How I Got My Name

Karen Annette Pew--September 1, 1968

Today's question is "Why were you given the first and middle name that you have?"

Well, my parents did have a girl's name picked out in case they had a girl: Amy Beth. My twin sister got that name, though, because she was born first. They hadn't counted on having two baby girls, so now they were faced with coming up with another girl's name in a hurry.

They decided they wanted a name that went well with Amy, so I think they mostly considered names that begin with "A". My mom's first choice was the name "Sarah Abigail", after her two grandmothers--Sarah Josephine Williams and Abigail Ann Webb. (My mom is named "JoAnn", after the same two women.) She thought it would be cute to call my sister and I "Amy and Abby". However, my dad wasn't very fond of the name "Sarah", so they decided against that idea. (As a child, I was secretly glad--I didn't like the name Abby because I associated it with the advice column "Dear Abby". I thought it was an "old lady" name! Funny that now (2012) the name Abigail is quite popular and trendy, and I have come to really like it.) My mom's second idea was "Amanda" but my dad didn't like that choice either. (I have always loved the name Amanda and as a child I was sorry they didn't pick that name.) After that, they came up with the name "Annette" and both of them liked it, so they settled on that.

Karen Annette & Amy Beth Pew--Blessing Day

For my other name, my mom thought she would really like to name one of her daughters after her only sister, Karen. Lucky me!

Karen Ruth Johnson

(I'm not sure when this picture was taken, but I would guess the early 1980's)

I absolutely adored my Aunt Karen, and I have always been very proud and honored to have her name. Karen did not have an easy life, but she was one of the happiest people I have ever known. I didn't even realize until after she died that she lived with pain on a daily basis. She loved people and made everyone feel important and special, even strangers she had just met. She had a strong testimony of the gospel and deep faith in the Savior. She was always trying to be the best person she could be. I have a lot to live up to as a bearer of her name!

My parents always intended to call me "Annette", but they put "Karen" first because "Karen Annette" flows better than "Annette Karen". (Wouldn't you agree?) Going by your middle name can be complicated and inconvenient sometimes, and I purposely avoided doing that to any of my children but I can understand why my parents did it that way.

Overall, I really like my name. One of the things I have liked about the name Annette is that it is familiar, but not very common. I have met very few people with my name as I have gone through life. There was never another little girl with the same name in my class, or even in my whole school most of the time. (I think there was one other Annette in my high school, but our paths never crossed.) My sister Amy was not so lucky--at one point, there were about 12 other girls in our ward named "Amy"! I did learn, however, that if I heard someone call out the name "Amy", that I needed to look around because sometimes the person calling was talking to me, mistaking me for my sister.

Below are some photographs of the dress I wore on the day I was officially given a name. My mom, who was a fantastic seamstess, made this dress for me. I remember the first time I saw the actual dress, I was surprised at how small it was. In the photos of my blessing day (seen at the beginning of this post) the dress looks kind of big on me. The dress wasn't all that big, though, I was just small!

I was also surprised that there were flowers embroidered on the yoke of the dress, since they aren't visible in the photographs:
I am fortunate to have such a talented mother, as well as a great name!

Weekly Review March 2 '12

When I left off last week, we were going to the temple. It was very nice! We saw a lot of people from our ward there, too. No one got sick in the night, but Friday evening (after we got back) and Saturday did turn out to be quite busy so we are glad we took the chance to go to the temple while we had it.

We were on our way home from the temple when Frank got a call that the satellite dish at the stake center was not working. This was a great concern since our stake conference was being broadcast from Salt Lake City on Sunday. So as soon as we got home, Frank changed and went to the stake center. He was gone for a couple of hours, but they were able to locate the problem and do a quick fix. Believe it or not, the problem turned out to be that the cover over the plug had been taken off (who knows why) and the cord / plug had corroded from the elements. I'm not sure what they did to fix it, but they figured something out. Frank says it was not very fun to be up on a ladder in high winds and cold (we had very high winds that night) but he was the hero because we were able to receive the stake conference broadcast without any problems.

Originally, Frank had planned to go to the stake center Friday evening to set up all the other equipment for stake conference but since he spent the whole evening fixing the satellite instead, that still needed to be done on Saturday. So he spent most of Saturday morning getting that done. Jared and Scott also went over, to help set up chairs with several other members of our ward. I let Tanner stay in bed because he still wasn't feeling very well.

Meanwhile, we had to make a decision about our offer on the house, so there were a few phone calls going back and forth. It was difficult to come to a decision, but we finally put in our best offer and immediately felt relief / peace. Our realtor called us on Monday to say that the seller is currently working with the other offer. He thinks we actually put in a higher offer, but the other buyer offered cash. Well, that's not something we can compete with. It's a little disappointing but I still feel good about it. Either it's not right for us or it's going to work out somewhere up the road. I am especially relieved that most of the pressure is off now to get our house on the market. The repairs / improvements we have contracted to get done are not going to be started until March 12 and take about 3 weeks to complete, and that doesn't count all the other things that we need to do ourselves. So we are glad to have some more time! We can work at a little more leisurely pace and put our house on the market later, if we find another house we are interested in buying.

I spent a lot of time on Saturday working on our tax return, but I did get both of them done and filed. (And the state refund has already come in.) Because of self employment tax, our refunds are a lot smaller this year but anticipating that very thing, we set aside a percentage of all the self employment income that came in. That wasn't easy to do when our income was so low, but now we can use that money we set aside for something else so we are glad we were so disciplined.

Saturday afternoon Frank had stake priesthood leadership meeting, and then we both attended the adult session of stake conference. It was excellent, as always. The stake RS presidency provided a stew and rolls supper for the stake presidency, all the stake clerks, and their wives right before the adult session so I got to go to that. It was very good. I thought that was a very thoughtful thing to do. Afterwards, we were invited to another ward member's house for brownies and ice cream. We enjoyed that and the visiting--got home much later than we had planned! All the boys were up pretty late also. Jared was babysitting for a family in our ward and Scott & Tanner were watching Seth for us.

Sunday started early since Frank had to be over at the stake center early to make sure everything was working properly. (I made a quick trip over there to take him some equipment he discovered he needed.) The boys and I got there about 40 minutes early but got a good seat because Frank had saved us a place. While we were waiting for the meeting to start, I noticed that one of the missionaries sitting right in front of us had a tag that said "Elder Streuling". So I questioned him about it and discovered that he is Kent Streuling's son! He was really thrilled to discover that I knew his grandparents well. In particular, he wanted to know what his grandma was like--he was very young when she died and can barely remember her. I could just see the longing in his eyes when he asked about her--it almost made me cry! Of course, I had nothing but good to say about his grandma (and grandpa too); they are fabulous people! Anyway, small world. I told him my maiden name and told him to tell his family hello from the Pew family.

After stake conference, our good friends the Koettings came over for dinner and visiting. Always one of the highlights of our stake conference weekends--we look forward to it!

Wow, it took me 8 paragraphs just to get through the weekend. The rest of the week has been pretty eventful also. Scott has been very busy this week because the play he is helping with at school, Jekyll & Hyde, opened last night. He stayed after school most days to get things ready for that. He was particularly late on Tuesday evening, not leaving the school until about 9:30, when he had a little "incident". He called me in a state of pretty high agitation shortly after he left because he ran into a curb and popped one of the front tires of the Prius. There had been a somewhat questionable man hanging around the school all evening, trying to get into the building so when he left the school he was feeling unnerved about that and in his anxiety he was checking his mirrors a lot, on the look out for this man and he didn't pay as close attention to his driving as he should have! So now here he was, in a disabled vehicle all alone at the school--everyone else had left! Frank went over to rescue him and I stayed on the phone with him until Frank got there. They put on the spare tire and came home. The next day Frank and I took the Prius in and got the tire replaced--thankfully, it didn't cost very much because the tire was under warranty. Scott learned he needs to be more careful and I have to say I'm glad he learned it by hitting a curb instead of something else--we didn't have to report anything to our insurance and no one was hurt!

Tuesday was somewhat eventful for me as well. I had book club and we had our annual fondue lunch, as we do every February. After we had finished eating and were passing books around, I reached for a book and managed to hit the end of one of my fondue forks, which was resting across my plate. It flipped up into the air and I'm not sure what happened next--I think I must have put out my hand to try to catch it or shield myself--but the end result is that the fondue fork ended up embedded in the palm of my right hand, just below my thumb. Both prongs went all the way in and stuck there! They went in at an angle, not straight in, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I pulled it out (ouch!), expecting a lot of blood, but it barely bled at all. We bandaged it up and Wednesday morning I went in to get a tetanus booster because I hadn't had one for about 11 years. So now my right hand is sore (but it isn't too bad and healing fast) and my left arm is sore (from the shot, but again--not too bad).

Other events this week included having lunch with the former Primary presidency (we like to get together occasionally to get caught up on what's happening in each other's lives), an orthodontist appointment for Jared (he lost his last baby tooth this week, too), meeting at the Middle School to help plan the 8th grade trip, YW on Wednesday night (of course) and parent / teacher conferences. I've been doing a lot of running around to various appointments and meetings this week.

For YW this week we helped the girls start making their pioneer skirts for this summer's Youth Conference Trek. We invited any women in the ward who wished to come help, and it went really well. We had about 8 or 9 girls making skirts and all of them got the skirt cut out, the ruffle cut out and sewed, and the ruffle attached to the skirt as well as the bottom edge serged. Pretty good for about an hour of work! All they have left to do is sew a casing at the top for the elastic, put in the elastic, and sew up a side seam. We are planning to sew again next Wednesday, so I think they will all be able to finish. We had a lot of women show up with machines to help so every girl had an adult helping her. My friend Kathleen had this really cool "ruffling" foot on her machine which she used to prepare the ruffles for all the skirts; it eliminated the need to sew the gathering stitches and then pull them--the foot did all of that in one step. So she did that part for each girl's skirt and my friend Rebecca came with her serger and did all the serging, which helped a lot too. The other girls (who aren't going to youth conference) did an easy sewing activity and helped watch the kids of some of the women who came to help.

Parent teacher conferences were today and yesterday, which means the school schedule was all messed up too. Everyone went in 4 hours late on Thursday and got out 3 1/2 hours early today. That meant Seth didn't have school at all yesterday, since he only goes in the mornings. Scott had a rehearsal Thursday morning before school and that was also the morning Jared had his orthodontist appointment and I had the Middle School meeting, so we didn't exactly get to sleep in. Well, actually we sort of did, since there wasn't any Seminary that morning! The principal at Seth's school had pity on us and planned a special activity today for all the 3 and 4 year olds who had older siblings at the school, so they were allowed to stay a little later, eliminating the need to make two trips to the school for pick up that would have been only 45 minutes apart. Seth thought it was pretty cool that he got to stay until the "big kids" got out! I actually didn't have to pick up Jared because he went home with his friend Sage to celebrate his birthday, but I still had to pick up our carpool boy, Javier, so it was really nice to only make one trip.

I went to parent teacher conferences for Seth and Jared last night and for Scott and Tanner this afternoon. All of their teachers have very good things to say about their behavior and most of their work is good, too. Tanner is struggling with a couple of classes, mostly due to all the absences he's had, but he's been neglecting a few things too. We had to have a talk about that when I got home. Hopefully with a little work he'll be able to improve his grades a lot. Scott is actually doing quite well in his AP English class--well, his grade isn't fantastic because he's missing a few assignments, but his teacher feels like he is writing very well for so early in the term and that he definitely is on track to pass the test if he chooses to take it. So I'm going to make him take it! :)

Jared has had a busy week also. He is also helping with the technical aspects of a play at his school, which will be performed next week. He had rehearsals until late on Wednesday and Thursday and another long rehearsal tomorrow. He will have more rehearsals nearly every day next week.

The weather out here has been typical spring-like: some cold days and some quite pleasant. We had frost again this morning and it is raining now, but yesterday it got up to 60. We had thunderstorms Wednesday night. Our power went out last evening for a minute or two; it went out at the high school also, right in the middle of the play! Overall, we can't complain about the weather, especially with all the blizzards and tornadoes that we are hearing about elsewhere. In spite of the frequent frosts we are still having, the daffodils in our yard have begun to bloom and there are several crocuses also. We need to do a LOT of weeding--the weather has been mild enough this winter that the weeds have still been growing.

Frank has been keeping very busy with his regular job, work for clients, and helping several friends as well. He has also decided to try his hand at fixing iPods, and has acquired 3 or 4 used ones from eBay for low prices. He's been fixing whatever is wrong with them and plans to re-sell them. I think Jared got him going on this--Jared saved up his money and bought himself a pretty nice used iPod from eBay a few weeks ago. Frank is planning to give one iPod to Tanner--Scott already has one he purchased from a friend a while back.

Tonight Frank and I are going to see Jekyll & Hyde; that should be fun. Scott has two play performances tomorrow, Jared has rehearsal for most of the day, Frank has a lot of computer work to do, I have to help Seth prepare a talk for Primary, and Tanner has homework so I'm sure we'll keep busy.

Sorry no pictures again this week--I'll try to do better next week.

Weekly Review February 24 '12

Well, it was too good to last, right? Seth started acting sick on Sunday. We made it to church with him, but it was pretty obvious as we sat in Sacrament Meeting that he wasn't feeling his best--not his usual energetic self! He felt warm to us, too. Frank had to leave right after the sacrament because of a meeting at another ward's ward conference and I was singing in the choir. I decided to take Seth out to the foyer, in case he got sick, until after the choir sang. I just stood out there and held him, and he lay quietly with his head on my shoulder. It was nice that he wasn't wiggly, but he was heavy, too! Scott held him while I went in to sing, and then I took him home. I thought I was going to miss YW, but Frank got back from his meeting in time for me to go to that. As the day progressed, Seth's temperature went up and he threw up once (all over the carpet, of course). There was no school on Monday of course, but he stayed home Tuesday and Wednesday as well--he had a fever until Wednesday (although no more upset stomach) and on Wednesday (his "make sure he's all better" day) he got a mysterious rash on his cheeks. All the more mysterious because it went away a few hours later. Meanwhile, Tanner had a sore throat from Saturday on; he kept going to school anyway but yesterday I kept him home and took him to the doctor, so today was the only day that everyone made it to school. Tanner does not have strep but he had lost 6 pounds from when he was in two weeks ago (with the ear infection) which concerned them a bit. He has to go back next month for a follow up on his ADD medication so they will check on his weight again then. They are hoping it was just a fluke--so am I.

Jared had his follow up on his broken finger this week as well so I made two trips to the doctor. But that's better than the week that I had three! Jared's finger has healed well so he is back to normal activities; no more finger brace.

Our long weekend was not very relaxing but we weren't really expecting it to be. Saturday wasn't too bad, actually. Frank had computer work to do and he pulled down some more wallpaper. I worked on taxes a little. I worked on them a lot more on Monday--a good portion of the day. I was feeling rather frazzled with numbers coming out of my ears by the end of the day, but I think I got most of it figured out. Frank pulled down more wallpaper so one another bathroom wall is completely done; he still has part of two more walls left. The older boys went to the ward talent show Saturday evening--Frank and I decided to opt out because we knew Seth wouldn't sit still. Tanner also went to a dance with a friend--another regional dance about a half hour from here.

Sunday morning Frank had a meeting and then I had ward council--filling in for the YW president. It was kind of amusing because when we went around the room to let each organization report on families / individuals they are working with, the bishop brought up a particular family when it was my turn. I was thinking in my head "they don't have any teenage girls..." and then I realized that he was forgetting that I was there for YW instead of Primary! Everyone got a good laugh out of that one. I was supposed to stay after church for BYC as well, but that meeting got cancelled and just as well since Seth was sick. Frank had to work that night also--an emergency with one of his clients.

As I mentioned, I spent most of Monday working on taxes. I did get some reading done over the week end, though. I finished the book for book club weeks ago so I've been reading some children's books the last few weeks. I finished "Miracles on Maple Hill", "It's Like This, Cat" and "The Giver" over the last few weeks. (I know the titles aren't supposed to be in quotation marks, but I don't see an underline option and the italic function is messed up and keeps italicizing the wrong words. So I gave up!) They were all good, but I liked The Giver the most. Very thought provoking!!

Other things that happened this week--I had a presidency meeting Tuesday afternoon, via phone again since Seth was sick. I was busy the first part of the week with preparations for New Beginnings, which was on Wednesday. It went really well, though--a couple of less active girls who are turning 12 this year were able to come and a few girls who come to church with their parents but don't want to come to class or activities also came in and stayed for the meeting, so that was great! We are happy whenever we get to see them. The girls planned the program and made the decorations--they did a good job. They asked me to speak and I hope it went well-I felt pretty good about it, overall.

Jared had play practice on Wednesday afternoon and Scott worked that night--he was doing the sound & lighting for a "Mr. TJ Pageant" at the high school. (A "pageant" for the senior boys; a tradition every year.) So that was a busy evening!

Thursday I took kids to the school library and did some research on some possibilities for Jared's class's 8th grade trip. Frank took Scott to take his test for his driver's license and he passed, so we now have an additional licensed driver in the family! Scott is very happy about it. Since he is a teenage boy, the cost of the added car insurance coverage is predictably steep. But he's already run two errands for me this afternoon and I intend to milk it for all it's worth! Today I went visiting teaching and one of my visiting teachers came. If nothing disasterous happens in the next 15 minutes, Frank and I will be leaving to go to the temple. We don't have a lot of time, so we'll probably do sealings. But we figured if we wait until tomorrow morning, someone will throw up in the night or something like that so we are going now!

Update on the house: long story short, there was a lot of miscommunication going on last week. There really was another offer on the house but this week the buyer walked away from the deal. So now our offer will be considered but in the meantime another offer has also come in that will be considered as well. Although we offered full list price, the other buyer may be offering more, so we have until tomorrow to decide whether or not we are going to increase our offer at all. Right now we are leaning toward keeping our offer the same and letting it go if we are outbid, but we haven't decided for sure. The seller wanted all the interested buyers to look at the house again so we did that on Wednesday afternoon. The house looks better than last time we looked--it's been cleaned up a lot more. It doesn't look like it will need a lot done to it except carpet cleaning and lots of painting. It really is a beautiful house, but we can live without it of course!

Well, we are off! I'll try to get a picture of Scott with his new license for next week.

Weekly Review February 17 '12

Happy Valentine's Day! Above is a picture of our table the morning of Valentine's Day--with all the goodies. We had a nice day with lots of chocolate, cards, and love--oh, and chocolate covered strawberries too!

So guess what? All four boys made it to school every day this week! I don't think anyone even has a sniffle, either. We are all feeling well all at once--and we've stayed that way for a solid five days. Miracles never cease! It has certainly been nice for a change. I'm not sure if I have anything to write about, though. :)

Last Friday night you may remember that Frank & I weren't feeling too great so we didn't make it to the temple. I did feel well enough to make it to the Leadership Training Broadcast, though, and it was very inspiring. Frank got a call shortly before it started; they were having technical difficulties so he had to run over there and save the day (even though he was feeling pretty nasty). They showed the broadcast two more times on Saturday morning and he went over to help with set up again, and then later in the afternoon on Saturday he and I went back to the church to take down all the equipment and put it away.

When I came out of the broadcast Friday evening, it was snowing lightly. It snowed more on Saturday--off and on, sometimes quite heavily for short periods of time. We only ended up with an inch of two of accumulation and not enough for anything to get cancelled. (Around here, it doesn't take much!) So we had three different snow "storms" in the last week which is more snow than we've seen around these parts in a long time. We might get more snow this weekend, but I doubt the boys are going to get out of school since it's a long week end. The timing of the few storms we've had has been just perfect, so that there have been no snow days or even delayed openings this whole school year. I don't think that's ever happened since we moved here. (But now that I said that, we'll get a huge freak spring storm that cancels school for a week. Jinx!)

Besides the Leadership Training Broadcast, Saturday was busy with other chores such as taking Frank's car in to get the windshield replaced (it had two large cracks; the insurance covered all but a reasonable deductible), some house cleaning, and Scott had a band show he helped with that night (for pay). Frank also started pulling wallpaper off the walls in our powder room--I've been wanting to pull it down and paint for years now. Right now about a third of the wallpaper is off so it doesn't look too great but I'm sure it will be nice when the project is done.

Everyone made it to Ward Conference on Sunday, which was nice. Frank and I were still feeling slightly queasy, but not too bad. Because the other ward that meets in our building was also having ward conference that day and our meetings usually overlap, our meetings were moved from an 11:00 start time to a 1:00 start time. It was strange going in that late, but at least we got to sleep in!

The rest of the week went by quickly and we stayed busy, mostly with the usual things. I went visiting teaching on Tuesday so I could take some flowers to one of the sisters I visit--she lives in a nursing home so I thought it would be nice to take her something. She really seemed to appreciate it. There was not YW on Wednesday night because we had a temple trip on Thursday evening, but the boys still had activities--the younger boys were planning a camp out and all of the boys needed to get temple recommend interviews as well. Frank took our boys over to the church and it was nice for me to stay home for a change.

Thursday it rained most of the day. That afternoon I had a meeting at Jared's school--I'm on the committee to help plan the 8th grade trip. It's a tradition that the 8th graders get to do a fun field trip at the end of the year, since it's their last year at the school. (Tanner's class went on a dinner cruise.) They always do something in Washington DC (an attempt to make it fair) but they try to pick something unique for each class, based on what the kids want to do. Thursday evening I went with the youth to do baptisms at the temple. It was great--I loved being at the temple again, after trying so hard for the last month to get there. They kept me very busy helping the girls (I was the only YW leader who ended up being able to go) but there was such a great feeling there. One of the sisters in our ward had a lot of family names and so most of the kids did baptisms for her family, which made it extra special. She came with us and it was great to sit next to her and watch her face as they read the names--she knew several of the people personally, so it meant a lot to her. I also enjoyed watching all three of my older boys as they were proxies for baptisms. We got to the temple early, so we went over to the visitor's center for a while and they showed us a short movie. Our session didn't start until 8:00, so we were up very late and getting up for Seminary this morning was not very fun. It was worth it, though.

Today the boys got out of school two hours early. I spent the morning at the school updating pledge drive information--I always enjoy doing that, but it made the day a bit hectic. After all the boys got home, Jared had to pack for his camp out. I left Frank in charge of that while I went to get my hair done. Seth came with me so he could play with his buddy Tyler (Tyler's mom cuts my hair). I got home just in time to take Jared to the church where they were meeting for the camp out. A few hours later, he called to say he forgot his contact lens case and fluid, so Frank and I drove that out to him (along with his toothbrush, which he also forgot, and some warmer gloves). Tanner has his friend Seth over to spend the night tonight. Sleep overs have been pretty sparse the last 3 or 4 months; I'm not complaining about that, though.

I think those are the main things that have been going on this week. There's been some interesting developments with the house we put the offer on--our realtor called to say that he's been trying to contact the listing agent all week to confirm that she got our offer and she hasn't responded. So Frank called the bank that owns the house and they told him that there are no offers on the house. To make a long story short, it looks like something fishy might be going on and the bank asked Frank to send an email to them with information on what we've done so far and what we've been told so far and they are going to do an investigation. There's no telling what the result will be, but I am not too worried about it. I don't mind the delay since we have so much to do to get our house ready to sell and we haven't been able to do much yet. Hopefully we'll make some progress on that this week.

Weekly Review February 10 '12

I am sorry I have no pictures to include this week. I guess I could have taken pictures of sick kids lying on the couch, but who wants pictures of that? Sadly, we are still suffering from various ailments around here. All families have those years where everyone gets sick a lot, and this is definitely one of those years for us! Last Friday Jared made it through the school day (although he didn't feel great). But then Scott came home with a migraine and Frank had an upset stomach. So I think Tanner was the only one who was feeling healthy that day. Frank felt pretty yucky through Saturday and Jared & Scott didn't feel great but better than the day before. Seth and I were improving, too.

Because neither Frank nor I were feeling very well on Friday, we didn't make it to the temple again--sigh! Scott felt well enough on Saturday that he played in his team's basketball game. They lost, and since it was their first game in a single elimination tournament, that means they are done. They didn't expect to win so it wasn't terribly disappointing. His team has improved a lot this season, though, so it was satisfying to see that. Jared couldn't play in his game because of his finger. His game was the final for the deacon's team tournament and his team won, so they are the champions of the stake. All three of the older boys went to a party that night which our bishop had for all the youth who read the entire Book of Mormon last year. It snowed a little bit on Saturday but the roads weren't too bad. Jared felt worse Sunday morning so he stayed home from church. The rest of it made it, though!

All four boys went to school Monday morning, but Jared came home early. His throat was hurting and his teacher sent him to the school nurse because strep throat has been going around their class. The nurse called me because although he didn't have a fever, his throat looked quite red and inflamed. She thought I should get him checked for strep, so I picked him up and took him in to the doctor. It was a little stressful because Scott had a follow up exam with the dermatologist that afternoon also and I wasn't sure we were going to get through Jared's appointment in time to get to Scott's, but Frank left work a little early and met me at the doctor's office so it all worked out. The doctor was just coming in to tell me that Jared's strep test had come back positive when Frank got there; I had to leave with Scott right then. I was really surprised he was positive because of the absence of fever. Go figure! Jared was home from school the next two days and returned to school on Thursday feeling much better.

However, in the meantime Scott and Tanner both started complaining of sore throats and had some cough and congestion as well. Scott asked to come home early on Tuesday; I took him to the doctor that afternoon but his strep test came back negative. The doctor said his throat looked pretty bad, though, and he suspected a possible false negative so he put him on antibiotics anyway. Scott stayed home Wednesday and Thursday and went back to school today although he didn't feel well enough to get up for Seminary.

Tanner didn't go to the doctor on Wednesday--I texted him when I realized I was going to be taking Scott in to see if he felt like he needed to go also, but he said he was feeling better. Later that evening, however, he started complaining that his left ear hurt. He couldn't hear out of that ear either. Really? By then the doctor's office was closed, but we talked to the doctor on call and he called in a prescription for Tanner and asked us to bring him in the next day to get him checked.

The story doesn't end there. We went to bed thinking we may be up in the night with Tanner, who would probably need another dose of pain medication before the night was over. Tanner slept through the night, but around 2:30 Seth came in our room and promptly threw up all over the bedding we have on the floor for him. (He told us he'd already been sick in his room, too--we had a mess to clean up in there as well.) Usually when he gets the stomach flu he throws up once and that's the end of it, but this time he woke up repeatedly and had diarrhea as well. Neither Frank nor I got much sleep after that. He was really a sick little boy--was not able to keep down even small amounts of liquid until early afternoon. He had a fever, too. It wasn't a very fun day. I washed my hands a hundred times and went around wiping down doorknobs and such with clorox wipes. Scott and Tanner were both home from school as well and Frank took a sick day from work. When I took Tanner in to the doctor that morning, he confirmed that he did indeed have an ear infection. By afternoon Frank and I were both feeling a little sick as well as dead tired. We both seem to have caught what Seth had, except that (thankfully!) it's a very mild version. We don't have much appetite, but we can eat and it stays down. Our plans to go to the temple have been ruined for the third week in a row, however. Maybe next week?

Tanner stayed home from school again today--his ear is feeling better but he still has congestion, cough, and headache. Seth is also feeling better but since he was throwing up less than 24 hours ago, I kept him home. Besides, he woke up this morning with both eyes looking pink again! We still have drops left over from last week, so we started putting them in again. Frank took another sick day since his stomach is still feeling pretty nasty.

Well, we did do a few other things this week besides take care of sick kids. I did some shopping Monday morning for the YW combined activity--I was in charge of that this week. We had family night Monday evening; I had activity and picked something tame (no K'nect or Wii) since Jared was sick and I totally creamed my knee that morning. (I rammed it hard into a seat belt fastener when I knelt down in the seat of the car to get a carseat out of the very back seat.) I 'm not sure what I did to it exactly, but it ached all day and hurt to walk. Going up and down stairs was especially painful. It was very sore for a few days, but oddly it didn't hurt to kneel on it or touch it as I would have expected. Now today it doesn't hurt very much to move it anymore, but it has developed a slightly greenish yellow tint and it does hurt to kneel on it! Delayed bruising? I don't get it.

Tuesday we signed the papers for a home equity loan. We also put in an offer on a house--but don't get too excited about that yet. The one house we looked at that really interested us had an offer on it already but that deal was supposed to close at the end of January. We found out the deal didn't close, so we decided it was worth a try putting in an offer ourselves--this house is one of the biggest we've looked at and in our ideal neighborhood but it's listed close to the bottom of our price range so it's a really great deal. So we did put in an offer, but the next day we found out that the other deal had been pushed back until the end of February so if that one works out we are out of luck. But that's ok--it it's supposed to work out it will. In the meantime, I'm feeling rather stressed about getting our house ready to sell--especially since we never seem to be feeling well enough to actually do anything!

I had a presidency meeting Tuesday afternoon as well, so it was a busy day. I didn't sleep well at all Monday night (woke up around 2:00 and never went back to sleep; my stomach was hurting) so I was pretty tired. Frank offered to stay home from work that day to help me, but I told him he needed to save his sick days for really bad days--and I am very glad now that he did!

I made two batches of sugar cookies on Wednesday because we were decorating sugar cookies for our YW activity that evening. We also put together some care packages for two sister missionaries serving from our ward. It started snowing Wednesday afternoon and came down for several hours but it didn't start sticking for quite a while so we only ended up with a few inches and very little stuck to the roads. I wondered at times if the activity was going to end up getting cancelled, and truthfully I wouldn't have minded too much--I was tired and my throat hurt a little so curling up in my pajamas was a more appealing idea than running an activity for a bunch of teen age girls. However, the activity went well and I actually enjoyed myself. The YW president didn't make it because she lives out in the country with a long, uphill driveway and the snow accumulation was worse out there.

I was supposed to go in to the school Thursday morning to take kids to the library and to work on pledge drive stuff, but I had to cancel both those things when Seth got sick. Today Frank and I have been trying to take it easy but we are slowly getting a few things done like updating the budget and folding laundry.

We have our Ward Conference this weekend; I'm hoping we are all healthy enough to go to that.

Weekly Review Feb 3 '12

Last week I forgot to include these pictures that Scott took of his school project. I tried to convince him to let me take a picture of him with the project, but he was feeling stubborn. Anyway, this is the project he worked on in his architectural drawing class all last semester. He had to draw the floor plan first and then build a model of his house. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Below is a detail of the front door:

The house has two stories, and on the model the top level lifts off so you can see the floor beneath:

He took a bunch of pictures of his model because--sadly--we didn't have room to keep it, so it had to be thrown out. Scott didn't mind--he said he worked on it so long that he was kind of sick of it! Documenting it in pictures was enough for him.

So on to this week.... I didn't get my wish--we did not enjoy good health all week. Seth has been home from school since Wednesday because he has a red eye and "pink eye" has been going around in his class. He came home from school Tuesday with his eye looking a bit pink but it wasn't too bad. It really didn't look much worse Wednesday morning, but it still didn't look quite right to me either, so I decided to take him in to the school nurse that morning when I took the boys to school. The school nurse said he should probably have it looked at, so I took him home and made an appointment with the doctor. The doctor didn't think it looked too bad but because pink eye is going around his class, he decided to go ahead and treat him, just in case and said he should stay home Thursday also because if he really did have pink eye he'd be contagious until he'd been on medication 24 hours. So he stayed home yesterday too. (Now if I can just figure out how to get eyedrops in a four year old's eyes!) Today I kept him home because in the meantime he still has a runny nose and he's complaining that his head hurts. He's not incredibly sick, but I just decided to give him another day (and the weekend) to get rested up and hopefully he'll be much better and less germy by Monday!

I have also been fighting congestion / slight sore throat / sinus headache off and on all week. Some days I feel almost normal and other days I feel pretty lousy. I've been pretty functional overall, though. Yesterday evening I really didn't feel very well (I skipped a YW training meeting)

and today I'm not much better but I'm hoping I'll start feeling better before the day is over. We were planning to go to the temple tonight and I'd still like to go. We'll just have to see how I feel as the day progresses. Jared has been a lot like me this week as well--feeling pretty good some days and rather sick on others. This morning he is quite congested and definitely not feeling his best. Hopefully he'll make it through the whole school day! Frank has been coughing more the last couple of days but other than that seems to be ok. Still, not feeling 100% healthy! So the "winter of 'the plague'" continues! Should we blame the mild weather? It's possible that at least some of this stuff has been caused by allergies--things growing that don't normally grow this time of year because it's too cold. It is hard to tell.

We did have a few really nice days this week with temperatures in the high fifties or low sixties. Tuesday was nice enough that one of my friends organized a play date at the park. We went right over after I picked up Seth from school and he had a great time. We had to wear jackets, but it was perfectly comfortable that way, without heavy coats. Wednesday was pretty nice also but it's been a lot cooler since then. The groundhog notwithstanding (the one in our area predicted 6 more weeks of winter), we have crocus blooming in the yard, my bulbs are starting to come up, I hear a lot more bird song in the mornings, and yesterday I saw a large flock of geese returning from the south. It certainly looks and feels like spring is on the way. What a weird winter it has been! Frank is a little grumpy about it and Scott is really mad that we haven't had any snow days for his senior year (the seniors get out of school a couple of weeks earlier than everyone else no matter how many snow days there are) but I have not minded at all!

This week was pretty busy, but it would have been a lot busier if a few things hadn't been cancelled. Frank did some cleaning up in his office on Saturday. He still has a lot to do, but at least now I can get to the file cabinet in the corner without having to risk life & limb climbing over a bunch of computers and boxes. He's making progress! I spent a lot of the day working on our tax return; it's mostly done but I'm waiting to see if we are going to get any more 1099s from some of Frank's clients. (We're going to report all the income anyway, but I'd like to enter the 1099 information that we receive.)

Sunday turned out to be busier than I thought because the YW president was sick so I ended up going to BYC after church. Scott also had BYC, APEC meeting, hometeaching, and a fireside and Frank had another ward conference to attend. He went with the 3 older boys to the fireside that evening because he had to make sure the technical stuff worked--they were playing a tape of the Seminary broadcast from last week. Because the YW pres was sick and I wasn't feeling my greatest on Sunday, we decided to postpone a YW leadership brunch that we had scheduled for Monday morning. That turned out to be good--I really needed that morning to re-group and plan out my week. Our presidency meeting for Wednesday morning was postponed also, which turned out to be good since I ended up taking Seth to the doctor that morning and the other counselor was also sick.

The YW president is actually not sick--she is having a major allergic reaction to something, and they can't figure out what. It's been going on for over two months, actually, but has gotten much worse over the last week or two. It started with feeling itchy and a few hives showed up; now she has hives all over her body except for her face--so many that they blend together and it looks like a big rash. They've determined that she has huge amounts of this one chemical in her blood--a chemical that your body normally produces in small amounts to combat an allergen--but that's all they've been able to figure out so far. She even had an appointment at Johns Hopkins this week with an expert and he said he'd never seen anything like it before. Unfortunately, the only medicine that can cure the problem is prednisone (not sure how to spell it) and she's allergic to that. They are treating the itching with a medication that makes her dizzy and drowsy, so for now she is either half awake or itching all over. How miserable that must be! The itching is much worse at night, so basically that means she is non-functional in the mornings from either lack of sleep or the effects of the medication. She says afternoons and evenings are better so she can get some things done then. I feel so bad for her! I hope they can figure out what's going on and find a solution for her soon.

Anyway, as usual I had shopping to do and lots of various errands to run this week. I did manage to exercise a few times, which felt good. We had a class activity on Wednesday for YW; we did some Personal Progress stuff so I was busy planning that and getting some things ready for that. I thought of a few ideas to make it a little interesting and fun! Then I ended up having all the Beehives join our class because the 2nd counselor was sick. It all worked out--she called ahead so I was prepared. I thoroughly cleaned out my desk one day--it took a lot longer than I had anticipated. A guy in our ward who runs a contracting business came over Wednesday before YM / YW to look over the work we want done so he can give us an estimate. If all goes well, he will probably be starting the work on our house in about 3 weeks. It's going to be crazy around here while that gets done, but I'm sure it will be nice when everything is complete. We still have a LONG list of things we need to do ourselves, like pretty much repaint (or touch up)every room in the house. But we may have a lot longer to get that stuff done than we thought since at the moment we aren't seeing any houses that even interest us. There is really not much on the market right now, at least not in our price range. And that's ok--I wouldn't mind staying and enjoying our new floors for a while!

Frank did several hours of work for a couple of clients this week, so he's been busy too. At work they are trying to get through the process of hiring him as an employee. They are running into the same paperwork hassels they encountered when they hired him as a contractor, but at least this time he is working full time while he's waiting, so it's all good. His boss says they are "fighting" to get him hired quicker, so it's nice to know that they really want him.

The boys have not had a lot of activities going on except for basketball practices (Jared is not supposed to be playing but keeps trying to play anyway) and Tanner stayed after school one day to make up some work he missed last week. They are all enjoying the piano keyboard and have surprised me by the songs they can play already. Jared has even memorized a few favorites, such as the Star Wars theme and "Praise to the Man". Frank gave an excellent lesson for family night this week based on Elder Oaks's "Good, Better, Best" talk he gave a few years back, and we are all working on making better choices of how we use our time.

I have to go work on the budget now, so I'll wrap up this post. (We did finally figure out the glitch in our budget spreadsheet--a problem with one of the formulas, as we suspected.) We hope you all have a great week. We are happy that it's February! (Happy Birthday to Ben!)

Weekly Review January 27 '12

Since I didn't take any pictures this week, I thought I'd share a few photos from our past. This is what we were doing five years ago. The boys look so little to me! So in January 2007, we were in the middle of science fair projects and building Pinewood Derby cars. Jared was growing crystals for his science fair project, as you can see in the picture above.

Tanner was studying waves or something like that for his science fair project--I can't remember now.

Jared won 3rd place in the Pinewood Derby.

Tanner got a medal for participating.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that little jog into the past! Now on to the present day. So I was wrong about a couple of things when I wrote last week. First of all, I thought that the week end was going to be busy. I also thought we were all getting better. The week end turned out not to be so very busy, mostly thanks to Mother Nature. We got a few inches of snow plus freezing rain early Saturday morning and in Maryland, that means everything got cancelled. No basketball games and no dance. I can't say I was too disappointed about that. Instead of running around like a crazy person all day, I got to stay home in my warm house. We didn't lie around all day but it was a lot more relaxing than it would have been. We took some time in the morning to break down a bunch of empty cardboard boxes that had accumulated over the last several months and to do some general cleaning up / tidying. Now there is only one box of computer stuff on the lowest downstairs landing instead of several boxes covering most of both downstairs landings, so it looks a lot neater (and is much easier to go down the stairs). We had the missionaries over for dinner that evening.

Sunday wasn't as busy either because our bishop wasn't feeling well so both of the meetings I was supposed to attend were cancelled. Frank was busy--he had two ward conferences to go to so he didn't make it to our ward meetings at all. The boys had a fireside that evening; it was a musical fireside that all the youth in our ward and another ward had put together. The idea was to invite their non member friends to attend. I hear it was very nice; I didn't make it to the fireside myself.

Frank came home from work on Friday not feeling very well at all and he started coughing again. That lasted for a few days; he seems to be mostly feeling better now. Both Scott and Tanner started feeling sick on Monday again. They didn't have school that day so they rested a lot but they didn't get better very fast. Tanner made it to Seminary on Tuesday morning but came home after that; Scott started throwing up right before we left for Seminary so he didn't make it to either school or Seminary on Tuesday. Jared also woke up with a bad headache and congestion so Seth was the only one who went to school that day. (A great way to start out a new term, right?) Scott made it to school Wednesday (but not to Seminary) and so did Jared but Tanner continued to suffer with congestion, headache, slight fever, and fatigue and didn't go back to school or Seminary until today. Scott started coughing a lot yesterday, so he still isn't feeling very well. I am starting to wonder if this is ever going to end!

In spite of all the time I spent taking care of sick kids, I still managed to get almost everything done I needed to do this week, except for exercising. I do that on the Wii, and the televison was kind of monopolized by sick kids. I made it to book club on Tuesday--we were discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Now we are reading a non-fiction book called "The 100 Thing Challenge", about a man who decides to get rid of all but 100 of his personal possessions and live that way for year. I also made it to choir that night, which I always enjoy.

Wednesday was busy with shopping and errands. That evening I met with one of the boy scouts so he could pass off his Personal Management Merit Badge and then had a presidency meeting with the Mia Maid class president before YW started.

Thursday was more shopping and errands. Frank and I went out for dinner that evening--we had a gift card for the Olive Garden. That was a nice break after a busy, somewhat stressful week.

Today I went visiting teaching and worked on the budget. Frank and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a glitch in our budget spreadsheet--we still don't know what's wrong! In between everything else, we applied for a home equity loan so we can do a few repairs / improvements on the house--mostly replacing the floors. We also got pre-qualified for a loan (they are willing to loan us a lot more than we can actually afford, of course) and looked into the cost of renting a storage unit--all this in case we ever find a house we actually want to buy.

Seth said something funny to me this week. I was in the kitchen making biscuits and he wanted me to move a chair to the doorway so he could stand on it and see what I was doing. I said "Why don't you just come over here next to me? Then you can see what I am doing." Seth's reply was "My feet are not floor proof!" (He further explained that they were carpet proof, but not floor proof, so he couldn't walk onto the kitchen floor. Who knows how he got that crazy idea into his head!

What will the coming week bring? Good health for the whole family? I hope so!