Weekly Review December 5 '14

Sometimes I wonder what there is to write about.  I mean, so much of my time each week is spent doing the same things--grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, driving kids to places they need to go, laundry, etc.  Probably takes up 75 -80% of my time.  Or maybe more.  

Then there is all the Relief Society stuff.  That's a constant, too.  Are you all tired of hearing about that?  This week is the week before the first Sunday of the month, which means I was working on VT changes...again.  I texted Frank last night and said "I think I have all the VT changes figured out, thank goodness."  and his answer was "Until next month...bwahahaha!"  He's right, of course!  Besides that, I had a presidency meeting (nothing new there) and met with the bishop (because it's the first week of the month, and I always have a meeting with him the first week of the month).  Plus, I had lots of phone calls to make and emails to send out...as always.

This sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not.  I'm just pointing out that if all I ever wrote about was the unusual things I do, it would sound like I sit around doing nothing most of the time!  I guess I've been reflecting a bit on my "job" this week.  That's because Frank had been out of town all week on a business trip--at a conference in Las Vegas.  He wanted me to come with him, and of course I would have loved to do that.  But then how would the kids get to school?  Who would buy the groceries or do the laundry?  Who would take the dog out?  Or mail Tanner that prescription he really needs?  So it occurred to me that when Frank wants a day off, he just asks for it, and the work at Marriott goes on without him for a day or two (or even a week or two).  Overall, I'd say he has the more rigid working conditions.  He is not as free to choose what he does or to set his own hours (although he can do both of those things, up to a point).  But when it comes to days off?  It's a lot simpler for him than it is for me.  My job never goes away!  And even though I don't get paid for it, I would have to pay someone else quite a bit to do it in my place.  

Again, I am not complaining!  I have the job that I always wanted the most and I am exceedingly grateful for it!  I'm so thankful I can focus on my home and on my children all the time and I don't have another job competing for my time and attention (unless you count RS...haha!)  I'm so thankful I am here for my kids all the time even in spite of the fact that every last one of them at some time or another has said (as Seth just said today) "Mom, I wish you had a job."  (Seth's reason was so we would have more money (!!!), another kid wanted to go to daycare like his friends.)  Bless them all, I DO have a job.  A 24 / 7 unpaid job with no days off, but a job nevertheless.  And the most important job there is, even though my kids don't realize it.  Or at least my youngest kid doesn't realize it.  My older kids are definitely seeing that now.  For example, Jared had a super busy week because this was opening week for the play at his school.  He was leaving the house at 6:15 for Seminary and not getting home until 10:00 or 11:00 at night.  So I was dropping dinner off at the high school for him every night.  I was getting text messages from him like this "You are a goddess."  Yeah, it's nice to be appreciated sometimes! :)

Well, now that I've said all that, we did have a number of events going on this week.so I do have something to write about besides laundry and cooking.  

Frank's parents left Saturday morning.  I teased Frank last week that we had no proof that his parents were here for Thanksgiving since he didn't take any pictures of them.  So here is our proof:

  

On Saturday we had a fun excursion down to Washington DC.  If it weren't for Erin & Dan, we would probably never go down there anymore, but they are always finding out about cool things to do there and telling us about them, plus we want to spend time with them so off we go.  It's going to be a real bummer when they move to Idaho in a few weeks.  (For a lot of reasons.)

Anyway, this time we planned to meet them at the National Geographic Museum and the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum.  They were going to a place called Eastern Market first, along with Dan's visiting sister, and they ended up running a lot later than they'd planned so we ended up doing the National Geographic Museum without them and meeting them later at the DAR Museum.  At the National Geographic Museum we watched a 3D movie about ancient sea creatures (it was fun, and Seth really loved it) and looked at their exhibits.  There really were only 3 large exhibits...one about food, one about Spinosaurus, and one about Mars rovers.  They were interesting...I liked the food exhibit the most (we even got to sample some turkey pumpkin chili, which was quite good) and Seth loved the Spinosaurus exhibit, of course!:

But overall, we thought it was a bit on the expensive side for only having 3 exhibits.  (The movie cost extra.)  We did enjoy it, though.

Frank got some nice pictures of Seth in the courtyard, too:

Oh, and one more from the Spinosaurus exhibit:

Then it was on to the DAR Museum, which was awesome because admission is free and it is located in this really cool historical old building with tons of gorgeous architectural details.  Plus they had a big quilt exhibit.  And several dollhouses on every level.  And a cute gift shop.  And all these beautiful period rooms.  And right in the middle of the building was a big genealogical research library.  Totally my kind of place!!

The whole building was beautifully decorated for Christmas:

Frank was taking pictures the whole time and it wasn't until afterwards that I realized that he was mostly taking pictures of all the architectural details, and he didn't get many of the period rooms.  But that's ok because the architectural details are certainly worth photographing and if you really want to see all the period rooms, you can actually do a virtual tour of them on the DAR website.

Each of the rooms represents a different time period sometime between the 1700's (or maybe it was the 1600's) and the mid 1900's.  There were parlors, sitting rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, libraries / studies, at least one kitchen, and an attic playroom.  Each room is named after a state, because they were created (and undoubtably paid for) by a different state's DAR charter organization.  There are not 50 of them, but there were probably close to 25 of them, at least.  Anyway, here are a bunch of pictures so you can get an idea of what the place was like:

(Attic playroom.  Erin noticed that in front of the fireplace there was a mark along the wood floor and there were hinges on one side of the mantle, so there must be a secret passageway behind the fireplace!)

And here's the library, which was also beautiful (the pictures don't do it justice)

At the top left of the picture, you can see the bottom of a bunch of flags.  I think they had a flag for every state hanging around the top of the wall.

And check out these cool little alcoves!

It would have been really fun to poke around in that library and do a little research, but we didn't have time.

Actually, no time was the theme of this museum, since we got there only one hour before it closed.  We ran around so we could see all the period rooms and I barely got to glance through the quilt exhibit (which was Virginia and Maryland quilts...a lot of Baltimore Album quilts in there, but others too) and we couldn't browse in the gift shop at all (which was probably a good thing...would have been too tempted to buy something).  I really wish we could have had more time there, because I could have spent an hour or two more.  I will just have to go back!

After we got home, Jared went to a Seminary party (he was late).  They had each researched a different person from church history so they could share information with each other, and they were supposed to dress up like their person, too.  Jared was George Albert Smith...the apostle, not the one who became the prophet.  They had a gift exchange and lots of food too, of course.

On Sunday I did not have any meetings for once but I still had to get up just as early because Jared was getting his patriarchal blessing.  Worth getting up for, of course!  The patriarch was quite emotional when we got there, and told us that he had never prayed harder over giving a blessing than this one.  And he did give Jared a beautiful blessing!  He already has the written copy, too...we got it in the mail on Tuesday.  We were totally surprised (and impressed) when it came that fast!  I read all three of my boys' blessings this week and it was really sweet.  Reaffirmed my testimony that these blessings come not from the patriarch, but from a loving Father who knows us so completely.  Even though their blessings say many similar things, each one is unique and I get a sense of each boy's personality in their blessing, and can see that it is tailored to that particular boy's strengths and weaknesses.  Kind of hard to explain, but hopefully you get the idea.

Frank left for Las Vegas very early Monday morning.  He will be back late tonight.  I think he enjoyed his week, but he will be glad to be home too.  He never did get on Las Vegas time, which is 3 hours behind us...he was waking up at 2:30 or so every morning, which is 5:30 here and he's usually up by that time.  He was able to go to bed fairly early most nights (8:00 or 9:00).  I guess that means he doesn't have to adjust back to our time now!  One kind of cool thing that happened is that he won a door prize from a vendor...a really nice drone.  He had to ship it home because he couldn't take it on the plane, which was not cheap but much less expensive than buying the drone would have been.  So early Merry Christmas to him!

I had the Sister missionaries over for dinner on Monday.  One of them...Sister Shumway (not Jeanette's daughter; there are two Sister Shumways in the mission) went home on Wednesday so I asked her to pick what she wanted for her last dinner with us and she chose chicken chili.  The sad thing was, when they came they told me that they just found out that not only was Sister Shumway going home, but Sister Madsen was getting transferred and in their place we were getting a second set of Elders instead of Sisters.  What a bummer!  I can't even begin to tell you how much help the Sister missionaries have been to me with all the RS work there is to do in our ward.  But I guess I will have to muddle through without them.  Hopefully it won't be permanent.  Nothing against the new Elders, of course.  I'm sure I'll love them too!

Today was our stake's annual Temple Jubilee, so I went to the temple this morning.  I actually debated going...the sore throat I had last week turned into a sort of cold with some congestion and the kind of cough where you occasionally, without warning, having nasty coughing fits.  Overall, I haven't felt my best all week although I pretended I felt fine.  Anyway, I didn't think a nasty coughing fit would be so great in the temple, but I finally decided to go anyway.  And it was wonderful and I didn't have any coughing fits so I'm really glad I went.  The trip home was rather rough, though...as soon as I got on the beltway, the traffic was just creeping along.  And then I saw the sign which said there was an accident at exit 35 and two lanes were blocked, and so was the ramp.  Well, exit 35 is where the beltway connects with 270 North...which is the only way to get to Frederick.  I didn't really want to go to Northern Virginia today so I decided I'd better get off at exit 34 and try to make my way home some other way.  Of course, I was in the car without the GPS and I don't have a smart phone.  But by following some signs and making one phone call to Frank, I managed to find my way back to 270 North, past the accident.  In the meantime, I got some lunch (I happened to pull into a Popeye's parking lot to call Frank, and it was after lunchtime and I was very hungry) so by the time I got home it was practically time for Seth to be home from school, I was really tired, and I still had a ton of things to do today.  But that's ok--it was worth it.

In between everything else, I have done quite a bit of Christmas shopping this week and I made quite a dent in what I need to do, so I'm happy about that.  Still haven't even started on Christmas cards or decorations, but I'm making progress at least.  I didn't have much free time, but I did finish reading my book for book chat (All Together in One Place...really enjoyed it; thanks Mom!) and I've also been reading a book called Here Is Where--Discovering America's Great Forgotten History, which is pretty interesting.  It even has a chapter on the Haun's Mill Massacre.  (Although it had an account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in the same chapter, of course.)  Wednesday was probably the day I felt the worst, so I did take the afternoon off and watched the first few episodes of Downton Abbey season 4.

It's mostly been just Seth and I hanging out together this week with Frank gone and Jared at the school all day every day.  Thank goodness he's been able to get rides home at night since Seth had to be in bed long before he got home.  As a matter of fact, he was home so late Wednesday night that I had gone to bed.  I didn't even hear him come in!  (Nice to know someone could break in and murder us in our beds, and I would not wake up until it was too late.)  I woke up suddenly around midnight and panicked for a minute, thinking Jared hadn't gotten home.  But then I checked downstairs and all the lights were out (I'd left one on) and his shoes and backpack were on the floor so I went back to bed.

We had a really nice warm day on Monday, but overall the week has been cold, grey, and rainy.  We were actually supposed to get a wintry mix Monday night / Tuesday morning and 1-3 inches of snow on Tuesday afternoon.  We did get some of the wintry mix...I was awakened by the sound of ice pellets hitting the window during the night, but the temperature must have warmed up more than expected because by the time I woke up Tuesday morning it was raining, all the ice was melted, and the snow never materialized...just more rain.  

Overall, I don't like having Frank gone but it doesn't seem to be as hard as it used to be.  Maybe because I'm busier, so the time goes by faster.  When he used to travel when the kids were little, it was a lot harder.  I really wasn't as busy then, which seems strange.  You'd think now that my kids can feed and dress themselves, I'd be less busy.  But now that they're older, they have a lot more going on, too, so they keep me running.  Besides that, I don't get as nervous about him being gone as I used to.  For one thing, I feel really safe in my current neighborhood.  And I suppose having a teenage son who is bigger than I am adds an element of security as well, not that I would expect Jared to defend me.  I'm still his Mom, and I'm sure I would still stand between him and danger.  But it's nice to think that in a crisis there would be another sort of adult around to help me cope.  I think the idea of facing a dangerous situation alone is what has always scared me the most.  I always try to compensate in little ways when Frank's gone too...I do things like plan super easy meals.  It's just me and Seth (and sometimes Jared) anyway and they are really happy with things like mac and cheese.  Plus I really like those Totino's Party pizzas, for some reason.  I have no idea why, but I do.

Well, I started out saying I don't have a lot to write about, but I managed to write a lot somehow.  Feeling philosophical tonight for some reason.  I guess that's what being left alone with my thoughts for a week, without a husband to talk to, does to me!  I'm very glad he'll be back in a few hours.  Now on to the all the other things I need to get done tonight....  

Weekly Review November 28 '14

Here's some pictures Frank took in downtown Frederick the Saturday before last (while I was shopping):

Something I forgot to mention about my trip to the American Girl store last week--the best part about being in the store was being totally amused by all the men who were there.  Heaven only knows why the poor guys were there in the first place...dragged along with their wives, daughters, granddaughters, etc...but every last one of them had the same dazed, bored look on his face!  Really tickled my funny bone,

Anyway, on to this week.  Saturday was super busy.  We had a big RS activity that morning.  So between set up, the actual activity and clean up, that took up all morning and a few hours into the afternoon.  It was a very successful activity, though, and I loved seeing all the women having fun...learning how to do new things, creating things, and visiting with one another.  So it was worth all the work that went into it (and I didn't have to do a lot of the work).  That afternoon we went to a friend's house to watch the BYU football game.  Of course, that was a good game since BYU won by so much.  Although maybe a little boring, since we were ahead by so much.  Not that I'm complaining about that!

Jared was supposed to get his patriarchal blessing on Sunday, but that morning the patriarch's wife called to let us know that he had had a bad allergic reaction to some medication so the blessing was postponed to this Sunday.  (The patriarch is ok, though, thankfully!)

This week was busy with all the usual things we have to do, plus preparations for Thanksgiving.  Originally, I planned to do all the shopping on Wednesday, but they were predicting a big snowstorm for Wednesday, so I moved all the shopping to Tuesday which made that day super busy but somehow everything got done.  (And imagine what a madhouse the stores were...Thanksgiving and a big snowstorm in the same week!  People go nuts around here when a snowstorm is predicted.)

Seth had half days on both Monday and Tuesday...Monday he went in late and Tuesday he got out early.  Jared had regular school days.  Then both of them had Wednesday through Friday off.  On Monday I went to a friend's house for lunch.  When I got back, Frank had come home from work and his parents had arrived.  They have been here visiting all week and it has been nice to have them here.  The weather on Monday was warm and sunny...we enjoyed that while it lasted!  On Tuesday I went to a parent teacher conference for Seth.  He is doing pretty well but still has a lot of focus issues.  I'm afraid we are going to have to intervene with some kind of medication for him before he gets much older.  He is keeping up pretty well academically because he's pretty intelligent, but if he could focus more he would be able to excel and learn a lot more than he is.  Plus, we don't want him to get frustrated.  So we'll have to do some thinking and praying about what to do for him.

Also on Tuesday we all went out to dinner at a Chinese buffet place, and Jared went to a movie with some friends after that.

Anyway, those two days were quite busy, trying to get a lot of things done.  We managed to get everything done that we would need to leave the house to do, so Wednesday we were able to stay home in our warm house!  (Well, actually, I think Frank did run to the store a couple of times for little items we forgot, but he is always happy for an excuse to go out in snow.)  At one point, they were predicting we could get up to 10 inches of snow, but the models kept shifting, and in the end we only got about 2 inches.  It was actually raining in the morning, but then it switched to snow and it did come down really heavily for a while:
  

Seth was excited to go out and play in the snow, and I even braved the cold for a little while to help him build a snow man and to have a short snow ball fight:

Frank tried to get some pictures of some cardinals and squirrels that we could see in the neighbor's yard:

Other than that, we spent the day visiting with Frank's parents and baking pies and such.  Oh, and I talked to Tanner since it was his birthday.

On Thursday Frank and I spent the whole morning cooking.  Besides Frank's parents, we also had the Elders serving in our ward over for Thanksgiving dinner.  We enjoyed having them, and I think they enjoyed playing games with us and eating dinner.

Here's the table:

I didn't take pictures of the food, but we had a LOT of it.

Today we have been resting and catching up on a few chores that need to be done.  Frank's parents came over this evening for dinner, but they spent the day doing genealogy at the local library and doing some shopping so we didn't see them much.  We were all happy to skip the chaos of Black Friday sales, and just stayed home.  I'm actually not feeling terrific...have a slight sore throat and headache.  I've had that for the last 3 or 4 days, but thankfully it hasn't turned into anything significant.  Besides that, I haven't had enough sleep this week.  Snickers has been sick...something going on with his stomach.  He's been making noise in the middle of the night almost every night and Frank has been getting up to see if he needs to go out..and he has taken him out a few times.  His worst day seemed to be Tuesday.  That day I ended up cleaning up a big mess in his crate AND giving him a bath (this was after I came back from taking Jared from Seminary to school) and later that evening we had another mess to clean up on the kitchen floor after we got back from going out to dinner.  He seems to be doing a little bit better now although he didn't eat his dinner last night and didn't want to eat this morning either.  He finally did eat something this afternoon.  If he doesn't get better soon we will take him to the vet, but so far he is still acting fairly perky...or like himself, anyway--not lethargic or anything.

I got a text message with a picture of Scott this morning from one of the members in Utah...the family they live with, I think.  She said that he had 5 dinner appointments yesterday!  So he is certainly not starving out there.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something important, but that's all I can think of right now.  I've done a little bit of reading and watched more Downton Abbey in between everything else.  (I just finished season 3, so only one more season to go and then I am caught up.)

Weekly Review November 21 '14

I feel shocked every time I realize that Thanksgiving is next week!  Starting to feel a little panicked about how soon the holidays are going to be here.

Most of this week has been super cold although yesterday when it got up to the mid 40s it felt almost balmy to me!  Today it's colder again but it's supposed to warm up this weekend / early next week.  Can't really complain about the cold here when I see how frigid it's been all over the country!  Plus, we didn't have 6 feet of snow dumped on us like Buffalo.  (Although that would be a reason TO complain, as far as Frank is concerned.)

Last Saturday was pretty busy for me.  In the morning, Frank and I went to an Eagle Court of Honor for a boy in our ward (one of Tanner's friends).  After that, I went shopping.  I had some birthday shopping for Tanner to do, plus I wanted to get started on some Christmas shopping.  There were a number of items I wanted to get from the LDS bookstore and the distribution center by the temple, so I planned to go down there.  And as long as I was going down that far anyway, I decided to go to the American Girl store in Tyson's Corner Virginia too.  I had some money to spend from sewing jobs I've done and I've been wanting to see what the store was like.  Well, I satisfied my curiosity but I will probably never go again because they didn't have anything at the store that I can't get from the catalog or online and the parking at that place was CRAZY!!!  I actually thought I was going to have to give up and go home without ever being able to get out of my car.  The parking garage I went into had a sign listing the number of open parking spots...it was over 200, so that didn't sound too bad.  Most of the open spaces were on the 4th level.  Trouble was, I entered the garage on the 3rd level and although there were signs pointing to the exits and to the bridge to go to the stores (not to mention a really sophisticated system letting me know which aisles had empty parking spaces...that is, none of them), there were no signs telling how to get to the next level.  So I drove around in what seemed to be circles for a while and then noticed I was on level 2, even farther from level 4 and the empty parking spaces!  The garage was very crowded, by the way, with lots of other cars circling the garage with drivers that I suspect were just as confused as I was.  So I was left to circle around and around, trying to find a direction to go that looked different from any of the directions I had already gone, and complaining out loud to no one in particular about the lack of helpful signs!  This literally went on for at l  FINALLY I realized that I had found my way to the 4th level and I was so happy until I realized that the 200+ empty parking spaces actually didn't exist.  That level was just as packed as all the other ones, and there were still another couple hundred people like me circling the lot, hoping to find an empty space.  I had just decided to make my way to the exit and try another parking garage when I turned down an aisle and miraculously a couple of people came walking over to get in their car.  And even more miraculously, there were no cars coming the other way with people looking for a parking spot on that particular aisle, so I stopped, put on my signal to claim my spot, and waited for the car to pull out.  So I did get to go into the store after all!  It was pretty cool and I got some fun stuff, but I think I will be an online shopper from now on!

After I got back from shopping, the Elders came over for dinner.  Then Frank swept & mopped the kitchen floor for me while I gave Seth a bath.  Jared was at his play.

On Sunday evening Frank and I went to a teacher training class held by the stake Sunday school presidency.  It was pretty good. Shortly after church on Sunday I went in my room and discovered that the bed was made:

Apparently, Seth had a lesson in Primary on secret service.  I thought it was so cute that he made our bed for us!  As you can see, not the most neat job, but still...pretty good for a 7 year old who hasn't had much practice.

The rest of this week has flown by, although apparently not fast enough for my inner clock...I kept thinking it was a day later than it really was.  For RS, I did two food orders, visited two other sisters (one with the missionaries) and also went visiting teaching.  I had a few random emails to send and phone calls to make as well...pretty typical.  Also this morning I made 2 cakes for our meeting tomorrow.  (We're having a Super Saturday activity with several craft classes, plus a luncheon.)  One of the sisters I visited this week is a less active sister that I had never met, so it was nice to meet her finally and she is a really nice person.  The other sister I visited has been having lots of health problems and she's on an all liquid diet.  She asked me to bring her a mango pineapple smoothie, so I did.  That particular day was in the low 20's with strong winds, so I'm sure the McDonald's employees all thought I was crazy when I came through their drive thru and ordered nothing but a smoothie!  The guy that gave it to me had a big smile on his face and said "Stay warm!"  I had to laugh!

Other things I did this week...went to the library, set up hair appointments for the boys and I (they got theirs on Tuesday; I get mine done tonight), tried to figure out what to do about the fact that Tanner lost his debit card, went to book club, got a package put together for Tanner's birthday (and Frank mailed it for me), and took Seth to a play at his school.  Plus all the other stuff I do every week, and in between I read some books and watched Downton Abbey.

I was not planning to go to the play at Seth's school, but he begged me to take him.  It was done by the 4th, 5th and 6th graders and it was a cute musical called Kokonut Kapers.  They did a pretty good job, although it was hard to understand the lines a lot of times...either they weren't talking very loud or very clearly.  There were a few kids that were quite talented and the main thing was...Seth LOVED it.

Jared wasn't feeling well the beginning of the week and he stayed home from school Monday and Tuesday.  He mostly just had a bad cold I think...sore throat and lots of congestion.  Seth sounded congested to me on Saturday as well, but fortunately that never turned into anything serious.  Jared went back to school on Wednesday and he seems to be feeling a lot better now.  He has the play again this week end (actually had it last night) and then that play is done.  But he'll be helping with sound for the next play (Shrek the musical) which starts in 2 weeks so I doubt we'll be seeing much of him still.  We have had him start driving whenever we have to take him somewhere, so he is starting to get some driving hours and he is doing pretty well so far.

Frank was busy doing maintenance for most of his clients this week and he's had a few projects like setting up computers.  Plus a couple of clients want him to get them quotes on getting new servers, so it sounds like he may have a few large projects coming up soon.  He went to lunch with some guy friends today but I didn't go with him this time because the boys got out of school two hours early...so someone needed to be home when they got home.

We're expecting Frank's parents for Thanksgiving next week.  They will be here most of the week so it will be nice to spend a lot of time with them.  We hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving; we are most thankful for all of you, our wonderful family!!      

Weekly Review November 14 '14

Another busy week has gone by.  This week was nice because although we kept pretty busy, it wasn't overwhelmingly busy.  It was actually a nice mixture of work and play...plenty of work to do, but some free time mixed in.

Neither Frank nor I had a long list of things to do on Saturday, so Frank decided to work on the bathroom.  He put together the storage cabinet we bought, hung the new mirror, towel racks, and tp holder, and installed a new toilet seat & handle.  That took longer than you'd think, so he actually spent most of the day doing those things.  The bathroom is still not completely done, but it's almost done.  So here are a few pictures.  It's hard to get good pictures of a small place like that, but hopefully you kind of get the idea:

The box on the floor in the corner is the new faucet...still need to install that.

And here is the new storage cabinet:

The towel rack doesn't have a towel on it because when I put a towel there, people with wet hands drip water down the wall when they reach for the towel.  And below the towel rack is the vent, so the old vent cover got all rusty from the water that ran down onto it constantly.  That's why we decided to put a hook next to the sink on the other side (see the picture below) instead.  Plus boys in a hurry are maybe more likely to put the towel back on the hook than they would be to fold up the towel and hang it neatly on the rack.  I was always finding the towels in a heap on the floor before!

Besides replacing the faucet, we also need to hang this picture (and the coordinating one behind it):

 And the one other thing left to do is to put in a new vent cover...haven't found one we like yet.

Anyway, it is looking much nicer and it is usable again, which is nice!

I couldn't help Frank with the bathroom much but needed to stay nearby to get tools for him and help make decisions about where to hang things.  So I watched a lot of Downton Abbey, and finished the 2nd disc.  Jared helped sort food for Scouting for Food and that evening we had the sister missionaries over for dinner.

On Sunday I was fasting again because I had a friend who asked me to fast for her family.  She called me on Monday to let me know our prayers had been answered...some hopeful things had happened that day.  (Sorry to be cryptic...very personal stuff for her and her family.)  I was really grateful to hear that, and humbled that the outcome was much better than I had hoped for.

There were a number of events going on this week.  On Monday, Seth's school had a thing called "Muffins with Mom".  Basically, all the moms were invited to come in for an hour to see some of the work that their child(ren) is doing.  I enjoyed spending that time with Seth.  We did a geometry work and looked at some fossils together.  And yes, they had muffins for the moms too.  I guess they are going to do a similar event for dads sometime soon.  After leaving the school I ran a bunch of errands and that afternoon I took drinks and cookies over to the high school because I had signed up to help with the cast dinner for the play Jared is working on right now.  Their opening night was last night and this was tech week and final rehearsals, so we barely saw Jared all week.  They had dinner at the school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Tuesday I had lots of RS phone calls, plus I was trying to set up VT appointments.  That evening I went on visits with the sister missionaries.

I went to see another sister in my ward on Wednesday afternoon.  I had asked her to teach a class on card making for our next RS meeting but she suffers from anxiety so she didn't want to teach a class.  But she offered to provide an example of a card to make, and to donate some supplies so we could have a card making station instead of a class.  I went over on Wednesday to pick up the card and supplies.  I didn't expect her to make several cards and to donate 9 boxes worth of decorative paper, embellishments, glue, cards & envelopes etc to use plus stamps, paper cutters, punches, and decorative scissors to borrow!  But she insisted she wanted to do it.  She said she has so much stuff that she's never going to use it all before she dies anyway!  It's too bad she has anxiety because she would teach a great class, plus she is just a lovely person so it would be nice if more ward members could get to know her.  But I appreciate so much that she is willing to help so generously in any way she can.

Thursday morning I had RS presidency meeting and we had the Elders over for dinner that evening.  We got gyros for them and one of them had never had one before.  He took one bite and said "this is amazing!!!"  We love them too and don't have the opportunity to eat them much.  There's a Greek Orthodox church that sells them for a fundraiser a couple times a year, so whenever we see their stand set up, we have to get some!  That's why we did that last night.

Today I met with a boy in my ward to sign him off on the Art merit badge...I'm a merit badge counselor for that badge.  I know...I'm not artistic at all!  But I do appreciate art, and it is one of the simpler merit badges to do so I decided to be a counselor so I could do it with my boys.  After meeting with him, I took a bag of clothes to another less active sister in my ward...her room mate needs clothes for his kids.  I had a nice visit with her and she is also a lovely person.  I wish she could make it to church more often.

The earlier part of this week was actually pretty pleasant with somewhat mild temperatures and sunshine.  Today is still sunny, but it's cold.  Yesterday it even snowed / sleeted a little, although nothing stuck.  I guess winter is finally here.

Frank has worked from home a couple of times this week, including today.  He's not feeling his best today...has a bad headache.  His knee has been feeling better, though.

That's about all for this week...we squished all the regular chores in between everything else.  I also built a few more Lego sets for Seth.  And I stayed up really late last Friday finishing Unbroken...definitely well worth reading!

Frank continues to experiment with the camera regularly so I'll finish with a few pictures he took this last week that I like:
 

PS to Weekly Review November 7 '14

I forgot a couple of things:

• Last Sunday (November 2nd) Jared was ordained a Priest and yesterday (November 9th) he blessed the sacrament for the first time.  He did a good job...didn't fumble any words!  It is great to see our boys grow in the gospel. :)
• I received a funny phone call on Thursday evening.  A probation officer called me.  Why?  Well, remember that experience I had nearly 8 years ago when a guy who was trying to get away from the police backed into my van?  Apparently, this guy just got out of prison.  As part of his probation agreement, he is supposed to pay me $81 (and some change; I can't remember the exact amount).  That is the amount of the damage to the van, according to the insurance assessment.  So the probation officer is going to have this guy pay me $20 a month for 4 months or something like that.  He wanted to make sure he had my current address so I can get paid.  (I asked him if the guy who backed into me would get my personal information and he said absolutely not.  The payment will come through the state.)  Before he hung up, he said "Now this is a criminal we are talking about.  So just realize that they don't always come through on their promises."  I laughed and assured him that I would not spend the money until I actually received it!  I had honestly forgotten about the whole incident, and I don't really need the money.  I was kind of tempted to tell the probation officer not to worry about it, but I guess it's good for this guy to have to take some responsibility for his actions.  It will be interesting to see if he comes through with the payments or not.    

Weekly Review November 7 '14

Did you know that the liquid inside glow sticks will strip paint off of furniture?  We learned the hard way:

We gave Seth some glow sticks on Halloween so he'd be more visible while trick or treating.  We put them down on the coffee table that evening and Saturday morning we discovered that they had leaked.  Rats!  We've only had the table a little over a year.  So learn from our mistake!

Seth has been really into building with Legos lately and one night he wanted me to look at what he had built on my bedroom floor.  I started to walk around my bed but he stopped me and said "No!  It looks better if you look at it from above, over the edge of the bed!"  So I did, and this is what I saw:  

Haha, pretty clever I thought!  The arrow is pointing at a little General Grievous Lego figure, if you can't see it.

This week was not terribly eventful (although still busy) so I don't think I have a lot to write about.  On Saturday Frank and I did some more shopping for the half bath that we've been working on.  It's amazing how many things we need for one little bathroom, but we are basically replacing everything except for the toilet and sink (and even the sink is getting a new faucet and the toilet a new lid & seat).  Our neighbor came over on Wednesday evening and painted the trim, so the painting is all done and we just need to find the time to install the new towel racks, faucet etc.  I will get pictures when we finally get it all done, but for now, a sneak peak.  Here's the new light fixture:

And here is a picture of the wall.

As you can see, the color of the wall looks different depending on the light.  The paint chip says it's slate gray, but most people say it looks blue.  It's definitely a bluish gray.  In the picture of the light, it looks more blue.  In the picture above, I think it looks gray.

Frank and I also went to the temple on Saturday.  It was our ward temple night.  We enjoyed that a lot.  We took one of the sisters he home teaches with us.  She isn't able to make it to church very often but she did make it the next day--we were happy about that.

The boys didn't have school on Monday or Tuesday.  Friday was the end of the term, so Monday was a teacher work day and Tuesday was election day, of course.  On Monday I got some things sent off to Tanner to help with his mission papers and I also visited a sister in the hospital.  She had surgery last week and had gone home but ended up back in the next day.  When I visited her, she was feeling very down and discouraged so I basically held her hand for an hour while she cried and talked.  I think it helped her to do that, though.  She got to go home last night, thankfully, so she's doing a little better.

On Tuesday Frank and I voted and I had my monthly meeting with the bishop.  I had lots of other chores and things to do those days, so they went by fast.

Everyone went back to school on Wednesday.  We were cheered up by the election results--much better than two years ago!  Besides the Republicans regaining control of Congress, a lot of local Republicans won their races as well and Maryland has a Republican governor again too.  I'm sure that won't solve everything, but it's hopeful at least.  I did two food orders that day.  Frank worked from home because he needed to go to the doctor.  His cough has never gone away and besides that his knee started hurting a lot on Tuesday.  The doctor prescribed an inhaler for the cough and sent him to get his knee x-rayed.  He thought it was possible that Frank had cut a ligament or something when he injured his knee last month.  The x-rays didn't show anything, though, so we have no idea why it is hurting.  Hopefully it will stop hurting just as mysteriously as it started.  I went to pick up his inhaler yesterday but it turns out the insurance company has to pre-approve that particular medication and they hadn't done it yet so we haven't been able to get his medicine yet either.  Kind of frustrating!

Yesterday I had a stake RS auxiliary training meeting to attend.  It was really good.  Today I've been busy with the budget, writing to Scott, RS phone calls, and exercising.  I haven't even taken a shower yet and it's after 5:00!  

Besides all those things, I was squeezing in some reading whenever I could this week.  We are reading a book for book chat called Unbroken.  It's a true WWII survival story and it is very compelling...hard to put the book down!  (Mom, we decided to save the books I suggested until next month because someone mentioned they were reading Unbroken and everyone was interested in reading it.)  I also watched some Downton Abbey...I saw season 1 on Netflix over a year ago and I was finally able to get season 2 on DVD from Netflix.  It's been in the queue for a long time, but kept getting bumped to the bottom!  I didn't mind because I've been too busy to watch it anyway.  At any rate, I enjoyed the 3 episodes I got and sent that disc back.  The next disc probably arrived today but I haven't checked the mail yet.

Frank has been playing with the camera some more this week and here are a few pictures he took:
  

It's definitely feeling more like November...and looking like it too.  Gray skies and lots of leaves blowing around!  But it's still not terribly cold and we've even had a few sunny days that were reasonably pleasant.  When the sun shines, it still looks beautiful outside, even though the fall colors are fading somewhat.  It's kind of a mellow beauty, but beauty nonetheless.  Frank is hoping it will snow soon, of course!  Today it has been really windy...I've been listening to it howl all day.

Can't think of anything else to report and it's time to make dinner so I'll sign off.