Second PS to Weekly Review August 12 '11

How could I forget to mention these two momentous events?

First, Scott finished all the paperwork for his Eagle Scout project!!! (Can you see me dancing around the room?) Now all he has to do is have a conference with his scoutmaster and get it sent in, and he will hopefully be ready for his Board of Review.

Second (and even more momentous), I actually won a round of Mario Kart! As in, 1st place!!! I am still in shock. :)

PS to Weekly Review August 12 '11

Blogger is doing crazy things again--won't let me save my previous post after adding to it--so I am finishing this weeks post in a separate post. If you haven't already read the Weekly Review for August 12 '11, please go read it first! This post is just finishing that one up.

So, to finish my thought, I am hoping that when we get to the judgement day that Frank's former boss and his wife will finally understand what we were really doing--just trying to take care of our family without causing harm to them--and maybe then we can be friends again. But even if they don't understand, it won't really matter what they think anyway. What the Savior thinks of our decisions, though, will matter very much indeed.

That was a lot of "thinking out loud"; I hope I haven't put you all to sleep! I wanted to write down some of the things I've been thinking and feeling the last few weeks so I won't forget them. I think Frank feels much the same as I do, but all of this has been so much more personal for him and he feels the weight of needing to provide for our family even more than I do. It is hard for him to have faith that it will all work out. Please remember him in your prayers. We know you are all praying for us, and we really appreciate it!

Weekly Review August 12 '11

I have 15 minutes before I need to go. Do you think I can get this done in 15 minutes? Probably not, but I'm going to see how far I can get.

The older 3 boys were all invited to attend an Orioles baseball game tonight with another family in our ward. Since they will be getting home from the game late, they are also going to spend the night with this family also. That is good news for Frank and I; it means that for once we don't have to wait up really late for a boy (or boys) to get home!

Frank is at a meeting with a career counselor--that's through the county; he signed up for that after his long boring meeting last week. I hope the counselor will have some good ideas for him.

When Frank opened the front door to go to his meeting, he was confronted by a wall of boxes--computers and monitors that were sent by the church for the buildings in our stake. We never heard a knock on the door or the doorbell ring, so we were very surprised. The boxes literally took up the entire front stoop; it was difficult to get the screen door open. Now they are taking up a whole side of my already crowded living room. I hope they aren't there for long.

Other things we did this week: I stood in line for two hours in the hot sun in order to collect free school supplies for the boys. Not too fun, but I did get almost everything they need, so it was worth it. I was talking to some of the other people in line and discovered that most of them do this every year; I feel grateful that I've never had the need to do that before. We've been very blessed.

A recruiter from the Army Reserves came to talk to Scott and us one day. I don't think Scott is seriously considering joining the Army, but he has thought about it. There are definitely some benefits to doing that, but overall my feeling is that he's too young to make a decision about that right now! I'd rather he wait until after his mission to decide. I liked the guy who came to talk to us, but as most things like that go, it took him much longer to convey the information than it should have!

Scott went one night to stay with Danny, the autistic boy in our ward, while his family was out. (He did that once before a few weeks ago.) He also went with a friend (who can drive) one day to "kidnap" Allie and take her to lunch. He did warn her ahead of time, which led to Allie's younger brothers camping out in the front yard with water guns, waiting for him!

Tanner and Jared spent the night with Ryan and Bryson one night. Tanner also went swimming with Ryan. He works out with Ryan about twice a week as well.

My visiting teacher came to see me Thursday morning. I'm still doing a lot of reading. I've finished several books, though, so I'm not reading 6 at one time any more!

We are finding that unemployment is set up like every other government help program--it is not set up to reward you for taking the initiative to try to work as much as possible and to take care of yourself as much as possible. It is easier to just be a drain on society! Every time Frank earns more than a certain amount per week (and that amount is nowhere near enough for us to live on, I should point out) we have paperwork hassels to work out, which slows down getting the benefits we do qualify for. They don't really encourage honesty, either! But we are persevering!

Ok, so I didn't finish in 15 minutes, but I did get all of the above written in that time. Now I'm back home and Frank is also. In his interview he found out that he can get help paying for MCSE courses, so he is going to look into doing that. He has to research and find what courses are available and the cost; once he has that information he can apply for help. It's possible that he may be able to get the entire cost covered.

In the meantime, he is also interesteed in learning more about Linxus, so he got a book from the library and he's been using one of the old computers we have to experiement with that system. So far, he seems to be enjoying learning something new. He did have one interview this week with a place in northern Virginia. It's just a temporary position (3-6 months) but may possibly turn into a permanent position. He heard back from the recruiter today that the people he interviewed with were pretty impressed with him, so that was good to hear. They were particularly impressed that he is taking the initiative to learn something new. (He mentioned that he was starting to learn more about Linux.)

Although these are positive developments, I think Frank is going a bit stir-crazy being stuck at home, and it is hard for him to keep his spirits up. I know he worries a lot about the things his former employer is saying to prospective employers, and fears that he will not be able to find a job because of that. I've mentioned before that we've considered starting our own business, but it's a big decision to make with a lot of uncertainties involved. On Saturday we went to the temple and on Sunday we fasted about it. Then on Monday morning we sat down and talked about how we were feeling. As we talked, we realized that we had both been feeling the same way, and that is that Frank needs to keep looking for a job--that starting our own business is not the right way to go at this time. To be honest, that doesn't seem like the most logical course to take considering the pretty dismal response he's had so far (only 2 interviews in 2 months) and considering how many of his former clients would be willing to give him work to do if he did start a business, but then how often is the right thing to do the logical thing to do? I've certainly done a lot of illogical things in the past when prompted by the spirit to do so, and it always turned out fine. So that is the course we are going to pursue at this point.

For me, that has really made a big difference. All the waffling back and forth, wondering what to do, has been the hardest part of this situation for me. I can't say we got any "lightning bolt" revelations, but the fact that we are both feeling the same way is enough of an answer for me, and I feel a lot more at peace than I have the last two months. I still feel like getting a new job is going to take some time--I don't expect one to drop in our laps next week or anything--but I feel like it will all work out somehow.

Along with trying to decide what course we need to take, I've been doing a lot of soul searching, knowing that at some point I need to forgive Frank's former employers for how nasty they've been to us the last few months. I've been trying to see things from their point of view as much as possible, and actually I've said all along that I can understand why they've made some of the decisions they have made, even if I don't agree with them. But still, it has been very hard not to be very angry with them! The last few weeks I've been praying a lot about it, and I have been reminded by the spirit, gently, several times that if I didn't have the gift of the Holy Ghost with me all the time to help temper my natural emotions, that I would probably be behaving in as nasty a way as they have been behaving. That has helped me to feel very grateful for that gift that I have. I've had it for so long that I'm sure I take it for granted most of the time. I still have a long way to go before I reach the total forgiveness level, but that has helped me a lot.

I also had another very comforting thought this week--someday we will all be judged for the decisions that we make, and I think when that day comes that in the process of that judgement a lot of the misunderstanding we have with others will be cleared up. One of things I really hate and have always hated is being misunderstood. In this particular case, I hate the fact that because two Griffin clients left when Frank was laid off and Frank subsequently accepted work from those two clients, that the owner of Griffin and his wife both think that we are these horrible people who are trying to steal their business and ruin their company. It doesn't matter how many times Frank has explained to them that he only accepted work because these two clients told him that they would not give the work to Griffin no matter what--they don't believe him. It also seems to mean nothing to them that about 7 or 8 other clients also offered him work and he turned them down because he knew they would probably stay with Griffin if he turned down their offers. Honestly, how many other people who had just been laid off without severence and with a family to support would have done that? Ok, that sounds a bit like a rant and maybe it is but what I'm trying to say is that I am comforted by the fact that maybe someday we will all be standing before the Savior together and they will know the truth--that we only tried to take care of our family without causing harm to them. At that point, I want to be able to know that I tried my best to act in a Christ-like way and that I tried to do the right thing in spite of the wrongs done to us. We could probably start our own business and take away a lot of Frank's former clients and even be legally justified in doing that, but it just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. And the fact that they are not doing the right thing by us (lying about Frank, etc.) would not justify wrong-doing on our part.

Weekly Review August 5 '11

I wrote last Friday, so
I'm trying to remember what we did last Saturday. I can't remember anything!
I'm sure we didn't sit around all day doing nothing...as a matter of fact, I'm
pretty sure that the boys and I got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed
the kitchen floor. But the rest of the
day isn’t very memorable, apparently.

We had a cool Sharing Time
on Sunday (prepared by one of my counselors) to help the kids become more
familiar with the scriptures; it ended with them having to look up references
and locate certain words. The words put together were a clue, which led them to
a treat that was hidden in the room.

Our bishop was out of town
Sunday (still is) but I had an interesting conversation with the counselor
who's in charge of Primary. We were discussing some callings that need to be
filled and then he asked me how the job search is going for Frank (still not
good). His next question was "How long have you been the Primary
president? Has it been a few years?" (Yes, as a matter of fact I just hit
my two year anniversary a few weeks ago.) "Hmmm..." he said,
"that's a long time...." We got interrupted at that point and I
needed to get back to Primary, so I headed down the hall but it got me
thinking...are they thinking about releasing me? My reaction to that
possibility was stronger than I'd expected--my eyes were full of tears by the
time I got back to the Primary room! Don't get me wrong...there are certainly
days that I would like to be released. But most of the time not. The only thing
I really don't enjoy about the calling is staffing issues. And it can be very
time consuming! But I really do love it. I know I'll be released someday, but I
just wasn't thinking about it yet. The bishop has always joked with me that
I'll go out when he goes out...which is still a year and a half away. Well, for
now I am just trying to forget that conversation happened! Maybe nothing will
come of it.

Sunday night after Seth
went to bed he woke up again (around midnight), thrashing around and
crying. He said his stomach hurt. We got him settled back down and he went back
to sleep, but about 15 minutes later he woke up again and immediately threw up
all over his bed. Then he went all limp
and scared the daylights out of us. I
think he just had a breath holding spell—he used to do that when he was younger
if he got really upset. Frank ran into
the bathroom with him and got him conscious again; then he threw up violently
all over the bathroom. Lots of fun! We had a major clean up job which included
bathing Seth and mopping the bathroom floor, among other things. We got him settled on our floor with pillows
and blankets. He thrashed around a lot
for a while but finally went back to sleep (by then it was probably around 2:00
am) and never got sick again.

Seth felt a bit feverish
in the morning but I gave him small amounts of soda at intervals and he was
able to keep that down. So after a few
hours of that he tried some crackers and that stayed down also. By early afternoon he was running around the
room, acting fine, and he’s been fine since.
I guess we’ll never know if it was just a weird short-lived stomach bug,
a reaction to the immunizations he had on Friday, or (highly unlikely)
poisoning. You see, we did have to make
a call to poison control earlier that day!
Seth has a small Magna Doodle thing and he came downstairs and said
“there was something on this (holding the Magna Doodle) that looked like food,
so I tasted it but it tasted really yucky.”
We checked and discovered that he had managed to punch a hole in it and
there was some liquid leaking out of it that smelled like petroleum. He said he’d just touched it with his finger
and then licked his finger, but we decided we’d better call anyway, just in
case. The lady at poison control did say
that the substance inside would be very dangerous if he had inhaled it into his
lungs but was probably ok since he had just licked a little of it. She said if he were coughing we would need to
take him to the ER. But he wasn’t
coughing and seemed fine the whole day.
It definitely crossed our minds later when he was so sick! I think we have had to call poison control
more for Seth than for our other three kids put together, by the way. And if you have a Magna Doodle, beware! (Ours went in the trash.)

The rest of the week has
been busy, but not terribly eventful. I had quite a bit of work to do for
Primary and I also visited some kids. I went with my friend Christine, who is
one of the teachers, to visit one of the girls in her class. Christine took me to
lunch first, which was really nice of her! We haven't had a chance to talk to
each other much lately and we needed to get caught up. I also went with my secretary to visit a new
family in our ward who have three girls—all in Primary. It was fun getting to know them better.

Frank went to a workshop
yesterday that was required by the Maryland Department of Labor. It was all day, and he said it was rather
boring and could have been completed in a lot less time. However, he did get a lot of useful information. They have all kinds of resources, such as a
professional resume writer who will look at your resume (for free) and give you
pointers on how to improve it. He can
also sign up for a personal career counselor, so he did that. There is a possibility that he may be able to
get help paying for some career training—such as some certifications that would
be very good to have. So it may have
been boring, but well worth the time in the end.

I spent a lot of yesterday
shuttling Scott and friends around. He
had set up a double date with the girl he likes (Allie) and one of her cousins
(Amanda) and one of his friends (Colton). They had it all planned out and then Colton’s
plans changed so it got a little complicated and resulted in a lot more driving
on my part than we had originally intended.
But it all worked out. The things
we do for our kids! It would be great if
Scott could get his driver’s license but we can’t afford to add him to our
insurance. He wouldn’t be able to drive
with friends in the car for the first six months, anyway (just family members).

The package we got on
Wednesday from you Utah
folks was great! I wish I had videotaped
when we opened it so you could all see how thrilled the kids were! They loved all the shirts (Seth and Tanner
are wearing some of them in the photos above), the fry sauce got a huge cheer,
and of course they are always happy to get candy! They thought the cards from the cousins were
great, also. It really cheered us up and
we appreciate the thought that went into it.
That meant a lot to us! Last
night we enjoyed watching a movie together while munching on all that candy.

Jared attended a
basketball camp every morning this week.
A couple of people in our stake did one for all the YM and YW who were
interested in attending for free, which I thought was really great. They had a large turn out (I’d say about 50
kids) and Jared had a lot of fun and hopefully learned a lot, too. He had very positive things to say about it
every day when we picked him up. Scott and
Tanner chose not to attend—crazy guys!

I can’t think of anything
else to say about this week except that I have spent a lot of time
reading. We’ve gone to the library a lot
lately. I think I am reading about 6
books at once—not such a good idea! I’m
reading the book for book club (A River Runs Through It—really good) and a
children’s Newberry winner called Kira-Kira, as well as several non fiction
books. I finished the disaster book (so
many sad stories!) and I’m about half way through the geography book. I’ve learned quite a bit about various
countries—it’s very interesting.

That sums it up for this
week!

Weekly Review July 29 '11

When I got the photos off the camera this week, I found several pictures that Seth took himself, apparently--like the little "gem" above. He looks like an alien with no mouth!

And this one, where at least you can see his mouth!

And this one, where he has the cutest cheesy grin (although he's still washed out).

He took this one of me, which is much better than the one Frank took at the zoo (I don't always wear that shirt, by the way). Not bad for a four year old!:

And here is one that I took of Seth--you can see his new haircut! (All four boys got haircuts last Saturday evening.)

That's all the pictures for this week; we didn't do anything very exciting, obviously! It was a very quiet week. The boys kept busy hanging out with friends, Frank looked for a job, and I kept the house in order. That mostly sums it up!

I had a presidency meeting Tuesday evening, the boys had YM Wednesday evening, and our home teachers came to visit us on Thursday evening. Scott had an orthodontist appointment Thursday morning and Seth had his yearly check up this morning. Scott goes back to the orthodontist in October for an x-ray to see how how his top wisdom teeth are doing; I hope he is not going to need to get them out yet--it's expensive. He also gets an impression for a new retainer because his 12 year molars have finally come in all the way (now that he is nearly 17 years old)! Seth had to get 3 shots at the doctor; he was pretty traumatized by that but he's recovered now. At least he got cool band-aids, a lollipop, and a little frog toy. He doesn't have to get shots again until he's 11, thank goodness! He remembers the older boys getting shots earlier this summer and he tried to convince the doctor that he is "not big enough to get shots yet"! He's obviously forgotten all those shots he got when he was a baby.

The boys enjoyed sleepovers and swimming outings with various friends. The weather cooled off a little bit the beginning of this week, so it was actually nice enough to do things outside like play basketball. It has gotten super hot again the last few days, though. We've been trying to let them have as much fun with friends as possible this summer since they are not going to get a vacation at all.

Frank has been trying to convince me to take the boys and drive out to Utah for a few weeks. As much as I would like to see everyone out there, I don't think we'll be doing that. Besides the obvious expense involved, the boys are not enthusiastic about a long drive like that, and I know I'd be miserable thinking of Frank all alone out here, trying to find a job and most likely feeling down. This has really not been a good week for him although he doesn't complain.

Frank has done a little bit of work this week, but the job search is pretty much at a standstill. After 7 weeks of being unemployed, applying for tons of jobs and only having one interview, it's hard to feel optimistic. Besides that, he found out that his former employers are not being honest with prospective employers who call them--they are telling them that he was laid off for financial and "other" reasons, which leaves them wondering what those "other" reasons might be. It's really frustrating that they would do that, when the only real reason he was laid off was because they couldn't pay him. I have a lot of very angry thoughts about all that, but I will keep them to myself! Considering that the job market is so slow right now and his former employer is trying to sabotage his ability to find employment, we have started to think a lot about starting our own business. This week we talked to an accountant who gave us a good idea of how we should set that up and what kinds of things we would need to do. Of course, the key part of making a business run would be getting clients, though--and that could be very difficult to do. So we haven't decided what to do yet, but we are keeping it in mind.

We did have some fun last week--on Saturday Frank and I were able to go see Harry Potter 7, part 2. We had some complimentary tickets to the local movie theater that we have been saving for several months--we're glad now that we didn't use them sooner! It was really nice to get out of the house and do something just for fun. We really enjoyed the movie, too. We mostly liked it, although we didn't like some of the things they changed from the book. But overall, it was really good and I was surprised at how emotional I got at some parts! Tanner got to see it with his friend last Friday, so Scott is the only one who hasn't seen it yet. He's not all that anxious about it though--he actually says he'd rather see Captain America! (What's wrong with that boy?!) I guess Seth hasn't seen it, either, but he's too young to see it.

Tonight Scott is hanging out with the girl he met at Youth Conference again. Her name is Ally. I met her when I dropped him off tonight, and she is definitely a cute girl and seems really nice. The bad news for Scott (but maybe good news for us?!) is that although she is his age, she skipped a grade in school so she just graduated from high school in June. She'll be going to LDS Business College in Salt Lake City this fall. So I guess he'd better spend time with her while he can!

Seth made a large purchase this week--he decided he was tired of trying to convince the older boys to let him play with their nerf dart guns so he got one of his own. I found him dumping out his piggy bank--I didn't even know he remembered he had one! But he did, and since he's never spent anything before he had a pretty decent amount accumulated in there. Now he has his own dart gun, but I've noticed he still plays with the older boys' guns!

That brings you all up to date on us, until next week....

Weekly Review July 22 '11

Let's see if I can get blogger to work this week! I am thinking pretty seriously about going back to email, but I'll give it another try. Especially since my address book got wiped out several months ago....

This week was fairly eventful, with some sort of event nearly every day. On Sunday evening Frank went to a resume writing workshop done by a guy in our stake who has been in HR for about 30 years. He enjoyed the workshop and learned some valuable information. Afterwards, he ended up talking to the guy giving the workshop for a long time, so he didn't get home until late.

Frank had an interview with a recruiter Tuesday afternoon and a job interview Wednesday morning, so the job hunt is starting to warm up a little. The job interview went very well; the guy said he'd probably hire Frank on the spot except that he couldn't pay him enough. Frank told him if he made an offer, he'd consider it. The guy was going out of town for a few weeks, though, so we won't hear back from him for a while. In the meantime, Frank did quite a bit of work this week which always helps.

I got my hair done on Monday, which meant that Seth got to play with his good buddy Tyler (his mom cuts my hair). Tuesday I had book club. The book we read this time, Perelandra, made for a very interesting discussion! Wednesday night our ward had a combined Preparedness Fair / Pioneer Day celebration with lots of booths on various topics such as making homemade bread, food and water storage, 72 hour kits, disaster preparedness, etc. There was also pioneer music, dutch oven cooking, a pie eating contest, first aid demonstrations by the cub scouts, a taffy pull by the activity days girls, and a candy store. I thought it was pretty nice and we had a pretty good turn out. I think there would have been even more people if the weather had been more cooperative. We've had temperatures in the 100's this week with humidity to boot--not very pleasant weather to be outside! (The fair was held in the parking lot, not indoors.) Jared's friend Sage came to hang out all day on Thursday. This morning Seth went to a birthday party for Tyler and this evening all the boys and I went swimming. My visiting teaching companion has a pool at her house and she thought it would be fun to invite all the ladies we visit and their kids over to swim. The kids swam while we visited. We had fun, but only one of our three ladies was able to make it today. We'll have to catch the other two another time. Tonight Tanner is spending the night with his friend Seth--I think they are going to go see Harry Potter 7, part 2. Scott is staying with his friend David's younger brother, Danny. The rest of Danny's family went to DC to see the play Wicked, but since Danny is autistic, they didn't want to leave him alone for that long. (Danny is Tanner's age.) Danny came over earlier and went swimming with us. After dinner, Frank took Scott and Danny back to Danny's house.

Besides all that, the older kids had various social activities. Tanner and Jared spent the night with Ryan and Bryson Tuesday night. Scott met a girl at Youth Conference that he really likes; he spent Wednesday afternoon and evening at her house. Scott's friend Ricardo came here one day and Scott spent time with his friend David another day. I'm sure I'm forgetting something! These guys really keep me going, trying to keep up with their social lives.

The older three boys, to my surprise, watched the movie Pride and Prejudice with me one evening. I had to explain a bit to them about how 19th century English society operates! They didn't think it was a great movie or anything, but they did watch the whole thing.

Frank and I went to the library to pick up a book for Jared and while Frank was browsing in the Sci Fi section, I ended up in non fiction and wound up bringing home The Idiot's Guide to Geography, Life 20th Century in Pictures, and The Greatest Disaster Stories Ever Told. I'm still wondering what that combination of books has to say about my personality!

Fun quote from Seth. He asked me Wednesday night at bedtime where Scott was, and I told him Scott was hanging out with a girl that he likes. Seth asked "Is she a hot girl, or a warm girl?"

We are really glad that Anna & Buck's little Ivory June arrived safely this week! What a sweetie for coming a little early. :) So now I'm a great aunt! I can't wait to meet her someday...

Weekly Review July 16 '11

So we did a few fun things this week. Yesterday we took Seth to the National Zoo. (Did you know that admission to the National Zoo is free? Well, it is. Your taxpayer dollars are paying for our free entertainment. The parking isn't free, though.) Poor deprived Seth has never been to a zoo before now! He seemed to have a good time. He says the tiger was his favorite animal. He is looking at the map of the zoo in the photo above.

I do not like this photo of me (I have a funny look on my face because Frank didn't give me a chance to smile), but pictures of me are hard to come by, so I included it so that someday my great grandkids will know that I really existed!

One of the cheetahs. We really enjoyed watching them. We also liked the lion cubs.

Seth is watching the zebras. He loved the noises that they made!

Only Seth, Frank and I went to the zoo. The oldest two boys were at Youth Conference and Jared had spent the night with a friend from the ward on Thursday--they had invited him to go with them to see the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7, part 2. (He enjoyed that a lot, by the way.) We figured it was a good day to go since we knew the older boys weren't interested in going to the zoo anyway, and Frank and I needed a break from the harsh realities of life when unemployed. Thankfully, it wasn't a super hot day, but we did get pretty tired and hot anyway. I don't think we will be doing that again for a while!

Other fun things about this week:

Scott had his friend Abbie over on Tuesday morning to "hang out". She was arriving early, so Scott was up early too. (Frank's comment: "We should let him invite a girl over every day!") They spent quite a bit of time down by the river talking--I admit there is sadly no place in this house to entertain a guest with any semblance of privacy!

On Wednesday the women in my book club got together to celebrate all the July / August birthdays since there are quite a few of us with birthdays in those months. We met at a park that I've never been to before. It was a bit of a drive--it was way up by the Pennsylvania border--but it was a beautiful drive and the view from the park was fantastic. It's located on the edge of a mountain. A long time ago it was a major tourist spot with hotels and an amusement park but all of that disappeared around World War II. Now it's just a really nice community park. The weather was nice and cool up there and I really enjoyed visiting with friends.

That evening my friend Jeanine and her boys came over. Jeanine had asked if we could have her two oldest boys, Joey and Kalvin, spend the night with us since they all had to be at the stake center at 5:00 am for Youth Conference. They live in Westminster, which is about an hour away from the stake center but it is only about 10 minutes away from our house. We were glad to have them stay, of course. Jeanine insisted that they bring us dinner that evening, and she did--along with several other bags of assorted groceries that she thought we could use. That was really thoughtful of her, and it really cheered me up!

On Thursday I enjoyed going to Barnes & Noble to spend the gift card Mom & Dad sent me for my birthday. Frank came too--he still had some of his gift card from his birthday left! I have a weakness for children's books so that's what I ended up getting. When I was a little girl, one of my favorite series of books was the Betsy-Tacy series. The author wrote 3 other books that were not officially part of that series but that included some of the same characters that appeared in that series. Those books were out of print for a long time but now they have been reissued, so I got two of them. (I already own the other one.) I've been wanting to read them for a long time, so it was fun to do that this week. I'm looking forward to reading the other two books that I got, too.

Tanner and Scott were at Youth Conference from early Thursday morning until this evening. They went to Kirtland, Ohio this year. I think it is really great that they got to do that! I haven't heard a whole lot about their experiences yet since they've only been home a few hours but I think they had a really good time. They were not allowed to take any electronics of any kind--even their phones. Before they left, they were moaning about how boring the bus ride there and back was going to be, but now they admit that the bus rides were a lot of fun. (I told them so!) They both met lots of cute new girls, too! They had a testimony meeting this morning in the Kirtland Temple before they left and they both admit that they (and everyone else, apparently) cried through the whole thing because there was such a strong spirit there. Scott's bus was in a very minor (thankfully) accident on the way home; no one was hurt but it delayed them a bit so they got back about an hour later than planned. I am looking forward to hearing more about their experiences over the next few days.

I think that covers the fun things we did this week. We did all the more ordinary things such as cleaning house and buying groceries, of course. Jared mowed the lawn and Frank trimmed the apple trees in our front yard. I met with one of my counselors to talk about the Cub Scout program. Frank did some work on computers in the stake. Snickers got a haircut. I worked on Sharing Time. Frank kept looking for a job. He had another very interested recruiter call him this week but so far most of the positions they are trying to fill are temporary and too far away to commute. He would be willing to do something temporary if it were nearby, of course, but if it isn't commuting distance it doesn't make sense to move. This is just not a great economy for looking for a job and I'm afraid it's going to take some time to find something. Some days I feel ok about that and other days I panic. On a good note, though, we are definitely seeing some of the blessings of paying tithing including the fact that the little that has been coming in is stretching a lot farther than expected.

Update on Seth: the last month or so he has begun to dress himself. He's known how to do it for a while, but now he goes to his room most mornings after breakfast and gets dressed without me asking him to. Very nice! I've had some interesting conversations with him lately, like the time he told me that when "you and Daddy got married, I watched you through a window. Scott and Tanner and Jared were there, too." He also told me once recently that Jesus loves him all the time and that He wants him to be nice. Even if Jared is mean to him (Seth), Jesus wants him to be nice back. What do you know--he really is listening in Primary! Hard to tell, because he rarely sits in his seat for more than a minute. And last week when we were talking about families being sealed in the temple and I showed them a picture of a sealing room and asked them if they would like to go to a place like that, he loudly proclaimed that he did NOT want to go there and that he did NOT want to be sealed to his family! Tough luck for him, since he already is. :)

I have finally succeeded in getting all the boys to bed, and it is my bedtime, too, so I'd better post this and get to sleep!