Weekly Review March 27 '15

Well!  I'd say this week was rather eventful.  It's hard to know where to start.  Although I'll say right away that I'm going to leave out a lot of the details of what we did each day or I'll be here all night trying to record it all.  So let's start with Saturday, I guess.

The big event of Saturday was the baptism of a family into our ward, and Frank was the one who did the baptisms.  Pretty cool, right?  Another family in our ward invited this family to church, and they have been coming for a couple of months.  I was surprised when the Elders told us they had asked for Frank to baptize them--what I didn't know was that Frank and the dad in the family have been talking a lot at church every week.  But anyway, Frank was happy to do it.  The baptism was really nice.  The water was really cold, though, because the ward mission leader accidentally turned the cold water up instead of off when he turned the water off.  Oops!    

The rest of the day on Saturday Frank was working on a client's crashed server.  It turned out to be a big mess and he was up over half the night and Griffin (his former employer) even got involved which was interesting since his former boss is still harboring a lot of angry feelings about the clients who left Griffin when they laid Frank off (but whatever, that's his problem).  Then at around 2:00 am when Frank was packing everything up to come back home, a computer slid off a chair and fell right on his foot!  He thought maybe he'd broken it.

So Sunday, which is always crazy anyway, got a little crazier.  I went to my early morning ward council meeting as usual.  I knew I had to get Frank in to see the doctor, which opened at noon.  So I came home & got food in the crock pot for dinner, made a number of phone calls to make sure everything was covered for RS since I wasn't sure I'd be there for our meetings, and then Jared & I went to another ward's sacrament meeting so we could take the sacrament.  (Jared went with me because he found out on Saturday that even though he'd told them he couldn't help with the Sunday performance of his play, they had to have him there.)  After we did that, Jared got a ride to his play, Tanner went to our sacrament meeting, and I took Frank to the doctor.  Seth came with us because he can be a handful at church and I had pity on Tanner.  Plus, he had developed a rather nasty cough in the night and sounded congested.  The doctor, not surprisingly, sent Frank to get x-rays.  First they got him some crutches, though.  And two prescriptions--one for inflamation and the other for pain.  We had to go to the hospital to get the x-rays done.  That took a while, of course.  By the time we got done at the hospital and headed over to the pharmacy, it was probably around 3:30.  Then the pharmacy wouldn't accept the prescription for pain medicine because it wasn't on "security paper"--apparently, a new law in Maryland.  So I ended up going back to the doctor for a new prescription (on the other side of Frederick, of course) and then back to the pharmacy, where they informed me that they close at 5:00 so be sure to be back before then to pick it up.  I hadn't had much sleep and I had been feeling all day like I was coming down with a nasty cold of some kind, so while waiting in line at the pharmacy, I remember wondering what would happen if I just fell asleep right there in the car!  (It was a drive through pharmacy).  I was thinking maybe I could catch a 30 minute nap before the Elders showed up for dinner at 5:00.  (Did I mention that I had signed up to feed the Elders?  Or that I had also committed to take dinner to another family in the ward?)  The pharmacy's early closing hour dashed that hope.  I had time to run home, add the last few ingredients to the crock pot, set the table, and then I had to be back before the pharmacy closed.  It all worked out, and somehow I didn't collapse.  The Elders took the food to the other family when we were done eating, which helped me out a lot.  Then Jared and I (he was home by then) were off to the stake choir practice.  By then my nose was running, my throat hurt, and I was congested, and normally I would have skipped the practice but it was our last one so I didn't want to miss it.  It was a long day!  For Frank too, since he was in pain the whole time.  He didn't break his foot, though.  It was just very bruised and sore and he tried to keep it up and keep ice on it as much as possible.

Seth sounded worse and felt feverish on Monday, so I kept him home from school.  Frank actually went to work, because he had some things he really needed to be there for.  He did not have to report for jury duty that day.  Tanner had the Elders over because they had permission to watch The Saratov Approach, and we can get it on Netflix.  (It was their Pday)  I wasn't feeling well either but I had made an appointment to visit a sister in the ward and I really wanted to see her so I went anyway.  She made lunch for us, and it was really good.  I tried to rest a bit after I got home.  All week we were trying to get things ready for Jared's Eagle project, though.  And of course we were preparing for Scott to come home too!

I kept Seth home from school through Wednesday.  On Tuesday Jared went to the oral surgeon and he decided that he doesn't need to do any more work on the molar exposures so he's good to go.  I tried to rest on Tuesday too.  I helped Frank go through a couple of boxes of things in Scott's room...he'd planned to do that over the weekend but the server crash got in the way of those plans, and then the hurt foot too.  He didn't have to report for jury duty Tuesday either, and we were really relieved when he called Tuesday evening and found out he didn't have to report on Wednesday.  (Thank you for the prayers!)  I admit I was kind of an emotional wreck on Tuesday, though.  I wasn't able to have things as ready for Scott's homecoming as I would have liked.

I thought Wednesday was going to drag, since Scott's plane didn't land until nearly 4:00, but it actually went by pretty fast.  I cleaned the oven and made a cake (a recipe I got from one of the families he lived with...they told me he loved this cake!) and got grocery shopping done.  We had to quickly make a few signs right before we left for the airport!  A sister in my ward called me while I was loading groceries in the car to let me know there was a picture of Scott on FB at the SLC airport.  So I had to go on there to see the picture, of course.  A man who lives in Bethesda was flying home on the same flight with Scott, and struck up a conversation with Scott at the airport.  He discovered that Scott is from the same stake as one of his sons, and that a friend of his is in our ward so he took the picture of Scott and sent it to our friend in our ward, and he shared it with us.  Meanwhile, we made our way to the airport:            

While we were waiting at the baggage claim for Scott to show up, this man who had talked with Scott came along and asked "Are you the Cleveland?"  When we said we were, he introduced himself and told us Scott would be coming soon.  He offered to take some pictures for us.  He also said "I have to warn you, he's kind of a crying mess!"  This man, whose name is Kerry Harding, did take some nice pictures and put them up on facebook for us with some very nice comments about Scott.  I tried to download some of his photos, but they are tiny and difficult to see.  But Jared and Tanner also took pictures and we got some great ones:

Here he comes!

Getting closer:

He's wondering why Frank is on crutches:

Almost here:

And at this moment, Seth got in between Scott and I.  But what did Scott do?  He sidestepped Seth completely and came right to me with wide open arms!  What a great son!:

We'd both been waiting for this hug for a long time, and neither of us let go for quite a while.  And I admit I cried a little bit.  But I wasn't the only one!:

Frank and Seth got a bit impatient for their turns (understandably) and joined in:

Frank finally gets his turn (and the expressions on Scott's face are priceless):

And now Jared's turn:

And I have no idea why no one got a picture of Tanner and Scott hugging!  Kerry Harding didn't have any either!  I am sad about that.  But I was there, and they did hug each other.

We finally stopped hugging and posed for a picture all together:

And by this time, about 90% of the people at the baggage claim were staring at us.  But most of them were smiling indulgently.  

I have to admit when I saw the photos later, I was surprised at how well they captured the joy and excitement we were all feeling.  It was truly a sacred experience.  I wasn't really prepared for how it would feel.  I feel like I got a small taste of how it must feel for Heavenly Father when each one of us returns to Him after this earth life.

On the way home, I snapped a few pictues of Scott in the middle seat with Seth.  I just kept looking back there.  Couldn't look at him enough!

We had a sign on the door at home, too:

It's hard to read the sign.  You know how people often put up signs when they have new baby?  Well, we patterned our sign after those signs.  It says:  It's an RM!  Name: Scott  Date: March 25, 2015  Length:  Hopefully still shorter than Tanner  Weight: Approx. 10-20 pounds heavier than when he left  From:  Salt Lake City South Mission  To:  Home!  Welcome Home!

Here he is with the cake I made him:

I put dinner in the crock pot that morning so it would be ready when we got home.  After dinner Jared had to go to YM and the rest of us went with Scott to see the stake president so he could be released.  We had a nice meeting with him and Scott cried when he took his nametags off, but it was sweet too.

So what is it like having him home?  It is fabulous!!!  I can't even put into words how great it is to have him home.  There is this sweet, joyful, holy feeling in our house  He's still himself and yet he's changed so much...all in good ways.  Maybe because he didn't write long letters, I just wasn't sure what his mission was like.  But I can tell already that he put his whole heart and soul into it, and that he loved it more than anything.  I just have a very full heart...so grateful he went; so grateful he had such a great experience; so grateful that we get to have him home with us for a little while.  I wish I could say more about how I feel, but there just aren't words.

My schedule has kind of gone on the rocks since Scott got home.  On Thursday I ended up taking he and Tanner shopping, because Scott needed some clothes.  (A belated Christmas present.)  And on Friday he talked me into going to the temple, even though I really didn't have time to do that.  But of course I was really glad to go to the temple, and it was wonderful to have the chance to have nice long talks with Scott on the way down and back...we swapped mission stories, of course!  Jared, Seth and I had dental check ups on Thursday also.  And of course we still had Eagle project planning to do every day.  On both Thursday night and last night, I was utterly exhausted by the time I fell into bed.

In spite of the incredible pace I've been going at, I am getting better.  Not nearly so congested and only coughing a little bit.  Thank goodness!

Last night (yep, I didn't finish this post last night) all three of the older boys went to help with a camp out.  They helped transport equipment to the camp site, and then they hung out with the scout troop all evening but they didn't spend the night.  I wanted them to come home for the night because we were all up early this morning for Jared's Eagle project.  He has three work days planned; this was the first one.  This time we focused on getting all the pictures drawn for the signs, and we got most of them done.

I will post pictures next week because if I try to do it now, I won't get this posted until tomorrow!  

Weekly Review March 20 '15

Happy first day of spring, everyone!  We woke up to this:

So much for spring!  I feel like those penguins in Madagascar that were so excited to get to Antarctica and then when they finally get there they stand there for a few minutes in the raging wind and blowing snow and then say "Well this sucks!"  We finally made it to spring!...NOT!

It can't last forever, though.  It's supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow so all the snow will be gone in a hurry.

I've decided I prefer the category method of recording our weeks, so here we go with the categories.  First, Relief Society:  there's not a ton going on but I still spent a lot of time on RS stuff because on Tuesday I spent most of the day helping with a funeral luncheon, as well as attending the funeral and the viewing.  I was happy to have the chance to help the family, though, and I wanted to go to both the viewing and the funeral.  The luncheon was not difficult to coordinate because there were plenty of people who wanted to help and I was working with one of the other RS presidents in our stake to get it organized.  Everything turned out really nice, the family was very grateful, and it was really nice to see them have the chance to sit down and talk with each other while sharing a meal.  The funeral was really nice, too, and a sweet tribute to the sister who passed away.  Gee whiz fact:  I was chatting with the other RS president, and it turns out that we were both born in the same hospital!  What are the odds?!!  Besides the funeral related tasks, I also had a presidency meeting on Wednesday and another sister in my ward needed some help because her husband was having surgery so I spent a little bit of time coordinating that.

Tanner's job:  they did get him on the schedule this week; as a matter of fact, he worked three shifts which is pretty good compared to how many hours he usually gets.  He is not on the schedule for next week at all, but the manager said she would probably be calling him in to work some of the mornings.  It had kept me busy, getting him to work and back.

Jared's Eagle project:  After our visit to Lowe's last Friday night, Frank & I decided we needed to drive out to the horse arena to look at some things before we could make any more decisions.  (Jared was taking the SAT and working at a band concert so he couldn't go.)  We turned it into a date and stopped for lunch on our way back home.  It was a productive trip because we figured some things out and the really good news is that we aren't going to need to buy nearly as much wood (or plastic, still haven't decided which) than we originally thought we would.  I also sat down with Jared one day and he made a lot of phone calls and sent out some emails to help get things organized.  We still have a lot to do but it looks like we'll manage to pull enough together to begin his project a week from tomorrow.

Jared's mouth:  It's still healing but he occasionally has pain and he has been somewhat plagued with headaches since he had the oral surgery.  He had a bad headache on Wednesday and ended up staying home from Seminary and school.  I hope he doesn't have any more trouble with headaches.

Cleaning / Organizing:  I really didn't get anywhere with that this week.  Just did a few random little jobs here and there.  If I do enough little random jobs, it will all get done eventually, right?

Family History:  The youth in our ward went to the temple yesterday to do baptisms.  Jared went, and Frank went to help also.  They wanted all the youth to have family names to do, if possible.  And I am happy to report that Jared had ONE family name to do!!  Someone from Frank's family.  But I also sent a female name for one of the YW to do, and this one is from my side.  Although don't ask me to explain how she's related because I can't remember for sure...third cousin once removed, or something like that.  A lady in my ward who's really good at family history found her for me.  So the next time we go to the temple, Frank and I each have a family member we can do work for.  I am pretty excited about it!  Also, the lady in my ward gave me some ideas of other things to do to try to find more people.  So I am excited to see if I can find anyone else.

Tanner's church job:  Tanner was called to be a ward missionary on Sunday.  Pretty cool, right?  He went out with the missionaries twice this week.  I think they are going to keep him busy.  Which is great!

 Taxes:  I've been working a lot on our income tax return this week, and it is basically done.  The good news is, we are getting a refund this year.  (We had to pay a ton last year.)  We didn't have a huge financial reversal this year (thankfully), we just paid estimated taxes every quarter--that's what made the difference.  Now I have to figure out the personal property tax return for the business.

Stake Choir practices:  They are awesome!!  Mostly because we are singing 3 songs from Handel's Messiah, and that is one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written!!!  So challenging and fun to sing, too.  The spirit and energy that I feel when we get going is incredible.  Absolutely love it!

Snow days:  Counting today, we are four days over now.  I think we should have had school today--we only got about 3 inches of snow, and it didn't even stick to the roads.  Well, that's Maryland for you.  This is really going to mess up our vacation plans.  This particular snow day also means that we have 24 cinnamon muffins to eat because it was our turn to provide a Friday treat for the Seminary kids, and since I wasn't sure if there would be school or not today, I made them just in case.  We all had some for breakfast and we fed some to the missionaries when they stopped by.  And speaking of feeding missionaries, not very many people in our ward are doing that lately.  But we have been feeding them a lot!!

Pi Day:  Last Saturday was Pi Day and Frank celebrated by making a delicious strawberry pie with homemade crust and everything.  It was yummy!  And we invited the Elders over for dinner so that they could share it with us.

Frank's work:  It's been going really well at Marriott.  His business is going well also, although I'd say he is a lot less busy with it than he used to be.  But today one of his client's servers crashed (he's been telling them they should get a new one for quite some time) so now he is super busy and probably will be for the next couple of days.

The Count of Monte Cristo:  I haven't had much time to read it, but I've made it to page 500, and it is getting to the point where all the pieces are coming together so it is very, very interesting and hard to put down!

Jared's play:  Is tonight, tomorrow, and Sunday (but he isn't helping with it on Sunday).  Even though there is no school today, he has been over at the theater getting things ready for tonight's performance, which is what he would have been doing anyway even if there was school.

Scott:  He's coming home on Wednesday!!!  I wrote my last letter to him today!!!  Wow, I can't believe it.  Still praying that Frank won't have jury duty that day.

I've run out of categories, so that's it!  

Weekly Review March 13 '15

Hey guess what?  It didn't snow this week!  And as a matter of fact, we even got some temperatures in the 50s a few days which feels pretty glorious after weeks of highs in the 20s.  A lot of the snow melted and the river is way up.  The large banks of (dirty) snow created by the snow plows are still there and everything is muddy and the grass is brown so yeah--the world is quite ugly at the moment but I don't care!  I bet in a few weeks the grass will be green again and I already see green shoots starting to poke through in the flower beds.

We had a pretty busy week.  I mostly failed at exercising (except I did take Snickers for a longish walk yesterday)--I blame that on the time change.  I was waking up on my own with time to exercise before showering and picking up Jared from Seminary at around 6:50, but now my internal clock is waking me up an hour later.  Which gives me time to shower or exercise, but not both.  So I chose shower!  Hopefully I will adjust to the time difference soon, though.

We had stake conference last weekend and it is the first stake conference in over 7 years that Frank wasn't in charge of all the audio visual stuff so he wasn't running all over the building during the meetings making sure everything was working or solving problems that came up.  I think he enjoyed that.  However, we still didn't all get to sit together as a family because our ward was asked to provide the choir and Jared and I were singing in the choir.  As a matter of fact, Jared (as the assistant ward choir director) directed one of the three songs that we sang.  Fortunately, he was feeling well enough to do that.  (After his oral surgery on Thursday.)  All the stake conference meetings were good, although I always seem to enjoy the adult session on Saturday evening more than the general session on Sunday.

For RS I did one food order this week and we had our monthly evening meeting.  For the meeting, we were celebrating the RS birthday and we did that with a dinner and a talent / service auction.  For the auction, we asked sisters to contribute either something they made (such as a blanket or a baked good) or to offer a service (such as babysitting or a piano lesson or something like that).  Then everyone who came filled out a survey that earned them points, and then you could use your points to "buy" things at the auction.  It was fun, and we all learned a lot about each other's talents and abilities.  For my contributions, I made a batch of snickerdoodle cookies, I offered the service of helping organize a budget, and a friend and I together offered some basic sewing lessons.  I didn't come home with much because even though I had a lot of points (I got five points for each sibling, child, niece or nephew, just for starters!) I was helping auction the items so it was hard to bid on them at the same time.  But I did get an e-book that a sister in our ward wrote, and a men's haircut (for one of my men).  The food was yummy and a lot of people came so I was happy with how the evening turned out.

I have also spent some time this week helping to plan a luncheon for a funeral.  I can't remember if I mentioned a few weeks ago that a sister in my ward was in the hospital very sick and in a coma.  Whether I did or not, this sister passed away on Sunday.  She got an infection and went into septic shock and all her organs began to shut down...that's why she was in the coma.  So on Saturday her family made the decision to take her off life support and she passed away on Sunday.  She has had many health problems her whole life and this last year has been particularly difficult for her and I've seen her quality of life deteriorate quite a bit, so I am happy for her that she is out of pain and not caught in her body anymore.  She could not walk or talk very well so now I imagine her running from one end of heaven to the other, and happily talking as fast as she can!  I will miss her, though.  I learned a lot from her and I always enjoyed visiting her.  Anyway, the funeral is on Tuesday.  Her parents live in another ward in our stake, so the RS president in that ward and I have been coordinating efforts to put together a luncheon for her family.

On Tuesday I went with my friend Rebekah (she used to be my secretary before they called her to be the Primary president) to take her sewing machine to a place to get it serviced.  It was this cute little store up in Pennsylvania that is run by a Mennonite family.  It was about 45 minutes away, so she wanted someone to ride along with her.  We enjoyed visiting all the way there and back, and after we got home we went to lunch.  I enjoyed that a lot.

Frank hurt his back somehow on Monday.  Very similar to the way I hurt my back...just lifting up his leg to take a sock off!  He was in a lot of pain Monday and to my surprise still managed to go to work on Tuesday, even though he was still in a lot of pain that day.  He worked from home on Wednesday because he didn't have a reason that he needed to actually be in the office that day.  His back has gradually gotten better...improved a little each day...so now it isn't troubling him very much.

Meanwhile, Jared went to school on Monday but on Tuesday he had a bad headache and his mouth was hurting a lot so he stayed home.  He has been ok the rest of the week, though.  He had a follow up with the oral surgeon yesterday and everything is healing well.  He may need to have a little more gum tissue removed from the back right tooth, but we need to wait until the swelling goes down some more before the oral surgeon will know for sure.  It won't be as involved as it was the first time, though, if he does have to have that done.  He goes back in about 10 days so the oral surgeon can look at that again.

I sat down with Jared and did a lot of planning for his Eagle project this week.  Then tonight Frank, Jared and I went to Lowe's to price some materials and such.  We ended up talking to a guy there for quite a while and we are re-thinking how we might do some of it, so there is more planning to do, but hopefully we'll get all of that figured out this week.

This morning I volunteered to help in Seth's class.  Usually they have me help kids with reading but most of the kids had done their reading already so his teacher just asked me to help kids finish their work plans for the week.  She said to help Seth first, and she would send me other kids if they needed help with things.  I did help one child with reading and another one with some math, but I ended up spending most of the time helping Seth get his work plan done.  And for the first time ever, he got EVERYTHING on his plan for the entire week completed!  His teacher and I were more excited about it than he was, but I think he did feel good about it.

Tanner's work is continuing to be kind of ridiculous.  They said they would start scheduling him for more hours, but he was only scheduled to work one shift this week...yesterday.  Then it turns out that there was some sort of a mix up and they thought he had quit because he had another job, so he had been taken out of their system.  So when he showed up for his shift, he couldn't work (it takes 24 hours to put him back into the system).  And of course he isn't scheduled to work next week either since they made the schedule when they thought he didn't work there anymore!  But they are getting everything fixed, and they might even schedule him to work some hours this week.  Hopefully; we'll see!

In between everything else, I did a little bit of cleaning.  All my kitchen cabinets desperately need to be cleaned, so I had Tanner take two of the cupboard doors off so I could really scrub them.  They are a lot cleaner now but I also rubbed off some of the stain.  So I'm not sure if I'll do all the others or if I'll try to figure out another way to clean them.  Maybe I should just sand them all down and re-stain all of them!  That would be a much bigger project than I intended, though.

I have also been reading Count of Monte Cristo whenever I get the chance.  I'm almost halfway through now...it's over 600 pages long!  But I do enjoy it.

That's it for this week!  I need to stop anyway and convince Jared that he should really go to bed since he's taking the SAT in the morning.      

Weekly Review March 6 '15

Here we go again...a week that is all about winter weather.  And it's March.  

On Sunday we had freezing rain in the afternoon, so our ward had only sacrament meeting and the stake choir practice got cancelled.  School was cancelled on Monday too because the roads were still icy.  Then yesterday (Thursday) we got another snow storm...about 10 inches again.  So there was no school yesterday or today either.  We are now 3 days over our limit on snow days, which means they will take 2 days off of spring break and add one day on at the end of the year.  Tanner and Seth got some sledding in today, though:

It is beautiful, too.  But I am ready for it all to melt away and for the grass to turn green again!

They cancel everything around here when it snows, but miraculously the oral surgeon's office did not close yesterday so Jared did have all four wisdom teeth out and his two lower back molars exposed.  So far he is doing pretty well.  He does want the pain medication as often as he can have it, but he's not complaining at all.  He's been able to eat soft foods and his face doesn't look swollen.  I spent most of yesterday watching the snow come down and making sure Jared took his medications at the right time (he has 3 different kinds...one for swelling, an antibiotic, and the pain killer) and that he had food and lots of liquids, and that he had ice on his face.  I read a lot of the book for book chat too, which is The Count of Monte Cristo (really good).

I had a bit of an adventure getting Jared home from the oral surgeon yesterday.  By the time we headed home, there were several inches of snow in the unplowed parking lot.  I've only been there one other time, so I'm not familiar with that particular parking lot and with all the snow I got disoriented and tried to exit the lot through the entrance.  I was just realizing I was in the wrong lane and needed to move over when a snow plow turned into the lot, coming right at us so I tried to move quickly to my right and discovered that there was a median buried under all that snow!  My front wheels thumped right over it, but my back wheels got stuck and there we were, straddling the median.  The snow plow kept going and disappeared...I couldn't believe they didn't stop to help us!  So I was trying to figure out a way to get unstuck while Jared, meanwhile, was still pretty out of it and kept saying crazy things.  Thankfully we were only stuck for a few minutes before another car turned into the lot and this man stopped to help.  He had a cord that he tied to the front of our car and with him pulling and me giving it a little bit of gas, we were able to get the back wheels over the median and I was able to get on my way.  The roads were very slippery, but the rest of the trip home was uneventful, thank goodness.  The car does not appear to be damaged at all from it's bumpy trip over the median and so other than feeling really dumb about it, everything turned out fine.

Last week end I didn't get much done because I came down with a case of the stomach flu.  I got up Saturday morning and had breakfast, but shortly after that I started feeling sick.  I spent the rest of the day in bed...if I even moved around a little too much it would make me get sick.  Not much fun!  We were supposed to have the Elders over for dinner, so Frank ended up taking them to Wendy's for dinner.  By evening I was able to keep down a little liquid and Sunday I was able to start eating small amounts of bland food.  But I still had a head ache, my stomach hurt, and I was totally exhausted, so I got one of my counselors to go to ward council for me that morning.  I didn't go to church either but since we only had sacrament meeting, I didn't miss as much as I would have.

This was a pretty busy week.  I had my monthly meeting with the bishop on Tuesday evening.  I took Snickers to the vet for his annual check up on Wednesday and today he went to the groomer's.  I took all three boys to get haircuts on Wednesday.  Jared and I had choir practice that night too because our ward choir is singing for stake conference.  Tanner worked on Wednesday and he works again tomorrow.  Frank was swamped with work...he had a big project at work that he was finishing up so he would do more work from home every evening after he got home from work.  Then on Wednesday he went in at 5:30 am and didn't get home until about 12:45 am on Thursday!  He did get the project done, though.  I went to lunch with a group of women from my ward today...we were celebrating a birthday for one of them.  Tonight we went to the temple because our stake was having a special meeting at the temple for stake conference.  We went down early enough that we had time to do some sealings before the meeting.  I actually recently submitted a few family names to the temple and there was one couple that needed to be sealed, so we were able to do that one tonight...some of Frank's great grandparents.  So that was cool!    

Now I am just waiting for Tanner to get home from a party so that I can go to bed.  We got a nice letter from Scott's mission president this week.  When I saw the stake president earlier this week he said he had just received Scott's release papers in the mail.  So I guess he really is going to be coming home pretty soon.  It's hard to believe.  Everyone please pray that Frank won't have to report for jury duty that day...thanks!

Weekly Review February 27 '15

My pictures for this post are all mixed up and a couple of them are sideways in spite of all my efforts to  move them right side up (I changed them in my photo editing software, and they are right side up when I look at my picture files, but when I upload them to blogger, they only show up sideways).  Bu I give up!  I can spend all night trying to get the photos right, or I can just leave them that way and actually get this post written.  So bear with me.  (Or is it bare with me?  Can you tell I'm tired?)

I will just explain the pictures, in their mixed up order, and then I will add anything else I think I need to add about this week, without any pictures.  So we'll start with Jared:

Do you see anything missing in this picture?  It's the braces on his top teeth!  They're gone!  And aren't those some beautiful (expensive) pearly whites?!  He got his braces off on Tuesday morning and as you can see he's pretty happy about it.

Speaking of Jared's teeth, I also took him to the oral surgeon this week for a consultation and he is scheduled to get his wisdom teeth out this coming Thursday.  Besides getting the teeth pulled, he also has to have something done at the same time called "exposures".  That's because both of his lower 12 year molars still haven't come in all the way.  So they have to cut away some gum tissue on both sides and on one side (I think it's the right side) that also involves cutting away some bone.  Sounds like lots of fun, right?  The oral surgeon said it won't be too bad and he'll only need a day or two to recover.  I'm skeptical ,but I hope he's right.  As you might have guessed, it's also going to be really expensive.  Thank goodness for insurance and for a very large discount from the surgeon (because he actually doesn't accept our insurance in network, but he was recommended by our orthodontist as the only oral surgeon in the area who really knows what he's doing when it comes to exposures). Without insurance and the discount, we'd be looking at about $6500.  We're paying a lot less than that, but we're still paying a lot.  But it needs to be done.

The next pictures are from the snow storm we got last week end.  It was supposed start snowing late afternoon Saturday, and we were supposed to get 5 to 8 inches.  Instead, it started snowing about 9:00 am Saturday and we got more like 10 inches:
  

Our stake had a women't conference that morning starting at 9:00 so by the time I headed home at 1:30, there were several inches on the ground and the roads hadn't been plowed yet.  (The women's conference was awesome and really uplifting, by the way.)  I drove the Prius to the conference but Frank came by later and switched cars because he was worried about the Prius making it home.  I was grateful, too, because I think I probably would have got stuck somewhere.  As it was, my big problem going home was that the defrost on the Expedition didn't seem to be working.  So the windshield wipers quickly got a layer of ice all over them, making them almost useless.  Plus the snow coming down was freezing to the windshield.  So the net result was that I couldn't see!  I wanted to pull over and clean off the windshield and knock the ice off the wipers, but I was afraid to try because there was so much snow on the roads (plus remember I couldn't see anything anyway) that I was afraid if I tried to pull over I would pull right off the road.  Besides that, I was afraid someone behind m would hit me.  So I just kept creeping along and shifting around in my seat, trying to find a patch of windshield that I could see through better.  It was not a fun trip but gratefully I made it home safely.

Because of the snow (and a subsequent ice storm late Saturday / early Sunday) every ward in our stake cancelled church meetings...except our ward!  We meet at 1:00 and by about 10:30 all the roads were plowed and the ice had melted so it wasn't difficult to get around.  We still had several people missing who had extra long drive ways to dig out of and such, but a lot of people made it to church, plus several others from other wards, including our entire stake presidency.  And our meetings that day were particularly good!

We had a lot of different things going on that day and as it turns out, the only planned thing that didn't happen was ward council for me.  Tanner had appointments with both the bishop and the stake president, and those did happen, although not at the times originally planned.  The bishop has his mission papers now but Tanner's BYU ward is still listed as the submitting ward so he has to get that changed so our bishop will actually be able to access them, review them, and send them on to the stake president.  So our bishop is working on getting that changed.  Hopefully they will go in in a week or two.  Here's the picture Frank took for Tanner to submit with his pictures:

He's handsome even when he's sideways.

On Sunday I also had two different choir practices (one before church for our ward and one in the evening for the stake Easter choir) and Frank, Seth, and I had the baptism fireside.  I think my talk went ok.

There is still a lot of snow on the sides of the roads which means a lot of roads that are usually 2 lanes and more like one lane.  Makes things tricky.  On Monday we had a two hour delay for school because of residual snow and ice, I guess.  Then on Thursday school got cancelled.  The roads were pretty slippery early that morning I guess and then we were supposed to get 2 or 3 inches of snow.  And I head it did snow for a while in some parts of the county, but all that happened here is that a few snowflakes drifted down.  So it seemed pretty ridiculous to have school cancelled over that, but oh well.  Have I mentioned that I am ready for spring?

We did have a really nice sunset the other night:

Oh!  And back to Saturday for my last picture:

When I was at the stake women's conference, I finally got to meet Jeanette's daughter Marlee, who is serving her mission here in the Baltimore mission.  I heard that she was in a ward in my stake so when I noticed there were sister missionaries at the conference, I went looking for her!  It was fun to talk to her.  I told her companion "I don't even know her, but I'm talking her ear off because"...and right then Marlee chimed in at the same time and we both said "But we're family!!"  Apparently family enough that we can finish each other's sentences. :)

Besides all of that, it was a pretty normal week with all the usual things that needed to be done, plus a number of RS things, including VT changes because it't the last week of the month.  And it was quite the puzzle this time, too!  There's also a sister in my ward very sick in the hospital...in a fever induced coma...so I've been worried about her, of course.  She seems to be improving a little bit, though.  Earlier this week we thought we were going to lose her.  It's looking a little better now.

I also had book club, and gave a ride to a lady who is investigating the church.  She is also totally blind.  She and her husband are both on date to be baptized March 21st.  It's been fun to get to know her better.

Today Frank had his monthly "Elders Quorum" lunch, but the wives were invited this time so I went too.  We had a small group but it was fun.  Then this evening Frank and I went out to get some hot chocolate.  Frank has been super busy this week.  He has a lot of big projects at work right now.  So we just needed to get away for a little while.

It is nice that Tanner has his license now...he can take himself places!  He has also taken Jared a few places too.  We were looking at our insurance again today and realized that if we only put Tanner down as a driver of the Expedition instead of both cars, that our insurance will only go up a very small amount.  So we're going to call and change it.  He won't be able to drive the Prius, but at least he will still be able to drive.

Tanner got called in to work one day this week (he wasn't scheduled to work at all) and they trained him on some new things and said that he'll be able to get more hours now.  He still isn't scheduled for a lot next week, but it's more than he has been by quite a bit.  Hopefully he will get more and more hours as time goes on.

Jared had a couple of rehearsals this week and he ran lights and sound for his school's talent show, so he is keeping busy, as always.

That's all the news I can think of for this week!

Weekly Review February 20 '15

It's all about the nasty winter weather around here lately.  Today we actually had a 2 hour delay because it was so cold.  With wind chill temperatures, it was around -20 degrees.  So they decided to have a 2 hour delay to give the temperatures a chance to rise up to a whopping 11 degrees...or something like that.  We beat the all time record low by several degrees today...that record low occurred in 1886!

Besides the miserably cold temperatures, we also had 2 "squalls" this week.  What is a squall?  It's a very quick, intense snow storm.  Last about an hour or less, but during that time the snow comes down so hard that visibility is almost zero.  And in that short amount of time, a few inches of snow gets dumped.  The first squall was on Saturday evening, lasted about an hour, and dumped about 2 inches of snow.  The second squall was Wednesday evening, lasted about a half hour, and dumped about an inch of snow.  Besides that, we got about 4 inches in the night Monday night, so we had a snow day on Tuesday.  Friday was a scheduled day off and Monday was also a day off (President's Day), so we ended up having a five day week end followed by 2 regular days of school and then another short day because of a delay.  You'd think with all that, this week would have flown by, but it actually feels very, very long to me!!

Did I mention that we are supposed to get 5 - 8  inches of snow tomorrow?  And that our highest temperature predictions are in the 30s?  If I want to get seriously depressed, all I have to do is watch the weather!

So let's talk about something else, shall we?  Relief Society:  I did two food orders this week, had a presidency meeting, and ended up meeting with the bishop for an impromptu meeting Wednesday evening since there are a number of crisis situations that have come up this week.  Plus a number of phone calls and such...the usual!

Valentine's Day:  Frank and I went out for breakfast that morning.  We got the boys cards and chocolate, and Frank got me red roses:

  

I got Frank a card, but we agreed not to get any chocolate for each other because we are both trying not to eat fattening stuff.  Plus, truth be told...I still have chocolate left over from Christmas!  In the afternoon, Frank and I took Seth shopping for clothes.  He's been growing out of all his shirts and his jeans and his shoes have holes in them.  So he acquired 4 new shirts, 4 pairs of pants, 5 undershirts, a hoodie, and some shoes.  Hopefully he's set for a while!  That evening we went to a Valentine's party that a family in our ward was giving...they told us "pizza and games" but it turned out to be a full-fledged party, with not just pizza, but tons of snacks, cookie decorating, Valentine making, a photo booth, a cupcake eating contest, chocolate sampling, etc!  It was really fun and a lot of people came.

We had Elders over for dinner on Wednesday (we watched the squall while we ate!):

 I couldn't get a picture with everyone looking their best at once, so in the first picture everyone is smiling but Jared has his eyes closed, and in the second picture everyone looks good except Seth has his eyes closed.  (Those boys must be related to their mother!)  The Elder on the right is going home next week.  So we told him we'd make whatever he wanted for dinner and he chose sour cream enchiladas.  He really liked them, and said they tasted almost exactly like the ones his mom makes.

Jared is dressed up in the picture because he was going to YM right after that, and they were having an etiquette dinner where the YM served the YW.  He had to make a meatloaf to take to that, too.

I felt pretty harried this week between RS stuff, all the regular chores, and writing a talk about baptism for a fireside on Sunday (it's for all the kids who are turning 8 this year).  Plus getting everyone where they needed to be, helping Jared with Eagle project planning, printing up music for Jared and I to start learning (we've both been invited to sing in a stake choir for a special Easter fireside we're doing in conjunction with some other churches in the community), contacting BYU-I for Scott, reminding Seth to practice the piano (he's doing great, though), and doing some planning for our spring break trip.  (Did I mention we are going to North Carolina?)  It was a very busy week.  Frank had to do maintenance for 3 clients, plus all the usual stuff so he was very busy too.  Both of us have bad headaches today that don't see to be responding very well to Tylenol.  Hopefully we'll both feel better tomorrow.

We did take the time on Monday to go to the temple.  The temple is usually open for half a day on Monday federal holidays.  (It's usually closed on Mondays.)  It was really nice to go, and it was pretty crowded so it's nice to know a lot of people took advantage of the chance to go on their day off.  They have a new model of the temple at the visitor's center...it's pretty cool!  One side is cut away so you can see inside, and it is quite accurate...right down to the chairs, the plants, and the pictures on the walls.

Frank got a summons for jury duty and it's for the week that Scott comes home!  How frustrating is that?  It's also a very important week at his work.  He can get a postponement, of course, but then they might reschedule him for one of the weeks we are planning to be on vacation, and he wouldn't be able to get out of it.  It's quite the dilemma, and he hasn't decided what to do about it yet.  It would be nice to know if he'll actually have to report or not.  I've been summoned twice and of all the days in both of those weeks, I only had to report once and then got to go home after an hour or two because the case was settled without a trial.  It wouldn't be a big deal for him to do it that week if something like that happens.  But it would really be a bummer if he were sitting in a courtroom when Scott gets off that plane!

Today I went with Tanner up to Hagerstown so he could take his driver's test, and he passed so...we now have another licensed driver in the family.  He tried out his new freedom this evening by giving Jared a ride over to a service project (and he brought the car back without a scratch, thankfully).  We are still reeling from the shock of how much our insurance just went up.  I knew it would go up, but since he is not a full time student right now, it is even worse than usual.  We didn't expect that.  At least it will only be for a few months, probably.  He has both his interviews this Sunday for the Melchizedek priesthood and his mission papers should go in soon too.

Tonight Jared helped a family in our ward who is moving and then all the priests got together at the bishop's house for pizza and fun.  Tanner went to his friend Taylor's house for cake (he had a birthday this week) and then they both went to another friend's house for a movie night.

That is all I can think of for this week!

Weekly Review February 13 '15

Greetings from the frozen land!  Ok, we aren't buried under snow like our counterparts to the north, but it's only about 18 degrees out there.  Last night it was that cold, plus the wind was blowing like crazy.  I listened to that wind howling out there and felt very, very grateful to have a house--with heat!!  We're supposed to have more of the same the next couple of days.  We got some sleet Monday night and had a 2 hour delay on Tuesday morning.  We did have a few days in between that weren't quite so bad, though.

I am keeping very busy getting the boys to all their various activities.  It definitely makes a difference having Tanner home and Jared seems to be a lot busier than usual lately too.  Tanner has his driver's test a week from today so hopefully we will have another driver in the family soon but since he won't have his own car that is not going to help me out a whole lot.  Some, though.

Jared survived his cold camp out in usual Jared fashion...that means we didn't really hear any complaints about it.  He is pretty good about rolling with the punches when it comes to things like that.  He got home with barely time to get to his next activity, which was a basketball game (church ball).  His team lost, but only by 3 points.  They had another game later but Jared missed that because he was working a concert at the high school.  He got paid for that concert plus the one he did last week, so he is feeling somewhat rich right now.  This week he helped with a few rehearsals and he also helped with a school event last night, so he's been gone a lot.  He did get his Eagle scout project approved, so now he just needs to find time to do it.

Tanner is busy with YSA activities--he goes to FHE and Institute each week.  Tonight he is going to a dance also.  He is going to be part of a dance performance of some kind soon so he is going to rehearsals for that.  He worked two four hour shifts at work, but he isn't scheduled to work any hours next week.  Our dentist had a cancellation, so I was able to get him into see the dentist this week too.  We had our monthly RS meeting this week and he helped with the babysitting again, which was very much needed!

Seth started a piano class this week.  It's a beginning group keyboarding class which is held once a week after school at his school.  He liked the first session so hopefully he'll keep liking it.  I'm sure it's not as good as private lessons, but it's a start.  I went in to Seth's school on Tuesday morning to help him get some things done.  It's too bad I can't do that every day because it does help him to have someone there helping him focus.  Tanner was just given a book to read about ADD and I am planning to read it too in the hopes that it will help me understand both Tanner and Seth better, and gt some ideas that might help them.

Frank has not been as swamped this week as last week, but he keeps pretty busy.  Besides taking the kids all the places they need to be, I kept busy with lots of other things this week.  I went to lunch with a friend on Monday, which I really enjoyed.  We had our monthly RS evening meeting on Wednesday, as I already mentioned.  We talked about ideas for increasing love at home and for others outside the home as well.  We also made Valentines and we made 50 hour candles to add to our emergency supplies.  We had a lot of people come, including a few women who don't usually come, so I was really happy about it.  Yesterday morning my presidency got together so we could clean out our closets in the RS room.  They had gotten really packed with stuff.  We were pretty successful...there's a lot less stuff in there and the closets look pretty good!  I ran a few errands for a sister in our ward who lives in a nursing home and made some phone calls for RS too.  In between everything else, I was reading the book for book chat, which got really interesting so it was hard to put it down.  I finished it Wednesday morning, after staying up much later than I should have on Tuesday night.  The book was dealing with a troubling situation which left me feeling somewhat conflicted a lot of the time but still...I enjoyed it.  It's definitely worth reading...The Light Between Oceans.

We've seen a lot of the missionaries lately,  They were here for dinner on Saturday, Monday, and last night.  On Monday they came over last minute because we found out they didn't have a place to go for dinner.  We always like having them over.

Tonight we had a fun evening with some families in our ward.  One family invited us over for "Darwin Day".  Charles Darwin's birthday was February 12, apparently, and to celebrate the diversity of species, they choose a food item every year and try to experience as many varieties of that food as possible.  For example, some of the things they've done in the past are apples, yogurt, and M&Ms.  This year they decided to do tomato based pasta sauces.  If you can believe it, we sampled 22 different flavors of pasta sauce!  We put all of them in little cups and then dipped small pasta shells in each one to taste them.  We took notes, and chose our favorites.  Then we found out which ones we liked the best (they were all numbered, so we didn't know exactly which was which).  It was really fun and interesting.  The funny thing was, the one that Frank and I (actually all of us) thought had the strangest taste turned out to be the kind that I always buy!  Can't figure out why it tasted so different to us, when we eat it all the time and we have always liked it.  For Frank and I, a lot of our tastes didn't match, but we both really liked a butternut squash pasta sauce, so we'll have to try that again at home.  We got to choose two bottles to bring home with us and that's one of the ones we chose.  We had green salad and fresh fruit along with all the pasta sauce sampling, so it was filling and made a good dinner.  We had a good time visiting as well.

That sums it up for this week!