Weekly Review April 7 '17

Here's our week:

Friday: Remember I said I had a lot to do? I got the kitchen floor cleaned that afternoon (I usually do that on Saturday) and that evening I went over to help one of the sisters I visit teach. She was moving, and needed to move several boxes into a storage unit and take some other things to Goodwill. A couple of men from the ward showed up to help move the heavy stuff and I helped load up the car with the lighter stuff. Then I drove over to the storage unit with her to help unload everything. It went quickly and we were able to help her get everything done in just a little over an hour, so that was nice. I took some dinner over with me too so that she would have something to eat. Sam arrived at our house later that evening and he stayed for the whole weekend since it was General Conference and he didn’t need to go to his own ward meetings.

Saturday: In the morning I went to the library, practiced choir songs, made some phone calls, and did some planning. I got everything done before General Conference started, so once it started I was able to concentrate on just listening! I did crochet while I was listening, but doing that actually helped me stay awake and focus better than I would have. Plus, I got a lot done. So that was nice.

(My afghan before General Conference):

(My afghan after General Conference):

I have a new Lego set (doesn’t build anything specific, just lots of extra bricks) and I suggested that Seth build with that while he listened to Conference. That worked out well—it kept him busy and quiet, but he listened too.

I haven’t been able to pinpoint a favorite talk yet. I just really loved the spirit I felt. Every talk seemed to be so good! I have been listening to the talks again this week (mostly while crocheting, again) and I’ve already listened to most of the 1^st session. I’m planning to read and mark them all when I get my Ensign too. On Saturday evening Frank and Sam went to the priesthood session at the church, with the usual ice cream social before hand. Frank was in charge of organizing the ice cream social, so he got there a bit early to set everything up.

Sunday: The same as Saturday, except I didn’t have work to do in the morning. I did do some indexing. Then more listening to Conference while crocheting! I had choir practice as usual that evening and we got homemade cinnamon rolls at the end—yummy!! Frank wasn’t feeling well when he got up on Sunday and he hasn’t felt all that great all week. Mostly his head hurts and he feels nauseated. It was nice that he could lie down all day while he listened to Conference.

Monday: It was busy all day, but not much to write about. The usual shopping, cleaning, laundry and errands. I did some preparation for the next day’s den meeting too. Frank decided to take the day off work and get some rest.

Tuesday: Again, the usual stuff plus I practiced choir songs. That evening I had den meeting followed by Cub Committee Meeting. For den meeting, the boys built a marble obstacle course.

We also learned about extinct animals and then we went outside to look at plants and animals. I think the boys ran around more than they looked at plants and animals, but it was a really nice day so it was a good day to go outside. Frank went to work as usual although he still didn’t feel great.

Wednesday: I went to the temple and it was lovely. It just felt so nice to be in the house of the Lord! It was also a beautiful warm spring day and the grounds were beautiful and the birds were singing. I took a bunch of pictures.

 After I got home, I mowed the lawn. It was my last chance to do it this week because it was supposed to start raining that night. The bulbs I planted in the front yard flower bed have come up now and it looks really pretty. Definitely worth the work! I remember I almost took my back out digging all those little holes. (I planted some in the backyard too but they don’t get as much sun so although they have started to come up, they haven’t bloomed yet.)

Frank worked from home that day—still not feeling wonderful, but better than before. When I got up on Wednesday, I checked Tanner’s BYU account to see if he was registered for classes. They have a new thing this semester where you can choose the classes you want and put them in a “cart”. If you do that, then the system automatically signs you up for those classes as soon as your priority registration time opens up. Then it sends you a message to let you know what classes you are signed up for and if you didn’t get into any of the classes you wanted (if the class was full, for example). Tanner had chosen all his classes and the sections he wanted and happily, when I checked there was a message saying that he had been registered for all the classes in his cart. So that was really nice! His priority registration time was at midnight Tuesday night (2 am here) so by doing that, I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to try to register for him.

Thursday: I got some housework done and practiced choir songs and crocheted in the morning. Then I went to Seth’s school for a few hours because I had signed up to help with the book fair. While I was there, Frank called me because Tanner had just called. He was getting a CT scan of his kidneys and he had a pretty large co-pay he had to pay so he needed more money put into his account. Frank didn’t know how to do that, so I walked him through the process. I’m glad he was able to get in touch with me. Tanner didn’t mention it in his weekly letter, but he has been having more kidney stone pain so they decided to do the CT scan. We don’t know the results yet but hopefully Tanner will let us know when he writes on Monday. After I got done at the book fair, I went to get a few things at Costco before going home. The predicted rain had arrived and it was REALLY coming down hard, so that was “fun”. At least I had a raincoat so I didn’t get soaked. It rained most of the day on Thursday and we had some thunder too. The worst of the storms went south of us—we heard reports of wind damage, hail, and even a few confirmed weak tornadoes in the DC area. Frank was working from home again that day and I was glad he wasn’t at work when I saw the worst of the storm going right towards Gaithersburg, where his office is.

Today: I spent the morning updating the budget, as usual. Frank went to work early but he is feeling worse today so he is on his way home now. Hopefully he will get over whatever this is soon! I am thankful that I haven’t caught it from him. It is quite cold today—the high is only supposed to be 46 today. Crazy spring weather!!

As you can see, we don’t have a lot of exciting things going on around here lately, but that is okay. I don’t usually mention it, but I exercise almost every week day and I usually crochet every day too, except for Sunday. The vet called us about Snickers and his bloodwork didn’t show anything new so she wants us to keep him on the three medications he is taking now (two antibiotics and one medicine that supports liver function) for a month and then have his bloodwork done again to see if there is any improvement. He still seems to feel fine and he is enjoying all the extra cheese and treats (I have to put the pills in cheese to get him to eat them, and he has to have food with 2 of the pills as well. In the morning, he gets the pills at breakfast time but when he has to take them again 12 hours later it is after dinner time by a few hours so he gets some treats to go with them.)

Seth has been going through kind of a clumsy stage (he is probably growing again) and he’s hurt himself a few times lately. Nothing serious. One day this week, he decided he wanted to go outside right after I got him home from school. He went running at the screen door to go out, not realizing that I had automatically locked the screen when we came in. So instead of the door opening when he slammed into it, the door didn’t budge and he hit his nose on it. Ouch!! He was kind of miffed at me for locking the screen, but I didn’t intend to hurt him of course! It actually would have been kind of funny if he hadn’t hurt himself. He had a red mark on his nose but it didn’t bruise or anything.

I called Tanner’s mission office one day this week because I needed some information about a payment we need to make for his iPad. In the process of my conversation with the sister in the mission office, Tanner’s release date came up and she said that he will be coming home on July 4^th. I am surprised that they would send missionaries home on a national holiday, but whatever! I guess I will wait until we get his itinerary to find out for sure. We will be happy to have him back home again, whatever day it ends up being.

That's everything I have to report this week!

Weekly Review March 31 '17

We have now lived in Maryland for 17 years! And guess what? I recently passed the milestone that means I have lived in Maryland longer than I lived in Utah! So I guess I am truly a Marylander now, even though I am not a native. Just thought I'd mention that for fun!

I’m going back to a daily list of what we did this week.

Saturday: Seth, Frank, and I helped pass out flyers with the Cub Scouts for the lawn aeration fundraiser. We only had to do a small neighborhood and most of the Cub Scout families showed up to help, so it didn’t take very long. The weather was pretty nice on Saturday too so that made it more pleasant. I did some Cub Scout planning later and Seth got his project for school done, except for taping things down to the display board. Frank, Sam and Seth went on a trip to Wal-Mart to get a few things we needed including a new backpack for Seth. His backpack was wearing completely out—it had holes in it! (He used it for a couple of school years.) His old backpack was a Minions backpack. The new one is larger and much more “grown up”—plain black with orange trim. It should last him a couple of years at least. That evening I watched the Women’s Meeting, which was really good. A friend in my ward invited a small group of people to watch together at her house, so that’s what I did. It was really nice and I got some crocheting done while I watched, too.

Sunday: We had a really busy Sunday. I substituted a Primary class, pretty last minute so I didn’t have much time to prepare the lesson but it went well. After church one of our home teachers came to see us. This is exciting, since we haven’t had a home teacher visit for years!!! After that we fed dinner to the Sister missionaries. Immediately after that, Sam had to head back home and I had to go to choir practice. Practice went great; the songs are really starting to come together. I actually got chills all over singing one of them, it was so great!

Monday: We got Seth’s display board for his project put together that morning before school. Besides the usual stuff (laundry etc) I practiced choir songs and worked on our Personal Property tax return for the business. I got it almost done (it’s not very complicated, fortunately) but I was up late doing that. It was a very busy day. Actually, every day this week has been like that.

Tuesday: In addition to the regular chores (cleaning bathrooms etc) I did some preparation for that evening’s den meeting and I signed Tanner up for housing in Heritage Halls. (It’s a building for people age 20 and over.) Last night I went back into his account and I could see his roommates’ names. The guy in the room with him is named Tyler. Then I noticed in the room next door there are two boys named Bryce and Taylor. In the last room is a guy named Steven. No one has signed up for the other bed yet. But anyway, I realized that means there will be a Tanner, a Tyler, and a Taylor all living in the same apartment!! Crazy!! Anyway, back to what I was doing on Tuesday. We had den meeting that evening and the boys built their Rube Goldberg machine and it went really well! I gave them the task to get a ball into a cup, and they were able to figure out a way to do it. I provided them with a lot of objects (marbles, ping pong balls, cups, Legos, a pulley, a lever, a train set, toy cars, funnels, pipe cleaners, etc!) and they figured the whole thing out with very little input from me. It was actually really cool to watch them discuss things and work together to figure it out!! I could just see the wheels turning in their brains. J They were really excited when we got it to work. I was super proud of them!! Here's a few pictures of the process (sorry they are blurry) and a video of the finished machine in action:

Also on Tuesday, Frank had his follow up doctor appointment. They decided they want to try something called a nerve block next, to see if that helps with the pain. The second cortisone shot seemed to help, but the other two didn’t do much. So no surgery yet. Hopefully the nerve blocks will help. It will be a process too, though, so it will take some time before we know if it’s working at all. Frank had a presidency meeting for Elders Quorum on Tuesday evening. The rest of the week he has continued to be super busy with stuff for his business.

Wednesday: I got Wal-Mart shopping done in the morning and then went visiting teaching. Snickers had his appointment with the specialist that afternoon and he had to fast for that, so I couldn’t feed him all day. How do you explain to a dog why you can’t feed him?! He did pretty well, actually though. Still, I wanted to avoid going in the kitchen /eating in front of him as much as possible so I ate breakfast before I let him out of the crate that morning and then on my way to visiting teaching I got a hamburger and some onion rings from Burger King. After I got back from visiting teaching, it was time to take Snickers to his appointment. It was in Gaithersburg, so about a 30 minute drive from here. The specialist did some blood work and took a urine sample and did an xray. She also put him on 3 different medications—2 antibiotics for the liver and 1 medicine that supports liver function. After all the test results come back and he’s been on the medications for a while we will have a better idea of what is going on with his liver. Hopefully he will avoid surgery on his liver but we don’t know yet. I paid the astronomical bill and brought Snickers back home. He enjoyed the trip back more than the trip down because I gave him several treats to keep him occupied. I had arranged for a friend in our ward who has kids at the same school to pick Seth up from school because I was afraid I wouldn’t get back in time, and that was a good idea because I didn’t get back in time to pick him up. They took Seth to the park with them so I went there to pick him up. It was the nicest day we had all week, sunny and temps in the 60s. I decided to let Seth play for a while and he was having so much fun that we didn’t get home until nearly 7:00. Frank hadn’t come home yet because he had volunteered to help with a youth temple trip, so he went straight from work to the temple. We stopped on the way home from the park to get some food for dinner and Seth chose Burger King—so yes, I ate at Burger King twice in one day! That is not something I want to do ever again.

Thursday: Another very busy day. Besides the usual chores (vacuuming, laundry etc) I got my hair done that afternoon. When I got back from there, I quickly mowed the lawn before I had to go pick up Seth from school. I wanted to get the lawn mowed because it was super long and it was supposed to start raining that night and rain until Sunday. Then rain again early next week! So it was Thursday or wait another week to mow. It was cloudy and only in the 50s so I had to wait until later in the day because it took that long for the dew to dry out. Actually, the lawn was still somewhat damp. So it wasn’t ideal conditions for mowing, but as I said—I was kind of desperate to get it done before the rain hit! The lawn does look much nicer though and it’s a good thing I did it because it was already so long that the lawn mower had trouble in a few places. After dinner I spent the evening looking at Tanner’s registration stuff, trying to help him figure out what classes to sign up for this fall. (Registration opens up on Wednesday.)

Today: As expected, it is raining. It has been coming down pretty hard!! Seth has the day off school because the third quarter just ended and it’s a teacher work day. I have no idea where this school year has gone—only one quarter left! I spent the morning getting the budget updated and I just finished writing to Tanner and Jared. I have a lot more things I need to get done before the day is over, so today will be very busy too. However, I am trying to get a lot done so that tomorrow I won’t have as much to do and I can totally focus on General Conference, which I am totally looking forward to watching!! 

That's all I can think of for this week.

Weekly Letter March 24 '17

I’m tired of the day to day rundown, so I am going to try categories this week.

Frank’s health: He’s doing pretty well. The cortisone shot he got last Friday (the 17^th) didn’t hurt him as much as the previous one. He didn’t get really sore like last time. He has an appointment next week to discuss what to do next—if they think he needs surgery or if the shots are effective enough that he doesn’t have to have surgery. Part of me wants to avoid surgery and part of me wants him to get the surgery because there’s a possibility that the surgery will completely relieve his pain. Plus, I’d rather he have surgery soon rather than wait months (or years) and then decide he needs it anyway. We’ll see what the doctor says and then go from there.

Frank’s business: It is keeping him very busy still. I hope things settle down soon so that he can get some rest, although it’s a blessing too.

The afghan: I’ve done 61 rows now. I haven’t done today’s rows yet but I am excited to do them because I get to add a new color today. I find that crocheting is very relaxing. I’m really enjoying it!

Seth’s artist project: He’s not done with it yet, but he’s making progress. I was having a hard time getting him to work on it, so on Monday I said “Look, each day when you get home from school, write a paragraph. By the end of the week, you will be done.” (The report only has to have 4 paragraphs.) Seth looked at me and said in a somewhat surprised tone “That’s a really good idea.” So that’s what he did. He finished the report today but he still has to do a project to go with it. Hopefully we’ll get most of that done tomorrow.

Cub scouts: We didn’t have den meeting this week because tomorrow we are passing out flyers for a fundraiser. I did spend some time gathering up all kinds of stuff from around the house that we can use to make a Rube Goldberg machine, since that is what we will be doing for our den meeting this coming Tuesday.

Stake choir: We had another good practice. I still have some things to work on. I have the parts pretty much down now, but on a few of the songs it is tricky figuring out when to come in. (That’s because each part is coming in at different times.) I have the songs running through my head All. The. Time. I even dream about them! (I also dream that I am crocheting a lot!)

Snickers: We got the results of his second test on Monday and they indicate that his liver function is diminished, so there is definitely something going on with his liver. The vet recommended we take him to a specialist, so I have an appointment for him next week to do that. He is not showing any signs of not feeling well—he is pretty much himself; always excited to eat or to go outside and always barking at anyone who walks by the house. As a matter of fact, this week he has started getting into his toys and playing with them again, which he hasn’t done in a long time. It’s encouraging that he seems to feel fine.

Weather: All of the snow in our neighborhood has melted now. I still see some snow in parking lots or on the edge of roads where it was plowed into big piles (now they are small piles). Mostly it has been pretty cold around these parts, but we did have one nice day this week. Today has warmed up some and tomorrow is supposed to be up into the 70s, so that will be nice! We’ve had some rain this week too.

Other things about Seth: He got his haircut last Saturday and he looks great! Today he was invited to play with the carpool boys. It was only supposed to be a couple of hours, but they were playing outside and having so much fun that they asked if he could stay longer. He’s actually still there now and they decided to feed him dinner, too!

Sam: He was here last Friday and part of Saturday. He was planning to stay until Sunday, but he got a message saying that everyone had to report back to base on Saturday at 5:00 (17:00). A couple of soldiers in his unit got injured somehow, and they wanted to make sure everyone was okay. Sam is coming again this weekend—actually he should be here within a half hour.

Jared: I got to talk to him for about 30 minutes on Monday morning—it was great!! He called from the airport in Mexico City. We got an email on Wednesday from his mission letting us know that he got there safely. I am anxious to hear from him on Monday. I hope he is doing okay, and adjusting to mission life. He sounded pretty good on Monday. He was excited to get to his mission.

Scott: He called me twice this week. He just started working a shift at the temple each week. He works on Saturdays for 6 hours. He really likes it. He shared some things he has learned from his scripture reading lately which were pretty cool, and which are helping him a lot. It’s good to hear him sounding happy.

Other things I’ve been doing this week: (1) I went to the temple on Wednesday. I’ve been put in charge of organizing a monthly trip to the temple for the RS sisters. Basically that means that I pick a day I want to go and then let everyone know and if anyone else wants to come, they come with me. The first month no one else came, but this time two other sisters came with me. It was nice. I love how every time I’m in the temple they pray for the missionaries!  (2) One of the sisters I visit teach is moving next week so I helped coordinate some help for her. I also took her some boxes and packing tape yesterday, and got to visit with her for a while. (3) Reading—I’m well into the book chat book (Rebecca) and it is very interesting and getting hard to put down. It’s one of those kinds of books where you can tell there is something mysterious going on, but you’re not sure what it is or when all the pieces are going to come together. (4) I tried to start planning the trips we are taking this summer, but I haven’t made much progress yet. (5) Put together some Easter packages for all the family missionaries. I mailed them all today. Hopefully they will all get them next week sometime. (6) Talked to Amy on the phone for a really long time one day. It was awesome!

Pictures of the packages:

One funny story: In Sunday School this week, the teacher was telling us about the organization of the Relief Society and he mentioned that there was a bit of debate about what to call it—one of the men there thought it should be called the “Benevolent Society” (there were lots of societies with that name back then, apparently) but one of the sisters insisted it should be called the “Relief Society”, and she won out in the end. I was thinking “Well, that’s good because ‘Benevolent Society’ would be quite a mouthful.” And then for some reason I thought about how I am always shortening “Relief Society” to “RS” (“I’m going to a RS meeting”, I will say, for example) and realized that shortening “Benevolent Society” would result in “BS” which would NOT sound very good! I got the giggles and couldn’t stop for a while. Frank was looking at me like he couldn’t believe I was so irreverent! I told him I would explain what was so funny later, and he DID laugh pretty hard when I told him at home later. So anyway, that sister who insisted on “Relief Society” was totally inspired and we are all indebted to her!!

I think I’ve covered all the categories!

I'll finish with a picture of our dinner last Saturday (we were being all Irish...a day late):

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: