Weekly Review December 27 '13

Since I didn't get last week's post done until Sunday night, I only have five days (counting today) to cover, so maybe this post will be shorter.  Quite a few pictures, though, since it was Christmas this week.  You all probably prefer more pictures and less words anyway!

 

Monday and Tuesday were jam packed full, as we tried to get everything done that needed to be done before Christmas.  On Monday, among other things, we took the boys shopping to get gifts for each other and Frank took all three of them to get haircuts.  We did laundry, and vacuuming, and grocery shopping, and baked cookies.  On Tuesday Frank and I were in the kitchen all day...either making cookies or candy, or preparing dinner (we have our big fancy Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve).  Oh, except I also cleaned the bathrooms (with help from the boys), so I guess I wasn't in the kitchen all day, but nearly so.  It did snow a little bit on Tuesday...just for about 20 minutes, but what little we got didn't stick.

 

We invited the Elders over for dinner.  Actually, we only had one set for dinner (because another family had already signed up to have the other set, and we're only allowed to have one set at a time anyway) but the other set showed up after we had dinner to pick up our set because they were all going somewhere else together (turns out they can all go together on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)  So here they all are (the two on the right of the picture are the ones we fed):

 

Not the best picture...no tripod again.  Before the other Elders showed up, we had a nice dinner of fried chicken, sour cream potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, and chocolate layer delight.  We had sparkling cider too, and Elder Hally (the tall one) was happy about that because he says his family always has sparkling cider on Christmas Eve.  We were fancy too...had a tablecloth, and napkins in napkin rings, and nice dishes on chargers, and candlelight...the whole shebang.  It's the only time all year (except Thanksgiving, when we are home) that we get fancy like that!  After we ate, we watched the church's Bible video of Luke 2 (the other Elders arrived in the middle of it) which was really nice and helped us feel a beautiful spirit. 

After the Elders left, we watched the Joy to the World DVD and then each of the boys opened a present.  Seth chose to open the gift from Grandma & Grandpa, and was very excited to get a Jedi cloak!:

It took him a long time to go to sleep that night...Frank and I could have gone to sleep easily!  Everyone slept until after 7:00 the next morning, which was nice.  Pictures from Christmas Day:

 
(Way too much fattening food!)

Coming downstairs

I got a little girl to dress up!  (Need to make her some clothes, though.)  This is "Julie"...she's from the 1970's, which is when I was a little girl. :)

 Dinosaur pop up book

Building with new Lego set

Synching up new iPods

We all enjoyed the presents, but the best part of our day was talking to Scott on Skype for about and hour and a half.  (He looks great!)  Then right before we got off the call with Scott, Erick, Liz, Erin & Dan showed up which made the day even better.  It's not very often that we get to spend Christmas Day with extended family members, so we were really excited to have them come!  We enjoyed visiting, snacking on a Bethlehem dinner, and playing Dan's vintage game of Boggle...although Erick creamed us all.  (What's new, though?  Erick always wins games.)

Yesterday we planned to spend some time down in DC with Erick & crew, but things didn't go as planned.  First of all, we had some treats to deliver to home and visiting teaching families, and that took longer than we expected.  Then once we were finally on our way down to meet them, Seth got carsick!  We had to go back home to get him and the car cleaned up, plus we weren't sure if he was carsick or actually sick.  So that was the end of our expedition to DC.  It turns out that Seth really was just carsick and we thought about meeting them for dinner later, but by afternoon I had a bad headache, so we just stayed home.  Frank and I did go out earlier (not long after we came home) to buy some gifts because I remembered I had a bridal shower to attend today (for Scott's friend Colette) and there's a wedding on Saturday for a guy in our ward.  Other than that, we just got laundry done and it wasn't a very productive day because I wasn't feeling my best.

I'm not feeling my best today either.  I woke up with a headache and sore throat.  I felt a little better after getting up, but now I am starting to feel worse again.  I have to think that it's no wonder, with the crazy life I've been living lately, that I'm coming down with something.  Although I hope it doesn't turn into anything major.  We are hoping to see Erick's family tomorrow and Sunday, and I'd really like to be feeling well enough to do that.  Today I got some grocery shopping done and the budget caught up.  I am probably going to send my gift to the bridal shower instead of going, and I doubt I'll stay up for the BYU bowl game either...especially since it doesn't even start until 9:30 pm our time.  I'm trying to conserve resources and get some rest so that I'll hopefully feel better tomorrow.

Sorry to end on kind of a low note, but that's about where I'm at today.  We did have a very nice Christmas, and feel very blessed, and I'm grateful that I don't get sick very often!

Weekly Review December 22 '13



It is hard to believe there's only three days until Christmas!  Especially since it's 64 degrees outside!  Yes, I know all you Utahns have snow up to the rafters, but after the last couple of days all the snow we had has melted.  Not that I mind that...the snow we had was getting dirty and ugly, and you know me...I love warm weather!  It's supposed to get cold again on Tuesday and we might even get a little bit of snow.  But for now, it feels like spring and I was awakened this morning by the sounds of rain pounding on the roof.  (And a good thing, too, since my alarm didn't go off and I should have gotten up earlier.  We managed to get to the church in time for our 8:00 choir practice anyway...I was pretty proud of myself.)

 

Besides the weather, I've just been so busy that I haven't had much time to let the Christmas spirit sink in.  I definitely felt it today, though.  Our Sacrament meeting was wonderful, with lots of beautiful uplifting music and great talks.  The choir sang three songs and there were a couple of other musical numbers as well, including a beautiful prelude duet that made me cry.  Besides that, we had a new member confirmed...the father of a part member family (not part member anymore).  He's been coming to church with his wife faithfully for 5 years so everyone in the ward knows him and loves him, and it was a joyful thing to go to his baptism yesterday.  So that added to the great spirit of the meeting as well.

 

I am not going to try to give you a play by play of what we did this week because it would take me forever, and besides...I really don't remember what I did when anymore.  It's all a blur!  It was another extremely busy week with me running from one thing to another from dawn until dusk every day and I have decided that next year I am going to get all our family Christmas shopping and preparations done by the middle of November!  Because Christmas and RS president don't mix very well.  I was talking to one of the other RS presidents in another ward yesterday and she said the same thing, so it's not just me. :)

 

Here are some of the things that we did, though.  I took the boys to the temple Visitor's Center on Monday to hear a concert and to see the lights.  Frank has also had an extremely busy week (same as the last several weeks) and had several things he needed to do for clients that evening so he stayed home to work.  The concert was given by violinist Jenny Oaks Baker (Dallin Oaks's daughter) and it was excellent.  We were on the second row of the auditorium too, so we had a great view and could hear all the music really well.  So glad we took the time to go down there!  After the concert I went in to see the International Creche exhibit while the boys looked at some of the displays in the visitor center.  The exhibit is always good and I'm amazed at the variety they have every year...it's different every year, too.  Here's just a couple of pictures:

 



Loved the cactus in this Native American crèche!  (It's kind of behind the shepherd on the left of the picture.)

I took this picture for Tim. :)

Then we went out to see the lights (it was cold the earlier part of the week).:

 Sorry the picture is blurry...I didn't have a tripod or anything.

In the middle of the week, I finally got the Christmas letter written and the Christmas cards all ready to go and sent off, and I also got the rest of the packages mailed that needed to go out (Mom & Dad, be watching for a padded envelope). 

I got Christmas shopping done and a lot of shopping for RS (more on that later).  On Friday Seth's class had pajama day and a winter party.  I had volunteered to help, so I got to wear my pajamas too.  I spent a couple of hours helping all the kids make marshmallow snowmen like this:
 

Every last one of the 25 kids asked if the black gel frosting we were using for the eyes, mouth and buttons was paint!  They were all relieved to find out it was frosting so they could eat their snowmen!  I really didn't have time to help in Seth's class, but I was richly rewarded for doing it anyway.  While I was there, Seth slipped me this piece of paper:
 

And when I opened it up, this is what I saw:

The boys got out of school 2 hours early that day.  They were all in a party mood!

Besides all of that, one sister in my ward had a baby and another one ended up in the hospital.  (Not life threatening, thankfully, and she's home now.)  Then I also had a couple of big projects to work on.  One of them was assembling 12 baskets for some of the sisters in the ward...you know, the ones who live alone or don't have a lot of family around.  This was something that neither the bishop nor I thought of until the week of the Christmas party and I couldn't do it then so it had to wait until this week.  (Next year we will both be more prepared!)  One of my counselors came up with a good idea of what to put in them and the other one purchased the poinsettias for me, but other than that, I ended up doing all the shopping and assembling myself and that took more time than I expected, of course.  We did have a time planned for all of us to get together to assemble them but a few emergencies got in the way, plus I was waiting to hear back from the bishop about when they were going to be delivered...since we were putting bread in them, I didn't want to put them together until right before they were going to be delivered.  So in the end, I ended up doing more of it than I'd planned.  But they did get done and the ward mission leader picked them all up yesterday morning so that the bishopric and the missionaries could deliver all of them.  Here's a few pictures:

My table wasn't big enough for all of them!

I was really fortunate I found the pretty Christmas baskets at 70% off, the first store I looked.  Saved me tons of shopping time because I didn't have to go all over trying to find baskets for a good price.

 

 Wrapped and ready to go!

My other big project was making about 90 ornaments for the RS sisters.  One of my counselors made 40 of them last week, but we had a bunch more to make because there are 135 sisters in our ward.  My secretary came over one day and helped me make a bunch of them, and then we divided up the ones that were left and she took some of them home to finish and I kept the rest.  I ended up finishing them late last night.  Here's what they look like:

And here's the explanation about the contents of the globes:

See, we had a lot of them!:

Well, I was super busy working on all of the above so when I found out about half way through the week that our ward should have decorated the church, I nearly cried.  Not that it was necessarily the RS's job to do it...but I knew no one had time to do it, including me.  I sent the bishop an email to alert him to the fact that it was our responsibility but also told him I didn't see how I could take on the project.  Then the next morning I sent him another email with an idea of how it might be done.  I guess some of the stress I was feeling came through in the emails, because I got back this response from my wise bishop:

Hi sister Cleveland

I think you and the other adult leaders in our ward are busy enough with the real work of the church. Please don't feel obligated to do one more thing. Getting a few flowers for the chapel is fine. If [RS president in other ward] wants to put up some trees in the foyer would you let her know to go ahead and we thank her.  Be at peace. Trees in the foyer are not going to turn any hearts to Christ. Giving of yourself and loving another might. Thank you for your many hours giving of yourself to the ward. God bless.

 

I can't even explain how much this email helped me to feel better!  And what a relief, not to have to figure out one more thing!  I did buy some poinsettias for the chapel and the foyers, but that was not a big deal, and they looked nice, too.

 

Tanner and Jared have been quite social this week.  They had a drama club party one day, a seminary party last night, and Jared went to a party with a group of friends on Friday.  Tanner babysat Seth for us so that we could go to dinner and then to a friend's house for dessert.  He invited several couples in our ward over, and we had a good time visiting and eating yummy dessert together.

 

Now church is over and we don't have any meetings, firesides, practices, or anything else scheduled for the rest of the day.  So for once we can relax a little!  Seth was playing with his Batcave this afternoon and suddenly I noticed what he was doing: 

Really tickled my funny bone, to see the Nativity mixed up with Batman!  You should have heard the songs he was singing too, all about the birth of Jesus (he made them up himself).  It was so sweet! 

Well, everyone have a Merry Christmas!  We will be thinking about you all.

Weekly Review December 13 '13

 

This week was ridiculously busy.  Take yesterday, for example.  I woke up at 4:00 am, went to bed at 1:00 am, and still didn't get everything done that I needed to do (like writing this post, for example).   No, I spent literally all day shopping for RS and Ward Christmas party things, as well as sending out about a million emails, text messages and making phone calls—all  related to the Christmas party or other RS issues.  Ridiculous!  The reason I was up so late is because I decided that I really needed to write to Scott and update the budget before going to bed.  One complication that caused a lot of extra work yesterday was the weather reports for today.  At one point, they said we were going to get 4-8 inches of snow and then some sleet on top of that.  A winter storm warning was issued for the whole day and the school system cancelled all their activities, including the last performance of the play the boys have been doing tech for.  We should really be like Utah and just plug forward with things no matter how much snow we get, instead of cancelling everything when we get a speck of snow--it would make a lot of things a lot less complicated.  (Although admittedly, that sounded like more than a speck.)  As it turns out, we definitely did get some snow today and in the afternoon it really came down for a while and the roads got decently slick.  But it hasn't turned into a howling blizzard or anything. 

 

In the end, the bishop decided to cancel the caroling portion of our activity and move the dinner to a little bit later, because the weather is actually supposed to be better later.  We'll be leaving in about a half hour to go to the dinner.  Most of today has been taken up by preparations for that...we made a triple batch of sweet potato casserole, 5 pounds of mashed potatoes, and enough stuffing to feed 250 people.  Plus I washed 17 white tablecloths that we got from another ward last night (they had their party last night so we had a very small window of time to get the tablecloths washed), Tanner & Jared went to the church to help set up tables and chairs, and Frank is at the church now helping with the cooking of the vegetables.  Plus, he is in charge of serving.  Our family ended up with way too many things to do for this activity and it's a long story how that all came about but...live and learn!  I'll do better next time I get an assignment like this!

 

Well, now it is late Sunday evening.  I was too tired after we got back from the dinner to finish this post.  I admit I was a little grumpy, too, because I ended up spending the whole evening serving dessert instead of enjoying the dinner, which is what I should have been able to do since my part of the assignments (making sure all the food got there...and it did, and I'm happy to say there was plenty of food for everyone) was done.  But on the upside, the activity did turn out nice and I think most people really enjoyed it and had no idea that a few of us nearly killed ourselves trying to get it all done.  So I'm going to repent and stop being resentful about it. 

On to other things...last week we ended up getting about 8 ½ inches of snow, and then we did get some freezing rain / sleet after that so the snow has a coating of ice all over it.  Then we got about 3 inches more Tuesday morning so school was cancelled not only on Monday, but on Tuesday as well, and we had a delayed opening on Wednesday.  All of those things pretty much wreaked havoc on my already tight-down-to-the-minute schedule, and I had a lot of adjusting to do but I managed to get most things done, except exercising. ( I think I’m going to be really fat by the time I get released as RS president.)

 

On the snow days earlier this week, Jared and Tanner had some fun hanging out with theater friends…Jared both days and Tanner on Tuesday.  On Monday Tanner took Seth out sledding for a while.  Here are some pictures, although they aren't very good because I was taking them from far away...my bedroom window...because I had no desire to go outside. 

 



Both on the sled together.

Tanner going down. (Seth waiting at the bottom.)

Both of them with the sled at the bottom of the hill (the brown behind them is the river).

Seth going down.

 

Coming back in.

Tanner pulling Seth through the backyard.

Seth with pink cheeks and wet clothes.

 

Some trees with a coating of ice on them.

 

Seth's shoes got soaking wet, so I decided I’d better buy him some boots.  It’s a good thing school was cancelled Tuesday also because if it hadn’t been he would have been wearing his Sunday shoes to school.  By Wednesday late morning, his shoes had finally dried out enough to wear them again.  We had the Elders over for dinner (yes, again) on Monday and then finally got the Christmas tree set up.  It’s small enough that it fits against the wall in front of the couch, between the wall and the coffee table.  I need to take a picture of it, but haven't yet.  It is white instead of green (appropriate, I guess, considering all the snow we’re getting) and it’s pre-lit so it was super fast and easy to put up.  We can’t put nearly as many ornaments on it so we just chose a few, including a few of Scott's.   I found a popsicle stick (the larger kind) snowman that Scott made in Kindergarten and said “Ohhhh...he made this in Kindergarten and now he is all grown up and away from home…he grew up so fast!!”  Everyone laughed at me for being sentimental, but it did hurt my heart a little, even though there is no place I’d rather he be right now.  On Tuesday I made cookies for the RS meeting we had Wednesday and I don’t remember what else now, just know it was super busy.  I just realized that the reason I don’t like snow days much is that I still have to work even though everyone else is getting a free day.  My “job” is at home, so I never get a day off.

Wednesday I had all this shopping to do at Wal-Mart but I also had a presidency meeting, which had to be moved back to the middle of the morning because of the delay, so I had no time to do a long shopping trip.  I got creative and split it up into two trips.  I got Seth all ready for school before dropping the older boys off at school so that I could take Seth with me to the store.  We bought most of the non perishable stuff before I had to take him to school.  Then I went to my meeting and after that I went back to the store and got everything else.  I got home in barely enough time to drop everything off at home (Dad put a lot of it away for me) and get Tanner to an appointment he had right after school.  Crazy!  We ended up having to get Burger King for dinner because before my RS meeting I had a song practice (and Dad had to coach a basketball practice.)  The meeting turned out very nice.  We had some inspirational readings and sang Christmas songs, and then we had a cookie exchange and refreshments.  From the cookie exchange, I brought home a big plate of all different kinds of yummy cookies, and a couple of people thought the “paintbrush” cookies I brought were pretty cool and wanted to know how to make them.

I'm glad it turned out so well and that the sisters who came enjoyed it, but it was a difficult evening for me...really long story, I won't go into a lot of details, but one of my counselors decided she needs to be released.  She's the one remaining member of the original presidency (besides me) and her husband is in the bishopric and she has lots of health problems, so I understand that completely and wouldn't have been upset except she was really unhappy about some other things and let me know it, and I feel terrible about that.  It's really been a week for me to try to learn from my mistakes, which is always painful.  Besides all that, I had an unpleasant encounter with someone else who thinks he should be using the RS room every 2nd Wednesday and was upset that we were in the room when he got there to have his meeting.  When I told him we had the room scheduled, he said "No, you don't" which made me upset because I knew we had.  This is the second time this has happened, actually.  I think I solved that problem, though.  I came home and checked the online scheduling calendar, and yes...we really did have the room scheduled.  As a matter of fact, it is scheduled every 2nd Wednesday for all of 2014 as well.  So I sent him a very polite email apologizing for the confusion and that let him know that I checked the calendar and a) we did have the room scheduled Wednesday night and b) he wasn't going to be able to use the room in 2014 either.  I even offered to let him know if we changed location or dates for our meeting, as we sometimes do, so that he could use the RS room that month.  I diplomatically left out a lot of the things I wanted to say such as c) you should really be apologizing to me for basically calling me a liar, d) if you want to have a meeting in our building on our ward's night, you should be happy with whatever room you can get, and e) shouldn't the Relief Society get priority when it comes to using the Relief Society room anyway?  Our name's on the plaque by the door, after all.  (Yes, I'm still feeling a bit miffed about the whole thing.  I really have a lot of repenting to do.)  The good news is, he backed down...sent me a response that was sweet as pie and saying that it was no problem at all for them to use the Primary room instead. 

Thursday I had a lot of RS / Christmas party related stuff to do, plus I got a package for Scott ready to mail and got the 12 Days of Christmas secret service project that we do every year all ready to go, since Friday was the first night for that.  We did the same thing as last year, though, and wrapped all 12 things up and put them in a large box with instructions to open one each night, and delivered the box that night.  (Well, Frank is actually the one who delivered the box.)  I guess it’s not quite as fun that way, but it is a lot easier, and with Tanner and Jared being gone so often to various activities and not home to help, I thought it would be best to do it that way.   We picked a family who have been unemployed since March... so we put a few gift cards in there along with the 12 days gifts.

 

I already wrote about Friday except for the really cool thing that happened that day--Tanner got an email saying he’s been chosen to be on the work crew for the Hill Cumorah Pageant this summer!  The email said there were 52 applicants and he is one of the 28 who were chosen to be on the crew.  Pretty awesome, huh?  It is going to be such a great experience for him; I am super excited for him!!  It will be like a mini mission too because he’ll have a companion, live mission standards, (he won’t even have a phone and will have to communicate with letters except for a phone call when he arrives and one when he is ready to leave) and I’m sure he’ll be working his tail off the whole time too but also having uplifting experiences.  He will be gone for a whole month…June 27^th to July 25^th.  If we can manage it, I think we are going to try to go see Pageant this year since he’ll be working on it.  If any of you have been wanting to see Pageant also, this would be a good year to go!  Come on, you know you want to! :)

Sorry if there has been a lot of complaining in this week's post.  Maybe you gathered that it wasn't an easy week for me.  (I didn't sleep well at all this week either...lots of very late nights and very early mornings.)  So I'll finish up with a few positive things!  First, Frank has been a gem and helped me out so much this week, both by helping me get things done and by being a listening ear and giving me a shoulder to cry on.  Second, I sang a song in Sacrament Meeting today with a small group of women and it turned out beautiful so I was really happy about that.  Third, Jared and I went to a Christmas concert tonight done by the Mormon Choir of Washington DC, and it was AMAZING and so beautiful that I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried.  Really felt some of that wonderful Christmas spirit that the stresses of this week had driven away. 

This week is going to be quite busy too, but I'm going to do better at not letting things get me down. 

Weekly Review December 6 '13

It's not really the 6th--it's the 8th--and you almost didn't get a post from me this week because I've been totally swamped.  But thanks to the weather, my really-busy-run-from-one-meeting-to-the-next-Sunday didn't happen.  We came out of Sacrament meeting to a couple of inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down hard.  It was supposed to get worse (and it did) and the county declared a snow emergency, so the rest of our meetings were cancelled and everyone got sent home and I suddenly had a nice long afternoon in front of me.

 

This photo was taken about an hour after we got home, around 11:30:

 

The snow was coming down really hard:

This photo was taken about 2 hours later:

We were supposed to get 1-3 inches of snow...I think they underestimated, don't you?  The snow stopped around 2:00 and now we are getting some sleet, although not a lot yet.  We could get up to 1/2 inch of ice before all is said and done.  I'm pretty sure there won't be school tomorrow!

I took these photos about an hour ago:

I thought our neighbor's lights looked pretty in the snow.

Frank put the ruler out there.  We got about 8 1/2 inches of snow.

So anyway, I can't say I lay around relaxing all afternoon.  I had a lot of emails to send about various RS related stuff, I wrote to Scott, and I read my scriptures.  I can think of several other things that I could do too (like address Christmas cards or figure out where we're going to put the Christmas tree) but I've run out of afternoon.  We will probably have family night soon and later we plan to watch the 1st Presidency Christmas Devotional.  It's great that we can do that from the comfort of our home!

One of the families in our ward invited the youth to come over to their house this afternoon to watch a Christmas movie, which pretty much defeated the whole idea behind cancelling church meetings, in my opinion, but whatever!  Our guys would not have been allowed to go except Frank was itching to get out in the snow again so I told him he might as well take them over.  Later, he went for a long drive all over and then picked them up on his way home.  Crazy guy!  I just don't get his desire to be out in such miserable weather on dangerous roads.

So you probably figured out that we made it back home from North Carolina.  The trip home was pretty uneventful.  The weather was better and we even let Tanner drive for a while.  Last Sunday the youth in our ward did a Christmas musical fireside.  Frank had a bad sinus headache so he stayed home but I took Seth with me to see it.  The youth did a great job.  There were a few short talks / testimonies and they did lots of musical numbers...some all the youth together and some in smaller groups.  Tanner and Jared both sang songs with some smaller groups and Jared conducted a couple of the songs that the youth did all together.  There were a lot of people there, including some nonmembers that the youth and other ward members invited.  The guys invited some of their friends, too, but I don't think any of them were able to come.

The rest of the week has been pretty ridiculously busy, with lots of RS stuff going on, all the usual household chores, and trying to squeeze in some Christmas preparations.  I got out a few decorations on Sunday but as I mentioned above, we still need to figure out the Christmas tree.  I got a little bit of shopping done but haven't done much yet and I'm trying to get the Christmas cards going too. Frank's been super busy with his business and spent all day yesterday at a client's place.  Tanner and Jared are helping with another play so they've been gone a lot too...they had late rehearsals a lot of nights.  It's been Seth and I alone at home quite a bit! 

For RS I had my monthly meeting with the bishop Tuesday night but the thing that has been taking up the most time is preparations for our ward Christmas dinner, which is this coming Saturday.  The RS is in charge of organizing all the food, and why I didn't think when we were first assigned the food to call a committee and let them handle it, is beyond me!  By the time I thought of that bright idea, it was too late.  So coordinating all of that has kept me incredibly busy and rather stressed.  Yesterday one of my counselors and I went out and bought the food that the ward is providing, including 10 turkeys, and delivered all the turkeys to the people who are cooking them.  That ended up taking about 5 hours, when all was said and done.  In the middle of all of that, I had to get Tanner and Jared over to the school for the play performance and get some food over to the Elders...they were supposed to come to our house for dinner but since Frank wasn't home yet and the guys had to be at the school, I couldn't have them at the house.  It all worked out, but I was pretty tired and frazzled by the time I got home last night.  Then I sat down and planned out what I needed to do this week, and that was discouraging too.  Having some unexpected time today has helped a bit and hopefully I'll manage to get everything done this week that needs to be done.

It is hard to believe it, but three days ago we had a high of 67 degrees!  Wow, it was nice...I tried to soak it in while it lasted.  Frank took advantage of the warmer temperatures and stopped on his way home from work at the Circle of Hope and painted the outdoor table and chairs for Tanner's Eagle project.  So glad to have that part finally done!  A few pictures so you can see the end results:

 

Tanner is waiting now to hear back from the lady at Circle of Hope to find out if there is anything else she wants him to do.  If not, then he can get going on all the fun paperwork.

Good news about the Prius...they aren't going to "total" it.  It's been getting fixed all week, and hopefully we'll get it back tomorrow.  It certainly wasn't cheap to fix it, but thankfully the insurance paid for all but the deductible.  I know, I know...our premium will go up and we'll end up paying for it in the end but it doesn't hurt as much when you pay it gradually instead of all at once.

On Friday our stake had their annual Temple Jubilee and so in spite of all the craziness, I went to the temple.  I left after dropping Seth off at school and didn't get back until it was time to pick him up, but I'm so glad I took the time to go.  I invited sisters to come with me and in the end three were able to come.  It was nice to have those sisters with me and there were tons of other familiar faces in our very full session, including the stake president and one of his counselors.  One of the sisters that came with me received her own endowment a few months ago and although she's done initiatories since then, this was the first time she'd done an endowment session as a proxy.  She was sitting next to me and we were only a few minutes into the movie when she reached over and squeezed my hand.  I whispered "are you all right?"  and she whispered back "yes, I'm just really happy right now!"  That made me really happy too.

One more RS story from this week before I finish up.  I stopped in to see a sister in a nursing home on Wednesday and while I was there she asked me to help her put up a few Christmas decorations.  Then she asked me if I would help her get to the restroom...I've done this at church several times, so I know what to do.  After I got her settled in there, she asked me to bring her Book of Mormon to her.  When I did that she asked me if I would come in, sit down, and read it to her and then explain what we were reading!  (Yep, she's pretty comfortable with me.)  So that's what I did...and we had this great conversation about how we feel the Savior near us and she told me how wonderful she felt when she was baptized.  It was actually really sweet, but the whole time in the back of my mind I was thinking how bizarre it was that we were reading scriptures and having this conversation in the restroom!  The crazy things we do--when I was called as RS president, I never imagined I'd do something like that!

I just took the dog out and had a good laugh watching him flounder through the snow that is about as high as he is.  Plus, he's the same color as the snow so he blends right in.  I wish there were a way to capture on camera how beautiful the snow and the sky are at night!

Seth is waiting for me to read him some stories, so that's it for this week.