Weekly Reviews April 3 and April 10 '15

This post is going to be crazy and mixed up.  That's because all the pictures are mixed up and I don't have the time or energy to fix them.  Plus I have two weeks to cover.  Besides that, the last two weeks have been ridiculously crazy anyway.  So I guess this post will be a fitting representation of what our life has been like.

So let's start with the pictures I promised you from Jared's Eagle project work day from a few weeks ago.  These pictures were taken on Saturday, March 28th.  Everyone is coloring pictures that are going to go on some of the signs: 

Jared found black and white pictures of the animals we needed on his computer.  Then he projected the images onto the wall, where we had put up large pieces of white paper, and traced them:

And that's all of those pictures.  Today we met again and finished up the coloring.  We wanted to start putting letters and pictures onto the signs, but we had a number of complications come up so we didn't get any of that done.  It wasn't worthless...we learned what not to do, and got some ideas of what we might do instead...but we still have a lot of work to do and a lot of things to figure out and decisions to make.  This project is becoming a lot more complicated than we anticipated, and we are learning as we go.  Some good news, though...a ward member heard about Jared's project and he had a lot of scrap birch plywood and scrap PVC which are the materials we need for the signs so he not only donated what he has (saving us a lot of money) but he even cut all the pieces the sizes we need (saving us a lot of time).  So that is very much appreciated!!  Note to self, though:  when Seth gets old enough to do his project, make sure he picks something that we already know how to do!  With preferably no building involved.  And also make sure he gets started on it earlier--like age 14--before he gets really busy with a lot of other activities.  You would think I would have learned that the first 2 projects we did.

That week end was really busy.  I attended the General Women's meeting that evening.  A sister in my ward invited me and a number of other women to watch it together at her house, which was really nice.  I was up late, though, since the meeting doesn't end until close to 10:00 in our time zone.

Sunday always starts out early for me and is packed full of meetings, but just to liven things up a bit more, Seth woke up in the night complaining that his ear hurt.  We warmed up our rice filled sock for him and got him settled on our floor with blankets & pillows and then he started to throw up!  This was distressing not only because we didn't want Seth to be sick, but as you may remember, Scott had just returned home from his mission that Wednesday and he was scheduled to speak in Sacrament Meeting.  And since you don't have a child return home from a mission and speak in Sacrament Meeting everyday, naturally we both wanted to be at church to hear him speak.  I went to my ward council meeting but skipped choir practice.  Frank took Seth to the Sunday walk in clinic at the doctor's office (second week in a row...the Sunday before that we were there having Frank's foot checked) while I took everyone else to church.  The doctor confirmed that Seth had a very nasty ear infection.  Frank got done with the doctor in time to hear Scott's talk.  I sat out in the foyer with Seth because we weren't comfortable taking him into the meeting since he might throw up again.  Although there were a few people from another ward sitting out in the foyer talking through the whole meeting, I was still able to hear most of what Scott said.  And miraculously, when the other ward got out of their meetings they didn't make a lot of noise then.  As soon as Scott finished speaking, I took Seth home.  Frank stayed to teach his Sunday school class.  Because it was a fifth Sunday, we had a combined priesthood / RS class so I wasn't needed as much as usual.  Seth was pretty miserable all day.  He couldn't keep anything down and later on--while the rest of us were at the Easter musical fireside and Frank was staying with him--he started crying that his other ear hurt too.  The doctor had given him two medications--one for nausea and the other an antibiotic--but the antibiotic takes a while to work, of course.

The musical fireside was really good...you may remember that Jared and I were singing in the choir for our stake.  Another choir from the community came and sang a couple of songs too.  They were really good.  After the fireside ended, a couple of the members of that choir came up to us and were raving about how great our choir was.  They couldn't believe we'd sung 3 songs from Handel's Messiah so well, and with only 4 practices!  They said our harmony and everything was perfect.  That was nice to hear.  I did really enjoy singing in that choir.

Seth was a pretty sick boy for a couple of days.  Although the ear pain started to resolve on Monday and he also started keeping food down, he was feverish and quite weak and he didn't have much of an appetite:      

The good news is, both of the medications the doctor prescribed for him were pills and he was able to get those down without any trouble!  He must have his dad's genes in that regard and not mine.  And it was much easier to take pills on our trip than it would have been to take liquid medicine (that would have had to be refrigerated, no doubt) so that was a real blessing.  Unfortunately, he missed the whole week of school because he was too sick to go on Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday we left for our trip.  You've probably forgotten by now that he missed 3 days of school the previous week (for a nasty cold, which is very likely why he got the ear infection) so that is a lot of school to miss so close together.  I did send an email to his teacher and she gave me a few ideas of some things we could do with him while we were on vacation.

The few days before we left were crazy...along with taking care of Seth, we had packing to do.  Scott had a dental check up, Jared met with a couple of men in the ward to talk about ideas for his Eagle project, and I had a meeting with the bishop because he had some concerns about a particular family that he wanted to share with me before I left.  We somehow got everything done and Seth got well enough that we could leave as scheduled on Wednesday the 1st.

The pictures from vacation are not in order so I will just explain quickly what we did each day and then you can scroll through the pictures and try to figure out what picture goes with what day!  Wednesday was spent just driving down to the Charlotte area.  We got almost to our destination and all of the sudden we noticed that there were flowers on the trees!  We finally got far enough south that spring had arrived!  That was a nice change.  The first night we got checked into our hotel, went to a little barbecue place for dinner (very yummy) and then swam in the hotel pool.

We spent Tuesday at an amusement park called Carowinds.  Frank's brother James and his family live in the Charlotte area now and they met us at the park.  We enjoyed spending the day with them.  I spent most of the day taking Seth on all the little kid rides.  I did get to go on a few of the more adult rides that I wanted a few times.  I'm not much of a daredevil anyway.  Jared is like me...he didn't want to go on the huge roller coasters.  Frank and Scott were game for anything and went on all the incredibly insane looking rides, including the newest roller coaster (called The Fury) which is apparently the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world at this point.  Tanner wouldn't get on that one, but he did get on several others (the Vortex, Afterburn, the Intimidator) that I would not get on, even if you paid me a million dollars!  (My big problem is long steep plunges.  I am pretty good with anything else...upside down, incredibly fast, turns, twists, smaller dips...you name it!  As a matter of fact, I love all those things.  But long steep plunges are my nemesis.  I like to breath, that's my problem.)  Seth was willing to try all kinds of crazy rides last year at Lagoon, but this year he got chicken about everything and even refused to get on some of the kiddie rides that I thought looked really fun.  Hopefully he'll grow out of that some day.  We talked him into trying a few things...one of them was a kiddie roller coaster.  As our cars were climbing up the first "big" hill, Seth turned to me and said "Um, why is this ride in the kid section?!"  That made me laugh!  We stayed at the park until it closed, then went to our hotel and collapsed.

On Friday (the 3rd) we went to the lake with Frank's brother James and his family.  They have a boat so we rode on the boat out to a little island on the lake, cooked hamburgers, and just hung out.  The kids enjoyed playing in the sand and skipping rocks.  The weather was a bit iffy...we kept worrying that a storm was going to blow in because it was windy and clouds kept rolling in, but thankfully that never happened.  However, it was a bit on the cool side.  We all wore swim suits to the lake but after dipping our toes in the water, all of decided that it was way too cold to go swimming!  We also got a  bit cold riding on the boat to the island and back because the wind would really blow through the boat when we got up to speed.  But it was still a nice outing and a fun day.  We drove that evening to Brevard and checked into a hotel there.

Saturday morning we hung out at the hotel getting laundry done and listening to the first session of General Conference.  Scott had been sick in the night (stomach) so he was able to get some more rest too.  Thankfully, he didn't get sick again and later in the day was able to eat and didn't have any more problems--and no one else got sick either (although Tanner felt rather ill on Sunday evening, but he never threw up).  Jared got up that morning with a swollen right cheek.  His cheeks never did swell up right after he got his wisdom teeth pulled, but now all of the sudden he had a chipmunk cheek and that side of his mouth was sore.  So I had to make a call to the oral surgeon that morning too.  He said that some food had probably got lodged in the socket back there and caused an infection, so he called in an antibiotic as well as a rinse that helps with swelling.

When Frank called his parents that morning, we found out that his sister Becky was in the hospital because she had just had a stroke.  At that point, she wasn't doing too well...slurred speech and whole left side was paralyzed.  We were able to visit her Sunday evening and by then her speech was clear and she was able to move her left arm and fingers a bit.  We don't know what the long term effects are going to be but she does seem to be improving...she has been able to walk with the aid of a walker since we got home.  I'm sure she has a lot of rehab ahead of her, though, and it is troubling that she had a stroke at such a young age.  (She's only 41.)

We joined Frank's parents at the local chapel to watch the second session of General Conference on Sunday.  They had a nice meal of ham, potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw, rolls, and cake for us too.  We also watched both Sunday sessions of conference with them at the chapel.  The missionaries serving in the area came to the chapel to watch most of the sessions too, but other than that, we were the only ones there.  I guess everyone else stays home and watches from there--that's what we usually do.  Frank, his dad, and the older 3 boys went to the Priesthood session too.  As always, General Conference was pretty amazing.

We checked out of our hotel in Brevard Sunday morning and checked into a hotel in Ashville that evening.  On Monday we drove home  The trip was pretty uneventful.  We were able to get home, unpack, and go to dinner in time for Scott and Tanner to attend the YSA FHE.  I guess that description of our trip wasn't very quick!  Believe it or not, I left out a lot of details.

Jared's mouth continued to bother him quite a bit and the swelling didn't really go down, even after he had been on the antibiotic for a few days, so I took him in to the oral surgeon on Tuesday.  (He wanted to check him anyway.)  Jared felt pretty yucky Tuesday and stayed home from school.  The oral surgeon cleaned out all the food debris and that has helped the swelling to go back down and he's feeling a lot better.  He will be going back in for another check up this week.

Meanwhile, since being back home life hasn't slowed down any.  We've been trying to get caught up on all the things that we got behind in and trying to get back into a normal routine.  I had my monthly meeting with the bishop Tuesday evening, we had our monthly RS meeting Wednesday evening (we worked on family history), and on Thursday I had a presidency meeting.  I got caught up on budget and bills, picked up books at the library, filed out income taxes, and got the personal property tax return for the business filed too.

Scott went to the doctor on Wednesday...while we were on our trip he informed me that he had a bump on his lower back that was bleeding a little, and by the way...it had been there and bleeding off and on since about November.  Not sure why he didn't do anything about it before!  On Monday evening it bled quite a lot, so I got him an appointment to have it looked at.  It turns out that he has a cyst and it needs to be removed.  He has an appointment with a specialist to have it looked at this week.

On Thursday Snickers had his teeth cleaned.  He also had two growths on his back and one on his tail removed at the same time, since they already had him knocked out.  (It still cost a small fortune.)  The one on his tail turned out to be quite deep.  He has five stitches on his tail and two stitches on each of the spots on his back.  He hasn't been a very happy dog the last couple of days.  He's on an antibiotic and a pain medicine and unfortunately since we caught him chewing on his tail, he's had to wear an e-collar (the boys call it the "cone of shame") unless someone is able to keep a close eye on him.  For some reason he doesn't think he can walk when he has the e-collar on, so you can imagine how fun that has been.  Plus, he can't fit in his crate with it on and we don't dare let him go in there with it off so he is banished from his crate and that is his favorite spot.  He usually sleeps in his crate too...instead, he's been sleeping in a dog bed we have on the floor in our room.  Thankfully, he has been pretty quiet and hasn't got up and walked around or anything (although we have to put the e-collar on at night, so he thinks he can't walk...I guess that's to our advantage at night!).  It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks until all his incision sites heal up.  And by the way, you don't truly understand the word "reproachful" until you see your dog looking at you from the depths of an e-collar!

In between everything else we were trying to get things ready for Jared's Eagle project which was challenging since Jared has barely been home.  Yes, another play begins next week and he had rehearsals after school every day this week.  All of these things have added up to more than a little bit of stress and I have felt on the verge of  a nervous break down more than once, but we're surviving.

Today after the Eagle project, we came home and weeded the front flower beds and the boys mowed the lawns.  Then this evening Frank went and bought some sod to spread over some bare spots in the front lawn.  We also put sod over the front flower bed that runs along the front walk because we want that to be grass now instead of a flower bed.  We still have a smaller flower bed right under the front windows of the house.  It already looks a lot better.  Then we did some (not nearly enough, but it's a start) cleaning in the basement to make room to store all the wood and PVC pieces for Jared's project.  So it's been a busy day and I feel pretty sore.  It feels good that we got so much done, though.

If you have managed to stick with me this long, you can now look at a bunch of pictures if you wish!

From our day at Carowinds:

Me, pretending that the carousel is a really thrilling ride:

Seth refused to ride on a horse!  He sat in a carriage that didn't go up and down.  He did love this plane ride, though:

Waiting in line for the Scrambler, which is one of my favorite rides:

Dippin' dots!:

On the train:

And a boat:

All the boys got hats for souvenirs:

Collapsing at the hotel after Carowinds:

Our room at this hotel was really interesting.  The bathroom was in two parts, and each part had a sliding frosted glass door, which didn't even lock.  Kind of strange, but it worked ok.  This part of the bathroom had the shower on one side:

And a sink and mirror on the other:

That mirror was annoying to someone my height since the bottom of the circle piece went right through my face!

The other part of the bathroom had a tiny sink and a toilet:

Driving to the lake...all the boys are still wiped out from the day before:

I had another picture with Scott asleep (I couldn't get all four of them in one picture) but for some reason that picture didn't come out.  All the boys were really tired the whole trip and complained that they couldn't sleep at nights because Frank snores.  I can usually sleep through his snores, but they aren't used to it.  I think we finally convinced him that he needs to get a sleep study done, though.  Scott had a companion on his mission with sleep apnea, and he says Dad sounds like his companion.  I think I actually (for the first time) heard him stop breathing a few times one night.  I've been telling him for years I think he should get checked for sleep apnea but he doesn't want to do it.  But after this trip I think he will.

Here's the cake that Frank's parents had for us on Saturday.  Their anniversary is the 18th of this month and ours is the 23rd:

Frank's mom gave us these little chocolate bunnies; I thought they were so cute:

Now to be really out of order, this picture was taken before we left home.  I just thought it was funny that all four boys are staring at a screen of some kind.  And I'm also still enjoying having all four of them together again.  It won't last long:

These pictures were taken on the way to North Carolina:

At a rest stop, Scott and Tanner:

This was the first real warmth we'd felt in a LONG time!  (It's been mostly cloudy and pretty cold since we got back home, too, although today was pretty nice.)

The boys were playing around with the camera and took a lot of pictures at the rest stop.  You'll see as you scroll down that they even tried some special effects:

When we were almost to Charlotte, we took a short detour so I could visit one of my former areas from my mission (Cornelius, NC...my second area).  Here I am in front of my old apartment:

It looks almost exactly the same except that it's been painted another color. It was actually a really odd feeling because it had changed so little (it's been 25 years since I served here!).  Still the same circular gravel drive around the building with lots of potholes in it, still the same wooden beam along the edge of the parking spaces where we used to park our little white VW Golf, still the dumpster next to the apartment in the same spot.  This was actually one of the worst apartments I was in...it was very tiny, all one room with a little kitchenette in one corner.  The only other room was the bathroom.  I could swear that this building used to be a cheap motel!  Anyway, it was a fun jaunt down memory lane.  The town has grown and changed so much that it was hard to recognize it at all until we got onto the historic main street...then it looked like the cute little town that I remember.

Here are Jared & Scott, ready to go swimming at the hotel the first night:
 

A whole bunch of lake pictures:

(James's step son and step daughter):

At the church with Frank's parents:

Another special effect experiment:

At Frank's parent's house:

After we got home, we found out that three of the four Elders in our ward were getting transferred.  They came by on Tuesday to say goodbye.  We will miss them:

Tanner went out with the Elders yesterday for a while, by the way.

And that is FINALLY it, folks!!

Weekly Review March 27 '15

Well!  I'd say this week was rather eventful.  It's hard to know where to start.  Although I'll say right away that I'm going to leave out a lot of the details of what we did each day or I'll be here all night trying to record it all.  So let's start with Saturday, I guess.

The big event of Saturday was the baptism of a family into our ward, and Frank was the one who did the baptisms.  Pretty cool, right?  Another family in our ward invited this family to church, and they have been coming for a couple of months.  I was surprised when the Elders told us they had asked for Frank to baptize them--what I didn't know was that Frank and the dad in the family have been talking a lot at church every week.  But anyway, Frank was happy to do it.  The baptism was really nice.  The water was really cold, though, because the ward mission leader accidentally turned the cold water up instead of off when he turned the water off.  Oops!    

The rest of the day on Saturday Frank was working on a client's crashed server.  It turned out to be a big mess and he was up over half the night and Griffin (his former employer) even got involved which was interesting since his former boss is still harboring a lot of angry feelings about the clients who left Griffin when they laid Frank off (but whatever, that's his problem).  Then at around 2:00 am when Frank was packing everything up to come back home, a computer slid off a chair and fell right on his foot!  He thought maybe he'd broken it.

So Sunday, which is always crazy anyway, got a little crazier.  I went to my early morning ward council meeting as usual.  I knew I had to get Frank in to see the doctor, which opened at noon.  So I came home & got food in the crock pot for dinner, made a number of phone calls to make sure everything was covered for RS since I wasn't sure I'd be there for our meetings, and then Jared & I went to another ward's sacrament meeting so we could take the sacrament.  (Jared went with me because he found out on Saturday that even though he'd told them he couldn't help with the Sunday performance of his play, they had to have him there.)  After we did that, Jared got a ride to his play, Tanner went to our sacrament meeting, and I took Frank to the doctor.  Seth came with us because he can be a handful at church and I had pity on Tanner.  Plus, he had developed a rather nasty cough in the night and sounded congested.  The doctor, not surprisingly, sent Frank to get x-rays.  First they got him some crutches, though.  And two prescriptions--one for inflamation and the other for pain.  We had to go to the hospital to get the x-rays done.  That took a while, of course.  By the time we got done at the hospital and headed over to the pharmacy, it was probably around 3:30.  Then the pharmacy wouldn't accept the prescription for pain medicine because it wasn't on "security paper"--apparently, a new law in Maryland.  So I ended up going back to the doctor for a new prescription (on the other side of Frederick, of course) and then back to the pharmacy, where they informed me that they close at 5:00 so be sure to be back before then to pick it up.  I hadn't had much sleep and I had been feeling all day like I was coming down with a nasty cold of some kind, so while waiting in line at the pharmacy, I remember wondering what would happen if I just fell asleep right there in the car!  (It was a drive through pharmacy).  I was thinking maybe I could catch a 30 minute nap before the Elders showed up for dinner at 5:00.  (Did I mention that I had signed up to feed the Elders?  Or that I had also committed to take dinner to another family in the ward?)  The pharmacy's early closing hour dashed that hope.  I had time to run home, add the last few ingredients to the crock pot, set the table, and then I had to be back before the pharmacy closed.  It all worked out, and somehow I didn't collapse.  The Elders took the food to the other family when we were done eating, which helped me out a lot.  Then Jared and I (he was home by then) were off to the stake choir practice.  By then my nose was running, my throat hurt, and I was congested, and normally I would have skipped the practice but it was our last one so I didn't want to miss it.  It was a long day!  For Frank too, since he was in pain the whole time.  He didn't break his foot, though.  It was just very bruised and sore and he tried to keep it up and keep ice on it as much as possible.

Seth sounded worse and felt feverish on Monday, so I kept him home from school.  Frank actually went to work, because he had some things he really needed to be there for.  He did not have to report for jury duty that day.  Tanner had the Elders over because they had permission to watch The Saratov Approach, and we can get it on Netflix.  (It was their Pday)  I wasn't feeling well either but I had made an appointment to visit a sister in the ward and I really wanted to see her so I went anyway.  She made lunch for us, and it was really good.  I tried to rest a bit after I got home.  All week we were trying to get things ready for Jared's Eagle project, though.  And of course we were preparing for Scott to come home too!

I kept Seth home from school through Wednesday.  On Tuesday Jared went to the oral surgeon and he decided that he doesn't need to do any more work on the molar exposures so he's good to go.  I tried to rest on Tuesday too.  I helped Frank go through a couple of boxes of things in Scott's room...he'd planned to do that over the weekend but the server crash got in the way of those plans, and then the hurt foot too.  He didn't have to report for jury duty Tuesday either, and we were really relieved when he called Tuesday evening and found out he didn't have to report on Wednesday.  (Thank you for the prayers!)  I admit I was kind of an emotional wreck on Tuesday, though.  I wasn't able to have things as ready for Scott's homecoming as I would have liked.

I thought Wednesday was going to drag, since Scott's plane didn't land until nearly 4:00, but it actually went by pretty fast.  I cleaned the oven and made a cake (a recipe I got from one of the families he lived with...they told me he loved this cake!) and got grocery shopping done.  We had to quickly make a few signs right before we left for the airport!  A sister in my ward called me while I was loading groceries in the car to let me know there was a picture of Scott on FB at the SLC airport.  So I had to go on there to see the picture, of course.  A man who lives in Bethesda was flying home on the same flight with Scott, and struck up a conversation with Scott at the airport.  He discovered that Scott is from the same stake as one of his sons, and that a friend of his is in our ward so he took the picture of Scott and sent it to our friend in our ward, and he shared it with us.  Meanwhile, we made our way to the airport:            

While we were waiting at the baggage claim for Scott to show up, this man who had talked with Scott came along and asked "Are you the Cleveland?"  When we said we were, he introduced himself and told us Scott would be coming soon.  He offered to take some pictures for us.  He also said "I have to warn you, he's kind of a crying mess!"  This man, whose name is Kerry Harding, did take some nice pictures and put them up on facebook for us with some very nice comments about Scott.  I tried to download some of his photos, but they are tiny and difficult to see.  But Jared and Tanner also took pictures and we got some great ones:

Here he comes!

Getting closer:

He's wondering why Frank is on crutches:

Almost here:

And at this moment, Seth got in between Scott and I.  But what did Scott do?  He sidestepped Seth completely and came right to me with wide open arms!  What a great son!:

We'd both been waiting for this hug for a long time, and neither of us let go for quite a while.  And I admit I cried a little bit.  But I wasn't the only one!:

Frank and Seth got a bit impatient for their turns (understandably) and joined in:

Frank finally gets his turn (and the expressions on Scott's face are priceless):

And now Jared's turn:

And I have no idea why no one got a picture of Tanner and Scott hugging!  Kerry Harding didn't have any either!  I am sad about that.  But I was there, and they did hug each other.

We finally stopped hugging and posed for a picture all together:

And by this time, about 90% of the people at the baggage claim were staring at us.  But most of them were smiling indulgently.  

I have to admit when I saw the photos later, I was surprised at how well they captured the joy and excitement we were all feeling.  It was truly a sacred experience.  I wasn't really prepared for how it would feel.  I feel like I got a small taste of how it must feel for Heavenly Father when each one of us returns to Him after this earth life.

On the way home, I snapped a few pictues of Scott in the middle seat with Seth.  I just kept looking back there.  Couldn't look at him enough!

We had a sign on the door at home, too:

It's hard to read the sign.  You know how people often put up signs when they have new baby?  Well, we patterned our sign after those signs.  It says:  It's an RM!  Name: Scott  Date: March 25, 2015  Length:  Hopefully still shorter than Tanner  Weight: Approx. 10-20 pounds heavier than when he left  From:  Salt Lake City South Mission  To:  Home!  Welcome Home!

Here he is with the cake I made him:

I put dinner in the crock pot that morning so it would be ready when we got home.  After dinner Jared had to go to YM and the rest of us went with Scott to see the stake president so he could be released.  We had a nice meeting with him and Scott cried when he took his nametags off, but it was sweet too.

So what is it like having him home?  It is fabulous!!!  I can't even put into words how great it is to have him home.  There is this sweet, joyful, holy feeling in our house  He's still himself and yet he's changed so much...all in good ways.  Maybe because he didn't write long letters, I just wasn't sure what his mission was like.  But I can tell already that he put his whole heart and soul into it, and that he loved it more than anything.  I just have a very full heart...so grateful he went; so grateful he had such a great experience; so grateful that we get to have him home with us for a little while.  I wish I could say more about how I feel, but there just aren't words.

My schedule has kind of gone on the rocks since Scott got home.  On Thursday I ended up taking he and Tanner shopping, because Scott needed some clothes.  (A belated Christmas present.)  And on Friday he talked me into going to the temple, even though I really didn't have time to do that.  But of course I was really glad to go to the temple, and it was wonderful to have the chance to have nice long talks with Scott on the way down and back...we swapped mission stories, of course!  Jared, Seth and I had dental check ups on Thursday also.  And of course we still had Eagle project planning to do every day.  On both Thursday night and last night, I was utterly exhausted by the time I fell into bed.

In spite of the incredible pace I've been going at, I am getting better.  Not nearly so congested and only coughing a little bit.  Thank goodness!

Last night (yep, I didn't finish this post last night) all three of the older boys went to help with a camp out.  They helped transport equipment to the camp site, and then they hung out with the scout troop all evening but they didn't spend the night.  I wanted them to come home for the night because we were all up early this morning for Jared's Eagle project.  He has three work days planned; this was the first one.  This time we focused on getting all the pictures drawn for the signs, and we got most of them done.

I will post pictures next week because if I try to do it now, I won't get this posted until tomorrow!  

Weekly Review March 20 '15

Happy first day of spring, everyone!  We woke up to this:

So much for spring!  I feel like those penguins in Madagascar that were so excited to get to Antarctica and then when they finally get there they stand there for a few minutes in the raging wind and blowing snow and then say "Well this sucks!"  We finally made it to spring!...NOT!

It can't last forever, though.  It's supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow so all the snow will be gone in a hurry.

I've decided I prefer the category method of recording our weeks, so here we go with the categories.  First, Relief Society:  there's not a ton going on but I still spent a lot of time on RS stuff because on Tuesday I spent most of the day helping with a funeral luncheon, as well as attending the funeral and the viewing.  I was happy to have the chance to help the family, though, and I wanted to go to both the viewing and the funeral.  The luncheon was not difficult to coordinate because there were plenty of people who wanted to help and I was working with one of the other RS presidents in our stake to get it organized.  Everything turned out really nice, the family was very grateful, and it was really nice to see them have the chance to sit down and talk with each other while sharing a meal.  The funeral was really nice, too, and a sweet tribute to the sister who passed away.  Gee whiz fact:  I was chatting with the other RS president, and it turns out that we were both born in the same hospital!  What are the odds?!!  Besides the funeral related tasks, I also had a presidency meeting on Wednesday and another sister in my ward needed some help because her husband was having surgery so I spent a little bit of time coordinating that.

Tanner's job:  they did get him on the schedule this week; as a matter of fact, he worked three shifts which is pretty good compared to how many hours he usually gets.  He is not on the schedule for next week at all, but the manager said she would probably be calling him in to work some of the mornings.  It had kept me busy, getting him to work and back.

Jared's Eagle project:  After our visit to Lowe's last Friday night, Frank & I decided we needed to drive out to the horse arena to look at some things before we could make any more decisions.  (Jared was taking the SAT and working at a band concert so he couldn't go.)  We turned it into a date and stopped for lunch on our way back home.  It was a productive trip because we figured some things out and the really good news is that we aren't going to need to buy nearly as much wood (or plastic, still haven't decided which) than we originally thought we would.  I also sat down with Jared one day and he made a lot of phone calls and sent out some emails to help get things organized.  We still have a lot to do but it looks like we'll manage to pull enough together to begin his project a week from tomorrow.

Jared's mouth:  It's still healing but he occasionally has pain and he has been somewhat plagued with headaches since he had the oral surgery.  He had a bad headache on Wednesday and ended up staying home from Seminary and school.  I hope he doesn't have any more trouble with headaches.

Cleaning / Organizing:  I really didn't get anywhere with that this week.  Just did a few random little jobs here and there.  If I do enough little random jobs, it will all get done eventually, right?

Family History:  The youth in our ward went to the temple yesterday to do baptisms.  Jared went, and Frank went to help also.  They wanted all the youth to have family names to do, if possible.  And I am happy to report that Jared had ONE family name to do!!  Someone from Frank's family.  But I also sent a female name for one of the YW to do, and this one is from my side.  Although don't ask me to explain how she's related because I can't remember for sure...third cousin once removed, or something like that.  A lady in my ward who's really good at family history found her for me.  So the next time we go to the temple, Frank and I each have a family member we can do work for.  I am pretty excited about it!  Also, the lady in my ward gave me some ideas of other things to do to try to find more people.  So I am excited to see if I can find anyone else.

Tanner's church job:  Tanner was called to be a ward missionary on Sunday.  Pretty cool, right?  He went out with the missionaries twice this week.  I think they are going to keep him busy.  Which is great!

 Taxes:  I've been working a lot on our income tax return this week, and it is basically done.  The good news is, we are getting a refund this year.  (We had to pay a ton last year.)  We didn't have a huge financial reversal this year (thankfully), we just paid estimated taxes every quarter--that's what made the difference.  Now I have to figure out the personal property tax return for the business.

Stake Choir practices:  They are awesome!!  Mostly because we are singing 3 songs from Handel's Messiah, and that is one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written!!!  So challenging and fun to sing, too.  The spirit and energy that I feel when we get going is incredible.  Absolutely love it!

Snow days:  Counting today, we are four days over now.  I think we should have had school today--we only got about 3 inches of snow, and it didn't even stick to the roads.  Well, that's Maryland for you.  This is really going to mess up our vacation plans.  This particular snow day also means that we have 24 cinnamon muffins to eat because it was our turn to provide a Friday treat for the Seminary kids, and since I wasn't sure if there would be school or not today, I made them just in case.  We all had some for breakfast and we fed some to the missionaries when they stopped by.  And speaking of feeding missionaries, not very many people in our ward are doing that lately.  But we have been feeding them a lot!!

Pi Day:  Last Saturday was Pi Day and Frank celebrated by making a delicious strawberry pie with homemade crust and everything.  It was yummy!  And we invited the Elders over for dinner so that they could share it with us.

Frank's work:  It's been going really well at Marriott.  His business is going well also, although I'd say he is a lot less busy with it than he used to be.  But today one of his client's servers crashed (he's been telling them they should get a new one for quite some time) so now he is super busy and probably will be for the next couple of days.

The Count of Monte Cristo:  I haven't had much time to read it, but I've made it to page 500, and it is getting to the point where all the pieces are coming together so it is very, very interesting and hard to put down!

Jared's play:  Is tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday (but he isn't helping with it on Sunday).  Even though there is no school today, he has been over at the theater getting things ready for tonight's performance, which is what he would have been doing anyway even if there was school.

Scott:  He's coming home on Wednesday!!!  I wrote my last letter to him today!!!  Wow, I can't believe it.  Still praying that Frank won't have jury duty that day.

I've run out of categories, so that's it!  

Weekly Review March 13 '15

Hey guess what?  It didn't snow this week!  And as a matter of fact, we even got some temperatures in the 50s a few days which feels pretty glorious after weeks of highs in the 20s.  A lot of the snow melted and the river is way up.  The large banks of (dirty) snow created by the snow plows are still there and everything is muddy and the grass is brown so yeah--the world is quite ugly at the moment but I don't care!  I bet in a few weeks the grass will be green again and I already see green shoots starting to poke through in the flower beds.

We had a pretty busy week.  I mostly failed at exercising (except I did take Snickers for a longish walk yesterday)--I blame that on the time change.  I was waking up on my own with time to exercise before showering and picking up Jared from Seminary at around 6:50, but now my internal clock is waking me up an hour later.  Which gives me time to shower or exercise, but not both.  So I chose shower!  Hopefully I will adjust to the time difference soon, though.

We had stake conference last weekend and it is the first stake conference in over 7 years that Frank wasn't in charge of all the audio visual stuff so he wasn't running all over the building during the meetings making sure everything was working or solving problems that came up.  I think he enjoyed that.  However, we still didn't all get to sit together as a family because our ward was asked to provide the choir and Jared and I were singing in the choir.  As a matter of fact, Jared (as the assistant ward choir director) directed one of the three songs that we sang.  Fortunately, he was feeling well enough to do that.  (After his oral surgery on Thursday.)  All the stake conference meetings were good, although I always seem to enjoy the adult session on Saturday evening more than the general session on Sunday.

For RS I did one food order this week and we had our monthly evening meeting.  For the meeting, we were celebrating the RS birthday and we did that with a dinner and a talent / service auction.  For the auction, we asked sisters to contribute either something they made (such as a blanket or a baked good) or to offer a service (such as babysitting or a piano lesson or something like that).  Then everyone who came filled out a survey that earned them points, and then you could use your points to "buy" things at the auction.  It was fun, and we all learned a lot about each other's talents and abilities.  For my contributions, I made a batch of snickerdoodle cookies, I offered the service of helping organize a budget, and a friend and I together offered some basic sewing lessons.  I didn't come home with much because even though I had a lot of points (I got five points for each sibling, child, niece or nephew, just for starters!) I was helping auction the items so it was hard to bid on them at the same time.  But I did get an e-book that a sister in our ward wrote, and a men's haircut (for one of my men).  The food was yummy and a lot of people came so I was happy with how the evening turned out.

I have also spent some time this week helping to plan a luncheon for a funeral.  I can't remember if I mentioned a few weeks ago that a sister in my ward was in the hospital very sick and in a coma.  Whether I did or not, this sister passed away on Sunday.  She got an infection and went into septic shock and all her organs began to shut down...that's why she was in the coma.  So on Saturday her family made the decision to take her off life support and she passed away on Sunday.  She has had many health problems her whole life and this last year has been particularly difficult for her and I've seen her quality of life deteriorate quite a bit, so I am happy for her that she is out of pain and not caught in her body anymore.  She could not walk or talk very well so now I imagine her running from one end of heaven to the other, and happily talking as fast as she can!  I will miss her, though.  I learned a lot from her and I always enjoyed visiting her.  Anyway, the funeral is on Tuesday.  Her parents live in another ward in our stake, so the RS president in that ward and I have been coordinating efforts to put together a luncheon for her family.

On Tuesday I went with my friend Rebekah (she used to be my secretary before they called her to be the Primary president) to take her sewing machine to a place to get it serviced.  It was this cute little store up in Pennsylvania that is run by a Mennonite family.  It was about 45 minutes away, so she wanted someone to ride along with her.  We enjoyed visiting all the way there and back, and after we got home we went to lunch.  I enjoyed that a lot.

Frank hurt his back somehow on Monday.  Very similar to the way I hurt my back...just lifting up his leg to take a sock off!  He was in a lot of pain Monday and to my surprise still managed to go to work on Tuesday, even though he was still in a lot of pain that day.  He worked from home on Wednesday because he didn't have a reason that he needed to actually be in the office that day.  His back has gradually gotten better...improved a little each day...so now it isn't troubling him very much.

Meanwhile, Jared went to school on Monday but on Tuesday he had a bad headache and his mouth was hurting a lot so he stayed home.  He has been ok the rest of the week, though.  He had a follow up with the oral surgeon yesterday and everything is healing well.  He may need to have a little more gum tissue removed from the back right tooth, but we need to wait until the swelling goes down some more before the oral surgeon will know for sure.  It won't be as involved as it was the first time, though, if he does have to have that done.  He goes back in about 10 days so the oral surgeon can look at that again.

I sat down with Jared and did a lot of planning for his Eagle project this week.  Then tonight Frank, Jared and I went to Lowe's to price some materials and such.  We ended up talking to a guy there for quite a while and we are re-thinking how we might do some of it, so there is more planning to do, but hopefully we'll get all of that figured out this week.

This morning I volunteered to help in Seth's class.  Usually they have me help kids with reading but most of the kids had done their reading already so his teacher just asked me to help kids finish their work plans for the week.  She said to help Seth first, and she would send me other kids if they needed help with things.  I did help one child with reading and another one with some math, but I ended up spending most of the time helping Seth get his work plan done.  And for the first time ever, he got EVERYTHING on his plan for the entire week completed!  His teacher and I were more excited about it than he was, but I think he did feel good about it.

Tanner's work is continuing to be kind of ridiculous.  They said they would start scheduling him for more hours, but he was only scheduled to work one shift this week...yesterday.  Then it turns out that there was some sort of a mix up and they thought he had quit because he had another job, so he had been taken out of their system.  So when he showed up for his shift, he couldn't work (it takes 24 hours to put him back into the system).  And of course he isn't scheduled to work next week either since they made the schedule when they thought he didn't work there anymore!  But they are getting everything fixed, and they might even schedule him to work some hours this week.  Hopefully; we'll see!

In between everything else, I did a little bit of cleaning.  All my kitchen cabinets desperately need to be cleaned, so I had Tanner take two of the cupboard doors off so I could really scrub them.  They are a lot cleaner now but I also rubbed off some of the stain.  So I'm not sure if I'll do all the others or if I'll try to figure out another way to clean them.  Maybe I should just sand them all down and re-stain all of them!  That would be a much bigger project than I intended, though.

I have also been reading Count of Monte Cristo whenever I get the chance.  I'm almost halfway through now...it's over 600 pages long!  But I do enjoy it.

That's it for this week!  I need to stop anyway and convince Jared that he should really go to bed since he's taking the SAT in the morning.      

Weekly Review March 6 '15

Here we go again...a week that is all about winter weather.  And it's March.  

On Sunday we had freezing rain in the afternoon, so our ward had only sacrament meeting and the stake choir practice got cancelled.  School was cancelled on Monday too because the roads were still icy.  Then yesterday (Thursday) we got another snow storm...about 10 inches again.  So there was no school yesterday or today either.  We are now 3 days over our limit on snow days, which means they will take 2 days off of spring break and add one day on at the end of the year.  Tanner and Seth got some sledding in today, though:

It is beautiful, too.  But I am ready for it all to melt away and for the grass to turn green again!

They cancel everything around here when it snows, but miraculously the oral surgeon's office did not close yesterday so Jared did have all four wisdom teeth out and his two lower back molars exposed.  So far he is doing pretty well.  He does want the pain medication as often as he can have it, but he's not complaining at all.  He's been able to eat soft foods and his face doesn't look swollen.  I spent most of yesterday watching the snow come down and making sure Jared took his medications at the right time (he has 3 different kinds...one for swelling, an antibiotic, and the pain killer) and that he had food and lots of liquids, and that he had ice on his face.  I read a lot of the book for book chat too, which is The Count of Monte Cristo (really good).

I had a bit of an adventure getting Jared home from the oral surgeon yesterday.  By the time we headed home, there were several inches of snow in the unplowed parking lot.  I've only been there one other time, so I'm not familiar with that particular parking lot and with all the snow I got disoriented and tried to exit the lot through the entrance.  I was just realizing I was in the wrong lane and needed to move over when a snow plow turned into the lot, coming right at us so I tried to move quickly to my right and discovered that there was a median buried under all that snow!  My front wheels thumped right over it, but my back wheels got stuck and there we were, straddling the median.  The snow plow kept going and disappeared...I couldn't believe they didn't stop to help us!  So I was trying to figure out a way to get unstuck while Jared, meanwhile, was still pretty out of it and kept saying crazy things.  Thankfully we were only stuck for a few minutes before another car turned into the lot and this man stopped to help.  He had a cord that he tied to the front of our car and with him pulling and me giving it a little bit of gas, we were able to get the back wheels over the median and I was able to get on my way.  The roads were very slippery, but the rest of the trip home was uneventful, thank goodness.  The car does not appear to be damaged at all from it's bumpy trip over the median and so other than feeling really dumb about it, everything turned out fine.

Last week end I didn't get much done because I came down with a case of the stomach flu.  I got up Saturday morning and had breakfast, but shortly after that I started feeling sick.  I spent the rest of the day in bed...if I even moved around a little too much it would make me get sick.  Not much fun!  We were supposed to have the Elders over for dinner, so Frank ended up taking them to Wendy's for dinner.  By evening I was able to keep down a little liquid and Sunday I was able to start eating small amounts of bland food.  But I still had a head ache, my stomach hurt, and I was totally exhausted, so I got one of my counselors to go to ward council for me that morning.  I didn't go to church either but since we only had sacrament meeting, I didn't miss as much as I would have.

This was a pretty busy week.  I had my monthly meeting with the bishop on Tuesday evening.  I took Snickers to the vet for his annual check up on Wednesday and today he went to the groomer's.  I took all three boys to get haircuts on Wednesday.  Jared and I had choir practice that night too because our ward choir is singing for stake conference.  Tanner worked on Wednesday and he works again tomorrow.  Frank was swamped with work...he had a big project at work that he was finishing up so he would do more work from home every evening after he got home from work.  Then on Wednesday he went in at 5:30 am and didn't get home until about 12:45 am on Thursday!  He did get the project done, though.  I went to lunch with a group of women from my ward today...we were celebrating a birthday for one of them.  Tonight we went to the temple because our stake was having a special meeting at the temple for stake conference.  We went down early enough that we had time to do some sealings before the meeting.  I actually recently submitted a few family names to the temple and there was one couple that needed to be sealed, so we were able to do that one tonight...some of Frank's great grandparents.  So that was cool!    

Now I am just waiting for Tanner to get home from a party so that I can go to bed.  We got a nice letter from Scott's mission president this week.  When I saw the stake president earlier this week he said he had just received Scott's release papers in the mail.  So I guess he really is going to be coming home pretty soon.  It's hard to believe.  Everyone please pray that Frank won't have to report for jury duty that day...thanks!