Weekly Review May 17 '24

We had a fairly busy week. Here's what I can remember:

On Saturday morning (May 11th) Frank and Seth took me to breakfast to celebrate Mother's Day. We went to a place called the Silver Diner and I tried something new...a crab cake eggs benedict. It was pretty good.

After breakfast, we ran some errands before coming home (much to Seth's dismay...he wanted to get home to play games). 

That evening we had the missionaries over for dinner. We have had sister missionaries serving in our ward for the past several years but they were transferred earlier last week and replaced with Elders, so we got to meet the new Elders. We enjoyed getting to know them a little bit.

Sunday for Mother's Day, Frank did all the cooking so that I didn't have to, which was awesome. (All extra meetings were cancelled, including Frank's self reliance group, so he was home all day which was nice.) Jared came over for dinner, visiting and game playing (Jessie stayed home to spend the day with her mom and grandma.) I got some fun cards from Frank, Seth, and Jared & Jessie, and all the boys went in together to get me a sweatshirt and some candy:

This sweatshirt is very appropriate for me!

And Jared was absolutely on target when he chose to get me dark chocolate. Yum!

This appropriate card is from Frank:

This one is from Jared & Jessie...made me laugh!:

And this one is from Seth, also appropriate:

At church, all the women and YW met together and the Elder's Quorum provided treats for all of us and we each received a rose. Both Frank and I talked to our moms and Scott and Tanner both called me. It was a really nice day.

Our schedule changed quite a bit this week since I don't have Seminary and Seth doesn't have school until 10:30. Frank is still going into work early, though, and I want to stay on a schedule that is closer to his, so I still got up pretty early most days...usually around 4:00 am. I haven't done as well at getting to bed by 8:00 pm, so I've been kind of tired but I have been able to take naps a few days. Frank has been going in to work early as usual but he has come home early a few days this week and worked the rest of the day from home because he is having some sort of allergic reaction to something at work and he gets really itchy when he's there. We remember he had a similar problem last spring...there must be something growing over there that really bothers him.

On Monday after I took Seth to school, my Seminary team teacher and I met to go through our closets and to do a bit of planning for next fall. We will meet one more time before school gets out to do a little more planning and then we probably won't be doing much until a few weeks before school starts. After we met, I went to the store to buy a few items that we had decided we wanted to get with our remaining budget for the year. (Both of us spent quite a bit throughout the year on things that we did not submit for reimbursement so we still had some budget funds left.) We've each had a few things to do this week, such as contacting youth (or their parents) who have make-up work or reading to do in order to receive credit for the semester. Doing all the Seminary stuff plus my regular Monday jobs took up most of the day.

I enjoyed a few tranquil moments on our deck on Tuesday morning during sunrise. 

The birds were singing like crazy:

Seth was up early too...for some reason he hadn't slept much. (That happens to him sometimes.) He was bored, so he got up in the night and did some reading and he also made this:

Crazy kid!

I was busy all day with the usual chores, plus I listened to a couple of episodes from a podcast Amy told me about. It's focused on Church history and I want to listen to it this summer to help prepare for teaching Doctrine & Covenants next year (beginning in January). 

Seth didn't have school on Tuesday because it was Primary election day in Maryland. Frank got home really late because he had to do some work for a client after he left his regular job and he also stopped to vote on his way home. 

On Wednesday Frank worked from home. I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. She returned recently from a trip to Utah & Arizona; her son, daughter, and son-in-law graduated from BYU and then her son got married so we had a lot to catch up on. We tried a new Mexican restaurant (because its name starts with an "E"...we're making our way through the alphabet) and it was pretty good. 

That afternoon I started on a project that I want to complete this summer: de-cluttering, deep cleaning, and organizing the house. I started with the kitchen since it's one of the rooms that needs it the most. I went through one of the cupboards and got rid of some things, cleaned the cupboard inside and out, and reorganized everything so that I can more easily reach the things that I use the most. I also thoroughly cleaned the counter underneath that cupboard and cleaned the dishwasher too. 

Since I don't have to get up for Seminary anymore, I took Seth to YM and picked him up that evening. Before YM, I took him to practice driving for about 35 minutes. He did some driving in a large parking lot and some driving on the road. Hopefully we will get a lot more practice in now that I have more available time. 

Seth had a math test on Wednesday that he didn't do well on so his math grade isn't too great right now. Because he's been prioritizing screen time over school work / studying for tests, he lost his screen time on Wednesday and Thursday and gets very limited screen time this weekend. He's taken the consequences pretty well...I think he realizes that he needs to change some habits. Yesterday he did a lot of math homework and got it turned in. 

Yesterday morning I discovered that we didn't have enough laundry detergent to complete all the loads of laundry I was planning to do that day, so I had to make a trip to Costco as soon as it opened to buy more laundry detergent. Frank met me there--he was on his way home from work early because of itching--and we had some lunch together. (Although we didn't talk much because he was actually listening in on a meeting for work.) While at Costco I also got some new running shoes because I've had my current running shoes for about 15 years. 😅 (I used the new shoes this morning and they feel great!) I had a lot of other chores to do yesterday and I also worked some more on cleaning in the kitchen and started working on a sewing project, so it was a busy day. That evening one of my ministering sisters came to visit me. This may be her last visit because with all the changes in our ward, the new RS president gave us a heads up that a lot of the ministering assignments will be changing shortly. 

Today I woke up at 4:00 am again but since I was planning to go to the temple today I wanted to be more rested so I tried to go back to sleep and thankfully I was successful. Then my alarm went off at 5:00 am (I forgot to turn it off...I have that one set because I don't want to sleep past 5:00 normally) but I went back to sleep again and didn't wake up until about 6:15. I was still able to exercise, shower, and get the budget caught up before I needed to leave for the temple. (I wasn't able to get an appointment until 12:00, so I was going later than usual.) I did initiatories today and it worked out well because I didn't have to leave until shortly after Seth left for school and I got home about an hour before he did. 

You can see in the pictures that it's cloudy. It has been cloudy and / or raining nearly all week, and it is still fairly chilly for May. We did get some sunshine yesterday which was really nice because it was the first time I'd seen the sun in about a week and I was starting to feel kind of depressed. I don't think we're going to get much sunshine again for a while, though. Everything is certainly very green from all the rain we've been getting. 

I got some reading done this week too. I'm almost done reading Things Fall Apart for book chat and I'm still working my way through It Can't Happen Here which is the book we read last month. While running last week I started watching an 8 episode show based on a book I read a few years ago. The show and the book have the same name--We Were the Lucky Ones. It's about a Jewish family in Poland during WWII. I remember the book was slow moving and a bit hard to wade through but the ending was so good that it was worth it. The show was very true to the book and very well done and I couldn't wait to get to the last episode because I knew the ending would be good. I got to the last episode this week and it didn't disappoint! Although the book is fiction, it is based very closely on the true story of the author's grandfather and his family. When I read the book, I was stunned to get to the end and discover that all the major events in the book had actually happened! So many adventures and close calls with death and miraculous escapes. The really miraculous thing is that the entire family survives and they are all reunited after the war ends. I sobbed when I read the book and I sobbed again when I watched the show...the reunions were so beautiful and moving. I highly recommend both the book and the show (if you have access to it...it's on Hulu).

All in all, my first week of not teaching Seminary went pretty well. I have a lot of projects that I want to complete over the summer and I didn't get as much done as I would have liked but I did make a start. Besides the house cleaning / de-cluttering / organizing project, I also want to get some projects done for Christmas, make more pillow covers for the couch throw pillows (I want to have covers for each month, eventually), get some yard work done, and do some prepartions for Seminary including creating a file with a bunch of ideas for lessons. We'll see how much I actually get done! It's good to have some time to work on things, at least. 

I'll finish up with some pictures I took yesterday morning. Although it was the one day that we got some sunshine, the day started out foggy.

Weekly Review May 10 '24

I woke up about 2:15 this morning and now it is 9:00 pm so if this post doesn't make any sense, that's my excuse. I started last week's post saying that it felt like summer. Now it definitely doesn't feel like summer. It's been cool and rainy most of the week and I have said more than once "I can't believe it's May...it's too cold." I even wore a coat to church on Sunday! It's not too bad, and since the A/C hasn't been coming on I haven't been cold when I'm inside. I just feel bad for people who are doing things like getting married--you would expect to have a nice day for your wedding when you picked an early May date! 

Last Friday evening Frank and Seth went to our stake's Priesthood Commemorative Campout, just for the evening. This means I had the house to myself for the evening, but what I did with that time is completely lost to my memory! 

On Saturday Frank and I went to the temple...my team teacher's daughter was getting endowed and she (the daughter) invited us to come. She had some family and a small group of people from our ward there and it was really nice! 

On the way to the temple we talked about our Sunday School lesson that we were preparing for the next day. After we got home we got some dinner and finished up lesson preparations. 

Our lesson went pretty well, I think, and I am glad that we are done with it. After church I had a short choir practice and Seth had a very long Bishop's youth council meeting so I was waiting in the foyer for him to finish for a long time. I heard a lot of Jared & Jessie's ward's testimony meeting. As usual, Frank went to his self reliance class that afternoon and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games. We played Trekking the National Parks and Jessie won the game, although it was a very close game with Jared only one point behind her, me one point behind Jared, and Seth a couple of points behind me. (Frank didn't play because something came up that he had to do for a client.) We had taco salad for dinner which I planned without even remembering that it was Cinco de Mayo.

This week was the last week of Seminary and it was kind of different for me to not be worrying about preparing lessons for next week...not different in a bad way! I taught a lesson about Mosiah 5 on Monday and about Mosiah 7-8 (Prophets / Seers) on Tuesday. I thought I would be doing part of the assessment on Thursday, but after we discussed it my team teacher said she thought it would be easy to do and easier not to split it up so I didn't have to do anything for that. She taught a regular lesson on Wednesday, did the assessment on Thursday, and today we played a game. Photos I took during the assessment on Thursday (it's done in groups):

And a group photo we took at the end of class that day:

(All but 3 of the kids in our class are in the photo...two weren't there and one girl had to leave before we took the photo.)

I did help a bit with the game we played today...I actually found an idea online and sent it to my team teacher to look at and she liked it so she used that idea. It was basically a Book of Mormon version of the game Clue (with a few adjustments) but in order to make a suggestion, someone on the team would have to answer a question first. We had a list of questions like "what is something you learned about the Savior in Seminary this year?" so it was kind of a reflection on the year. Some of the kids said some really nice things. A few photos I took today:

One of the boys brought in flowers for my team teacher and I, along with cards signed by him and his parents...that was nice! 

I did feel a little sad when I was driving home from Seminary this morning. I will definitely miss seeing the kids every day. 

Since I wasn't preparing lessons, I definitely had a lot more free time this week than I have had in a while. I think I spent most of it talking to Amy on the phone. 😂 We haven't been able to talk in quite a while and it was really great! I also did some reading but honestly, I don't know where the time went. I had a few other things that took up time too like on Wednesday I had a doctor appointment (just an annual check up) and I helped Seth make cookies for the youth activity that night. (They had a service auction.) I also had random Seminary things to do like writing thank you notes for our class president and vice president.   

Today I went to the temple. Jared and I were going to go together, but he had some issues with his stomach and was up a lot of the night so he couldn't go. I felt sleepy driving down and struggled a bit to stay awake during the session but I'm glad I was able to go. It was another cool and rainy day.

Seth didn't pass his certification test this week, but we were kind of expecting that. One of his good friends in his class who is also in our ward now (got moved into our ward with the boundary changes) took the test the same day as Seth and he didn't pass it either. As a matter of fact, there are 14 kids in Seth's class and only 5 of them passed the test. After some discussion with him, we decided that he's not going to take it again. Maybe someday up the road, when he has more experience, he will try again.

My brain is too sleepy to think of anything else, so that's it for this week.

Weekly Review May 3 '24

 It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May! (That song has been going through my head.) It's May, and it suddenly feels like summer most of the time. We went from cool / warm to hot this past week. Mostly it is still very pleasant, though. A couple of days we got up to 90 degrees, but mostly it's been in the 70s or 80s during the day and the 50s at night. The air conditioning is coming on a bit and I am always cold when I am inside! It looks like we are heading into some cooler weather this weekend and next week, though, so maybe I will be warmer (ironically). There have been a couple of days this week that when I've gone outside, I've been struck by the beautiful bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and abundant sunshine. It's so nice, and brings me joy!

Going back to last Saturday, though...it wasn't May yet. It was cloudy and a bit cool. I had a haircut appointment in the morning. There was a stake service project for the youth, and we told Seth he was going to it (he preferred to stay home) but the forecast that morning said it was going to pour down rain and the service project was outdoors so we let him off the hook. Then it didn't rain much until later, so we wished we had taken him to the service project after all. After my hair appointment, I spent a significant amount of time preparing my Seminary lesson for Tuesday. It wasn't actually a lesson...it was preparing games that would help them review / learn their doctrinal mastery scriptures. I found a lot of ideas but knew a lot of them wouldn't work well with our class--they usually don't get into games much, which is frustrating to both my team teacher and me. (They don't get into anything much...they just want to sleep!!) As a result, I felt rather crabby on Saturday but I did finally make some decisions about what to do and I was able to get most of it ready. 

On Sunday I gave my talk in Sacrament meeting and I am really glad that is over with! I felt like it went really well, overall. Frank is in charge of the Zoom broadcast and camera and as part of the set up for that, he has a laptop hooked up to the microphone which enhances the sound for the Zoom broadcast. That laptop is sitting on the floor up front next to the podium, so that the bishopric and the speakers who are sitting on the stand can see the laptop screen, but no one else can. When I finished my talk and sat down, Frank flipped the screen of the laptop to a Word document that said "Great job, Sister Cleveland!" It was funny because the whole bishopric saw it and laughed too. (It was not visible to anyone watching the meeting via Zoom.) Just one of the perks of having your husband be in charge of the technology. 😊 After Sacrament meeting, we had our first Sunday RS meeting since the ward boundary change, even though it's been 5 weeks. (We had an adult combined Sunday School class the first week after the change instead of RS / EQ meetings since we didn't have a RS presidency yet, the next week was Easter, then General Conference, then Ward Conference, then Sunday School). The meeting was really lovely. The new RS president is one of the women who were moved into our ward from another ward which doesn't seem very fair to her, but she is going to do a great job. I know her a little bit because we co-facilitated a self-reliance group together several years ago. 

After church, we had lunch and Frank went to his self-reliance group. I took a nap and read scriptures and looked over my Seminary lesson for Monday. Jared & Jessie came over as usual for dinner and games. I think I forgot to mention last week that Jared & Jessie have decided that Jessie is going to go to graduate school in Texas, so they will be moving there this summer. We will be sad to see them go, but we are excited for Jessie...the Texas school was her top choice. 

Monday morning in Seminary I taught a lesson about Mosiah 3:19 ("putting off the natural man"). I felt good about the lesson going into it, but the kids weren't super cooperative (didn't want to answer questions or participate) so it didn't go too great. I didn't let it bother me too much, though...I know I did the best I can and it is their choice whether or not they get something out of it. Seth wasn't there that morning because he didn't sleep well the night before. After Seminary I got grocery shopping and vacuuming done and got the laundry started. Then I went to the dollar store to get "prizes" for the review games we were playing the next day. I also found graduation cards for our two students who are graduating this year and thank you cards to give to our class president and vice president. The rest of the day was busy with dinner prep and family night; I tried to squeeze in some lesson prep for next week too but didn't get very far.

The doctrinal mastery review games on Tuesday morning went pretty well. I prepared 4 games but we only did two of them because the kids were enjoying the second game. (I knew I was likely overpreparing, but it's good to have a few back up plans.) I can't remember what else I did on Tuesday besides talking to Scott, the regular household chores, and I'm sure I tried working on lessons some more. Oh, and we got our auto and homeowner's insurance switched to a new company...that took some time, too. (But well worth the effort...we are paying so much less now!) 

On Wednesday morning we had a guest teacher for Seminary...a young adult in our stake who grew up in our ward. He's Jared's age and he has an interesting story...went inactive for a lot of years and made a lot of bad choices but he's now fully active, just went to the temple, and has actually submitted mission papers (he's just below the cut off age for that). He was one of my Primary kids back in the day. 😅 He did a great job and the kids really enjoyed having someone closer to their age teach, I think. After Seminary I got a few things done before lunch time but not a lot. I did get to talk to Tanner for a while though. His divorce is close to being final...he signed the papers but his lawyer is waiting to get some tax information that Tanner asked for before he sends the signed papers to Darlee's lawyer. We are sad about it, but relieved that they have come to an agreement and that Tanner can move forward with his life now. We hope and pray that Darlee will also be able to feel some peace and be able to move on and be happy.

I went to lunch with some friends that day...one of them used to be in our ward but moved to a house in a different ward. She has cancer now and recently had surgery...we wanted to get together for lunch to show her some support and give her some love. We only had a small group because a number of people were out of town or had conflicts, but it was nice anyway. 

That afternoon we had a guy come by to look at our deck and give us some estimates on repairing it. We've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but it was just one of those things that we hadn't gotten around to doing yet. Since we just made the switch in our homeowner's insurance, though, and the new company is going to come do an exterior inspection of the house, we're sure they are going to be concerned about the deck and will want us to fix it. The HOA is doing inspections this month too and they probably won't like it either. Isn't it crazy how buying a new car can set off a chain reaction? Buy new car...get new insurance...fix the deck. 😆 The problem with the deck is that pieces of the railing have warped a lot which has caused sections of the railing to pull apart and if we went out there and shook them really hard, we could probably cause them to fall right off. Yikes...not very safe. Here's some photos:

The guy who came to look at it said he actually thinks he will only need to replace the top pieces of the railings and that he can probably pull the sections in and reattach them to each other because the rest of the railing pieces are in good shape. He will also re-nail some of the floor boards, add some extra anchor bolts underneath, and then power wash and restain the whole deck. We don't have the estimate for the work yet, but hopefully it won't be too bad. It was definitely good news that the whole railing didn't need to be replaced. 

Seth had YM that evening. While he was gone, Frank and I went grocery shopping (normally I go Thursday mornings, but Frank wanted to get some window shades for his car so we decided to go together that evening). When we were done, Frank dropped me off at home to put away the groceries and go to bed while he went to pick up Seth. I didn't get to bed before they got back though, because I remembered that breakfast needed to be made too (it had to set in the refrigerator overnight) but I got to bed shortly after they got home.

Yesterday morning my team teacher had the kids doing a project so I took some pictures:

These two weren't working on the project 😂:

After Seminary I spent quite a bit of time sending attendance and makeup work information to one of the parents who had inquired about it for her son. I got laundry going and did a bunch of other things I needed to get done and then I tried to work on Seminary lessons but started falling asleep so I decided to take a nap first. When I woke up, I was startled to see a text message from Seth, sent a few minutes before, saying that he was on his way home from school. (He sends me a text every day.) Could I really have slept that long??! Then I looked at the time and I realized that I had been asleep for only an hour...I had completely forgotten that they had a 2 hour early release from school that day! I actually didn't anticipate sleeping for even an hour, but for a minute I thought I had slept for 3 hours! After Seth got home I finally managed to get my lesson for Monday planned. After dinner Frank was really tired so he went to bed early. They had employee appreciation day at his work yesterday and he was on the planning committee for that so he was going all day long. Since I had taken a nap, I was less tired than usual so I stayed up an hour later than usual working on Tuesday's Seminary lesson. I'm not completely done with it, but I have most of it planned. 

This morning my team teacher's daughter cooked breakfast for our Seminary class. She graduated from high school last year and just got back from her first year at BYU. She is leaving on a mission next month...she will be serving in the Baltic Mission and speaking Latvian. She made waffles and sausages and she had lots of yummy waffle toppings like nutella, strawberries, and whipped cream. It was yummy! 

(Some of them even sleep when we are eating! 😝)

I spent this morning after Seminary getting the budget caught up. Frank put in extra hours yesterday so he got to leave early today and he is already home. Seth is home from school too. They will be going tonight to our stake's Priesthood Commemorative Campout, although they aren't actually spending the night. They are going up for dinner and to hang out a bit. 

In between all the other things going on this week we have been making more plans for our trip to Florida this summer. I have also been doing a little bit of reading...both the book we are reading for book chat this month and the one for last month. I purchased a digital copy of this month's book because I'm third in line to get the book from the library and I doubt I will get it in time to read it before we meet. It's pretty good so far. 

I forgot to mention last week that Frank's new CPAP arrived on Wednesday. He still seems to be pretty tired to me but I think he will need to get a few weeks of quality sleep before he starts to feel a lot more rested. 

We found out this week that Seth's CTC class ends next Friday (he's dual enrolled through the local community college and the college class ends that day). This means that if I sign a waiver for him, he will not have to go to school in the morning for the rest of the school year. He will just go to his two classes at his regular high school, which are in the afternoon. We're waiting to sign the waiver until after he takes his certification exam for his CTC class, which is next Tuesday. If he passes the exam, then we'll sign the waiver. If he doesn't pass it, then he could continue to go to the CTC in the morning to study some more and re-take the exam. (If he retakes the exam and passes it, then we can send in the waiver and he can stop attending at that point.) It kind of depends on how he does on the exam. If his score is close to a passing score, then it would probably be worth trying again. If his score is way below the mark, then we probably won't have him retake it because he probably wouldn't pass it again. I talked to the vice principal at the CTC this week and he told me that the exam Seth is taking is the most rigorous exam they give and that the pass rate is very low, which is good to know going in. Of course we would like Seth to pass the exam but we won't be terribly surprised / disappointed if he doesn't. (He already passed the final exam for the class...this is an extra exam that will give him a certification if he passes it.) Anyway, that was a long explanation but the bottom line is...it's really great that he doesn't have to go to school in the mornings once his class ends, and it's really nice that his class ending date coincides with the last day of Seminary. If we decide he doesn't need to continue going to the CTC at that point, then we will go from needing to be somewhere at 6:10 am every morning to not needing to be anywhere until 11:30! Nice! Not that I am planning to sleep in a ton. Frank still gets up early for work and I am used to getting up early and will probably continue to get up pretty early in the mornings at least until we start traveling this summer and my schedule gets all mixed up. (I will NOT be getting up at 3:30 am though...probably more like 5:00 am.) 

Frank and I still have a lesson to prepare for Sunday School this Sunday and I have Seminary lessons to finish up and I will be preparing part of the assessment for Seminary next week as well, but at this time next week I will be done with all of that! It's hard for me to believe, but I am starting to feel the weight lift and that feels good. I definitely have come to love the kids and there are many good things about Seminary, but it will be really great to get a bit of a rest! I have a list of things to do this summer, so I will not be sitting around, though. I have had many sweet moments preparing lessons and I have learned a lot but it will be nice to take a break from the constant lesson preparations. I do think I will be going through the lessons on my own this summer as part of my scripture study, though, because they are good and I learn a lot from them. It will be a lot easier to study them on my own and not have to worry about preparing a lesson for a bunch of sleepy teenagers, though! 

That brings you up to date on us for now.