May 31st to June 7th
This was a difficult week. I was super busy and didn't feel like I was getting nearly enough done each day. I had long lists to get through every day and I felt like the days would just disappear and I wasn't checking off a lot of things on my lists. The week was slipping by and I still had lots of things to do. Besides that, a lot of complications kept coming up with different things, such as Jared noticing that Jessie's name was wrong on their marriage license. He called on Monday (the 3rd) to find out what to do about it and found out he had to pay $60 to petition a judge to have it changed and it could take up to 2 weeks. And of course he didn't have 2 weeks because he was getting married in less than 2 weeks! He ended up having to take time off work to drive up to Pennsylvania to hand in a letter with his petition, which begged them to fix it before his wedding date. And thankfully, they did fix it in a few days, but in the meantime that caused a lot of stress. Jared also hadn't had his car inspected or anything yet so Frank & I were stressing about that. And he was trying to finish up an online class he was taking too! The end result of all these things is that I had a bit of a meltdown on Friday morning. But you know what? After I had a good cry, I felt so much better!! I think I just needed to get all of that tension and anxiety and stress out of my system!
A few things we did that week:
I mentioned that we had Deacons coming over to our house for an activity on Friday the 31st. That worked out well. They played some games and did sports on the Wii and it was fun to watch them interact together. They laughed a lot and cheered each other on and no one seemed to mind if they weren't doing very well at the games. We had leftover birthday cake to give them too, so they liked that.
On Saturday the 1st, I spent half the day going down to the bishop's store house to pick up two food orders for a couple of families in our ward. The RS president had sent out a message to a group of us to see if any of us could do it and for some reason, in spite of my busy schedule, I felt like I should do it. I don't know why, and I probably never will, but I'm glad I did it. Meanwhile, Seth went to a birthday party for a good friend. I spent the rest of the day working on the quilt and on wedding stuff.
On Sunday the 2nd I prepared an article for the ward newsletter (I do a music spotlight every month) and we made chocolate chip cookie bars that evening for Seth to take to school the next day. They were for his birthday celebration--because they had field trips and a camp out the week before, there was no chance to celebrate his birthday that week. As always, the cookie bars were a hit!
I picked up my friend's kids from school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (the friend who had surgery recently). Their dad came to get them right after we got home on Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday I got a call from my friend in the early afternoon; she asked if I could keep her kids until about 5:00 because she had just found out she had blood clots and fluid in her lungs and she needed to go back into the hospital for the weekend. So they needed to stay somewhere until their grandma could pick them up on her way home from work. Of course, I said yes to that! It was no problem to have them here a little longer and Seth was glad to have some time to play with them. And thankfully, my friend only had to stay in the hospital for a few days and she seems to be doing a lot better now.
The storage shelves for my office / sewing area finally got put together that week and they look nice:
(And yes, they are already full!)
I was supposed to take Snickers to the groomer on Wednesday the 5th, but I was so distracted that I actually forgot to take him! I had to call and reschedule for the following Tuesday and thankfully I remembered to take him that time. (It had been so long since he'd been to the groomer that he was really shaggy and his hair was really matted, so they ended up shaving him! He looks like a big white rat!!)
On Thursday the 6th I went to a meeting for the parents of kids going into middle school this fall (middle school is only 7th and 8th grades at Seth's school). It was interesting and helpful and I think Seth is going to really like middle school.
Seth worked on his Mars project during the week and got it mostly completed.
Frank went with me on Friday the 7th to pick up some prints and order a cake from Costco, and to a party store and to Walmart to get paper products for Jared's wedding dinner and for Tanner's Open House. We also ordered the catering for Jared's wedding dinner. It felt really good to get those things done finally.
Amy, Maddie, and Ammon arrived really late on Friday the 7th (or more accurately, they arrived really early on Saturday the 8th). I stayed up to let them in the house, but that was okay because I finally finished quilting Tanner & Darlee's quilt while I was waiting for them. And thus began 10 days straight of staying up really late and getting up early!!
June 8th to June 15th
Otherwise known as the week of the wedding celebrations!
On Saturday the 8th, I got my hair done in the morning. Amy & crew were just getting up when I left but they needed time to recuperate from their long day so they were still hanging out when I got back home. Shortly after that, they headed down to Washington DC for the rest of the day. Meanwhile, I had a list of things to do which included making cupcakes for my Primary class (another birthday!), reviewing my Primary lesson, and the inevitable wedding stuff, quilting, and cleaning. That evening we had an event to attend for a family in our ward--they had a picnic at the park in honor of their oldest daughter and her husband. They were married about 18 months ago, but she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 2 weeks after the wedding so they had never had a chance to have a celebration for them. They were here visiting, so they decided to do it now. Their daughter is still very sick (just finished her second round of chemo) but she's a trooper!! It was good to see her. She was one of my secretaries when I was serving as the Primary president. We had a lot of good times! I forgot to give Amy a key to the house before she left (pretty much forgot to do that every day) but I managed to sew together all the pieces for the border of the quilt while I was waiting up for them to get home. They had a lot of adventures every day, but I can't remember them all now so you'll have to ask Amy or Maddie or Ammon to tell you about them.
On Sunday the 9th we all went to church, had some lunch, and then Seth & I went with Amy & crew to Gettysburg. (Frank had to do some urgent work for a client and Jared had stuff to do with Jessie.) We started out going to the visitor's center, where there is a movie, cyclorama, and a large museum. There was so much to do there that we spent hours there before we actually started driving around the battlefield. I have a battlefield tour on CDs which we listened to, but the tour takes about 3 hours and we didn't have enough time to do that--it would have been dark before we got halfway through! So we kept the CDs playing as we drove around but we got way ahead of the CD. It was a beautiful cool day with low humidity and sunshine, and Gettysburg is very beautiful! We enjoyed it, but we didn't get home until bedtime.
On Monday the 10th, I had a list of 18 things to do! It included regular chores (like vacuuming and sweeping), several chores that I had to get done early since I knew I wouldn't be able to do them later in the week (such as cleaning bathrooms, planning menus, and paying bills), and the inevitable long list of wedding stuff (which included looking for some shoes for me, finding a place that had brownie bites since the place I ordered them from called to say they didn't have any and couldn't get any until the 16th, picking up table cloths from the church for Tanner's openhouse, and picking up white Christmas lights from a friend who was loaning them for Jared's reception.) That's not all the things on the list, just a sampling!! Jared got his car inspected that day and thankfully it only needed the headlights cleaned and two new tires in order to pass inspection. (We thought there were going to be more things than that.) So he got the new tires and got an industrial strength cleaner for the headlights that day.
My list for Tuesday the 11th had only 10 things on it--more cleaning and wedding stuff, plus I mowed the lawn. I picked up the flowers from the florist that I had ordered for Tanner's open house. I took the flowers, along with a bunch of photos of Tanner & Darlee, to my friend Starr's house. I took all the paper products, tablecloths, and the guest book to my friend Tammy's house. I ended up ordering more prints of photos of Tanner & Darlee later that evening. Snickers went to the groomer, I swept & mopped the kitchen and bathroom floors, and did laundry. I also worked on the quilt, and got the border sewed on but then discovered my tension was weird on one side, so I had to re-do that side. Frank unpicked the whole thing for me while I folded laundry so by staying up late, I was able to finally finish sewing the quilt the day before Tanner & Darlee got here! (Some friends in our ward offered to let Jared stay at their house at night, so he slept there every night from Saturday to Tuesday, which meant I still had access to my sewing room. Big help!) Jared got his car inspected again and it passed so he started to take it over to the MVA to get it inspected but then realized he didn't have the title because the place he bought it from hasn't sent it yet. So that will have to wait until after he and Jessie get back from their honeymoon. Jessie came over for dinner on Tuesday evening.
I forgot to take pictures of the finished quilt, but Tanner & Darlee sent me these photos of the quilt after they got back to Utah:
There were 14 things on my "to do" list for Wednesday the 12th. I put food in the crock pot that morning so that people could eat dinner whenever it worked for them. Seth was doing his presentation of his Mars project that morning so I went to that. Thankfully, he finished it up with minimal help from me (Jared helped him a little bit). I had to kind of laugh about his presentation. It was pretty disorganized and he kept having trouble remembering where he had put information on his board. He could definitely work on his presentation skills! I asked him if he knew what to do for his presentation and he said he did, so I left it at that because I didn't have time to have him practice it for me. Oh well! After I left the school, I ran some errands and did some cleaning before I had to leave for the airport to pick up Scott, Tanner & Darlee. (Meanwhile, Jared was taking the final for his online class. Thank goodness he finished it!) It was great to have all the boys plus Darlee here! Their flight left really early from Utah so after I got them home and they had something to eat, they did this:
After dinner Scott, Tanner, Jared, and Seth went to a movie together (Jared's "bachelor party"!). Meanwhile, Darlee came with me to the store to pick up all the baked goods I had ordered for the open house, plus a bunch of strawberries for the open house too. Then we took photos to my friend Starr (Frank had picked up the new prints I had ordered on his way home from work), all the baked goods to my friend Jane, cupcakes to one of my Primary kids and her family (I made them for her birthday, and then she wasn't there on Sunday!), and all the strawberries to my friend Sherrie. I also gave Sherrie cash because she had volunteered to pick up the Costco cake for the open house so that we wouldn't have to, plus I gave her payment for her neighbor who was making a bunch of fancy little pastries for the open house. After that, we went back to the store to buy some groceries! Darlee was a trooper and helped me a lot!! I had planned to pack for our trip to Philadelphia that night, but by the time we finished all of that, it was late and the boys were returning from their movie so I decided to wait until morning. Meanwhile, Jared reported that his car was overheating which was kind of alarming since he needed to drive it to Philadelphia the next day. Frank went with him to the store to get some radiator fluid and then helped him add it and drive the car around some more to see if it would stop overheating. All of that took a long time, and we didn't get to bed until about midnight (again!) Scott, Tanner & Darlee got to bed earlier because they stayed with a family in our ward (the same place Jared had been staying). Since Amy and her kids were gone, Jared came back home and spent his last night as a single guy in his own bed in his own room!
Thursday the 13th was complicated by the fact that it was supposed to be field day at Seth's school and he didn't want to miss it. We had to leave for Philadelphia by noon, so we had already told him that he was going to have to miss the afternoon. The weather forecast wasn't very good--cloudy, temperatures in the low 70s, and it was supposed to rain. I was hoping they would postpone field day, but that morning I got an email saying they were going to have an abbreviated version of field day in the school parking lot (instead of at the park) and that they wouldn't start until noon. Seth decided he wanted to go to school anyway so we got him off to school. Meanwhile, Frank's parents called and they had made it to Winchester, Virginia, which isn't far from here so we told them to stop by our house and we could all travel on to Philadelphia later. (Frank's sister Dawn and her husband Mike were with them too.) I was running around throwing things into suitcases and trying not to forget anything and trying to make sure everybody ate something (Scott, Tanner & Darlee had come over too) when we got a call from Seth saying that they had decided to start field day at 10:30 and he wanted us to bring him a towel (because of course we hadn't sent anything with him for field day since we thought he was missing the whole thing!). Thanks, school, for giving us one more thing to do in the middle of all the chaos! I had to go pick up a cake from Costco (for Jared & Jessie's wedding dinner) anyway, and Tanner needed to go to his former high school to get a transcript, so I dropped Tanner & Darlee off at the school, took the towel to Seth, and then went to Costco to get the cake. Somehow, we managed to get everything packed and ready to go and we all got on the road by noon. We had to take two cars since there were 6 of us (Jared was in his own car with Jessie and some of her family) and thankfully Scott agreed to drive one of the cars so that I wouldn't have to. (I hate driving in unfamiliar places, especially busy cities like Philadelphia.) We stopped to get some food at Roy Rogers and we made one other stop about half way there, but we made good time and arrived at our hotel by about 3:00. Jared had called us a couple of times--he was still having some trouble with overheating, but thankfully they made it okay and his car has been fine since then.
Scott paid a dollar to get this massage chair to work for 5 minutes, and he said it was totally worth it! (This was at the service area where we stopped on our way.)
We pulled into a parking place at our hotel and Hans pulled into another spot a few places down at the same time. It was cool that we arrived at exactly the same time! After we all got checked into our rooms, we sent Scott, Tanner, Darlee, and Seth to the church where we were going to be having the dinner to set things up (Hans went too) while Frank and I went to the Cracker Barrel to pick up the food, which we had ordered online a week before. We had set the pick up time as 4:30, but we ended up waiting a half hour before they had all our food ready! We weren't very happy about that, especially since the traffic was getting worse that whole time. Thankfully, it turned out okay--we got to the church right before all the guests arrived and were able to get everything ready quickly so we were able to start the dinner at about the time we had intended. We got everyone eating, and then we took turns going around the room to introduce ourselves and share funny stories about Jared and Jessie. It was a lot of fun and the food was good and there was plenty of it. Jessie's family are all really nice and easy to get to know and they like to laugh. I think everyone had a good time.
Cutting the cake for dessert!
When we were done, everyone helped clean up so we got through that quickly. We had a lot of food leftover and since it was going to be challenging to keep it fresh and to transport it back to Frederick, we called the local missionaries (their number was posted on a bulletin board in the church) and asked if they wanted it. They did! So that was a win-win situation, and we were glad we could feed the missionaries. We were leaving the church by 8:00 to head back to the hotel and I was thinking that for once we would get to bed at a decent hour. Silly me! Scott, Tanner, and Jared decided they wanted to go swimming and they stopped at a Walmart so Scott and Tanner could get some cheap (and really ridiculous) swim suits. Thankfully, I had thought to throw Seth's swimsuit in his suitcase--just in case--so he got to go swimming too.
(Ammon had a swim suit too.)
It wasn't until after they finished swimming and we returned to our rooms that the trouble started. Our rooms smelled terrible!! It turns out that someone below us was smoking marijuana in their room and it got into the vents and up into our rooms. When Frank called the front desk to complain, they said they only had one empty room so they could only move one of us to a new room. The boys' room was worse, so we moved them, but our room got worse and both Frank and Seth started to feel sick. Frank kept calling the front desk and asking if they could do anything to help us and they kept putting him on hold and generally not being helpful and making us feel like we were being difficult. I was thinking "Just great! We are going to show up at the temple for our son's wedding smelling like marijuana and feeling sick." Finally Frank decided to go down to the front desk to talk to someone in person and they finally agreed to move us to a different room. So we did that, but by the time we got through all that and finally got to bed, it was midnight again. That hotel gets a 0 out of 10. It's not their fault that one of their guests decided to do something dumb like smoke marijuana in their room, but I was totally unimpressed with their efforts to make things right for us. It was just unbelievable! But thankfully in the end it all worked out and even though Frank's head hurt the next morning and we hadn't had as much sleep as we would have liked, it didn't ruin our ability to enjoy Jared's wedding.
I took this photo of Seth and Ammon still asleep on Friday morning. Can you tell who's who?:
Amy and I look alike too--especially when we are wearing the same color:
A few other people at breakfast:
So--finally!!--it was Friday, June 14th! It was really sweet to all be in the temple together to see Jared & Jessie get sealed. I know many of you were with us in spirit, and I'm sure Dad, among others on the other side of the veil, were there too. The sealer told them that they were not supposed to give a lot of marriage counsel, so he said that his one piece of counsel was to let the Lord be their marriage counselor. I liked that! After the ceremony, as we were heading downstairs, Jessie's parents came over and hugged Frank and I. It was a sweet moment, as we realized that we are forever connected to each other now, through our children. When we got out of the temple, it was cloudy, in the 70s, and windy! It was actually a little cold until the sun came out, but I was so glad that it wasn't super hot and humid! We took our family photos first since we were on a tight time schedule to get back to Frederick in time for Tanner & Darlee's open house. The photographer did a great job! Here are just a few:
(Yes, I forgot to pack Seth's Sunday shoes! But that's the only thing I forgot to pack, which is pretty good, all things considered!)
And here are a few more pictures that I took with my phone:
After we finished family pictures, we had to jet out of there. (Jared & Jessie stayed in Philadelphia overnight. So did Amy & kids. Hans headed back to his home, but we're so glad he could come for the wedding!) Frank's parents somehow went north instead of south and ended up taking an alternate route through Pennsylvania to get back to Frederick. Scott also got stuck in Philadelphia for a while, but once we all got out of the city the traffic wasn't bad and we sailed home with only one stop in Delaware for lunch and got home by 5:30 or so. Meanwhile, my totally awesome wonderful friends had set up everything for the open house, and it looked amazing!! Don't you agree?:
Okay, I was a little surprised when I saw the cake. Costco made a little mistake. Do you see anything about PINK on the order form I filled out?:
Yeah, I didn't think so! But that's okay. It still tasted good and it didn't look bad even if it wasn't the right color.
Here's the refreshment table:
A close up--they had cute photos of Tanner & Darlee scattered about:
These are the fancy pastries that my friend's neighbor made. They looked (and tasted) fantastic!:
My friends came up with this beautiful backdrop for Tanner & Darlee to stand in front of:
My friend Starr put together this display table of photos of Tanner & Darlee:
I made the guest book, but it was one of my friend's ideas--I never would have thought it up:
Each of the tables had photos of Tanner & Darlee--either engagement photos or photos of them as children:
One of my friends had her daughter take photos for us, so I didn't take any photos during the open house except for this one:
I haven't seen the photos my friend's daughter took yet, but I'm sure they'll be wonderful.
I can't really put into words about how I feel about all the things my friends did to make this open house happen. Without their help, we couldn't have had an open house at all. Not only did they help me plan and set things up, but many of them loaned us items for the decor. The blue tablecloths, glass jars, lanterns, lights, everything for the backdrop, all the serving dishes, wood circles, white napkins, porcelain doves, and all the little sign were all things that belonged to my friends (or that they borrowed for me). The only things we had to purchase for the open house were the food, flowers, guest book, photo prints, and photo frames. So not only did they come to my rescue time-wise and sanity-wise, they also saved me a lot of money. And since many of them have artistic / decorating talents, it looked so much better than anything I could have come up with as well. We all had a wonderful time at the open house, visiting with friends. I know it meant a lot to Tanner to be able to have an event in the place where he grew up, to share his joy with life long friends and to introduce Darlee to them. When I thanked my friends, one of them responded "We're so glad you asked us for help. It was a joy! The whole time we were setting things up, we kept saying to each other 'I can't wait for Annette to see this!'" I'm actually crying while I type this, just thinking about it. I felt so loved!! I'm so blessed to have friends like that. I hope I will have the opportunity to serve each one of them in some way in the future. It was a wonderful exhausting day. After the open house we got things cleaned up and went home to bed--really late again! Frank's parents stayed with us and Frank's sister and her husband stayed at a hotel nearby. Scott, Tanner & Darlee were still staying with friends in our ward.
I still woke up fairly early on Saturday, June 15th--I'm not sure why! Frank had to be at the church to help the people cleaning to get started (that's his calling now) and he also helped Brother Hatch load some tables and chairs into a truck so they could be used at Jared & Jessie's reception. (We got permission to use tables and chairs from our building because the chairs at our building are much newer and they're white instead of gray). Scott, Tanner & Darlee arrived at the church too late to help with the loading of chairs and tables, but they did help clean the church. We all relaxed a little bit in the morning and after lunch we drove out to the reception site (Jessie's grandparents' house) to help with some of the set up. I was driving my car, and realized that I was really tired. It was so hard to stay awake! When we got to Jessie's grandparents' house, I was amazed at how great it looked already--they weren't even close to done setting up, but it looked fantastic!:
Frank helped Brother Hatch finish stringing all the lights while I put out all these little solar lights and helped sort out which cushions went with which set of patio furniture.
Tanner, Darlee, and Scott helped move all the patio furniture into place. After a couple of hours, things were mostly done and we headed back home to eat something and change clothes. Then it was back out to Jessie's grandparents' house for wedding celebration #2! It was another lovely evening, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. It didn't rain and it wasn't hot or humid. It was in the low 80s with a light breeze and low humidity. Perfect! You have to realize how unusual that is for Maryland in June. We just felt so blessed. I admit as we were going through all the planning for Jared & Jessie's reception that I sometimes wished they were keeping things simpler, kind of like what we did for Tanner's open house. (And we didn't have to do any of the work. I felt like the Hatches had so much to do though!) But their reception was absolutely beautiful and it was a lot of fun, too. They did so many fun activities and all those projects (like building planters and making concrete fire bowls and so on) really made it unique and special. It was another wonderful evening of visiting with people we love. Here are a few photos that I took (or Frank took) with my phone:
This is my friend Rebekah and her husband. She was one of the friends who helped me with Tanner's open house. You can see one of the concrete fire bowls in this photo too.
They had tons of cookies! Yum!! They also had pulled pork sandwiches, cole slaw, potato salad, fruit, and raw vegetables (like carrots and cherry tomatoes) but I didn't get a picture of that.
They played the "shoe game" and it was hilarious. (They were asked a question like "who is more likely to lose their keys or wallet?" or "who is more romantic?" and each of them had to hold up the shoe of the person they thought was the answer to the question.)
Frank's mom and his sister Dawn. Dawn and her husband had to leave from the reception to go to their hotel in Baltimore because they were flying back home on a very early Sunday morning flight. This is while they were saying goodbye, so that's why they look a little teary eyed.
Jared & Jessie's first dance. (She changed out of her wedding dress for the dancing part.)
Seth playing corn hole. Doing this and taking photos kept him pretty occupied all evening, which was great.
The two couples responsible for all the craziness and celebrating!
Cutting the cake. And yes, they did smash it into each other's faces a bit!
More than one person got mixed up and thought Amy was me!
The same photographer who took photos at the temple also took photos at the reception. Here are some of those:
Dawn let Seth use her camera at both the reception and the open house. I am looking forward to seeing some of the pictures he took! (Frank also brought his drone and took some photos and did some video footage from above, but I haven't seen those yet either.)
Here's the cake; it was one of our jobs to get the cake arranged. One of our neighbor's daughters, who has a cake decoration business, made the cake. I think it turned out beautiful!
One of the fun things they did at the beginning of the reception was to introduce the "wedding party" to everyone. First they recognized the grandparents and parents. Then they introduced the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Jessie's sisters and 2 of her friends were bridesmaids, and all of our boys were groomsmen. They had each of the groomsmen escort one (or more) of the bridesmaids out as they introduced them. I love these photos of Seth as he escorts Jessie's sister, Emily!:
Tanner escorted Jessie's two friends. (Jenny and Allie, I think were their names):
Scott escorted Jessie's sister Kylie:
And of course Jared & Jessie came out last:
The whole scene (it looked even better in real life):
Playing corn hole--our bishop and his wife, and another couple from our ward:
Jessie's grandma is talking to Jared & Jessie:
The shoe game again:
Jessie's dance with her father:
Jared & Jessie's first dance:
More dancing with their friends:
Tanner & Darlee dancing:
(I'm sad the photographer didn't get a photo of Frank & I dancing.)
Cutting the cake:
Getting ready to throw the bouquet:
Jessie's sister Emily caught it. I don't think her dad liked that!! :)
At the end of the evening, we did a sparkler send off. Tanner & Scott had decorated Jared & Jessie's car. They wrote stuff on the windows with pink paint, and my favorite message was one on a side window that said "Leave room for Jesus". The funny thing was, Jared & Jessie are actually living at her grandparents' house this summer (in the basement apartment) so after they drove away, they just drove around for a while and then came back about an hour later! In the meantime, we all cleaned everything up and when they got back we all gathered in the house to watch them open presents. They mostly got cards with money or gift cards inside, which is nice since they have to take everything out west in the fall. They do have several presents at my mom's house, since things people purchased from their gift registry were sent there. After all of that, we headed home but Frank and the boys still had to go to our church to help Brother Hatch unload all the tables and chairs. They were gone longer than I thought, partly because they discovered that a couple of the windows at the church were broken--apparently someone tried to break into the building. So they spent some time searching the whole building to make sure no one was in there and that nothing was damaged or missing. The windows were not broken that morning when they were cleaning the church, so it must have happened sometime that day. At any rate, we all got to bed after midnight again. Frank's parents stayed with us again, Amy & kids stayed at a hotel nearby, and Scott, Tanner & Darlee stayed with our wonderful ward friends again.
June 16th to 22nd
Whew!! That was almost as exhausting to write about as it was to live through it! This last week was not nearly so eventful so hopefully this won't be too much longer. Sunday the 16th we all went to church together. For the second hour, they had a special meeting for parents of youth so they had got someone to substitute my Primary class so that I could go. This meeting was actually the only meeting for adults for the second hour so all the visitors came with us even though some of them (like Scott, Tanner, Darlee, and Maddie) are not parents of youth. The purpose of the meeting was (I think) to acquaint parents with the procedure for bishop's interviews for their kids but unfortunately it turned into a grievance session where a couple of people had to complain about bad experiences their child had or that they themselves had with a bishop's interview (and they wouldn't let it go). It was kind of crazy!! Our bishop handled it well, but I felt really sorry for him and I definitely would have preferred to go to Primary. Frank couldn't take it after a while and he left the room, but Scott had asked him to give him a blessing while he was here so that gave him the opportunity to do that. They just found an empty room! After church it was time for Scott, Tanner & Darlee to head to the airport so Frank took them there. Amy & her kids came over and visited for a while and we all had some lunch. (Frank's parents were there too.) They had a mishap with their keys getting locked in the trunk of their rental car, but thankfully a guy in our ward who is a police man came over and got them out so they were able to leave for the airport in time. We loved having everybody here and it was sad to see them all leave, but we couldn't have kept up that pace much longer!
On Monday the 17th, things started to get back to normal. Frank's parents started on their way home that morning, Seth went to school, and Frank and I went to work. Sometime in the middle of all that chaos of the weekend, the lady I work with at the Arc had texted me to ask if I could meet with her on Monday. She had some training she needed to do for her job and she needed me to help her with that. It was nice to see her again, and we got all the training done successfully. Funny story, though--after I dropped Seth off at school, I happened to glance over at the floor board of the front passenger side of the car and realized that when Scott & Tanner decorated Jared's car, they had left all the packaging of the stuff they bought on the floor of my car. This happened to include (ahem!) a package of condoms! Those crazy boys! I was so glad I noticed the trash BEFORE I picked up my Arc friend. I was able to hide the evidence before I picked her up. (Although honestly, she probably would have thought it was funny.) I spent the rest of the day doing mountains of laundry (lots of towels and sheets), planning meals, and otherwise trying to get caught up with a few things. I was still feeling really tired every time I drove anywhere, so I tried to take short naps whenever I could (which wasn't often, but it did help a bit.) That evening Seth had one of his strange episodes where he got a headache, felt sick to his stomach, threw up, and then felt fine and started eating a few hours later. He should have stayed home from school the next day, but he really, really wanted to go and they were doing a special "6th grade send off" for all the sixth graders in his class which would have been really sad for him to miss. Since he has a track record of throwing up and then being just fine the next day, I was naughty and let him go to school. And he was just fine, so I don't think I did the wrong thing. He came home with several gifts from his classmates, tailored to his specific interests, including a fun t-shirt:
(The t-shirt says "I roared my way through upper elementary".) All his classmates signed their names on the back. He also got a sketch pad & pencils since he loves to draw, a small Lego set, and his favorite candy.
I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mostly doing basic chores and trying to get caught up on everything. I also spent some time reading the book for book chat because I hadn't had much time to read it up until then. I didn't finish it, but I did get over halfway through. By Wednesday I started to feel like maybe I wouldn't be tired for the rest of my life!! And honestly, I'm really grateful that I wasn't sick in bed or something, because after all the loss of sleep, stress, and hard work, I thought that was a distinct possibility! The last day of school was on Wednesday and school got out two hours early. I went to my religion class and left directly from there to pick up Seth from school. He was happy, but I think I am happier!! I told him he could have the rest of this week to fry his brains on television and games, but next week we will get back on a schedule with some chores and limited screen time.
Tuesday evening when we were eating dinner, a piece of one of my back molars broke off! Nothing like having a tooth fall apart to make you feel old. I called the dentist the next morning but they can't get me in for two weeks. Thank goodness it doesn't hurt or anything!
On Thursday I got most of the chores done in the morning and I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon helping a family in my ward set up for...their son's wedding reception! I can't get away from weddings right now! This son is one of Scott's good friends and his mom is my co-teacher in Primary. Needless to say, I knew how she must be feeling so I offered to help her with whatever she needs! I mostly spent the time putting tablecloths on tables and then helping tie chair covers onto 144 folding chairs. A lot of work, but everything looked amazing when we went to the wedding reception last night. Meanwhile, I had book chat Thursday evening, where we discussed In His Steps. It was a good, thought provoking book, even though I didn't finish it. We had a great discussion. Now we are going to read Northanger Abbey. I've already read it, but it's been a while. And I'm going to miss the discussion anyway because I'll be in Utah for Tanner's wedding.
On Friday I spent about an hour helping a family in our ward clean their new house before they move into it. Several other ladies helped too. I couldn't stay long because I had other things to do. In the afternoon I took Seth to the library where they were having an activity for kids his age--a couple of the other deacons in his quorum were going to that too. After the activity, we all went to the park for about an hour so they could play basketball / play at the park. It was another beautiful day, with sunshine, warm temperatures, a slight breeze and low humidity, so it was a great day to be outside and I enjoyed visiting with the other moms. Seth got on the merry go round, though, and that made him feel sick. He made it home, but then he threw up. (I'm glad he didn't do that in the car, though!!) He was okay after that. He just needs to keep off of things that spin! That evening, Frank and I went to the wedding for Scott's friend and it was really nice. They had a little ring ceremony (they got married in the Philadelphia temple that morning) and then they had a reception with a full sit-down dinner. The food was Cafe Rio, which is always good! We stayed until about 9:30, but opted out of staying until the send off, which wasn't going to be until 11:00 pm! No thanks, we've had enough late nights lately!
Throughout the week, I've been working on this post as well as trying to get the finances caught up, which was a big job with all the traveling and wedding expenditures. I'm mostly caught up now. Today I prepared my Primary lesson for tomorrow, practiced my ukulele (first time in weeks), wrote thank you notes to a bunch of my friends, mowed the lawn (Frank helped) and did some things for my music calling. I still need to clean the kitchen floor before bedtime, so I'd better go do that now. It was another really beautiful day today--how long can this last??! (We did have a couple of really warm and humid days earlier this week, which reminded us how lucky we've been.)
Jared & Jessie have spent this week at her grandparents' beach house at the outer banks in North Carolina. They left Sunday and they are coming back tomorrow. It will be nice to see them again. I've decided, though, that after one of your children gets married, the parents should get to go on a honeymoon. We could really use a week at the beach about now!
A word about Snickers before I finish up: we were kind of worried about him the last couple of days before we went to Philadelphia because he was shivering a lot and also wasn't eating his food. We left some soft food to try while we were gone and he did eat that. When we got back, he seemed calmer although he still wasn't eating. We think maybe he was shivering and acting upset because of all the different people coming and going at our house. It definitely was kind of crazy!! After we got back and he hadn't really eaten anything for a few days, we tried giving him some soft dog food again (he prefers that) and he gobbled it up. So we know he's not skipping meals because of a stomach ache or something like that. But we can't figure out why he is suddenly refusing to eat his regular dog food. I'd prefer not to take him back to the vet unless we have to. He ate well for 3 or 4 days so yesterday we switched back to his regular food. He's refusing to eat it again, but we're going to see if he will give up and eat it if we give it a few more days. It's perplexing.
Seth has had some nasty meltdowns during the last couple of weeks, but all things considered he's done pretty well overall with all the craziness. It will be good to get him back on a regular schedule, though.
And last but not least, we really enjoyed getting to know Darlee better while she was here! She just rolled with all the chaos and jumped in to help whenever there was a need. She was really patient with Seth and we discovered that she has a playful side and great sense of humor. She seems like a really good match for Tanner and we are really happy that she will be joining our family. It feels wonderful to welcome daughters into the family!! We feel really blessed.
And if you made it through this monster blog post, bless you!
