Weekly Review April 19 '24

 I guess I'm doing better this week because I am getting this post written on Friday instead of on Saturday, like the previous two weeks. I don't feel like I was very productive this week. At the end of every day I would wonder why I didn't get more done. 

Going back to Sunday (the 14th)...I had choir practice before church because we were singing prelude music for our ward conference. It wasn't our best performance (we didn't have much time to practice) but it went okay. Our meetings were really good. I had been asked to substitute in nursery, but there is only one nursery age child in our ward and her family didn't come on Sunday so I went to the meeting that the stake RS presidency taught for all the sisters instead. Frank started an emotional resiliance self-reliance group on Sunday. Our former bishop (released last fall; Frank was one of his counselors) decided to have a group for men in the ward and he asked Frank and his other former counselor to attend. There are a number of other men in the group too. The group will meet for twelve weeks. He seemed to enjoy the first meeting. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games that evening as usual. That's always fun!

 I don't know if I've mentioned that Jessie has been applying to graduate schools. She applied to 3 schools and she has been accepted to 2 of them and is waiting to hear back from the third one. Last week she found out that she had been accepted to the second one, which is her top choice, so of course she is happy about that and we are excited for her. This school is in Tyler, Texas. The other one is in Chicago. The school she is waiting to hear from is in Towson, Maryland. If she gets accepted to Towson and she decides to go there, they will not have to move. Otherwise, they will be moving of course. As I mentioned, the Texas school is her top choice but there are advantages to staying here so if she gets accepted to Towson, they will have to weigh the pros and cons. We'll be sad if they move, but happy for Jessie, of course! Meanwhile, Jared is in the process of getting set up through BYU-I online so that he can finish his associate's degree. He only has a few credits left to get that degree.

Monday and Tuesday I taught Seminary, as usual. I taught about forgiveness (Enos) on Monday and Tuesday's lesson was about identifying gospel principles in Jarom & Omni. For Tuesday's lesson I decided to try something to make it more fun. I divided the class into three groups and each group read the chapters looking for gospel principles. For every principle they found, I gave them 2 popsicle sticks. Each group built a "temple" out of their popsicle sticks and at the end of class we voted on which "temple" was the best. Everyone got a treat, but the winning team got to choose first. I was pleased that all the kids participated and seemed to have fun. It was also good for us as teachers because we realized that the kids don't have a good understanding of what a gospel principle is, so we will be emphasizing gospel principles more in the future. 

My team teacher took a few photos too so I am actually in a few of them! (Proof that I exist!)😂

I actually didn't get a photo of the winning team's temple...I thought I took one, but it didn't come out.

My team teacher and I were surprised on Tuesday evening when we were contacted by the mom of one of our Seminary students...the student who decided to stop coming in January...to say that her daughter was thinking about coming back to Seminary and would that be okay? Of course it was okay with us! She started coming the next morning and attended for the rest of the week. We are happy to have her back. 😊

On Wednesday morning we had guest teacher for Seminary--we asked our stake Seminary supervisor to teach. She did a great job and it was good to chat with her afterwards. That day I got one of my Seminary lessons for next week prepared. My team teacher and I also spent quite a bit of time discussing our schedule for the last 3 weeks of Seminary. We decided to do something a little different with our doctrinal mastery lessons next week and that mixed the schedule up a bit. We did get everything figured out, though. We have a guest teacher on Tuesday next week and then on Wednesday we are each doing part of the lesson. I mostly know what I want to do for my part, I just need to work out a few details. On Friday we are working together again, but we aren't sure what we are doing yet so I will still have some work to do on that next week when we figure out exactly what we are doing. 

Seth had a doctor appointment on Wednesday afternoon after school...just a medication check-up. That evening Frank took Seth to his YM activity while I went to a VITA end of tax season celebration. We met at a restaurant for pizza and wings. (The United Way pays for the meal for all the volunteers.) It was fun...I got to see some of the other volunteers whom I have worked with in the past but didn't see this year because we volunteered on different days. It was a really nice day so we ate outside on the patio and it was really pleasant. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday except that I made a breakfast casserole to take to Seminary this morning because I had signed up to provide breakfast. I didn't bake the casserole until this morning, just mixed it up yesterday. I brought doughnuts and fruit for breakfast as well. We had a doctrinal mastery review this morning which means we played games to help the kids learn / remember the doctrinal mastery verses. We played one game that involved shooting baskets (they are looking at phones sometimes because they are looking up scriptures in the Doctrinal Mastery app):

 After Seminary, Jared and I went to the temple together. We did initiatories so we didn't see each other much while at the temple but we had plenty of time to visit on the way there and back. We took my car but Jared drove and it was nice for me to have a break from driving (plus I wasn't trying to stay awake!) It's rainy and rather chilly today but the temple grounds still looked beautiful.

We went to the distribution center so Jared could purchase some white pants. When we got back to the house, he tried them on and I marked them so that I can hem them for him. Then we had lunch together and talked some more before he had to leave. 

I tried to read the book for book chat this week (It Couldn't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis) but I haven't made much progress. I haven't had a lot of free time to read in the first place and when I have had time I've been hampered by the fact that I'm tired so I'm fighting sleep! The book is not boring...I actually think it's pretty interesting...but it's not fast moving or super engaging so it's just hard for me to stay awake. It's also not an easy read...the kind of book you have to really concentrate and focus when you're reading it if you want to understand it. I very much doubt I will finish it before book chat on Wednesday but hopefully I'm at least put a dent in it. 

Frank had his annual performance review at work this week and he received "exceeds expectations" so he was pleased about that. He always works really hard so it's nice to be recognized for that. He has been really tired lately...his CPAP is not working very well. We have been trying to get him a new one for months (literally since last October, I think) and supposedly the new one will be here in the next couple of weeks. For Frank's sake, I really hope so! You wouldn't believe the run around he's been getting and all the hoops he's had to jump through to get to this point. It's really frustrating. 

Seth drove to Seminary nearly every day this week so he's getting in some practice. He is doing okay and I'm seeing improvement in some areas. We just need to get out more often, to give him practice at different times of day and on different types of roads. (He hasn't tried the freeway yet, for example.) He took the SAT a few weeks ago and got his score today. He did pretty well...scored in the 80th percentile. 

I was asked this week if I could help with cooking for Girls' Camp this summer. I helped in the kitchen a few days last year and one of the women I worked with then is in charge of the food this year and asked me if I can help. She would actually like me to stay for the whole week, if possible. Frank and I have been discussing it to see if that will work. It looks pretty likely that I will be able to go...if not for the entire week, at least for most of it. I really enjoyed working with all the women in the kitchen last year so I would like to do it even though I know it will be a lot of work.

I haven't given an update on Tanner lately so I'll do that to finish up. I actually can't remember what I have shared previously, so I will mention that at the beginning of March he filed for divorce. He didn't want to do that...he was hoping they could work things out...but Darlee would not communicate with him at all so he felt like he didn't have much choice. Darlee got a lawyer so Tanner had to get one too. There was a lot of silence for a while but he finally got a response from her lawyer last week and they are working out some minor negotiations. Hopefully they will come to an agreement soon and if so it may only take a couple more weeks. We are sad about it...they have made it clear that they don't want any contact with him. We do care about Darlee and want to know how she is doing but unfortunately it's not going to be possible for us to keep in contact with her. We thought she would be part of our family forever so this feels very heart breaking to us too. 

Tanner is coping really well, overall. He's definitely had some really difficult days but I think it was harder for him when he was "in limbo" and still hoping there was a chance things could work out. He has a little more peace and closure now and has been able to focus more on moving forward with his life. He has been meeting with a life coach and has been setting some good goals. He started exercising regularly about a month ago and he is actually training to run a half marathon at the beginning of June. He also started a new job this week. About a month ago he went to see his former mission president, just to get caught up with him. When Tanner mentioned that he was looking for a better job, his mission president, who owns Mr. Mac (a retail chain that sells men's clothing, particularly suits), said "I know what kind of missionary you were and I would be totally willing to hire you." Tanner said he would think about it, and a few days later his mission president emailed him and said "I was completely serious about hiring you. Let me know if you are interested." They talked some more and Tanner decided to accept his offer. He gets a lot more hours at this job than his last job and he also has the potential to earn commission on top of his hourly rate (which is pretty good to begin with). We talked to Tanner on Tuesday and he said his first day of work went really well, and he really likes it so far. He even sold about $800 of merchandise in the couple of hours that he wasn't getting trained. Hopefully things will continue to go well there. It is good to see him making some positive changes. 

Oh, and here are a few wildlife photos. On Sunday there was a duck in the common area behind our house and then on Monday I saw a goose out there. (Haven't seen much since then, though, except for the usual squirrels and rabbits.) I also saw a fox out there last week but it ran away before I could get a photo.

Weekly Review April 12 '24

 I'm a little late posting this week...it turned out to be fairly busy. After I posted last week's review, I noticed that we have a lot of daffodils growing in our backyard flower bed, so I took a few photos:

On Sunday, we enjoyed the last two sessions of General Conference. It's always so good!! Jared & Jessie came over to watch the second session with us and to have dinner. We played a game together after Conference ended, before I had to leave for choir practice. Our Ward Conference is tomorrow and the stake leaders asked our ward choir to provide some prelude music, so we needed to have a practice for that. Most of the sopranos in our ward are out of town or weren't able to come so I got recruited to sing soprano this time. 

We didn't have Seminary on Monday morning because my team teacher was out of town (took one of her daughters to see General Conference) and we also thought it would be nice to give everyone a day to adjust to going back to school before having to get up even earlier for Seminary. I definitely enjoyed not having to get up as early! We were still up fairly early since Seth has to be at school at 7:20. 

Frank had a business trip this week...he went to a convention / conference in Las Vegas. He left Monday morning and got back Friday evening, so I did the "single parent" thing all week. It's a lot easier to do that with one teenager at home than it was when I had 3 little boys, but of course I missed having Frank here and was very happy when he got home last night.

Monday afternoon was the solar eclipse, as you all know. I would have liked to drive up to the path of totality, but ultimately decided not to. It would have been a five hour drive, one way, and we wouldn't have made it home until super late and I did have to teach Seminary on Tuesday morning. (I know a few people who did drive up to northern Pennsylvania and they said the traffic was so bad coming home that they didn't get home until 2:00 am Tuesday morning.) We were in the 90% zone where we live, so I was hoping it would be fairly impressive here. I was disappointed about that, though...I didn't notice much difference between this solar eclipse and the 2017 one, when I was in Arizona. I can't remember now what zone we were in for that eclipse, just that it was less than 90%. Seth and I sat in camp chairs on the front lawn and watched through our eclipse glasses, and it was pretty cool to see the sun covered except for a sliver. It did get slightly darker and slightly cooler, but nothing significant...I don't think we would have noticed anything if we hadn't known the eclipse was happening. Just goes to show how powerful the sun is...it was 90% covered, and it was still really bright outside. The other cool thing is that we saw the same crescent shaped shadows that we noticed during the 2017 eclipse. 

A sky shot at the beginning:

A really bad selfie; I couldn't see what I was doing, of course!:

Eclipse "shadows":

A sky shot near around the time the eclipse was at its peak; sky color is slightly darker; sun looks pretty normal but my camera is pretty pathetic:

Frank had a stop in Nashville enroute to Las Vegas, and his plane got pretty close to the path of totality. The sky got fairly dark and there was a cool sunset effect:

Frank also sent me photos of his hotel room after he got to Las Vegas. It was pretty posh...and so big!

View from his window:

On Tuesday we returned to our normal Seminary and school schedule. I didn't have trouble getting up in the mornings, but I was definitely more tired during the days and had to take naps on both Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons because I literally couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. I taught lessons this week about Jacob 5 and 7. 

I took this photo of a squirrel on our deck railing on Tuesday. It was lying on the railing for quite a while, not moving. I was kind of worried about it, but eventually it moved! 

On Wednesday I did my last VITA shift. It was pretty busy and quite a few people with appointments had more than one appointment because they needed tax returns completed for more than one year. We had a few no-shows, though, so I ended up completing only 2 tax returns. However, I reviewed at least 6 other returns so I was busy most of the time. The first return I completed took a long time because the taxpayer didn't speak English. She had an interpretor which was enormously helpful--it just took a long time for me to explain things and then for the interpretor to translate for her, get her response, and then translate her response to me. It was kind of fun, though.

Wednesday evening Seth had YM and I had to take him since Frank wasn't here, so I was up later than usual. I took my Seminary stuff over to the church with me and worked on one of next week's lessons while Seth was at his activity. Seth is trying to get more comfortable with driving on the road and he drove home from the church that evening. He drove to Seminary on Thursday and Friday mornings as well. He is still in the beginning stages of learning, but he is improving. I can tell he's nervous (me too!!) but I can also tell that he has accepted that the only way to get more comfortable with driving is to practice. 

The weather warmed up a lot on Tuesday and Wednesday...it got up into the low 80s on Wednesday...and when we got home from the activity at the church on Wednesday evening the house was so warm that I knew we would be too uncomfortable to sleep if I didn't switch on the air conditioning. I called Frank so he could walk me through the procedure of switching from heat to air conditioning. (I've done it with him before, but never alone and I couldn't remember all the details.) The air conditioner came on for a while and cooled things down. It hasn't been on much since then but we also haven't needed the heat. Today is cool and breezy, but pleasant. Last night and this morning it was very windy and we had a wind advisory but the wind has calmed now.

On Thursday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah which is always fun and a good chance to talk a lot of things out. That evening when I was getting ready for bed I noticed that there wasn't any hot water. I immediately suspected that I had made a mistake when switching the heat to the A/C. I called Frank again and we figured out the problem...we had miscommunicated about which gas valve I should turn and instead of turning off the gas to the furnace, I had turned off the gas to the hot water heater. With Frank's help I got the gas back on and the pilot light for the water heater lit. By morning we had plenty of hot water, thankfully! I'm really glad I noticed the problem Thursday night instead of Friday morning when I needed to take a shower because I am NOT a fan of showering with cold water.

Our ward's bishopric made a hot breakfast for our Seminary class Friday morning. We also had two visiting class members...one from out of town (she used to be in our ward) and one who is in our ward but she attends a different high school so she goes to a different Seminary class near that high school. (Her teacher had surgery so her usual Seminary class wasn't meeting that morning.) 

It rained that morning and as I was leaving the church, there was a rainbow:

 

I went to the temple Friday morning also. I actually had time to take a short (20 minute) nap in between Seminary and when I needed to leave. I wasn't sleepy on the way to the temple, but I still struggled a bit with sleepiness while I was there. I'm still glad that I went! The temple grounds were so beautiful. When I got there, it was wet and cloudy but by the time I left it was sunny:

Last night I took Seth out to dinner...let him choose where we went. He decided to go to the Olive Garden so he could get unlimted soup, salad, and bread sticks. I wasn't very hungry so I brought most of my entree home and Frank and I ate it for lunch today. 

I spent a lot of yesterday (after the temple) finishing up one of my Seminary lessons for next week. Today I prepared the other one. Frank and I went to the library this morning so I could turn in a book that I had finished and pick up another one that I had put on hold. It's the book for book chat--it took me two weeks to get it so I may not have time to finish the book before we meet next time but I will try. 

I'll finish up with a few photos of some trees in our parking lot out front. They have bright pink flowers and a lot of the petals were blowing off this week so there were bright pink petals scattered all over. It looked really pretty. (Better in real life than in the photos.)