-long project to de-clutter and fix up the house. My plan is to work on one room each month. Even breaking it down like that, it looks overwhelming to me, but I figure even if I can’t do it all (likely!) I will have at least made some progress by the end of the year, right? I think one of the things that is going to be the most challenging is finding time that Frank and I can both work on it together. Frank is so busy most of the time, and I can do a lot of things myself, but I really need his help when it comes to lifting heavy objects and making decisions about what to give away / throw away / keep. This month I’m working on the master bathroom, though, and I do think I can do a lot of that without him, so I’d better get this posted and get busy!

Weekly Review January 2 '10

Pictures first, since I still haven't figured out why blogger won't let me move them anymore!

First, Happy New Year photos:

Seth
Making noise!

Frank

Jared

Tanner

Scott

Annette

The puzzle

The week started out with church—hooray; it didn’t get cancelled!! We had our belated Christmas program and it was wonderful, with lots of beautiful musical numbers. The meeting did go long, though, so Primary was a bit rushed. I was busy getting the new lesson binders handed out to all the teachers.

The rest of the week is kind of a blur in my mind. When the kids aren’t in school, I lose track of the days. I do remember that I spent quite a bit of time shopping. Besides the usual grocery shopping, I was getting some things for Primary and returning some pajamas I bought for Seth that were too small, and so on.

The boys were still in party mode. The older two spent the night with their friend Brian on Monday night and their friend Ryan on Wednesday night. Brian was here playing most of the day on Monday, and Ryan and Bryson came over to play on Thursday. They didn’t have scouts / YM as usual on Wednesday, but the YM had an impromptu movie night at the YM president’s house that evening, and Jared had a stake 11 year old scout swimming activity Wednesday afternoon. (Indoors!) They worked on all the swimming requirements for 2^nd and 1^st Class scouts. Nice idea—I appreciated that, since we don’t have access to a pool. (Tanner still hasn’t passed off all the swimming requirements for 1^st Class! I wish I had thought to ask if he could go, too!)

I was busy Wednesday evening, also—the Primary presidency met at the church to put together our new bulletin board for the year. We got most of it done, and it is looking really good, I think. The theme for this year is “I Know My Savior Lives”. I am so excited about this theme—it is going to be awesome!!! We really want the kids to understand that everything we do in Primary and all the teachings of the gospel are intended to bring us closer to Christ, so we are going to focus all year on getting them to think about how gospel principles bring us closer to the Savior. We have our bulletin board set up with a picture of Christ with children in the center, and the rest of the board is a path of stepping stones winding all around to the picture in the center, with a sheep at the beginning of the path. (We used a sheep because Christ is our shepherd.) Every week, at the end of sharing time, we are going to ask them to answer the question “How will living this principle (whatever we just talked about) help you get closer to the Savior?” or a similar question. If they can give us a good answer, then we are going to move the sheep up the path. By good answer, I mean “thoughtful”, because we have had a lot of trouble with the kids (older ones especially) giving silly answers all the time. Anyway, our goal is to get to the picture in the middle by the end of the year. Periodically along the path we have little clumps of grass. When we get to one of those, we are going to do a special sharing time as a reward for getting that far.

Another thing we are going to do—we bought little notebooks for all the kids, and we are going to give them time about once a month to write or draw about what they’ve been learning. I found a bunch of really cute little notebooks at the dollar store so hopefully they will be excited to use them!

Frank worked Monday through Wednesday, but he had the rest of the week off. Thursday morning we got about an inch of snow. That day we took down the Christmas decorations. For New Year’s Eve, we just hung out. We had our traditional New Year’s Eve dinner of appetizers. This year we had mini quiches, pizza bites, shrimp, and mozzarella sticks. We also had some chips and dips. Everybody ate what they wanted; the boys played video games, and Frank and I mostly worked on our new jigsaw puzzle. I chose a good puzzle this year—by midnight, we were almost done! It usually takes us a few days to get the puzzle made. I always get a 1000 piece puzzle, and I always try to choose pictures with a lot of variety in pattern and color, which makes it easier to put together. This one was just easier than most of the others, I guess, because it went together quicker. Everybody stayed up until midnight—even Seth!! That was mainly because I was too engrossed in the puzzle to take the time to put him to bed, and besides he wasn’t acting crabby. However, I’m still surprised that he didn’t just conk out on his own.

Remember last week I said we did some secret service on Christmas Eve, but we got caught? Well, the reason we got caught is because one of the teen age boys in the family chased Jared & Tanner all the way down the street! On Sunday, he and his parents apologized for his behavior and on New Year’s Eve, he brought over some brownies and a bunch of New Year’s hats and horns for us. I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but they felt bad that he had chased them and scared them (and that they could have tripped and got hurt) when they were trying to do something nice, so they wanted to do something concrete to say they were sorry. So as a result, we all had fun hats to wear and horns to blow at midnight, which made it a little more fun than usual.

After midnight, all the boys went to bed immediately. It took Seth a little while to settle down so he didn’t go to sleep until nearly 1:00 am. Frank and I wanted to finish up the last few pieces of the puzzle (mainly because we thought it was a very real possibility that Seth would wake up in the morning and destroy the puzzle before we got a chance to finish it) so we did that and by the time we got to bed it was around 2:00 am.

We have all been enjoying the Wii. The boys play the games, and Frank and I have tried to do at least 30 minutes of aerobic / balance exercises each day. We have all found “favorite” things to do. I really like the running and biking activities because they are a lot more interesting than a treadmill or stationary bike would be, but I’m still indoors—not dealing with the elements!! Actually, the boys have been doing a lot of the exercise things as well because they are fun! Who can resist things like ski jumping, skateboarding, and a Segway course? Very cool.

I didn’t sleep all that well this week—I’ve noticed that when I don’t get to bed early and up early that I sleep poorly. I’m not sure if it was the tossing and turning, the extra exercise, or what, but I was very achy the first couple of days of the week and by Tuesday evening I had a tension headache and just hurt all over. Frank gave me a great back massage, though, and I took some Advil and I’ve been better since then. In other health news, I sadly fear that my right eye is going to need the same surgery that I had to get on my left eye a year ago. I’ve noticed my right eye watering a lot lately and the area by the tear duct is all swollen. I guess I’m going to have to see a doctor about that soon. It leads me to wonder, though, why both my eyes would have the same problem, and why it’s happening now when I’m an adult. It makes me think that there is some underlying cause for my tear ducts to be getting blocked. If we could figure that out, maybe we could resolve the underlying cause instead of having to do surgery on the other eye. My left eye has not given me trouble since the surgery, but I have noticed in the colder weather that it is watering a little bit also.

New Year’s Day was, thankfully, very low key. We all did our exercising and the boys played with their friend Joey in the afternoon. Today it is so very cold and windy! Frank was gone most of the day helping to cook food for a wedding. I went to a baptism for one of the little girls in our ward. It was very nice, except that it was very cold in the building. On the way back, I stopped at the Honeybaked Ham store to pick up a (yes, you guessed it) ham as well as some sides and a cheesecake—one of Frank’s clients gave him a generous gift certificate for that place. We are going to have a very yummy dinner tomorrow!

The boys and I worked on some homework and scouts (we are almost done with the Weather Merit Badge). I also worked on getting some things ready for Primary tomorrow. This evening was the Griffin Networks party. We weren’t sure we were going to make it since Frank was cooking all day and he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to get away. But it turned out that they had enough help that he was able to leave early. We were a bit late to the party, but actually timed it well—we got there just in time to order our food. The party was held at a really nice restaurant here in Frederick—the kind that we never go to because it costs about $35-50 a plate. Actually, we’ve been there about 4 times for other company parties or to use gift certificates we’ve been given, so we know how good the food is, and we were really looking forward to it! We weren’t disappointed—the food was delicious, as always. Frank’s boss and his wife always get little toys for everybody—this year we got little wind up robots which have been a great hit with the boys! This was a good year for the company, so they also did a drawing with some really nice gifts. We didn’t get the television or the Blue Ray player, but we did get a very nice GPS. I am glad because Frank always has the GPS so now I get to use the old one! Frank’s boss also gave a short speech commending everyone for the work they did this year and he said some very complimentary things about Frank, which was nice to hear.

A friend / business associate of Frank’s boss who has been working as a contractor just got a full time job with Lockheed Martin, so he handed over all his clients to Frank’s company. That means there will be plenty of work to do this year, which is a great blessing. We feel very fortunate that things are going so well for his company, especially in the current economy. Of course, some of that is due to the hard work of Frank and others, but a lot of it is just being blessed, and we are grateful.

We got home from the party pretty late, and I’ve been having some difficulties printing some things for tomorrow, so now it’s really late—time for bed!! As I’m listening to the wind howling out there, I am very grateful for a warm house!