Weekly Review March 17 '17

There’s been quite a bit going on so hopefully this post won’t be short and boring. For starters, we had a snow storm here on Monday night! Actually, it turned out to be a lot smaller than they were predicting. They said we were going to get 8-12 inches Monday night and an additional 3-5 inches on Tuesday. As it turned out, we actually got about 6-8 inches Monday night and nothing really on Tuesday. We got more freezing rain / rain mixed in with the snow than I think they expected, which probably accounts for the lower snow accumulations. Still, there was no school on Tuesday. Our first snow day this school year! I shoveled our front walk and that was probably the wettest, heaviest snow I have ever encountered! It was pretty simple to shovel, though. Only took me a few minutes. So our crazy winter continues—hardly any winter to speak of, and then we get snow in March! We never know what to expect. The roads were pretty cleared up by Tuesday evening but it was really cold on Tuesday and Wednesday so we had 2 hour delays on Wednesday and Thursday because the roads got icy overnight. Today was the only “normal” school day we had this week. Yesterday and today were a bit warmer so the snow is starting to melt. There’s still a lot out there, but our front yard is completely melted in the middle.

Our flower bed on Monday:

Our flower bed on Tuesday:

Snowy front yard:

Snowy street:

Last Friday I got an evening out—two of my friends decided to have a “girls night” so we had a potluck dinner and watched a movie afterwards. I sort of liked the movie although it wasn’t my favorite, but the food was really good and it was fun to spend an evening with friends. Sam came for the weekend, so he was here when I got home that night.

Saturday was typically busy—as usual, I did some Cub Scout planning and cleaned the kitchen floor. I also worked on the FAFSA for Tanner and went to the store to get more yarn and to the library to get some books for Seth for a report he is doing at school. They are all doing a report on an artist and he is doing Diego Velazquez. I was really surprised on Sunday afternoon to find him totally engrossed in one of the books I got (a book of paintings). I didn’t think he was that interested in art!!

Sunday was the day we went onto daylight savings time, so we’ve been trying to adjust to the time change since then. Frank wasn’t feeling well at all on Sunday so he stayed home. (He’s feeling better now). I had choir practice on Sunday night as usual and it was a really good practice. I feel like I am finally starting to get all those songs down! I practiced them a bunch on Tuesday and I only have a few places here and there in some of the songs that I’m struggling with a little bit still. We still have 3 practices left so I think I will get everything down solid before the performance. I really LOVE singing songs from the Messiah!! They are challenging to learn, but so amazing once you learn them. I really feel the spirit when I sing them.

Monday they had school scheduled to start two hours late for a teacher work session, which I thought was kind of weird. I kept busy all day—I finished up the FAFSA for Tanner (other than the signature part, which we're still working on. It's complicated since Tanner isn't here to do it himself). I also ordered sheets for Jared and had them sent to his mission so they’ll be there waiting for him when he gets there. I had to get a few groceries and the store was a mad house because of the snow storm predicted for that night—it always annoys me when my regular shopping day falls on the day before a storm so that I have to compete with all the unprepared procrastinating people!!

Tuesday may have been a day off for Seth, but I was busy all day. I cleaned the bathrooms (I even mopped the floors!) and practiced choir songs and spent way too much time trying to communicate with everyone to find out if we were having Cub scouts that night in spite of the weather (we did). Some of the boys didn’t make it, but the ones who came had fun. We started working on an adventure called “Marble Madness” so we played marbles all evening.

Wednesday ended up being kind of a crazy day—I feel like I spent the day driving to the vet and back (I actually only made 3 trips there and back, but it’s a pretty decent drive so 3 trips added up to quite a bit of time.) Snickers had his ultrasound that morning, so I took him over for that. Originally, I was going to stay there until he was done but since the schools were on a 2 hour delay, I had to get back home to get Seth ready for school and then take him to school. Then I went back over to the vet to pick Snickers up, thinking he’d be ready by then. Well, the ultrasound was done but since it didn’t show anything obviously wrong with his liver, the vet recommended they do another test on him which would help narrow down what might be going on with his liver. They had to test him once, feed him, wait two hours, and test him again. So I ended up leaving him there and having to go back later to pick him up (the same time I picked up Seth from school). We’re still waiting on the results of that test to figure out where we need to go from here. Meanwhile, the ultrasound DID show something going on with his bladder—he has a kidney stone. This explains why there is blood in his urine. The vet said it is quite large and she is surprised he hasn’t been asking to go out a lot and / or peeing all over the house. I’m happy to say he hasn’t been doing either of those things!! The stone does need to come out, though, and he will need surgery for that. They have decided to postpone his teeth cleaning and they will do that at the same time they do the surgery to remove the kidney stone. Depending on what the test on his liver shows, they may be doing surgery on his liver too. Ugh!!! I feel bad for him and I’m not looking forward to the boatload of money this all is going to cost but we want him to get better, of course. He is also going to start taking an antibiotic which he will be on for a few months.

All the trips to the vet really broke the day up, and I don’t feel like I got much done on Wednesday besides Wal-Mart shopping. My visiting teachers came to visit me that evening. I always enjoy their visits! I had book chat on Thursday evening and it was fun as usual. We enjoyed discussing All the Light We Cannot See. A lot of the women agreed with me—they liked the book, but felt like the ending fell kind of flat. Now we are reading a book called Rebecca, which is a classic and some of the members of our group have already read it, but I haven’t so I’m looking forward to reading it.

This morning Frank had another cortisone shot. This may be his last one. His appointment was at 7:30 and for some crazy reason neither of us woke up until 7:09! I woke up first and when I saw the clock, I woke Frank up and we just threw on some clothes and went over to his appointment. I was half way there when I remembered it was St. Patrick’s Day and I hadn’t put on any green. Oh well! I have green on now—I put on a green shirt later, after I exercised and showered. Frank worked from home today and we went to lunch together. So far, this shot isn’t bothering him too much although tomorrow will probably be worse than today. At least we know now that after a few bad days the shot will start to work and he is likely to feel better than he did before the shot. We have the carpool boys over to play again this afternoon, so it is very noisy in here right now! They are having fun, though.

In between everything else, I’ve been crocheting whenever I get the chance and I’m making quite a bit of progress on the afghan:

Frank hit a milestone this week--he has now been working for Marriott for 5 years. He got a certificate and a pin:

He also gets to choose a gift from a catalog of options and he got a certificate which is good for dinner for two at any Marriott hotel. It will be fun to use that--not sure where we are going to go yet!

That wraps it up for this week.

Weekly Review March 10 '17

Another week has gone by fast. I feel like it was just Monday, and already it is Friday!

Last Friday we had the Caraballo (former carpool) boys over to play after school. They were loud and made a mess, but Seth had fun with them, and it was only for a couple of hours. Then Frank and I went out to dinner—we went with another couple in our ward. It was fun to go out with someone else; we don’t do that often. I also started the afghan on Friday as I was hoping to do.. I have been crocheting whenever I get some free time since then and I have done 17 rows and have used four different colors already. I am pleased with the way it is looking so far:

This is row one. The lighting wasn't great when I took the picture, so it may look like more than one color but it really is only one color!

This is three rows (two colors)

This is four rows (three colors)

And here is where I am at now (17 rows and 4 colors)

I am still super slow at crocheting and hope I will get faster with more practice.The color pattern of the afghan looks random because it is--each row's color is based on the high temperature for the day. When I am done, there will be 365 rows--one row for each day of the year. I have no idea who thought up this idea, but I think it is pretty clever. (I am not doing this year, by the way, I'm doing a previous year so it won't take me a whole year to make it. At least I hope not!)

It was really cold on Friday—I was actually shivering when we were walking to the car and back from the restaurant, which is not something I’ve done very often this winter. It was cold / cool most of the week but Wednesday was nice and yesterday was beautiful, although windy. However, this morning it is cold again and we have rain mixed with snow. It's actually snowing right now. It isn't sticking, but the flakes are large and pretty. It’s going to stay pretty cold for the next week and they are saying we are getting more snow on Tuesday as well. I figured when we had such a mild winter that spring would be cold. Seems like that’s how it usually goes.

On Saturday I worked on Cub Scout stuff, practiced choir songs, cleaned the kitchen floor, and crocheted. Oh, and I watched the face to face with President Eyring and Elder Holland even though I’m not a youth because it just sounded cool! (They were in Palmyra.) I was right, too—it was really cool!! I was watching it and thinking how amazing it is that we have the chance to listen to actual apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ speak, to have them answer questions we have! That is so amazing and we are so blessed!

On Saturday while I was researching stuff for Cub Scouts, I found this cool book online that has a bunch of ideas for making chain reactions (Rube Goldberg style) using Lego bricks, and it looked so much fun and I knew Seth would love it so I ordered it. The book came the next day (wasn’t supposed to arrive until Monday) so on Monday Seth and I built the first thing they suggested and it actually worked and it was really fun! We are going to try some of the other things in the book and will probably end up using at least one of them when we build our Rube Goldberg machine for den meeting.

I guess I skipped Sunday, but I can’t think of much that happened—just the usual! Church in the morning and I had choir practice that evening. We got to talk to Scott too. On Monday I took Snickers to the vet for his annual check up. His teeth look better than they usually do, but he still needs them cleaned. There is one tooth in the very back that looks sort of bad and that one may have to be pulled. If so, they will do it when they clean his teeth. Besides that, she also felt a small lump under one of his front legs so they are going to draw some cells out of there while he is “asleep” to see if that’s anything we need to worry about.    

On Tuesday I had to go buy a couple of things I needed for den meeting that evening. Frank was supposed to have a PPI with one of the counselors in the Bishopric that evening but he ended up postponing it because he wasn’t feeling well. He actually hasn’t been feeling very great all week—he’s got some kind of a cold. His head hurts and he’s stuffed up and his ears hurt a bit too. He took one day off (I can’t remember now if it was Monday or Tuesday) and he worked from home the other days, but yesterday and today he went into work as usual. He’s feeling better than he was, although not fantastic.   Anyway, Seth and I went to den meeting. We made two kinds of simple pulleys and we also made levers and played with them a bit. We talked about ways we could use these simple machines as part of a Rube Goldberg machine. It was mostly fun but as I said—I always feel a bit frazzled by the end. The Primary president came in to help me and afterwards she asked me “was that a typical den meeting?” and when I said “yes”, she said “Wow!!” It’s amazing how much havoc one boy can create, because actually most of them are very calm! I had Cub Committee Meeting after den meeting so Frank came over to pick Seth up.

Frank had a follow up doctor appointment on Wednesday and they decided to give him one more cortisone shot next week. That may be the last one he has to get. (At least for now.) He still has pain in his shoulder / neck / back, but it’s a LOT better than it was. We had the Sister missionaries over for dinner that night. In the evening, I got our tax returns printed up and ready to mail and yesterday I mailed them. It’s nice to have that done! Hopefully next year we can go back to electronic filing. Now I have to do the property tax return for the business and fill out the FAFSA for Tanner.

On Wednesday evening we got a call from the vet because when they got back the bloodwork they did on Snickers on Monday, they saw some things that concerned them. For one thing, they did a urinalysis as well and he has blood in his urine for some reason. The thing that they were more concerned about is that one of the readings for one of the enzymes is way off. She said last year when they did his bloodwork this enzyme reading was 54. This year it is over 300. The “normal” range is up to 120ish, so 300 is definitely a lot higher than it should be. She says that this particular enzyme points to a problem with his liver. So now he has to go in next week to get an ultrasound of his liver and of his kidneys so they can try to figure out what is going on. He hasn’t been acting sick at all and he seems to be his usual perky self so we were really surprised that something might be wrong with him. We’re hoping it’s nothing serious. 

Yesterday I went to the temple, which takes a good part of the day. As usual the traffic was bad and I just missed the 10:00 endowment session so I did initiatories instead. It felt really good to be in the temple again. As I was turning into the temple grounds, I just had this overwhelming feeling of joy and gratitude come over me…so grateful that I can “leave the world” for a while and go to the House of the Lord! I was looking at the cards for the five women I did work for yesterday, and noticed that two of them were sisters and then two more were the daughters of one of those sisters. It was really sweet to be able to do the work for so many women who are in the same family! On the way home from the temple I stopped and had lunch with Frank and some of his co-workers. Then I tried to get all the usual chores done (laundry, vacuuming...) before I had to go pick up Seth. Our ward RS had a dinner to celebrate Relief Society's birthday last night. The food was really yummy. For the activity, they asked each of us to bring 5 items (that fit in a paper lunch bag) that represent something about us to share with everyone. We took turns going around the room talking about our items and what they stand for. It was fun, and I learned some interesting things about some of the women in my ward that I didn't know. In case you are wondering, the five things I put in my bag were a doll dress I made (I still like dolls, and I sew a bit), my library card (I love to read), my calculator (I have an accounting degree and I'm really into finances), a CD (I love music--to listen to, and to sing), and a set of salt & pepper shakers (I have a huge collection). It was an enjoyable evening. While I was out, Frank and Seth hung out at home eating pizza and Chinese food. 

That’s about all the news from these parts.

Weekly Review March 3 '17

This last week has gone by fast. It feels like I was just writing the weekly review, and here I am doing it again!

On Friday we had the Blue & Gold Banquet as planned. It turned out really nice. For dinner we had planned to have a potato bar and I had to bake 10 potatoes for that. Normally not a big deal, but it turns out that it was about 70 degrees on Friday, so I wasn’t too happy about having to light the oven and leave it on for an hour or so. The house was so warm that night that we had to open windows! In February!!! We kind of laughed about it at the banquet—if we had known how warm it was going to be, we would have planned to have a salad bar or an ice cream sundae bar instead of a potato bar! But who expects it to be 70 degrees in February? The food was still really good, though, and there was plenty of it. I did end up helping Seth decorate his cake—we didn’t do anything fancy, just went with the “blue & gold” theme:

This is one of my Bears. I thought his "campfire" cake was really clever:

Seth carrying the flag during the flag ceremony:

I helped set up all he tables. I think it turned out looking nice:

(Disclaimer about all the Blue & Gold pictures: they are all kind of dark, blurry, and yellowish because I still had the camera on the “sunset” setting and didn’t realize it until after I took all the pictures.)

I got the slide show done in time and I think everyone liked it.

On Saturday morning I weeded our front flower bed. It looks WAY better now! The bulbs are starting to come up and a few little daffodils have bloomed already. I actually thought about mowing the lawn, too, but decided it wasn’t quite ready to be mowed yet. One of my neighbors walked by and commented “Gardening in February!!” Yeah, it’s crazy. That afternoon we had a big thunderstorm and the temperature dropped quite a bit (all the way down to the 50s!) It was a busy day; I did a lot of Cub Scout planning and practiced choir songs and updated the business finances and cleaned the kitchen floor. We had the Sisters over for dinner that evening.

We had ward conference on Sunday and it was really good. I picked up a special needs YSA in our ward and she sat with us in Sacrament Meeting because her dad had surgery last week and her mom and brother were staying home to take care of him. I took her home after church also as well as another teenage girl who lives near us, and I also missed the beginning of RS because 2 investigators needed a ride home also. So I was the ride lady on Sunday, I guess! I thought RS was particularly good; we talked about ministering to others and started out by discussing the way the Savior ministers and the teacher had us thinking about times in our lives when we have known that Heavenly Father and the Savior are aware of us personally. That is always a good question to ponder; I can’t do that without ending up in tears. Judging by all the sniffing I heard around me, everyone else is the same as me. I can think of several times that I have known that they were aware of me personally, and those are the sweetest moments of my life. On Sunday evening I had choir practice, as usual.

On Monday Seth got out of school 2 hours early; I’m not sure why they had a random early dismissal on a Monday! I was super busy that day because I had several things I needed to purchase for den meeting and I had to go to several different stores to get them all. One of the places I needed to go was JoAnn’s and while I was there I also got a lot of yarn because I have decided to make an afghan. Amy and Rachelle are both making afghans and Amy told me about it and it sounded like a cool idea so I am going to try it. If the first one turns out okay I will probably make some more.  When I told Frank I was making an afghan, his response was “do you even know how to crochet?”, which made me laugh. Well, sort of—I did learn how to crochet, but it was a LONG time ago and I haven’t tried to make anything since the scarf I crocheted while I was on my mission. (News flash: in 12 more days, I will have been home from my mission for 26 years.) Plus, I was never incredibly proficient at it. But that is one of the great things about the internet—if you want to know how to do something, you just Google it and there’s bound to be a YouTube video tutorial out there. I watched a couple of tutorials Wednesday night and I now feel pretty confident about crocheting again. As I watched, I was like “Oh yeah…I remember that!” It all came back to me. So we’ll see how it goes.

On Tuesday we had den meeting, and I started a new adventure with the boys called “Make It Move”. The first thing we did was to build “stick bombs”. Have you ever done that before? I hadn’t, until this week. It’s a pretty cool and fun little project, although it’s a bit tricky to figure out at first. Speaking of YouTube tutorials, I had to watch a few and then I spent a couple of days practicing before I felt confident enough that I would be able to help the boys do it. It’s hard to explain, but you basically weave together popsicle sticks in a certain way so that there’s all this potential energy built up, and when you pull one of the sticks out, the whole thing “explodes”—the sticks all pop up in the air. You can imagine the boys enjoyed that! It took a lot longer to do than I had expected, though, so we didn’t get to do some of the other things I had planned to do that night. I have one boy (besides Seth) who is really ADHD and he is really disruptive (without meaning to be) so it always takes a lot longer to get through things than I would like. I always feel kind of frazzled after den meetings, trying to keep 5 boys under control! (Although actually, 3 of them are little angels; it’s only Seth and the other boy who can be difficult and I had a talk with Seth right before den meeting this week and he really tried hard to be good and was much better than he has been).  Here are a few pictures of our "bombs":

(We put a stack of cups at the end to make the "explosion" even more fun.)

It happened so fast that only a few sticks are still in the air, although I took the picture right when he pulled the stick out.

Here's another one:

Just starting to "explode":

The other thing we did that night was talk about Rube Goldberg machines because we are going to build one and I wanted them to start thinking about it. Don’t know what that is? Don’t worry; I will explain! Rube Goldberg was an inventor, engineer, and cartoonist who lived in the early 1900s. He was famous for dreaming up really complicated machines to do simple things like scratching your back or using a napkin. So a Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated machine that does a simple thing. (For example—ball rolls down ramp, hits dominoes, dominoes fall, last domino lands on a “see saw” which flips a small object into the air, which falls into a cup attached to a pulley, making the cup fall and cup on the other end of the pulley goes up and hits a bell, which makes it ring.) Our machine only has to have four steps, so it will be really simple. I went online to get some ideas, though, and came across tons of YouTube videos (yes, YouTube videos kind of dominated my week) of Rube Goldberg machines that people have constructed and there were some pretty amazing and elaborate ones out there. There was one that went through an entire house, and another that went through a huge warehouse. There is even an annual Rube Goldberg machine competition; who knew???! It was actually a lot of fun to watch those videos (Seth loved them too); I could have watched more of them if I had had the time. If you want to be really entertained, go look up Rube Goldberg machine videos! It got me kind of excited to do this project with the boys, although I don’t think it is going to be easy.

I didn’t do much that was noteworthy Wednesday; just the usual things and practiced choir songs and worked on our taxes, which are done except for filing. I can’t file electronically again this year for the same reason as last year—Fraank had a W-2 for the short term disability payments he received which only had an amount in box 12 and apparently you can’t file electronically if any of your W-2s have a zero in box 1. I have no idea why! But we are getting a refund, so I’m not complaining too much. Ironically, our refund this year is $1 more than last year’s. I thought that was funny! We had another thunderstorm Wednesday too and yesterday was windy and quite a bit colder (although still in the 40s). Earlier this week was quite warm again, after the weekend being a bit cold. Oh! I got some new shoes Wednesday too since my socks always get wet when it rains. 

Yesterday was mostly a quiet day, which was nice for a change. I wrote to Tanner & Jared (because Jared's P-day is on Friday) and I stayed up kind of late adjusting the chart for the afghan I'm going to make. I did get it finished, so I am ready to start that project now and will hopefully get started on it later today. This morning we had a very very light dusting of snow on cars and lawns (but not on the roads). It is windy and cold still. We will get some nicer temperatures next week it looks like, though.

I am happy to report that Frank is doing better than he was last week. His neck finally stopped hurting and he thinks that the last cortisone shot is actually helping a bit…his back isn’t hurting as much as it was either. It’s really nice that he isn’t groaning every time that he moves! So thank you for your prayers; please continue to pray for him! He has had a very busy week again with lots of work to do for his clients. He hasn’t had time to transfer all the stuff to my new laptop, so I am still using the old one but that’s not a big deal, and I am not complaining! All this work he is doing for clients is paying for missions and I am grateful. 

That is all I can think of to report for this week. To finish, here is a picture of Jared's missionary plaque, which just went up at our church building this week:

Weekly Review February 24 '17

Let's start with a sunrise:

This week was maybe a little more eventful than last week, but still not a lot going on. We went to the temple Friday night as planned—just to the 7^th floor meeting. As I anticipated, Frank wasn’t up to doing anything else. The meeting was really nice, though, and it is always really sweet to be in the temple with lots of other people I know. Feels like what I imagine the Celestial Kingdom will be like! We were going to have a teen age boy in the ward come stay with Seth while we were gone, but then Sam showed up (we didn’t expect him to come so early) so Sam stayed with him instead.

On Saturday morning we all went to the church to help load up chairs to take to the Stake Center; then we went to the Stake Center and helped set up all the chairs. A few other people from our ward came, and a few from another ward came. It was a pretty small group, but enough to get everything done in a reasonable amount of time. Frank went to the leadership session of Stake Conference that afternoon but by the time he got home from that he was hurting a lot and decided not to go to the adult session on Saturday evening. I did go, and it was really good. We had a member of the seventy visiting—Elder Clay—and he gave a really good talk. I really liked him; he was funny but also got some really great points across. His talk on Saturday night focused on personal revelation, and he basically said that if you are a baptized member with the gift of the Holy Ghost, then you can receive revelation. On Sunday he talked about handling questions and doubts, and he said “if you have a doubt and that’s all you focus on, you will leave the church, guaranteed”. He talked about better ways to handle questions that come up and said that all of our questions will be answered eventually. We all went to the general session on Sunday morning. I was singing in the choir, so I didn’t get to sit with Frank and Seth. Before the meeting started, they had a slide show running on the televisions with pictures from service projects throughout the year and they also had pictures of all the missionaries serving from our stake right now. I had to send pictures of my two boys to the stake executive secretary earlier. Well, since I was singing in the choir and we had practice right before the meeting, I didn’t get to see the slide show. After the meeting ended, I ran back to the cultural hall to watch the slide show and I saw a whole bunch of pictures of the service projects but they turned it off before they got to the missionaries. I was really sad I didn’t get to see that part! Oh, but they did ratify Jared’s ordination as an Elder (although they read his name as “Jared Anthony Cleveland” instead of “Antony”. Wasn’t the first time that’s happened to him and won’t be the last either, I’m sure, though.)  I had choir practice again that night because we are still preparing for the Easter fireside. I have Messiah songs running through my head pretty much all the time, but that’s okay.

Seth was out of school Monday for President’s Day and Tuesday for a teacher work day. Frank had Monday off for President’s Day too. We took Seth to see the new Lego Batman movie, and it was pretty good. Seth loved it, of course, and there were lots of funny parts that adults could appreciate too. There were funny references to all the other Batman movies, and even the old Batman television show from the 60’s. On Tuesday I took Seth to the park for a couple of hours. Our ward has a weekly play group for all the young moms; it’s usually on Wednesday but this week they moved it to Tuesday so that older kids who are normally in school could come too. A couple of the boys Seth’s age came so that was fun for him. This whole week has been pretty nice (feels like spring again) although it was only in the low 50s on Tuesday and a bit windy, so it was a bit on the cold side, but not too bad. Yesterday it got up into the 70s! Felt like April 23^rd, not February 23^rd. I drove around with the windows down and the sun roof open!

Frank had his second cortisone shot on Wednesday morning. I took him to that, since it makes him feel dizzy. He hasn’t been as nauseous this time, but he has been in a lot more pain. His whole neck just hurts a lot. He had planned to work from home Wednesday, which turned out to be a good thing. Yesterday he decided to take the day off. He is still groaning every time he moves; I hate it! I can’t say he just took it easy, though. He still did quite a bit of work for clients and he has also been working on a computer for a lady in our ward all week. She asked Dad on Sunday if he could look at her computer for her because it had been having some problems the last few days. We went over Sunday evening so he could look at it and he left some things running on it that night. Anyway, it turns out her computer has a really bad virus and he will probably have to wipe her hard drive to get rid of it. In the meantime, he got all of her stuff off of her computer and put it on a laptop that we had lying around and gave her that to use. Actually, we’re just going to let her keep it since we don’t need it. If he is able to get her computer working again, her kids can use that one. She came over to pick up the laptop this morning, and she is really grateful. Dad spent a lot of time on it and she offered to pay him but he didn’t charge her anything, because she and her husband just separated and we know money is tight. He has a big soft spot for people in situations like that.

Speaking of laptops, that reminds me that I got a new one this week! Frank needed to buy a couple of laptops for a client and I ended up going with him to buy a new one. (I think that was Tuesday night.) We’ve been talking about getting a new one for me for months because my old one is falling apart. The case is breaking open. We just got the new one set up yesterday, but haven’t had time to get all of my stuff transferred off the old laptop yet, so I am still using the old one. Hopefully by next week I will be using the new one.

Wednesday I went visiting teaching and yesterday I got my hair cut. In between everything else, I have been busy this week working on a Cub Scout slide show for the Blue & Gold Banquet, and wishing I had got that done before Jared left. It would have been a lot easier with his help! I did finally succeed in getting it done, though, and Frank just added the music to it for me last night so it is ready to go. Good thing, since the Blue & Gold Banquet is tonight! (The slide show is just pictures from all of the activities we did this past year in Cub Scouts.) We also made a cake for the banquet last night, although it still needs to be decorated. Technically, Frank is supposed to be helping Seth make the cake but I have a feeling I’ll be doing it since Frank is hurting so much right now. Please continue to keep him in your prayers. Today he went to the data center here in Frederick to work, since it is not so far to drive.

I just heard yesterday that the DC temple is going to be closed next year (March) for extensive renovations and won’t be reopened until 2020! Two years! I am super bummed that it is going to be closed for so long, especially since the next closest temple (Philly) is two and a half hours away. However, when the renovations are done, there will be an open house and the temple will be rededicated. So I am really, really, really happy about that!! That is going to be AWESOME!!! Also, Seth will be old enough by then to go to the dedication. Actually, I hope all of myboys will be able to come to the dedication somehow. I think it is something that everyone should get to experience at least once.

That is all the news from these parts, at least all I can think of for right now, so I will end with a sunset:

Weekly Review February 17 '17

This week was pretty calm without a lot going on, so I’m not sure I’m going to have a lot to write about but I’ll try to think of something interesting to say. Last Friday evening, Frank and I went out to eat. We tried a place we hadn’t been to before, called Moe’s Southwest Grill. It’s a lot like Café Rio, except that the food isn’t nearly as good. So we probably won’t be going back there. I mean, it wasn’t bad food, just not very good either. I had leftovers but when we were leaving I put the container in one hand to open the car door with my other hand and it slipped and hit the ground. The lid popped off and all my food fell out onto the ground. So we scooped it all up and threw it out. At least I didn’t mind losing it too much, since it wasn’t that good! It was nice to get out of the house for a little while, though, and spend some time talking without Seth interrupting us. We talked about how we’d like to do something special for our anniversary (maybe go on a cruise or something?) but Frank needs to be feeling better than he is now before we do any traveling, so we need to wait and see how he’s doing before we make any plans. On that note, the cortisone shot never seemed to make much difference for him, unfortunately. He has a second shot scheduled next week so maybe that one will help. If he gets three shots without results, then they will have to figure out what to do next.

Saturday was fairly busy; Frank took his car in for an oil change and he got a haircut too. We had Seth’s friend Krish over to play for the afternoon and we fed the Sister missionaries dinner that evening. When we went to pick up Frank’s car, we did some shopping too. In between I practiced songs for choir and worked on Cub Scout stuff and taxes and cleaned the kitchen floor., so I was busy most of the day.

Sundays seem to go by so much faster now that we have meetings starting at 11:00 instead of 9:00. That evening I had choir practice and a Cub Scout day camp planning meeting. They overlapped, but they were both at the stake center so I went to choir first and then left early to go to the planning meeting (arriving a bit late for that). We are singing 3 songs at Stake Conference this weekend so we went over those at the practice. I really liked the RS lesson on Sunday from the Gordon B. Hinckley manual; it was about being optimistic. Here’s a quote I particularly liked: “As a missionary in England, Elder Hinckley worked hard to follow his parents’ counsel [to be optimistic]. He and his companion shook hands each morning and told each other, ‘Life is good.’ Almost 70 years later, he suggested that a group of missionaries in the Philippines follow the same practice. “Every day is a great day in my life. I hope every day is a great day in your lives—every one of you. I hope you can get ready to go in the morning and shake the hand of your companion and say, ‘Brother (Sister), life is good. Let’s go out and have a good day.’ And when you come in at night, I hope you can say to one another, ‘It’s been a good day. We’ve had a good time. We’ve helped somebody along the way….We’ll follow up with them and pray and hope that they will come into the Church.’ Every day ought to be a good day in the mission field.”” I really wish I had heard this quote before my mission. I could have used a lot more optimism when I was a missionary!! I spent way too much time and energy worrying, blaming myself when things didn’t go well, and just plain feeling sorry for myself. I would have had a much better experience if I had had a better attitude. I think I have learned since then to do better, though.

I did a lot of reading this week. Remember that 500 page book we’re reading for book chat? I finished it. It was pretty interesting and after reading a bit on Monday I decided that I was going to be really distracted until I finished it, and since I had some time on Tuesday I decided to just finish it. So I did! I made myself get my regular work done first and then I just read most of the afternoon and evening. I enjoyed the book a lot, although I would have liked the ending to be a little more conclusive. I didn’t feel like all the loose ends got tied up, but I guess that’s how real life is, more often than not.

Meanwhile, Tuesday was also Valentine’s Day. I got Frank and Seth cards and chocolate, and Frank got me a card and a beautiful arrangement of red roses and white calla lilies. Seth brought home Valentines from school, too. We had some little vanilla cupcakes with pink frosting as a special treat that night after dinner. I put a card and a small box of chocolates in Jared's suitcase before he left, and I sent cards to Tanner and to Scott. I talked to Scott last night, and he said the Valentine we sent him made him cry! (In a good way.)

Valentine's table;

Wednesday I went to the temple, which took a good part of the day. We have a 7^th floor meeting at the temple tonight (for stake conference) which Frank and I are planning to attend, but Frank doesn’t think he’ll be up to doing an endowment session or anything so I decided to go do an endowment session on Wednesday instead. It was really nice, as always, to be in the temple! I love it!! Afterwards I visited the distribution center briefly and also went to the LDS bookstore to return some books we bought for Jared. (We tried to get the missionary library for him there earlier but they only had 2 of the books. We bought them, thinking we could buy the other 2 online but it turned out we couldn’t buy them separately—only as a set with the 2 books we already had. So I bought the set and then returned the 2 we had already purchased.)

Yesterday I just kept busy with the usual things (grocery shopping, laundry…). I also tried to set up visiting teaching appointments, but I wasn’t able to get in touch with anybody. I’ll keep trying. I told you this week was pretty calm!

Frank has been quite busy still, with work and with his business. He just keeps going, even though he is never out of pain. I appreciate that he works so hard but feel bad that he is doing so much when he doesn’t feel well. I just keep reminding myself that after the first accident he did finally start to feel better in time, and that this time he will feel better too—eventually.  It takes a lot of time, but he’ll get there.

It’s mostly been cold this week; feels a lot more like winter. It was really windy on Sunday night / Monday and we got some rain too. A couple of days this week (including yesterday) I saw a few snow flakes drifting down now and then. In the meantime, I think some of my bulbs are starting to come up already because overall the winter has been so mild. There are green shoots all over the front flower bed. I hope they don’t come up too soon and then die when it freezes again.

Well, I think I have bored you long enough now. I am sorry that there is not much of interest to report. It is nice to have some peace and quiet for a change, but it doesn’t make for very interesting blog posts. To finish up, here's a nice sunrise we had one morning;

Weekly Review February 10 '17

For us, this week has been kind of a roller coaster with Jared leaving and all. Last Friday he went to the temple. We took the Elders in our ward out to dinner that night (because one of them is going home this week) and Jared met us at the restaurant on his way home from the temple. Saturday was kind of my melt down day—Jared had to work in the morning and after he got back from work, some friends had planned a get together with him and he ended up being gone all day until late evening. I told him a few days before that I didn’t want him to be gone all day so I was upset about that—we wanted to spend time with him too, plus we still had several things left to do to get him ready to go. So, I was upset (Frank too), but also didn’t want to spend his last few days arguing with each other, and I was hitting that point where I was realizing that he was really leaving and feeling sad so—emotions were just running pretty high!! But we got through it.

I was actually gone a lot of the day on Saturday too. A guy who used to live in our ward lost a  brother in a horrific car accident a few weeks ago and on Saturday they had a memorial service for his brother. They asked people from our ward if they could help with a luncheon for the family, so I went to help with that. I was told I would be helping to make sandwiches so I didn’t expect to be gone that long, but it turned out we were actually setting up the whole luncheon before the service and helping to serve it after the service, so I ended up being gone for about 5 hours instead of the 1 or 2 I had anticipated. It was okay, though—I didn’t have anything else planned (until after Jared got home) and I wanted to help.

Sunday was a lot calmer than Saturday and we enjoyed being together as a family for church (Sam was here too which was nice). I went to choir practice and everyone else watched the Super Bowl—I watched the second half with them after I got home from practice. I still don’t get why everyone wants to watch the Super Bowl when we aren’t pro football fans at all, but whatever!! It was fun to spend the time together, although I admit it didn’t feel much like Sunday to me anymore.

Monday was super busy since we had to finish everything else that Jared needed to do. He packed his bags and he did pack up some of the things in his room too. (Didn’t have time to go to the storage unit, so they are still sitting in the living room. They are too heavy to move by myself.) He got his hair cut and we made two trips to the store before the day was over, getting last minute things he needed. He got everything to fit in his bags and they were even well under the weight limit, so that was good. That evening we went out to the stake president’s house so that Jared could be set apart. It was really nice and the stake president gave him a great blessing. It was long! After that we stopped to get frozen yogurt on our way home, for family night treat. Jared had a few more things to finish up when we got home and we finally got to bed about 10:30. It was a short night—even shorter for me than everyone else because for some dumb reason I woke up at midnight and couldn’t go back to sleep.

Jared’s flight left at 5:25 am, which meant he had to be at the airport about 3:30, which meant we had to leave here about 2:30 which meant he had to get up about 1:45 to shower and get ready. I was already awake, of course. We didn’t want to leave Seth alone here for 2 hours in the middle of the night, so we got him up and he came with us. We were driving to the airport and Frank kept asking Jared if he had remembered to pack certain things. He asked if Jared had his glasses, and Jared said “of course I do…here, I’ll show you.” He pulled out his glasses case, opened it up, and…no glasses!!! He had packed them on Monday, but then took them out to wear them Monday evening and then left them on his nightstand. Well, we were already about 20 minutes up the road, but we had to turn around and go back because that is one thing he really needed and of course he couldn’t just go to the store and buy some. We also couldn’t send them to him because the Mexico MTC doesn’t accept ANY packages. So that was stressful, but we were able to go back for his glasses and we still made it to the airport by 4:00 am. (One good thing about that time of the day—no traffic!!) When he went down to get his glasses, he discovered that he had left his watch on his nightstand too and he also grabbed a pair of sunglasses. So it was good that he was able to get all of those things. I hope he didn’t forget anything else, but I did find an electric razor on top of the storage cabinet in the bathroom the next day when I was dusting. I’m not sure if it is his or an old one. That would also be a bad thing to forget, but at least a razor can be purchased pretty easily. I guess we’ll find out when he writes next week.

So anyway, we got Jared on his way:

I cried a little bit in the car on the way home, but I did the same thing when I dropped Tanner off and when we dropped Scott off. I’m okay. Jared called us from a pay phone in Houston to let us know he made it that far and then we got an email from him that night letting us know he got to Mexico safely, which hopefully you all saw. His email made me laugh when he talked about it being scary to be in a new country with no way to contact anyone and where he understands hardly any of the language. EXACTLY why I felt a rather high level of anxiety on Tuesday!! It’s pretty scary sending your child into that situation. So it was especially nice that they let him email when he got there. Anyway, after dropping him off, we got back home around 5:00 am and went back to bed. I woke up again at 7:00 am for some reason and was awake for a while, then woke up again around 8:30 and never went back to sleep. So that was a really bad night for sleeping!! To our surprise, Seth woke up all bright eyed at 8:15 so we got him ready for school quickly and Frank took him to school on time. Frank had taken the morning off, but he had meetings in the afternoon so he went in to work for those. I dragged around the house, getting the regular chores done and getting ready for den meeting that evening. I tried taking a nap around 4:00 after Frank and Seth got back home, but for some reason I only slept for about 20 minutes. I made it through den meeting and a cub committee meeting that evening, though, and then Tuesday night I slept like a log all night so Wednesday I felt much more rested.

Frank got a cortisone shot on Wednesday morning; I went with him to the doctor for that. He hasn’t noticed it helping his pain level much yet, although they said it could take 3-5 days before he feels a difference. In the meantime, the shot made him feel kind of dizzy and queasy for a few days. He worked from home on Wednesday but yesterday he put in a full day at work, even though he was still feeling a bit dizzy and queasy. Not fun! Hopefully it will help him feel better eventually though.

Meanwhile, I have been working on some Cub Scout stuff (including meeting with the other den leader to plan), working on our taxes, and I started reading the book chat book. (All the Light We Cannot See)  It’s pretty long (over 500 pages) but it’s fascinating so I don’t think I’m going to have a hard time getting through it. My visiting teachers came to see me last night. This is two months in a row that they have visited me, shared a message, prayed with me AND brought me a treat too. I feel pretty spoiled.

My right eye has been giving me trouble this week. On Saturday when I was coming home from the funeral luncheon, I noticed that my right eye was hurting. When I got home, I looked at it and it was all swollen underneath the outer corner of my eye. It continued to be swollen and sore (worse in the mornings) for the next couple of days. It isn’t sore anymore and the swelling has mostly gone down but I haven’t worn my contact lenses since Saturday. I’m trying to give it plenty of time to heal completely. I don’t know what it was—some kind of infection. That seems to happen to me occasionally. One of these days I really need to go to an eye doctor to try to figure out why I am somewhat prone to eye infections.  

The bi-polar weather has continued here. It’s been mostly warmer than usual and Tuesday and Wednesday were particularly mild. I think we got up into the low 70s both days, or at least into the high 60s. Tuesday was windy too and it still felt completely comfortable and no need for even a jacket. In February—crazy!! In spite of Wednesday being so nice, we had snow predicted for Wednesday night / Thursday morning. We were supposed to get 1 to 3 inches of snow, but it mostly fizzled in our area. We just got a dusting—didn’t even stick to the roads and barely stuck to the grass. That didn’t stop them from deciding to have a 2 hour delay for school on Thursday, though. Ridiculous! We had a few snow flurries throughout the day on Thursday, but nothing that stuck. It was definitely cold again and today is cold and windy but tomorrow we are supposed to be back into the 50s or 60s again. You are not going to hear any complaints from me about that, but Frank, of course, has done ample complaining about the weather this winter. I do wonder what summer is going to be like! Super hot? I hope not.

Yesterday we got a picture of Jared from the MTC. Apparently, a couple in Scott’s ward recently returned from serving in the Mexico MTC. When Scott told them his brother was going there, they said they would talk to someone who is still in the presidency there and get a picture of him to send to Scott. So they did…and Scott sent it on to us. Here it is:

 He looks good to me!! That nametag looks really good on him! It was really nice to get that picture.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I have TWO missionaries in the field now!! It is awesome, but seems strange to me too.

Weekly Review February 3 '17

This last week went by fast. I am happy that we are in February now! January is not my favorite month. We’ve really been spoiled this winter, though. We have had very few miserably cold days. Of course, we’ve had hardly any snow too. Frank is so sad about that!

Last week when I wrote, we were getting ready to go to the Pinewood Derby. Last year we combined with two other wards for the derby, but this year we did it by ourselves. We only have 10 Cub Scouts in our ward, but it was really nice to do it with a small group. The kids all seemed to have fun and no one seemed upset if their car didn’t do very well. Seth’s car was one of the ones that didn’t do very well, but almost all the cars we’ve made over the years have been duds. This year, I think it was Jared’s fault because when he was putting the first wheel on Seth’s car the wood split on either side of the groove where the wheel goes. I mean, he didn’t do it on purpose, but that meant that wheel didn’t go in quite right and didn’t turn very well. I really think the wheels turning well is more important than anything else (weight of the car, aerodynamics, etc.) Anyway, Seth thought his car looked really cool and he had fun at the derby and he didn’t care at all that he didn’t win anything, so it was fine.

We had a pretty busy weekend. On Saturday Jared and I went to the temple and he got to see a different movie, so that was nice. I mean, it would have been nice anyway! I always enjoy going. Sam came on Saturday afternoon to spend the rest of the weekend with us; he wanted to be here to hear Jared’s talk on Sunday. So yes—Jared spoke on Sunday and he did a great job. His topic was “being a disciple teacher”. All the talks were really good and it was a very uplifting meeting. Jessie and her whole family came to hear Jared speak also, which I thought was really nice. I didn’t have choir practice that night because there was a stake youth fireside but I have it every Sunday from here on out until the beginning of April! Jared went to the fireside even though technically he’s not a “youth” anymore—I think he just wanted to see friends and socialize mostly, although he said the meeting was really good too.

We fed the Sister missionaries on Monday. This week has been fairly quiet without a lot going on other than we’ve been trying to wrap up all the odds and ends of things Jared needs to do to be ready to go in a few more days. Since I wasn’t swamped, I also started a few other projects. One is a Cub Scout slide show for the Blue & Gold Banquet, which will be at the end of this month. My main motivation for starting that now is that I’m not sure how to work the program but Jared does, so I wanted to get it started before he leaves. If I can ask him questions and work out the bugs, I think I’ll be able to finish it without him here. I also started working on our income tax return, which seems to get more complicated and take more time every year! But I am making progress.

Jared has had a fairly busy week. Besides working on mission stuff, he also went to one of Jessie’s swim meets on Tuesday. He worked on Wednesday and he’ll be working again tomorrow. He also went to his high school on Wednesday and again today to help his former theater teacher teach some technical theater stuff—he’s supposed to get paid for that. He is at the school now but will be home soon and then he is going to go to the temple. He has NOT done any packing in his room yet and I’m afraid he is going to run out of time to get that done which means I get to do it after he leaves. I ended up doing that for both Scott and Tanner after they left.

I had book chat last night. Since we started meeting in the evening, we have been having one person bring dessert instead of doing a potluck lunch like we used to do. But over the years we have developed this tradition to have fondue for our February meeting, so this time we still had fondue. One of the book club members always makes cheese and chocolate fondue and the rest of us bring things to dip in them (fruits, cake, pretzels, bread, kielbasa, vegetables, etc). It’s always really yummy!! We discussed the book A Man Called Ove, which is really good--if you haven't read it, you should! Now we are going to read a book called All the Light We Cannot See. I put it on hold at the library last night so hopefully I will get it soon.

Frank has had a very busy week. He continues to have a lot of things to do for clients, but he has also been very busy at his regular job. He has got home pretty late a couple of nights this week. The reason he is so busy at Marriott is because while he was out on leave, some of the people who were supposed to be working on some of his projects didn’t get anything done on them. So now he is trying to get those projects caught up. He did get one of them finished up this week. I haven't noticed him being in as much pain this week, but I'm not sure if that is because he is feeling better than he was last week or if he just hasn't been around as much. He's scheduled for his first cortisone shot on Wednesday and I hope that will help him a lot.

We have Sam coming to stay this weekend again—so that he can see Jared one more time before he goes. I am excited for Jared and mostly happy that he is going but I am also trying to ignore the twinges in my heart when I realize that he probably really won’t live at home ever again after this. I mean, he’ll be here to visit in between college semesters and such, but that’s probably it. When I realize that all three of myolder boys are mostly at that stage, it makes me feel kind of sad. I’m not sure how we got to this point! I am so proud of all three of them and I love seeing the great young men they have become. I really wouldn’t trade! But I do wish that they could all move into houses on the same street with us or something! J

I can’t believe I forgot to mention last week that the new Super Wal-Mart near us opened last Wednesday! I mean that is so exciting, right?! I actually do the Wal-Mart shopping on Wednesday every week, so it was convenient for me. On the first day they had free samples of food and a big cake and such (I skipped the cake though—wasn’t really feeling it at 10:00 am). The new store is huge and clean and even more exciting—they have brand new shopping carts! I thought they’d just bring over all the old ones from the old store, but they didn’t. The wheels run perfectly smoothly with no clunking or anything…such a luxury! J I don’t like the layout of the new store as well as the old one, though. It’s nice that it’s bigger and has more selection, but the sections I need to use the most are spread out all over the store instead of right next to each other like they were in the old store. That’s progress, I guess! I’m currently just trying to memorize where everything is located in the new store so that I don’t have to go back and forth looking for things.

I have started to learn how to play the ukulele. Jared has one, and he put an app on my phone that has a series of basic ukulele lessons on it so I can keep working on it after he’s gone. I would like to have Seth learn how to play too. I’ve only done one lesson so far so I’m not proceeding very quickly, but the one lesson was pretty fun.

I’ve been having some issues with vertigo the last few weeks. It’s nothing to worry about…it’s happened to me before and I know what causes it, and it’s nothing serious. It’s kind of come and gone a lot over the last few weeks, but on Sunday morning things were really spinning and I even started to feel nauseated! So I said a prayer that I would feel better because I really wanted to enjoy Jared’s talk, and the vertigo went away for the rest of the day. I’ve had a few issues with it this week, but not much and nothing that made me feel sick. I just have some exercises I need to keep doing and it will go away eventually.

This is another short one, but that is everything that has been going on around here. Here's a funny picture I took of Seth earlier this week. I guess he is getting ready for summer!!