Weekly Review November 13 '20

 It's the middle of November already. It's going to be 2021 before we know it! Most of this week didn't feel like November. We had beautiful days in the 70s! It was so nice!! It rained all day Wednesday and into Thursday morning and it was cloudy the rest of Thursday but still fairly warm both of those days. Today the sun is back out again and it's cooler, but still above average for November. It is supposed to cool down a lot this weekend and into next week, though. In the meantime, I've just been grateful for the beautiful weather that we've had. 

Frank wasn't as busy this week...he only had one overnight job, which was on Monday...his last POS install. He is so glad to be done with those! He said last week that he wanted to go out to eat on Tuesday to celebrate being done with POS installs, so that's what we did. We enjoyed a yummy meal at Outback Steakhouse. And just in the nick of time too...our governor announced that day that because of an uptick in Covid cases, restaurants would be cut back to 50% capacity instead of 75%, effective at 5:00 pm on Wednesday. (Indoor gatherings are also being cut down to 25 people.) Anyway, Frank certainly still kept busy with work all week, and there were a few crazy emergencies but at least he was home almost every night and got a decent night's sleep. 

Speaking of increasing Covid cases, from what we hear cases are going up all over the country (Utah seems to be particularly hard hit) and lots of places are instituting new restrictions so that leaves us wondering if we are really going to be able to carry out our holiday plans for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. We're in "wait and see" mode. We're hoping we will still get to travel, but probably won't know until the last minute if plans are going to work out or not. 

Seth had a Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening (they played a version of "Headbandz") and on Thursday evening he had a presidency meeting to plan next month's activities. On Wednesday Seth got braces on his top teeth (he'll get braces on the bottom teeth in a couple of months). His mouth is sore, of course, and he doesn't love having braces but he's dealing with them pretty well. He has complained a bit, of course, but doesn't seem to be suffering too much, thankfully. Knowing this was coming, I purposely planned meals with soft foods for a number of days. Before and after photos (sorry "before" is a bit blurry):

 I've been keeping fairly busy. Having a calling in YW definitely adds quite a few events to my life! On Sunday evening there was a stake fireside for parents and leaders of youth, as well as youth class presidents, so that means everybody in our family since Seth is the Deacon's quorum president. The fireside was held online, with only a few stake youth leaders and 2 youth actually at the stake center. The purpose was to discuss the youth program and how we can help and encourage the youth. It was pretty good. They had 2 youth speakers who were particularly good and then they had a panel discussion where we could submit questions. On Sunday we had in person church and then I had my first online class with my YW class. One of the girls actually taught the lesson and she did a good job. On Tuesday our ward YW leaders had a presidency meeting where we discussed the fireside and some other issues. On Wednesday evening we had an online YW activity...my class was combined with the older girls' class as well as the Teachers and Priests for this activity. (Normally we do activities Tuesday night...I'm not sure why this one was on Wednesday.) Anyway, it was a mystery cooking activity. They told us what ingredients we would need ahead of time, but not how much or what we'd be making. We just had to come up with our own recipe. The ingredients were very similar to the ingredients we use to make buckeye candy (peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, chocolate chips...) so I was planning to make those but then I discovered that I had only one stick of butter in the house! That wouldn't be enough to make many buckeyes so I made peanut butter bars with a layer of chocolate on top instead. Some people made no bake cookies and some made truffles (basically buckeyes) or "puppy chow" (cereal coated with powdered sugar and peanut butter). I'm sure everything that was made tasted good...it's hard to go wrong with peanut butter, chocolate and butter!! It turns out the actual recipe was for buckeyes...just a slightly different recipe than the one we use. Here's a photo of my creation:

Monday was a day off school (teacher work day because of end of term). Seth enjoyed having the day off and I got to go visit with my friend Rebekah for a few hours, so I enjoyed it too. I had a good idea before I went over to visit with her...I realized I'm going to need to wind several skeins of yarn into balls soon since the afghan I'm making changes colors. So I took one skein of each of the 3 new colors I'll be using soon and I wound those into balls while I talked with Rebekah. It was nice to get that normally very boring job done while I talked to her--kept me entertained!

Last night we had an online RS activity. We shared family history stories and ideas while we made family tree boards. I got all my photos attached to the board but I haven't added the names of everybody yet so I haven't taken a photo of it yet. I will share a photo when it's done. I'm nervous about adding the names...worried that I'm going to mess that part up!! I'm glad we did this activity because it motivated me to get photos of Frank's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents from his parents. My family tree in family search on Frank's side has been bare of photos so it's nice to have pictures of at least the first four generations now. 

Besides all of that, I've been reading a lot and crocheting, of course. Also, I'm still watching Education Week presentations. I finished the book for book chat (Song For a Whale) yesterday. I would have finished it a lot sooner but I got distracted by other things. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it. Today I started reading Merci Suarez Changes Gears, which is a Newbery winner and the only one I own that I haven't read yet. I've also been reading the Harry Potter series again...just one chapter a day for the last few weeks...and I'm already about half way through the second book. I'm making good progress on the afghan. I finished the first band of cream color and successfully added the next color (purple) and I'm well into that band. Here's a photo:

It's a lot easier now...I'm just repeating the same pattern over and over so I have it memorized and don't have to check the instructions in the pattern anymore. It's pretty fun.  

I didn't make any progress on the skirt this week. I wanted to work on it on Saturday, but we really needed to mow the lawn and do a bunch of weeding in the yard and by the time we were done with all that, my back was hurting and I couldn't face the idea of doing more cutting (which is also hard on my back). We watched the BYU football game Saturday night and that was great. Frank was exhausted (of course) so he didn't make it through the whole game but Seth and I stayed up until the end. Well, actually, Seth fell asleep on the floor a few minutes before the end so I guess I'm the only one who made it through the entire game, but Seth saw most of it. It's fun to see BYU playing so well!

On Saturday Seth and I both got haircuts too...you'll notice his hair is much shorter in the photos I included above. It looks so much better! He's a real pill about getting the back of his neck trimmed, though. He tolerates the scissors but will NOT stay still for the clippers, so there's always short hairs on the back of his neck that the stylist is not able to clip. It's frustrating, but I don't know what to do about it. I think he has some sensitivity issues. At any rate, the rest of it looks much better. 

I feel like I'm forgetting stuff but that's probably the most important things. I have continued to attempt to capture the beauty of the outdoors, so I'll finish with a few more photos that I took this week.

Weekly Review November 6 '20

 Well, let's see...I guess I'll start with Frank. As I mentioned last week, he worked Friday night as well as Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday nights this week. The Friday night job turned out to be a bust because the contractor was drilling a hole and hit a water line and caused a flood. So he couldn't finish the job but Frank still had to stay up all night...supervising the emergency plumber, who came to fix the damaged water line. That means Frank will have to go back to that store another night for the drive thru timer install, so that is a bummer. Sunday night he had a digital menu install and Monday night he had a POS install (only one left!). The Wednesday night job was a cabling job and didn't take long so he was able to get home by about 1:00 am. He took Wednesday during the day off from Roy Rogers because he has built up so many extra hours, but he didn't get any rest. Instead, he had some work to do for two of his clients...one in southern Maryland and one in Virginia. He ended up being gone all day and since he was already in Virginia and the restaurant where he had the cabling job on Wednesday night was also in Virginia, he ended up not coming home in between. (He would have been home about one hour and then would have had to turn around and go back.) I feel like I've barely seen him this week so I'm glad it's almost the weekend. 

Seth had Tuesday off of school for election day. Originally, I'm sure school was out because they use the schools for polling places. I guess they decided to keep it a day off so that it would be easier for the teachers to go vote (as well as parents who would normally be supervising their kids' school work). He enjoyed having a day off and I enjoyed not having to supervise him! Other than that, he had a quiet week. He didn't have a Deacon's activity this week (they decided not to meet since it was a day off school and at least one of the boys was out of town). This is the last week of the term so they are winding things up and I feel like he didn't have as much work to do. He finished his school work early on more than one day. I checked his grades today and they all look good...including PE. He did better on the last few quizzes and his teacher also added in points for class participation and he got 100% for that. So now his grade is a high B. 

Seth did get sick one night this week...I guess it was Tuesday night...in the middle of the night. He said his head did not hurt this time, so who knows why he got sick to his stomach. He only threw up once and then went back to sleep and was fine the next day. Unfortunately, I did not go right back to sleep but instead stayed awake for a couple of hours, so I was pretty tired on Wednesday.

I actually haven't felt really great this past week...I've had headaches a few days and my stomach hurt a lot the first couple of days this week too. I'm feeling fine now, though, and I think it was probably hormonal (the headaches, anyway). I've been busy with all the usual stuff...housework, supervising Seth, reading, crocheting, projects, and BYU education week presentations. I finished reading Smoky the Cowhorse. I got the book for book chat from the library on Wednesday and I'm well into it already. It's going to be an easy read and I'm enjoying it so far. I got all of the home movies digitized except for the ones that are still on tape (instead of DVD). I still have to figure out how to get those transferred off of the tapes but I need Frank to help me with that and he hasn't been around much (and when he is around, he's exhausted...or sleeping.) I made some progress with the afghan I was crocheting but then ran into another problem...or thought I had. I was concerned that the edges of the afghan were not looking even at all, and I thought I must be doing something wrong so I was looking at that more closely trying to figure out what to do. I finally realized that I just wasn't looking at it right! This particular afghan is a ripple afghan (zigzag pattern), which I've never done before. So I had a good laugh at myself over that, and I'm relieved that I don't have to take out a bunch of rows and start over again. Here's some photos of how it looked early this week:

And here it is now:

I haven't made it very far yet but now that I've worked out all the bugs it should go more quickly. (I will need to change colors several times...it's not going to be plain cream colored).  

On Saturday I got the skirt I'm working on back out and I cut out the two back pieces. I didn't have a lot of time to work on it and I wasn't feeling really great (one of my headache days) so that's all I did that day. The two front pieces are going to be a bit trickier, but once I get those done I only have the yoke (waistband) pieces left to cut out and those will be a bit easier. 

On Saturday we made shrimp tacos for lunch, using the new little grill. They were so yummy!! I will definitely be making those again!

Saturday was Halloween, of course, but it sure wasn't very exciting at our house. Seth's last year to trick or treat was last year, so no dressing up for anyone at our house. We turned on our porch light to welcome trick or treaters from 6:00 to 8:30 and we had a grand total of two trick or treaters come by. Two!! The number of trick or treaters in our neighborhood has been dwindling the last several years and I expected that there would be a lot fewer this year because of Covid-19, but I didn't anticipate there would be practically none. I bought a lot less candy this year, thankfully, but we still have a lot of leftovers (of course) that I am trying not to eat. We're planning to take the leftovers to NC with us for Thanksgiving...to eat in the car and to share with others!

I watched the first half of the BYU football game that night, which turned out to be perfect since the first half was super exciting (5 BYU touchdowns) and it looks like the second half was really boring (only 2 BYU field goals and the other team only scored once.) It also helped that we were "falling back" that night so even though I was up until midnight, it was the same as staying up until 11:00.

I got released from both of my church callings on Sunday and sustained to my new calling as a YW advisor. My class did have an online activity on Tuesday, so I went to that. In honor of "Dias los Muertos" we were asked to come prepared to share a family story. I wanted to share either "Miracle at the Crossing" or "Ruth and the Christmas Doll", but by the time it was my turn we were almost out of time so instead I told the story of Dad killing the turkey (which they all loved) and promised to send them the other two stories to read. All the other stories that were shared were really good, too (mostly funny stories). I'm going to enjoy this group of girls! Today I spent some time talking to the young adult who is replacing me as ward music chair, explaining what the responsibilities are for that calling. 

I've been busy with a lot of other little things like gathering family photos for an upcoming RS activity, setting up dentist and hair cut appointments and calling the pharmacy to find out why Seth's prescription hasn't been filled yet (his medicine has been on order for over 2 weeks!). I also needed to contact Walmart because the order I picked up last week was not "tagged" as picked up for some reason. I never got a receipt for it and then on Saturday I got an email saying that my order had been cancelled. But don't worry...I hadn't been charged for it. Free groceries! Awesome!! Just kidding...I try to be honest, so I decided I'd better call them. Except guess what? No one at my local Walmart answers the phone, apparently. I tried several times and finally got to talk to a human being on Wednesday. The guy I talked to said "Hmm. That's weird. I'll have to talk to the people in charge of the app to see if they can fix that." He also thanked me for my honesty. But so far, that order has not been changed. It still says "cancelled" when I look it up and our credit card hasn't been charged for it. Meanwhile, I picked up another order yesterday and that one hasn't been tagged as picked up yet either!! It still says "ready for pick up" even though I picked it up over 24 hours ago. So I tried to call again today about that one, but once again...the phone just rings and rings and no one answers it. So frustrating, and so strange!! I've been doing a weekly order since school started and have not had this problem until now.

I'm still enjoying BYU education week presentations...definitely well worth the $49 I paid for access to these classes! I watched one about insulin dependence, one about symbolism of the atonement (excellent!!) and another about doing things we don't think we can do or don't want to do. It was excellent too. My favorite quote from that one is "It's not about understanding the reason for the commandment (talking about commandments we don't understand or agree with), it's about knowing and trusting the Commander (God)." Yes, yes, yes! That's how I've always felt, but haven't been able to put into words.  I've probably forgotten a few other presentations; I think I watched more than 3. 

I have this game I like to play called "Just 2 Words". You try to figure out what the photos represent...usually a familiar two word phrase or compound word; sometimes a famous person's name. I usually only do one puzzle each day (although you can do as many as you want). I laughed at the irony on Wednesday morning when the puzzle I happened to be on turned out to be this one:

Nope, no one in this presidential election is going to be able to claim a landslide victory! My plan for coping with the election results (or lack of results or whining about the results...) this week has been to avoid watching or reading the news. I'm a lot happier that way!!

After it got really cold last weekend, it has warmed up again this week and has been really quite pleasant. It's beautiful outside and I keep taking photos but then being disappointed that the photos don't look anywhere near as beautiful as it is in reality. But here are a few of the photos I took this week, to finish up.  

Weekly Review October 30 '20

 Today is the first cold day we've had this fall. It was cold enough that I wore my coat. It's been cloudy most of this week too and yesterday we got a ton of rain (leftovers of Hurricane Zeta). It's getting dark noticeably earlier now too and the trees are getting more color and some are losing their leaves. It's starting to feel like winter. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, though...I'm looking forward to some sunshine.

Frank had a really crazy week, as I predicted, and it's not over yet. He worked every night this week, starting on Monday, and he is working tonight too. He's also working Sunday night, Monday night, and Wednesday night next week. Monday was a POS install...only 2 of those left to do, I think. The rest of the week he has been doing drive thru timer installations. He didn't get home Tuesday morning until nearly 7:30 (lots of problems with the POS install). He thought he'd be home by about 3:00 or 4:00 on Wednesday morning, but instead didn't get home until about 5:15. Thursday morning it was 4:00 am. Today he actually got home by 1:45 am, which was a very welcome surprise (for both him and me). He actually thought he was going to be gone all night. He was scheduled to do a drive thru timer installation at one restaurant last night and a different one tonight. Then because of the rain, they had to change plans because the rain was going to interfere with being able to do everything. So they decided to do the part that could be done in the rain at both of those restaurants last night and do the other part at both restaurants tonight. (Neither of these restaurants is in Frederick...both over an hour away, and not near each other either!) As it turned out, they were able to do everything at the first restaurant after all and it was actually easier than normal so they finished at the first restaurant by shortly after midnight. At that point, they decided to just wait and do the second restaurant tonight as originally planned. Frank has definitely done work during the day every day too although he hasn't had to work all day. Most days, though, he only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep before waking up again and getting sucked into doing some work so he's been exhausted, of course, and I've been a bit of a mess worrying about his health and / or that he'll get in a car wreck since he's so tired. Today, however, he slept from 2:00 am until nearly 9:00 am, so that was wonderful and I'm feeling a lot less stressed at the moment. It's a good thing he got some rest too, since today has been kind of crazy. Someone got in a wreck this morning near one of the restaurants and took out a utility box which knocked out power, internet access, etc. for not only that restaurant but also one of his clients for his business. So he's been a little busy taking care of those things. (The restaurant that lost power also had a gas leak earlier this week...the night Frank was there working, as a matter of fact {although it had nothing to do with him} which forced them to be closed the next day until the leak was fixed so it hasn't been their best week!)

Okay, so that's been Frank's week. He and I did manage to go vote today...we decided to take advantage of early voting. So did a lot of other people, apparently, because there was a huge line that took about 45 minutes to get through. The voting location was the high school near us and the voting was in the gym which has an outside door so the line was outside...and stretched all the way around 3 sides of the gym and down a very long sidewalk. I was really, really glad I thought to put on a coat for that trip! It's good to see that so many people are taking the time to vote, though. Here we are at the end of the line (the white building to the far left of the photo is the back of the building we were waiting to get into; the door was on the opposite side, in the front. You can't really see in the photo, but there are people lined up all along the back of the building.)

Getting closer:

 

Now we are next to the building and there are a lot of people behind us:

Of course, the line is a lot longer than it would be normally since people were standing 6 feet apart. Still, it was a pretty decent line! Luckily we got home just in the nick of time to log Seth back onto his computer for his two afternoon classes. (He finished all his other work earlier, which is why we decided to go vote at that point, since he didn't need to be online.)

Seth had an online Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening...they did a scavenger hunt. Each person had to bring four common items that everyone would be likely to have in their home. They took turns holding up an object and everyone else would race to find that object in their own house and bring it back to hold up...whoever got there first "won". (I guess they actually didn't keep score.) Seth seemed to have a lot of fun and I think the smaller size of our house was a definite advantage. The first item he had to find was a roll of toilet paper and the half bath was literally a few feet away from where he was sitting on the living room couch! (The three objects Seth picked were a Lego mini figure, a salt shaker, and a pair of socks.) Anyway, I thought it was a fun idea. Seth also had an online presidency meeting on Thursday so they could plan the next month of activities. He had to do that by phone, though, because Frank was already gone to work and I had book chat last night so neither of us were home. Seth met with his counselor on Wednesday, but that is the last visit for a while. Things are going pretty well right now (his counselor thinks so, too) so we decided to take a break for a while. Other than that, Seth has just kept busy with school. A couple of days, like today, he finished his work early.

I feel like I didn't get a ton accomplished this week but I did get some things done...I guess they just took longer than I anticipated. I'm still working on reading Smoky the Cowhorse. It's not super long, but it's also not super engaging so I usually only read one chapter a day. I also read a little bit more of one of the ADHD books, although not much. There's some good stuff in there, though. After uploading photos to our Costco account for days on end, I finally finished that project. I haven't made much headway with digitizing the movies but I got a small start on it. I also started working on crocheting an afghan but ran into problems and basically had to start over so I haven't made much progress on that yet either. Hopefully I will make more progress this coming week. On Saturday I pulled out a pattern and some fabric for a skirt that I purchased literally 5 years ago (yes, I have many unfinished projects!) so I can finally make it (hopefully). The fabric is plaid, so it has to be "matched" at the seams and I haven't done anything like that since I was in college so I couldn't remember how to do it. I did some reading in a few sewing technique books I have and watched a few YouTube videos and also called Mom and talked to her about it for a while. I did some preliminary work on the pattern pieces that day, but it was getting late by then and I was tired so I didn't start cutting pieces out. Unfortunately, I haven't got back to it yet! (Hopefully tomorrow I will.) I stayed up quite late that night watching the first half of the BYU football game (the first half ended around midnight). I would have liked to watch the whole thing but I didn't want to be exhausted for Sunday, especially since we actually got to go to church. 

At church the 1st Counselor asked if he could talk to me for a few minutes after the meeting but then afterwards he said he was mistaken and the bishop actually wanted to talk to me instead. The bishop didn't call me until Sunday evening which sort of left me wondering for a while, although I figured it must be a calling change. And I was right...I'm going to get released this Sunday from both of my callings (ward music chair and Primary activities leader) and I'm going to be sustained as an advisor in YW for the middle class (what used to be Mia Maids). I am kind of sad to leave my Primary activities calling...a calling I've literally wanted for years and finally got, then only got to do it for 4 months before everything shut down! But I am excited to work with the YW and the YW counselor I'll be working with is one of my best friends (she was one of my counselors back when I was Primary president) so I am really, really happy about that! The bishop told me when he talked to me that he had been planning on me being the ward music chair "forever" but he finally gave in and changed his mind! He said my name comes up often for callings (yikes!) and he always said "no, she's not available" because he wanted me to continue being the music chair. Kind of makes me wonder what I got out of! 😉 Anyway, I'm glad that I ended up with this calling and I have actually been feeling lately like it was time for a change so it all feels right, even though I will miss both callings. I got to talk to my friend (the YW counselor) for a while on Wednesday and she filled me in a bit on the girls and what my responsibilities will be, and she's super excited to work with me too. I guess the bishop told her "no" the first time she asked, too! On Sunday, besides church, we had online RS and quorum meetings and I really enjoyed the RS lesson, where we discussed Sister Eubank's most recent talk.

For book chat last night we discussed The Odyssey and now we are reading a book called Song for a Whale. I don't actually have a copy of it yet, though...waiting to get one from the library. I always really enjoy book chat. 

I watched several more Education Week presentations this week, although I'm not remembering what a lot of them were now. I watched one on eliminating negativity, another one about dreams & revelation (pretty sure I've never had a revelatory dream...except possibly once or twice...most of my dreams are complete gibberish!!), and at least one other which was about linking people together on a family tree. That one was excellent and I think I need to watch it again. I've probably forgotten a few others that I watched.

A few weeks ago we got a small indoor grill thing and I tried it out this week by making steak and asparagus one night. It was yummy:

I think I'll be using this grill a lot. We cook a lot of meat (low carbs) and this grill is nice because you can program how you want your meat done (medium well, medium rare, etc.) and you put a thermometer in one of the pieces of meat and it lets you know when it's done. We have a tendency to overcook meat (because Frank wants his meat well done and is very leery of pink meat) but this meat was perfect (and Frank even let me do "medium well" instead of "well"). I also like that it closes while cooking so all the grease is trapped in there. It has it's own splash plate that I can remove and easily wash every time we use it and it also has a pan below the grate that collects all the grease / juices so the meat isn't greasy and the kitchen stays cleaner too. 

One more thing I almost forgot about...on Monday Frank and I had a tele-meeting with a financial planner. We talked to one of the planners at the financial planning company that Frank used to work for, FSA. We were able to ask lots of questions and figure out some things we want to do to plan for retirement as well as the best way to invest some savings that we have. It was really helpful. 

That is all of our news from these parts. I will finish with a few photos of our pretty backyard view:

Weekly Review October 23 '20

 It is another beautiful fall day today! I love days like this. This week was a lot like all the others--we're not doing anything exciting, but calm is good!

Last Friday Frank actually got off work about 2:00 pm. Wow, that was nice! I still had some POS equipment in the back of my car from his work earlier that week and I also had some errands to run so I met him at his office when he got off work. On the way, I stopped at Seth's school to pick up his year book (from last school year...yes, they were late getting them done) and some other materials that he is going to need. After meeting Frank at his work so he could get the equipment out of my car, we went to Costco together. We needed to get some chicken and we also had a rewards certificate to spend. We got a few small clothing items and we also got an indoor grill. I'd been seeing advertisements for this grill and thought it looked kind of cool since we cook meat pretty often these days and I thought Frank would probably like it. He did, so that's what we got with our reward certificate. (I wanted to get a microwave, but they only had one kind and it was too small). 

On Saturday Frank and I went on a "date" to see some fall leaves. It was a perfect, beautiful fall day. We went up to a place called Pen Mar Park, which is on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland (hence the name). The drive up to the park is really beautiful, through the countryside and into the "mountains". The Appalachian Trail goes right through the park...as a matter of fact, it is pretty close to the halfway point of the trail:

We were surprised that there actually weren't that many fall leaves yet...I feel like there were more colors in our own neighborhood...but it was beautiful anyway. It also felt about 10 degrees cooler up there. 

After we got back home, I finished the hat I'd been working on all week.

Sunday was fairly busy, although we did not have in-person church. We were able to tune in to Sacrament Meeting, though, and then we did our own sacrament at home. After that we normally would have online Sunday School, but instead our ward had their Primary program this week. It was online too...they had the kids send in photos of themselves with their families, with pictures they had drawn & colored, and also videos of the kids talking about something they've learned at home church this year, and even a few videos of some of the kids singing one of the Primary songs for the year. It was really nice and we enjoyed it a lot! After lunch Frank had an online meeting for his self-reliance calling and then we tuned in for a baptism service. The girl who was baptized is a friend of another girl in our ward and she has actually been coming to church with her for 3 years. She has wanted to be baptized for quite a while but her parents weren't too thrilled about it. She just graduated from high school in the spring and she is at college now (somewhere in Maryland) and the baptism was held in her new college ward. Anyway, it was really neat and a whole ton of people from our ward attended since we all know and love her. 

Seth had a strange school week because it was parent teacher conferences this week so school started 4 hours late on both Wednesday and Thursday and today school ended 3 1/2 hours early. I don't know think they planned the amount of work he should get very well because yesterday he was working until after 7:00 pm and he still didn't get everything done he was supposed to do on Thursday (nearly all of the time that were "school hours" he was in online classes so then when that was done he only had about 30 minutes left of "school hours" to do all his assigned work for the day). I was annoyed by that, but today he got done right on time and the rest of the week he got done on time or early so it turned out mostly okay overall. I attended online parent teacher conferences with two of his teachers (which covers 5 of his classes) and he is doing really well in all of those classes...mostly As and one B, I think. His Spanish teacher is good about communicating regularly through email, and he is doing better in that class too and has a B now. He also has an A in music. I wasn't able to meet with either his music or PE teachers because all of their time slots were filled up. His PE grade is actually really bad right now...a D...but when I looked at the details, his teacher has had only 5 little quizzes worth 4 points each, so 20 total points so far. He got 3 or 2 out of 4 on all of them, so that's why his grade is so low. He needs to do better on those, but I think also as she gives them more things to do he should be able to pull his grade up as long as he does okay with the new stuff. I will probably send an email to his teacher to touch base, since I couldn't meet with her for a conference. 

Seth had an in-person activity on Tuesday evening...they had a combined activity for all the youth. They met in one family's backyard to watch a movie. They all wore masks. They watched an Alfred Hitchcock movie called Rope, and he seemed to enjoy it. That's the first time they have had an in-person activity for more than just his quorum since March. (And he's had very few in-person quorum activities either.) 

Frank worked overnight both Monday and Tuesday nights. On Monday he was in Cumberland, Maryland, which is about 2 1/2 hours from here so he got a hotel room so he could sleep for a while there before trying to drive home. He actually had some work to do at that restaurant earlier in the day, so he left here Monday morning and I didn't see him again until Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, he only slept for a couple of hours at the hotel before he woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. Then there were some issues that came up so he ended up working most of the day on Tuesday. He did get an hour or two of sleep at home on Tuesday evening before he had to leave for work again. Thankfully, that job didn't take as long and he was home by 1:30 am. The rest of the week has been pretty normal...very busy, but not too overwhelming. Next week is going to be crazy, but I'll tell you all about that next week! He only has a few more POS installs to go but he has drive through timer installations and digital menu installations still, which will be going on for the rest of the year, I think. 

Frank picked up some new glasses on Saturday and wore them Saturday and Sunday but he got a really bad headache so today he took them back. They looked at them and said the focal point was wrong on one lens, so they are going to make a new lens for him. Hopefully that will help. 

Speaking of headaches, I forgot to mention in last week's post that Seth had another headache / throwing up episode last Wednesday evening. This time he actually mentioned at dinner time that the sight in one of his eyes "looks too bright". I asked him if his head ached, and he said a little. I gave him acetaminophen right after dinner but it was too late and he started throwing up (and his head ache got a lot worse) a short time later. This leads me to suspect (as we have wondered all along) that he is probably getting migraine headaches and that is what is causing the nausea / throwing up. We're going to keep paying attention to see if we can figure out what might be triggering the headaches, but so far we've never been able to see any pattern. I do want to take him to the doctor at some point, but I figure the doctor isn't going to be able to figure much out unless we can tell him things like what Seth has been eating the day these incidents happen. So I'm going to start keeping track and take him to the doctor after we have some data to share. 

I'm keeping busy with reading and projects. I finished The Odyssey and then I read a Newbery winner called The Crossover. Now I am reading another Newbery winner called Smoky the Cowhorse. I spent some time on Saturday trying to decide what crochet  or sewing project I am going to start next, but I actually didn't start anything new with that this week. Instead, I have been working on getting all of our digital photos uploaded to my Costco photo account so that I have copies of them somewhere besides my computer (and my phone...for the ones that are still on my phone). My phone is actually almost maxed out on photos, but I didn't want to erase them off my phone until I had a backup copy somewhere. I've made pretty good progress and I'm about halfway done with that project. I used to move photos to my Costco account at the end of each month, but I fell behind on that years ago. When I looked to see when I had actually stopped, I laughed...it was March of 2013, about 3 months after I got called to be the RS president. That explains it! I fell behind on a lot of things at that point and I think I'm still trying to catch up! I have also been working on another (somewhat related) project--getting all of our home movies onto DVD. I actually did copy most of them to DVD years ago, but we have about 3 tapes that haven't been copied to DVD yet. So far, I haven't done any copying...I just got our video camera out of the storage unit and figured out how to hook it up to our television (with Frank's help). I also looked at what was on all the DVDs to make sure I knew what I'd already done, and watched a good part of the tapes that haven't been copied yet to see what's on them. Most of those are of Seth when he was a baby and watching those was interesting because things have changed so much since then. The biggest thing I noticed was how NOISY it was all the time at our house when we had all 4 boys at home! How on earth did I cope? Seth by himself definitely doesn't make that much noise, although he certainly can be very loud. 

I have also continued to watch BYU Education Week presentations and enjoyed them all very much. I can't remember all of the ones I've watched, but I watched one on the book of Revelation (part 1, but the 2nd part isn't available yet), one called "Religious Freedom for Non-Lawyers", which was really helpful, One on what causes conflict (including some conflict resolution strategies) which was really good, and one about the importance of Joseph Smith's First Vision (also a two parter). I'm pretty sure I watched at least one other, but I'm not remembering what it was about now. 

Since Seth didn't have school yesterday morning, my friend Rebekah came to visit with me for a few hours before she went to a physical therapy appointment. We sat on the deck and talked. It was kind of foggy and a little drizzly but not cold. Of course, right about the time she needed to leave the sun came out and it turned into a beautiful day! That's okay, though...I'm glad to get some beautiful weather whenever I can. This week was mostly really nice (even a little too warm at times) and we went for a long walk on Wednesday evening. 

That is all there is to report this week...at least, that's all I can remember. 

Weekly Review October 16 '20

 When I left off last week, I was hoping that Frank would get home from work early. He did get home around 4:00 pm, which is a little early, but then a problem came up at one of the restaurants with a piece of equipment failing and it needed to be replaced right away, so guess who got to do that? The restaurant was in La Plata, which is over an hour and a half away, too. So he ended up eating dinner and then leaving again, and didn't get home until about 11:00 pm. Boo!! Frank has had a busy work week this week (what's new?) but it wasn't too bad. His Monday night POS install was the biggest hiccup...it actually went quite smoothly and they were done by 3:45 am, but then he discovered that someone had left the back delivery door to the restaurant unlocked and everyone who had a key was gone and sound asleep, of course. he couldn't leave the restaurant unlocked like that, so he pulled his car up close to the door so that it couldn't be opened from the outside and he had to wait there until someone finally showed up to open the store at about 5:45. (He did try to get in touch with the store manager, but of course he was asleep at that hour.) This restaurant was about an hour away, so he didn't get home and to bed until 7:00 am. So that was really frustrating that he lost so much sleep over someone else's mistake. He was awake again and on the phone shortly after 9:00 am but thankfully he didn't have to go anywhere that day. He probably worked at least 2 or 3 hours, but all from home. he took a few short naps later but he was, of course, very tired by bedtime on Tuesday night. The rest of the week has been pretty calm, by comparison. I hope nothing "explodes" today!

Anyway, going back to last Saturday, I had Seth try on all of his pants and shirts to see what still fit. He has outgrown a couple of pairs of pants and a lot of shirts, but since he had tons of shirts he still has plenty of shirts left. He mostly needed a couple of pairs of pants and some new church clothes, plus some underwear. Frank and I went to the store later that day and got the pants & underwear (we had other shopping to do too) and I went on Amazon on Monday and ordered a dress shirt, dress pants, and a couple of ties for him. He should be good for a while, except that we still need to get some Sunday shoes. When Frank and I went out to the store we also went to his office on that same trip to drop off equipment that was still in the back of my car from his Monday night POS install (he brings back the old equipment that was replaced). Then we got some lunch at Cafe Rio. It was nice to spend some time alone together! On Saturday afternoon we watched the BYU football game and we were glad BYU won again although it was disappointing that they didn't play as well as they were played for all the other games. Finally, there was a game that was at a time that we could actually watch the whole thing and it was their worst game of the season so far! But that's okay...at least they did win the game. 

We had in person church on Sunday and then Frank & Seth had online quorum meetings and I had an online RS meeting. It was also fast Sunday and our stake had a special fast for several things. I spent the day reading a family history book and doing indexing.

The rest of the week has been the normal school / work routine, without a lot of variations. Seth had an online Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening--they had "show and tell" (show something they made or something they've been doing). Seth also had a virtual checkup with our doctor on Wednesday afternoon--just following up on his medication. This week is "midterm" at school and today he has the day off.

We got one of those new video doorbell things on Wednesday and Frank spent quite a bit of time that evening installing it...there was some kind of problem with the connection but he finally got it working correctly. I don't like answering the door when I'm the only one at home so it will be nice to be able to see who is there when the doorbell rings. 

I kept quite busy this week and got a lot done. I finished the hat I was working on:

And started a new one, which I am well into:

I finished the ADHD book I was reading and started a new one. I am also only a few pages away from finishing The Odyssey. I watched a BYU Education Week talk nearly every day and have really enjoyed all of them so far. I watched one about teaching our kids to have "grit" which was excellent and another one about financial preparedness that was also excellent. It encouraged me that we are not as far off in preparing for retirement as I thought we were, and it also showed clearly to me that we have been doing everything right in terms of living within a budget and staying out of debt. So that was nice! I have also done well with scripture study and I've read through several of the talks from the most recent General Conference. 

Today is cloudy and gloomy, but mostly we've been enjoying really nice fall weather and yesterday was really beautiful! 

Backyard views:

Views of the front door from where I was sitting on the couch:

That's all our news for this week. 

Weekly Review October 9 '20

There is not a lot on the calendar this week, but we did have a few things going on.

Last Friday (October 2nd) I got to go visit my friend Wanda. It was really great to see her, although our visit was short. (They're only allowing 20 minute visits). It was windy and a shower curtain next to us (to separate visiting areas) was flapping in the wind a lot which made it hard to communicate because we were also sitting 6 feet apart, had to wear masks, and Wanda is difficult to understand under the best of circumstances. (She had a traumatic brain injury, so her speech is quite garbled.) But it was better than nothing!! Wanda was in pretty good spirits and she seems to be doing okay although she did admit she gets bored and lonely (no wonder!). She is happy to be getting some visits now, though, and her parents and her son and grandson had already been to visit her as well. 

We got Chinese food from our favorite local Chinese take-out restaurant that evening. Frank opened his fortune cookie and laughed ruefully:

Okay, that's not a fortune (they rarely are) but it is certainly accurate. Actually, it's an understatement...there should be several "very"s before the "hard". 

Saturday and Sunday were dominated by General Conference, and it was awesome!! I felt like I was living on a spiritual island for a couple of days. I didn't want to go back to normal life! I particularly loved the Women's Session, but all of the talks were excellent. I tried something different this time and didn't really take any notes except to write down the name of each speaker and the general topic of their talk, to help jog my memory. I always watch and read all the talks again afterwards and I take notes then, so I decided to just relax and listen and worry about notes later. I liked doing it that way. I did work on embroidering some pillowcases while I listened to the Saturday sessions, though, to help me stay awake! 

Frank was busy as usual this week although thankfully he didn't have 3 late night or overnight jobs. He did have an overnight POS install on Monday night and this one went all the way until 6:00 am, so that was not so fun for him. Then he was awake again by 9:00 am, solving a problem and ended up going all day long, into the evening, working. So he was pretty exhausted by Tuesday evening. He did get a solid 7 hours of sleep that night, thankfully, since he put in long days on both Wednesday and Thursday. He is at work now, but we're both hoping he will be able to leave a bit early today. We'll see how that goes!

Last week when Frank met with the doctor for a follow up visit (from his fall a few weeks ago) the doctor decided that since he still has some fairly significant back and knee pain that he needed to go to physical therapy. So he started that this week and went in early in the morning on Monday, Wednesday and today. On Monday he will visit with the doctor again and decide if he needs to continue physical therapy. He thinks it's helping but he still has pain. 

Seth had an online Deacon's activity on Tuesday evening...they played a General Conference trivia game. Other than that, he has just kept busy with school all week. He is struggling a bit with his Spanish class but the teacher is really good about following up with him and helping him so hopefully he will get a passing grade in the end. Either he had less to do this week or he did better with time management because he finished all his work for the week by 11:30 today. He still has music and PE classes this afternoon, but in the meantime he is happy to be enjoying some screen time. 

I had a fairly productive week. I got more reading done--I'm finishing up the ADHD book and I am well into The Odyssey, which I am enjoying. I have made an effort to spend more time on scripture study and that's going pretty well. I also made a lot of progress on the hat that I'm crocheting. The yarn is still not easy to work with, but I'm getting the hang of it and I made a lot of progress:

That photo was actually taken a few days ago so I have since done 3 or 4 more rounds and only have 2 rounds to go before I am finished. I was happy to see an actual pattern emerging, and that it looks like I did it right! I have still had some problems with it...I had to re-do one of the rounds probably 4 times before the stitches came out right, and then I had the same problem with one of the other rounds I was doing yesterday. I anticipate that the next round I do is going to be challenging too but hopefully I will figure it out and finish the hat soon. I think it is going to be wearable when I finish it...I hope so, anyway!! I am glad I persevered and kept trying to figure it out, because mostly it just took some practice. I don't think I am going to use this kind of yarn again anytime soon though. When I go back to regular yarn now it is going to seem so much easier!

On Wednesday evening Seth's school had a virtual "Back to School" night so I attended the session for the middle school parents. Also on Wednesday I purchased access to BYU Education Week (if you haven't heard, it's virtual this year and only $49 for access to all the classes from now until the end of March). That seemed like too good of a deal to pass up! I've watched a couple of classes already and they were both excellent. I've actually never been to Education Week (always wanted to go) so I'm excited to have the chance to participate, even though it's not the same as being there in person. This actually works a lot better for me since taking a week off from regular life is not easy to do but watching one class a day (or every few days) fits into my schedule just fine. 

I haven't been feeling great this week...I've had a slight headache and sore throat for most of the week. I've also had a lot of achiness...especially in my neck. I'm not sure if that is related to the sore throat / headache or if it's just from sitting on the couch most of the day hunched over my laptop or over crocheting. Yesterday both the sore throat and the achy neck improved a lot, though, and I feel mostly normal today. I do not think I have Covid-19 (you always have to wonder these days, whenever you feel even slightly ill) but I didn't go anywhere this week except Walmart on Monday. I've also been having some issues with my back this week. I have one spot on the lower left side of my back that really hurts, especially if I try to lie down flat on the floor (which I do pretty often, since I do sit ups most days). It hurts enough that I had to forego sit ups most days this week and between that and not feeling well I exercised for shorter time periods than normal each day and yesterday I didn't exercise at all. I was able to get back on track this morning though. (With the exercising, but not with sit ups. I tried...but it hurt too much.) It mostly feels like I pulled a muscle somehow so hopefully it will heal and the pain will go away soon. Thankfully it doesn't hurt to lie down in bed, just on hard surfaces.

Our ward is going to start having Sacrament Meeting weekly, with 75 people allowed to attend at a time. (This is a big improvement over once a month, with only 25 people in a group.) They divided our ward into 2 groups of 75 people (there are still a lot of people who aren't comfortable attending in person) with each group taking turns meeting on alternate weeks. These meetings will also be live streamed (except for the sacrament) each week so we will be able to attend either in person or through the live stream each week. We will also have virtual RS, quorum, and Sunday school meetings each week following the normal schedule...which means RS, EQ and Deacon's quorum lessons this Sunday and Sunday School lessons next Sunday. Our family is in the group that will meet in person for Sacrament Meeting this Sunday (although if I'm not feeling totally well, I won't go). We still aren't allowed to sing in our meetings (just listen to music) but since we are meeting every week now, the bishop sent me an email this week asking me to start planning the music for Sacrament Meeting each week again (as I was doing before the pandemic hit). Since we stopped having meetings in March, one of our organists has moved and the other two are not attending in person because of age / health risks but we have 4 people who have agreed to play the piano. Two are in one of the groups and two are in the other group so they'll be able to rotate and each one will only play about once a month. It sounds like we will be able to start having some in-person activities, at least with small groups outdoors, but no Primary activities yet so I still don't have anything to do for my Primary activities calling.

That is everything I can think of that is going on around here except that as many of you know, we purchased plane tickets to visit Utah for Christmas. I am really excited about that! Of course, we always have in the back of our heads that Covid-19 concerns or weather issues could mess up our plans, but we're hopeful that won't happen. It will be great to see so many of you, if everything works out.   

Weekly Review October 2 '20

Unlike last week (and pretty much every week since March) I had something on the calendar almost every day this week. I don't think there's a lot to say about all those things, but I'll have a little more to talk about this week.

Last Friday evening we went to Dairy Queen to get blizzards. It wasn't a date because Seth came with us but it was nice for all of us to get out of the house for a little while. On Saturday our ward did our annual "Day to Serve" project...we have been collecting food to donate to some local food banks, and Saturday was the day we dropped off our donations. I took over our family's contributions and while I was there got to talk to a few ward members...one of whom I haven't seen (either in person or online) since March...so that was nice. Then I drove to my friend Rebekah's house and we sat on her porch and talked for a few hours.

On Sunday we had in-person Sacrament meeting and we were assigned to the 9:00 am session. Originally, our ward had planned that week to be a testimony meeting, but a few days before Sunday our stake leaders asked all the wards to have fast Sunday the week following General Conference and to have a stake fast for several specific things. That left our bishopric needing to get speakers for Sunday at the last minute, so instead they each asked 3 or 4 people to share a 4 minute testimony, including a gospel principle that is meaningful to them. I was one of the people who was asked to do that for the session we were in. I appreciated the chance to ponder my testimony and what is important to me. (And this was much less intimidating than giving a talk!) I chose to focus my testimony on the importance of Heavenly Father's and the Savior's love for me (and for all of us). I was the last "speaker" and the song they had chosen to play at the end (we aren't allowed to sing, just listen to music) was "I Know My Father Lives" so that turned out to really go together well. On Sunday evening we enjoyed visiting via Zoom with Mom, all of my siblings, and several of my nieces and nephews. It was great to see all of you!

On Monday Seth didn't have school (Yom Kippur) which was nice for a change. He had a counseling appointment at noon and before that he went with me to Walmart to choose a gift for a friend who was having a birthday party. Frank had an overnight install on Monday night, so before he left we played a game and had a treat (we did the lesson portion of family night on Sunday). We played Yahtzee and Seth won. After Frank left for his overnight job, Seth mowed the lawn. (It was too wet to mow it on Saturday). 

On Tuesday Seth had an online Deacon's activity (they played Old Testament trivia), I had book chat, and we took dinner to the missionaries. Frank was supposed to have a late night cabling job at one of the restaurants but since it was supposed to rain pretty hard that night and they needed to do work outside, that got moved to Wednesday night instead. I enjoyed book chat, where we discussed The Scarlet Pimpernel. Now we are reading Homer's Odyssey. As usual, we talked about more than just the book...we ended up talking about our concerns over the state of the world more than anything else! Actually, discussing the book kind of led to that...the book is set during the French Revolution and the parallels between what was happening then and some of the things that are happening in the world now are actually pretty scary. 

Seth went to a birthday party on Wednesday evening for a friend from school (and church...he used to be in our ward). They played laser tag and other games at his house. Seth got to see a few other kids from school and he had a good time. (They wore masks.) Frank left for his late night cabling job while I went to pick Seth up from the party. Thankfully, the cabling job didn't take too long and he got home around 1:30. He did have a full day of work on Thursday, though, and then last night he had another overnight job...this time installing a digital menu board at one of the restaurants. 

Meanwhile, I had an appointment to get my hair done yesterday afternoon. Seth wasn't done with his schoolwork when I had to leave so he had to finish that up later after I got back. (He should have been done before I left...he took too many "breaks". We had a discussion about that last night and when I pointed out to him that his medicine is wearing off or has already worn off when he goes into the late afternoon or evening with his school work, he realized that isn't a good idea so hopefully next week he will do better at getting his work done quicker. Today they have a two hour early release, so Seth had less work to do and he doesn't have his music and PE classes this afternoon. He just finished his work a little while ago, so he is done with school for this week.

Frank thought his overnight job last night was going to be a true overnighter...until 6:00 am this morning or later, but he actually got home about 3:45. No complaints about that! Since he worked days Monday through Thursday in addition to working Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights, he took today off completely. He has been on the phone a bit handling some kind of an issue, but at least he hasn't had to go anywhere and he is getting the chance to relax some. 

I don't feel like I got much done this week...I'm not sure why. I did a lot of reading and finished a few books (and I'm almost done with the ADHD book). I started working on a new crocheted hat but I haven't made it very far yet because the pattern I'm using called for a different kind of yarn than I have ever used before and it is very hard to work with. I'm really not sure if I'm going to be able to successfully make this hat and have it be something someone would want to wear, but I'm going to keep working at it and see what happens. The yarn is very bulky and fluffy so it's super hard to see the stitches (actually impossible, really) so I'm pretty sure I'm making mistakes but it's also nearly impossible to tell if I'm making mistakes! Besides that, it has a tendency to knot up when I try to unravel mistakes. The yarn looks like this:

 Anyway, I haven't totally given up yet, but I may have to change plans if I get further along and it looks terrible. 

This afternoon I get to go see my friend Wanda for the first time since March! She lives in a nursing home even though she's not much older than me (she was in an accident that left her with limited mobility in her legs and arms) so I haven't been able to see her. Just recently they started allowing 20 minute scheduled visits. We'll have to sit outdoors and I have to stay 6 feet away from her (and wear a mask, of course) but I am excited that I will get to talk to her at least! (She doesn't have a phone, so I haven't been able to call her either.) Another friend of mine in my ward and I are going together to visit her...my friend is the one who set up our visit. 

Anyway, that is everything I can think of for this week. We're looking forward to General Conference! I'll finish up with a photo I took while I was at Walmart picking up groceries on Thursday morning. This is the view that I'm facing while the Walmart associate is loading my groceries for me. I know they are just weeds, but I think they are pretty weeds!