Weekly Review March 25 '22

 Is it spring? Some days it feels like it, but other days it doesn't. Today temps are in the mid 50s but it is cloudy so it doesn't feel very warm. We've had a few really nice days but mostly this week has been kind of wet and chilly. However, a few trees have started to bloom this week and we are hearing and seeing a lot of birds, so the signs of spring are there even if it doesn't feel very warm a lot of the time. 

We had another pretty busy week although my calendar doesn't have a lot on it. Frank was definitely a lot busier than I was, though. He's had a lot going on with work and has put in a lot of late nights. After we got back from Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon (around 3:00), he unpacked and then went downstairs to his office to do work and worked solid until midnight. Then of course he had to be up early for bishopric meeting and ward council. That's how a lot of this week has gone for him. Is it any wonder that he is sick now? At first he thought he might just have allergies but he's been really congested and not feeling great since Wednesday, so I think he's got a bad cold or the flu or something. He did take an at home Covid test, and that was negative. Even though he isn't feeling great, he has still been working a lot...just working from home. There's some issues with the new database that he's been working on all day today.

I guess I should go back to last Saturday and finish telling about our trip to Philadelphia. As planned, Seth and Frank went with me to the temple on Saturday morning to see if Seth could do some baptisms and they did let him join a larger group that was already there so while I was in my endowment session, he got to be proxy for 4 baptisms...3 of them were family names I brought with us...and Frank did the confirmations. They finished before I did so they walked back to the hotel and changed and packed everything up except for my suitcase and then walked back to the temple to meet me when I finished. 

It was wonderful to be back in the temple again! We are all so glad that we got to go!

We walked back to the hotel so I could change clothes and then we checked out and headed home. I took a few photos of the hotel...one in the lobby and the other in our room...because I thought the signs on the walls were kind of clever:

I took some photos from our hotel window on Friday night too, after I wrote last week's post:

The trip home went smoothly and was uneventful...we stopped in Delaware to get some lunch, but other than that we didn't need to stop. As I mentioned, Frank worked the rest of the day; I kept busy finishing the usual Saturday chores. I don't remember much about what we did on Sunday after church except that we had family night. Frank took a nap after he got home from doing tithing and I wanted to take a nap but I wrote an email to our kids instead. On Sunday morning I looked out my bedroom window and saw these two geese walking across the common area:

The rest of the week was mostly business as usual. I did get the personal property tax return filed for the business on Monday. My VITA shift on Wednesday was kind of crazy because the first two appointments I ended up not being able to complete the returns. The first lady had an incorrect W-2 (she moved during the year so her company sent her one for each state that she lived in but the total income for the two states added up to a lot more than her total federal income for the year). The second lady had an item on her return that was out of scope for our program. Then the third hour I was there all of the appointments no-showed, so overall I spent the first 3 hours I was there with not much to do. We (the volunteers) were all just sitting there talking to each other and hoping someone would show up soon. Then at noon all 5 of our appointments showed up and a few of them were people who didn't speak English so then I was really busy the last two hours completing a tax return for a couple who spoke Spanish, who also needed to get ITINs (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) for their two children so that they could claim them as dependents on their return. I filled out the application to get ITINs for their children as well as completing their tax return. I had an interpreter there for the beginning as we were sorting through all their stuff but she had to leave shortly after that so it was tricky communicating with them after that when questions came up! Then to finish their return I had to help them prepare to mail it--they couldn't efile because of the ITIN applications--so I had to call a number to get an interpreter for that part. It wasn't ideal to not have the interpreter there in person since I was pointing to lines to have them sign and stuff like that and of course the interpreter on the phone couldn't see what I was doing. But we got it all done in the end and they seemed to be grateful!

Frank didn't go to YM on Wednesday evening since he wasn't feeling very well but Seth and I both went to the church for activities. All the YW classes and the YM were working on their movies because the "film festival" is next week so we all need to finish up. My class went to Goodwill to purchase some clothes for costumes and then we came back to the church and got one scene filmed. We are meeting again tonight at 4:00 to continue filming. Hopefully we will get most of it done! 

I had a YW presidency meeting yesterday morning so between that and the regular chores I kept pretty busy.

This is the last week of the 3rd term for Seth so he's been pretty busy getting all his assignments in. I hope someday he will learn not to procrastinate! He is done with everything now though and he has Monday off from school. I'm pretty happy that we only have one term left of this school year. I am ready for summer!!

Frank and Seth are ministering companions now and they visited two of their families this week...one on Tuesday and one last night (Frank wore a mask last night). Frank told Seth that he would give the lesson the first few times and then Seth will have a turn. I am happy that Seth is starting to see what it means to be a ministering brother. Unfortunately, we haven't had hometeachers or ministering brothers visit us for over a decade (all of Seth's lifetime that he can remember) so he doesn't even really know what a hometeacher or ministering brother is. 

This morning some guys from the company that installed our new windows came over and fixed our shutters on our house so they look better now. 

I talked to both Tanner and Jared this week. I only had a few minutes to talk to Tanner so we didn't chat extensively but he seems to be doing well. I talked to Jared for longer; he was calling to report the results of a visit to a specialist. He was hoping to get his surgery scheduled soon but the new specialist doesn't agree with the one in Utah. Based on Jared's symptoms, he thinks it's highly possible that Jared has Crohn's Disease, and if so just doing surgery to remove the fistula will not solve the problem. So instead, they are going to do some testing (bloodwork, MRI, colonoscopy) to try to get a firm diagnosis. If he has Crohn's Disease, he still may need surgery but there are some other treatments they can try also. I've been doing a bit of online research on Crohn's Disease and it doesn't sound very fun. Jared defninitely has a number of the symptoms. It's a chronic disease and not really completely curable, but there are medications that can really help and can possibly put it in remission for long periods of time. Everybody please keep him in your prayers! He has a lot of discomfort from the abscess / fistula and hasn't been able to work a lot so that makes life challenging for them. Fortunately, Jessie's new job seems to be going really well and she enjoys it.

That's all the news from around here (or at least all the news I am remembering right now). To finish up, here's a photo of the new bishopric that the bishop's wife took a few weeks ago. Frank is definitely the tallest one (but the bishop has the most hair)😂!

Weekly Review March 18 '22

 This week's post is coming to you from Philadelphia. We are here this weekend to go to the temple. Frank is at a session now and I will be going to a session tomorrow morning. We weren't able to get an appointment for Seth to do baptisms (all the appointments were taken) but we're hoping that maybe if he and Frank go over with me tomorrow with the family file cards that I printed up for him that they might squeeze him in. It's worth a try, anyway. Seth had a 2 hour early release from school today so we left shortly after he got home from school (around 1:00). We got here around 3:30 so we made good time for once. The traffic is always bad coming into Philadelphia, but we were early enough that we didn't hit the really bad rush hour traffic. We are staying at a hotel that is within walking distance of the temple. After we got here and checked into our room, we got some food at the restaurant downstairs and then Frank left to go to the temple. We are on the 23rd floor of the hotel. Here are some views from our window:

I guess I should back track now and tell you about the beginning of the week. We have been pretty busy. On Saturday (the 12th) it snowed. We only got an inch or so and it didn't stick to the roads much but it was also really cold and windy so we just stayed home. I was pretty busy doing stuff for YW and I also got our tax returns filed. 

On Sunday I was originally going to have 3 meetings after church but a couple of them got cancelled so I only ended up having one...a class presidency meeting. Frank had a lot of meetings, of course. He had bishopric meeting and ward council. He had another meeting that evening but he missed that one because he had to go to work for an overnight digital menu install. He got home earlier than he originally expected, but it was still the wee hours of the morning. Fortunately, there weren't a lot of emergencies on Monday so he was able to rest a bit. 

On Monday afternoon a sister in my ward came over so I could help her with her taxes. She had asked me about the place I volunteer, but when I told her where it was she said she wouldn't be able to get there, so I told her she could come to my house and I would look over her taxes and see if I could figure them out. It turns out that her taxes were pretty simple, so we were able to get both her federal and her state taxes completed and filed that afternoon and she was happy about that. 

That evening we had to make some final decisions about our summer schedule because the next day was the day we could register Seth for FSY and we needed to choose which week to send him to that (we had three choices). Since plane ticket prices are climbing, we went ahead and purchased tickets for Utah. We are looking forward to seeing all you Utah folks this summer!

My friend Rebekah, who is in my book club, got the movie Ben-Hur from the library and invited me to watch it with her. I went to her house on Tuesday and we ate lunch together while we watched about 2/3rds of the movie. (It's 2 hours and 40 minutes long!) Then Rebekah came to my house yesterday and we watched the rest of the movie. I enjoyed seeing it again...haven't seen it since I was in high school, and I had forgotten most of it. The movie deviates from the book quite a bit, but we still enjoyed it. There are some things I like better about the movie and other things that I like better about the book. 

Frank was really busy on Tuesday with work--he worked all day and into the evening. He wanted to go to a regional Primary training meeting that was at the stake center by the temple (the Primary is one of his repsonsibilities) but he had too much work to do. 

Wednesday was really busy for me as usual...I worked at VITA during the day and had a YM / YW activity that evening. We were pretty busy at VITA...we had a couple of people come in who needed 4 years worth of taxes filed. That was kind of crazy, but we got them done. For the YM / YW activity that evening we talked about goal setting and then watched the Face-to-Face broadcast that introduced this year's theme (Trust In the Lord). The broadcast was really good. We got there early because Frank was in charge of setting up all the technology stuff. Frank & Seth were assigned to bring lemonade and I brought cookies and unfortunately there was a lot of both of those things leftover. I put a bunch in the cookies in the freezer. Maybe I should try freezing the lemonade too since there is about 4 gallons of it!!

Frank worked all day on Wednesday but he had to go back to work after the activity was over becuase they were installing the new database at one of the stores that night. It was only supposed to take about an hour so he thought he'd be home around 11:00 pm but there were a lot of problems so he didn't get home utnil about 3:30 am. Then he had to be back at the store at 5:00 am when they opened up. He was hoping he'd only be there for a short amount of time but he didn't get back home until about 9:00 am. He got maybe an hour or two of sleep but then he had meetings and other work to do so he never did get to go back to sleep until bedtime last night. He was exhausted, of course! He did sleep solidly all night long last night, though. 

Meanwhile, I had book chat last night. We discussed Ben-Hur and now we are going to read Dune. 

I think I mentioned that Frank had a job interview last week while he was in Las Vegas (they did the interview online). They contacted him on Monday and want to do a second interview, this time in person. He'll be doing that the week after next. 

Frank's dad had surgery on Tuesday to remove his gall bladder. It went well and he is recovering, although recovery will take a while. 

That's all I can think of to tell you about this week.

Weekly Review March 11 '22

My brain was feeling like mush when I wrote last week. Thankfully, I don't feel that way today. 

Last Saturday morning (the 5th) I had a hair appointment at 8:00 am, so that's the first thing I did. We did a couple of things differently this time...instead of just touching up the roots, the stylist pulled the color all the way to the ends so it looks quite a bit darker. We did that because next time I'm getting highlights. The stylist also cut my bangs shorter than she's been doing lately (at my request; they've been too long and hard to deal with). It took me a few days to get used to both the color and the bangs, but now I'm happy with it. Frank was busy that day cleaning in his office and moving his desk away from the window, in preparation for the new windows being installed this week. He was also busy packing because he was leaving for a business trip the next day. He went to Las Vegas for a convention (something to do with restaurant technology). He left Sunday morning and was gone until Wednesday evening. 

Frank attended bishopric meeting on Sunday morning but after that he needed to go to the airport. He left around the same time that Seth and I left for church. We had a pretty quiet day after we got home from church...no extra meetings or anything. It actually got up to the low 70s that day, so it was a nice day but for some reason I was really cold all day. It was colder inside than outside.

Because Frank was gone, I decided to make dinners that Seth would like and eat with him rather than following Frank's diet. Well, Seth liked the main dishes, anyway! I made a green salad on Monday to go with the sausage rice casserole he likes and I made him eat some of that each night. (We had sour cream enchiladas and lime pork fajitas other nights.) We had pretty quiet days while Frank was gone...just mostly getting the usual things done. I did get a number of errands done on Monday. That evening, Seth came with me to Costco--I needed to stock up on chicken, salmon, and shrimp--and then we went to Dairy Queen to get ice cream cones. A pretty decent rainstorm came through while we were driving to Dairy Queen but by the time we got home it was mostly gone. 

We didn't get to talk much to Frank while he was gone because he was 3 hours behind us so the timing was always off. He was busy at the convention during the day and by the time he finished at night we were in bed asleep. But we did talk briefly a few times and texted a bit. We were happy to have him return home on Wednesday evening.

I did my usual volunteer shift at VITA on Wednesday. It was raining hard most of the day so it was a good day to be indoors. We were busier than we've been the last few weeks, but not overwhelmingly so. I kept pretty busy the whole time I was there. On Wednesday evening I had a RS activity--the YW were invited to this activity too. Seth had YM as usual; they worked on their movie for the upcoming film festival. For RS we were celebrating the RS birthday and we had a service auction. I didn't actually bid on anything but it was amusing to watch other people have bidding wars and such. The YW really seemed to enjoy themselves! I submitted sewing lessons as my service to be auctioned off and one of the girls in my YW class won that, so I will be giving her some sewing lessons. I think it will be fun! I gave a ride to the church and back to my friend Rebecca and her daughter Melanie for this activity. Rebecca is blind, so she obviously can't drive and it made it easier for her family if her husband didn't have to drop them off (she has younger children). I enjoyed visiting with her a bit on the ride to the church and back.

Yesterday was eventful because we had the new windows installed. The crew arrived around 9:00 am and they were done by about 4:00 pm. There were windows and doors open the whole time they were here and it was about 50 degrees yesterday so it got really cold in the house and I was freezing all day! I kind of expected that's how it would be, though. They did a good job with the windows but we aren't happy about what they did to our shutters. They had to remove all the shutters and when they put them back up they didn't hang them up the way they were before. The shutters were hung on screws that were behind the shutters so that they didn't show. I don't know why they didn't just replace the screws and hang them back up, but instead they drilled screws all the way through the shutters into the house. That means we have a bunch of extra holes in our house now, and holes in the shutters, and the screws are showing on the front when they used to be hidden behind the shutters. Frank has been talking to the company today to try to get that resolved, and telling them that they need to replace the shutters for us now. Hopefully he'll be able to work that out. The windows do look really nice and the house is much warmer today than it's been in a long time, without the heater having to run much, so we're happy about that. 

Old windows in our bedroom (see the condensation between the panes?):

This is how the house looked during the install, when I went to get us some lunch. It was amazing to me what a mess the yard was!:

New windows (I took these photos this morning):

The blinds we had on the old windows are not going to fit in the new windows so we are going to have to buy new ones. In the meantime, we felt pretty exposed last night with no blinds or curtains on any of the windows. (We had to take down the curtains of course and we couldn't hang them back up until today because the caulking on the new windows had to dry for 24 hours first.) I washed the curtains today and we hung them back up so at least we have those now, which will have to do until we have time to get more blinds. I didn't hang Seth's curtains back up though because I'm going to get him some new ones. I've never replaced the Noah's ark themed curtains that have been hanging in that room since before he was born. I think he has grown out of curtains with cute little animals on them now! 😉

I've been gathering donations for Ukraine the last few weeks. My friend Renata has a connection with a Ukrainian School in Bethesda that is shipping needed items to Ukraine every few weeks. She let me know about it and I spread the word to our ward because I thought people would want to donate, and I was right. Last night I took a trunk load of donations over to Renata for her to take to the school tomorrow. I may be doing this again if more people donate. Renata was really grateful! It feels good to do something to help Ukraine, even if it's not much. 

Frank injured his leg when he was on the way home from Las Vegas. I'm not sure exactly what happened...he just tweaked it somehow when he had to stand up to let someone sit in the middle seat on the airplane, and he was standing at a weird angle. He definitely wins the random injury award...I feel like he is constantly getting these odd injuries! His leg is quite painful and he's been trying to rest it as much as possible. 

When I had any free time this week, I was reading. I finished reading A Gentleman in Moscow on Saturday night. On Sunday I started reading another book that I got from the library as a suggested reading for book chat. It is called Educated but Tara Westover. I finished reading that book last night. I finished it quickly because it was hard to put down. I'm not sure how to describe it except to say that it was astonishing. The author was writing about her own life, so it was a true story and it was just really crazy! Or actually, her parents were crazy (mentally ill would be the more correct term) so that made her life crazy. Her family was LDS, but believe me...most of the time I didn't recognize the beliefs / lifestyle she was describing. She grew up in Idaho on the side of a mountain. She was homeschooled (sort of...she really didn't get much education at all), they considered dresses above the knee or without a high neck to be immodest, her parents thought medicine and doctors were evil, and her dad was constantly expecting the world to end so he was stockpiling food and other supplies. You get the idea! The book is very well written but the overall story was pretty disturbing and I spent a lot of the time feeling really angry with her parents and some of her siblings (even though most of the time the author wasn't angry with them). It was definitely worth reading, though.

I rescheduled Seth's wisdom teeth removal with the oral surgeon but they didn't have any openings very soon so that's not going to happen until the end of April now. It's too bad since that will delay him getting his braces off but there's not much I can do about it.

That sums up our week...the most memorable things anyway!

Weekly Review March 4 '22

 My mind feels pretty muddled today, but hopefully I will be able to compose a coherent post about our last week. Why does my mind feel muddled? Well, it's been a frustrating / stressful day. Seth was supposed to get his wisdom teeth out today but...he didn't. He had one of his stubborn / anxious / freak out moments and refused to let them put in an IV. We all tried to talk him into it for a good 20 mintues but finally had to give up. The teeth have to come out, though, so now we have to reschedule the procedure and go through this whole process all over again. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it!! He insists that he just needs time to mentally prepare himself. I hope that's all it is. In the meantime, this day has been a bust since I wasted 2+ hours of my time taking him there (it's 30 minutes away and when we got there, they informed us that they were running behind and we'd have to wait 30-45 minutes...I wasn't happy about that either), he missed Seminary and school today for no reason, he fasted half the day for no reason, and I haven't accomplished much since we got back because my mind has been muddled so I can't concentrate. Can I go to bed and start this day over again??

The rest of the week went much better than today, thankfully. Last Saturday (the 26th) turned out to be really busy. I went to the church in the morning to help sort donations for Afghan refugees. We still didn't have a lot of donations coming in, but I had a nice visit with the other people who came to help. After I was done there, I just had time to have lunch before I needed to leave again...this time to go to a baptism. The baptism was for an 8 year old girl in our ward...her older sister is in my YW class, so I wanted to go to show support for the family. I'm really glad I went because not only are baptisms always really sweet but the older sister in my class was called to be the 1st counselor in the class presidency at the beginning of the year but had not yet been set apart and the bishop decided to set her apart right after the baptism. So I was able to be there for that, too. After I got home from the baptism I thought I would have a few hours before needing to go to the adult session of stake conference that evening. Frank had a leadership meeting at 4:00, but I didn't need to go to that meeting. We planned for me to make dinner and bring it over to him when his meeting ended at 6:00; then we would have time to eat together before I had a song practice at 6:30 followed by the adult session at 7:00. But shortly after I got home from the baptism, the other counselor in the YW presidency texted me saying "did you see the email that just came from the stake executive secretary saying that counselors in ward presidencies are invited to the leadership meeting too?" (Originally, only presidents were inivited.) At first I thought there was no way I could make that work last minute, but ultimately I decided to make the effort to go. It just meant that we had unhealthy McDonald's for dinner instead of the healthy meal I was planning to make! I'm glad I went because it turned out that meeting was almost entirely focused on the youth, so there was a lot of great information for me in that meeting. It was also nice that Frank and I were able to go to the meetings and come home together instead of taking two cars. Both meetings were excellent and I think our song went pretty well too. We had one of our area authorities, Elder Pace, come to this conference and he brought his wife with him. It just so happens that his wife (whose maiden name is Margaret Watson) grew up in the same ward with Frank, so he got to talk to her and that was fun for him, of course. So that was Saturday...by the time we got home it was time to go to bed.

Sunday wasn't quite as busy. We had the general session of stake conference in the morning--we went to our own ward building for that because they broadcast it to the buildings in our stake. That meeting was good too but I admit I had more trouble focusing for that meeting. Afterwards, we did have a few more meetings over Zoom. I had a class presidency meeting with my YW class, and Frank and Seth had a meeting with the bishopric and all the YM quorum presidencies (there are so few boys in YM that they meet all together). Then Frank had bishopric meeting via Zoom also. 

The rest of the week has actually been pretty routine, with all the usual things going on except that Seth had an orthodontist appointment on Thursday after school and of course he had the oral surgeon appointment today. At the orthodontist yesterday they said that all he has left to do is to move his teeth together (bite is correct now and teeth are straight; there are just some small gaps between them) so they put a different kind of wire on his teeth. Of course, that means his mouth / teeth are quite sore today. They said it's possible they can remove the bottom braces on his next visit (which is in 6 weeks) and then possibly the top braces the visit after that. Well, that was dependent on him having his wisdom teeth removed and molars exposed today, which didn't happen, so I'm sure that will push back his braces getting removed. Another reason why I wish that had happened today as planned! 

Frank had a quite busy week with work. He had to work last night because two contractors were doing jobs at one of the restaurants after hours. It wasn't too bad, though...they got done a lot sooner than he anticipated so he was only gone from 7:00 to 10:00. When I wrote last week's post, he was in the middle of a job interview. That interview went well. They are still very interested in him but have interviews to do with other candidates before they narrow it down. I'm still concerned that if he got that job he would need to travel down there a lot more often than I'd like. In the meantime, he was contacted yesterday by another place. He applied for a job there a few months ago and had given up on it since he never heard back but I guess they are just moving a lot slower than we anticipated. He has an interview set up with them on Monday. This job would also require commuting, but not nearly so far. 

I have to report that we played Mario Kart for family night activity on Monday because I actually won!! Yes, me!!! This is a really big deal because I'm no good at video games. It took me 10 years to reach this point. 😂 I was so astonished that I had to get photographic proof:

Yes, I know it says "Peach" instead of "Annette", but who else in my family would play as a girl?? You can see it was close...I beat Frank by only 1 point and Seth (Yoshi) by 3 points. But after 10 years of being way behind those two, it felt pretty good to be in the top spot! It may never happen again!

My VITA volunteer day went well again this week. Once again, we weren't very busy. But I actually kept steadily busy and completed 4 tax returns. They were all pretty simple so they didn't take long. Too bad 3 of the 4 taxpayers had to pay instead of getting refunds. That doesn't happen very often...as a matter of fact, those were the first balance due returns I've encountered this year. Never fun for the taxpayer, but they all took it in stride, thankfully.

For youth activities this week my YW class planned our movie for a film festival that we are doing with all the YM / YW at the end of the month. We had to start all over on the plot because we previously chose to do a Russian themed film. With everything going on with Russia right now, though, we thought maybe that would be in bad taste. So we started all over, planning with a totally different idea. The YM played kick ball and had donuts...Frank was in charge of bringing the donuts. Luckily, he found plenty of people at the church who were willing to eat a donut so we didn't bring any home with us!

When I finished reading Ben-Hur last week, I started reading another book called A Gentleman in Moscow. It was one of the books I checked out of the library to suggest that we read for book chat. We chose Ben-Hur instead, but I figured since I was done with that I might as well read this book since I had it. (Plus it sounded really interesting so I wanted to read it.) I'm glad I decided to read it because it's a fantastic book and I am enjoying it immensely. I will probably finish it in a couple more days. It is super interesting, clever, funny, but also poignant. I definitely recommend it if you want a good book to read. 

That is all the news from these parts so I will finish up with a photo I took while I was waiting for Seth to get out of Seminary yesterday morning. 

Weekly Review February 25 '22

 Welcome to the weekly Cleveland marathon. This was another pretty busy week. I'll try to remember all the important stuff.

Last Friday evening I attended a baby shower via Zoom. It was for my good friend Jeanine's son, Kalvin and his wife. (Kalvin is the same age as Tanner and they were very good friends growing up.) It was pretty fun. We played three games and I came in 2nd place on two of them. No prizes for me! 😂 I really enjoyed seeing Jeanine and Kalvin, even if it was just on a screen.

Saturday morning I had volunteered to help sort donations for Afghan refugees. Our stake has teamed up with another church and some other organizations to gather needed items for these refugees...there are about 100 arriving in the Frederick area in the next month. Our church building is one of the drop off sites for donations and Saturday was the first donation drop off day. It turns out they asked for more volunteers than they really needed, so I didn't end up staying long. I will be helping again tomorrow morning; maybe they will have more need for helpers tomorrow. Afterwards, Frank and I ran some errands. We dropped off a brake light bulb for another member of our ward at her house--she hasn't been feeling well lately so just needed someone to buy it for her so she wouldn't have to go out. We also picked up Frank's new contact lens prescription and then we went to a shoe store to get Frank some new Sunday shoes. The pair that he had that matched his suit were falling apart. He found some nice ones and he also got some new shoes to go with his work pants (Docker style pants) which replaced two more pair of really beat up shoes. Frank hates buying new shoes so he always wears his shoes until they are holey and the soles are falling off. I was so happy to get rid of three pair of ratty shoes!! After that we were going to check out a new cookie store that just opened up in Frederick called Crumbl. I guess it's big in Utah, but this is the first one we have out here. When we drove by, however, we could see that it was literally PACKED with people and there was a line going out the door, so we decided to try another day when the novelty has worn off. We went to the grocery store and got some donuts instead!

On Sunday we were up early because Frank had bishopric meeting at 7:30 and Seth and I had to be at the church at 8:15 for Frank's ordination / setting apart. Jared asked me to take a photo of Frank in a suit on his way to church so I took this one:

Doesn't he look great??

Frank's good friend, Greg Baird, ordained him a High Priest. Then one of the counselors in our stake presidency set him apart as the 2nd counselor. He gave Frank a very long blessing that was really amazing! I wish I could remember it better, but basically he gave him every blessing I could want for Frank. I feel really grateful for that!! We were both surprised that he gave him not just spiritual blessings but temporal blessings as well. Frank conducted Sacrament meeting and he did a good job. He didn't have to stay after church for very long and he only had one meeting (ward council, via Zoom) so the afternoon wasn't too hectic. Frank hadn't slept well so after his meeting he took a long nap. 

We had the missionaries over for dinner that evening. We had a good time...we really like the Elders serving in our ward right now. They are a lot of fun, but serious about missionary work too. It was nice we didn't have to rush as much because they are allowed to stay longer at the homes of bishopric members! After the missionaries left, we got online to reserve tickets for our visit to the Arizona War Memorial. The tickets for the day we are planning to be there opened up that night, and we weren't sure how big the demand would be so we wanted to get on to reserve them right away. We didn't have any trouble doing that and we are excited to visit this special place.

Because Monday was President's Day, Seth didn't have school but that is not one of the days Frank gets off, so he had to work. He worked from home so he was around but down in his office most of the day. It wasn't really a day off for me either--I still needed to grocery shop and do laundry and all the usual things. At least I didn't have to get Seth to Seminary or to school, and I did get to sleep in a bit!

One of my ministering sisters came to visit me on Tuesday evening. I always enjoy her visits and she is a great listener and also very thoughtful. She knows we are planning a trip to Hawaii and she brought me a pretty fabric wrap that she got in Hawaii years ago for me to borrow for the trip (makes a good swim suit cover up). 

I did my usual VITA shift on Wednesday. Once again, we weren't overwhelmingly busy and all of the tax returns I did were simple, so that was nice. We are having to reschedule a lot of people this year because they don't have information about either their stimulus payment or the their advance child tax credit payments. We can't complete their return if they don't know the amounts they recieved for either of those things. Some people get really upset / annoyed by that, but most people are understanding. 

On Wednesday evening we all went to the church for the combined YM / YW activity. We had mini soccer and basketball clinics because our stake has a youth sports program beginning soon where they will be playing those sports, as well as volleyball. We had some women in the ward who are really good at soccer and basketball come teach the kids, so I really didn't have to do much except watch / help out with little things when needed.

Yesterday was busy because I had a presidency meeting in the morning and a song practice in the evening. Frank also had to work last night...another data base test. He says it went well. He got home about 1:30 this morning from that. 

This morning Seth was up getting ready for Seminary / school as usual. They had asked everyone to bring food to share at Seminary this morning and he wanted to take a pizza, so we were warming one up in the oven. I had just put the pizza in the oven and went upstairs to change out of my exercise clothes when Frank informed me that he just got a text message saying there was a 2 hour delay! What??? It was raining a bit, but nothing more. Frank said when he came in at 1:30 am it was raining but cold and starting to get a little icy. That's all we can figure, is that there was ice on the roads. That meant there was no Seminary, however, so guess who had pizza for breakfast? Frank went back to sleep for a while but Seth and I were both wide awake by then so we stayed up.

Seth is home from school now. I spent the morning updating the finances. Frank is on Zoom doing a job interview right now (same company I mentioned last week). I'm interested to hear what he finds out from this interview. 

I did a lot of reading when I could this week and I managed to finish Ben-Hur last night. It was pretty good. We had a couple of nice weather days this week, with temperatures into the 50s or 60s. We enjoyed those while they lasted! Yesterday it got colder again (but not super cold) and it rained a lot. Today the high was 51, so that's not too bad either. Looking ahead, it looks like we will continue to have some colder days mixed in with somewhat milder days and a few nice days. I'm glad we are getting to the end of winter! I feel like I am always cold, though. My feet in particular feel cold a lot. (They are really cold right now, as a matter of fact.) A lot of times I think it's colder in the house than it is outside. Good news, though...we just got the call today that our windows are done and we were able to schedule the install for March 10th. They offered to install them on March 4th, but that's the day Seth is getting his widsom teeth out so we didn't think that would be a good day to do that. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and they will actually be installed that day. And then maybe our house won't be so drafty and I won't be so cold!!

We've been watching the news from the Ukraine with dismay / concern. I have a friend who is from the Ukraine and she has a lot of family there. I texted her yesterday morning to ask if she had heard from her family, and she said she had. Her parents are actually in Switzerland with one of her sisters, so they are out of harm's way. A couple of her sisters and their families are still in the Ukraine but she says they live near the Polish / Romanian border so it is quiet in their area for now. I'm sure she is very worried about them, though!

Our local school board met this week and voted to lift the mask mandate in the schools starting today. Masks are still encouraged, but not required. We told Seth he didn't have to wear a mask anymore and he said he was going to wear one anyway. He said "I'm used to them now. I think they're kind of comfortable." Crazy kid!! But whatever, I don't mind if he keeps wearing a mask...he will probably get sick less often. I asked him when he got home how many kids wore masks and he said most kids still wore them. Only a few didn't. I was a little surprised by that.

Jared and Jessie have been on the road all week and they arrived in Cary, North Carolina yesterday and were able to check into their new apartment. I expect that they are very busy moving in because I haven't heard anything else from them except that they arrived! Jared was good about checking in with me each night to let me know where they were and that they had arrived at that night's destination safely. Thankfully, Jared made the trip without a lot of discomfort...thank you to everyone who prayed for him! Hopefully we will be seeing a lot more of them in the future, now that they are only about 5 hours away from us.

That's all I can think of to tell you about us this week!

Weekly Review February 18 '22

Well, there was quite a bit going on this week, it seems. I'll probably forget something, but here goes...

Frank and I went to see a Michelangelo Sistine Chapel Exhibit on Saturday. We bought the tickets a few months ago. It was down in Virginia, so a little bit of a drive but we enjoyed spending the time together. The exhibit consisted of several close up high resolution digital photographs of different parts of the Sistine Chapel ceiling which were projected onto large screens so they looked like you were looking at the paintings close up. Certainly, it is amazing to think that he painted all of those intricate paintings on a ceiling! We enjoyed the exhibit, but we were a little disappointed in it...afterwards we agreed that if we had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 5, we'd give it a 3. There weren't as many paintings as we anticipated and the photos in the advertisements made it look a lot more impressive. For example, in the photos, it showed lots of paintings projected onto a ceiling, so it looked like you would be walking into a sort of replica of what you would see if you went to the actual Sistine Chapel. The exhibit space we went to didn't have any of that. They were just projected onto walls with space in between each image. Just didn't have the same impact, but of course we did enjoy looking at the paintings and definitely appreciated the skill that went into painting the originals. We will just have to go visit the real Sistine Chapel someday! 😄

The exhibit was located in a space in a huge mall, so afterwards we got some lunch at the food court. When we first got to the mall, I realized it's the same mall that I visited a number of years ago so that I could go to the American Girl store, so after we ate, Frank humored me by going to that store with me for a few minutes. It was really nice of him since the store was on the opposite end of this huge mall! Quite a bit of walking. I didn't buy anything at the store, just wanted to see it. After that we came home. It was a fun, half day date. 

That evening we got an email from one of the counselors in our stake presidency asking if it would be possible for us to meet with him the next morning before church. We were somewhat intrigued by that and spent some time debating what it could be about. We assumed it was a calling or assignment for Frank, since the email was addressed to him (although it was sent to both his email address and mine). But really, I thought it was likely some sort of stake committee calling or maybe an assignment related to the temple open house. I wasn't expecting a major calling, so I didn't think about it too much. 

We woke up on Sunday morning to discover about an inch or two of snow on the ground. It was the perfect kind of snow, though. It covered up the grass, trees, etc and made everything look really pretty, but it didn't stick to the roads at all. As most of you know by now, when we met with the counselor in the stake presidency, he issued a calling to Frank to be the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric of our ward. We were definitely surprised!!! I thought it was pretty cool, though, that the first thing Frank said was "Wow" (registering his surprise) but then he immediately said "Yes". I could tell he was shocked and pretty overwhelmed by the idea but he was still immediately willing to do it. We met with the counselor at 8:30 and church started at 9:00 and they sustained him in sacrament meeting so we didn't have much time to wrap our minds around the idea. I kind of felt like we'd been hit over the head! 😅 I think we're still adjusting to the idea, actually. I do think Frank has a lot to offer and that he will do a great job. And I also know this calling will be a great blessing to both him and to our family, so I'm grateful. 

Sunday after church was crazy because of course Frank had to meet with the bishopric for a bit and we hadn't been expecting that so we only drove one car to church. We will be driving two cars every week from now on! Then we came home and grabbed something to eat before I had a class presidency meeting and Frank had ward council (both on Zoom, and at the same time). Then immediately after that Frank and I both had another meeting because the YW presidency and the Bishopric were meeting together to discuss the youth and to do some planning for youth activities. I had the meeting on my calendar fo the last few months, but Frank of course found out about it last minute. We also had family night and dinner in there somewhere...all in all, Sunday went by fast!

Frank has not been ordained a high priest or set apart for his new calling yet. That will happen this Sunday morning. We were hoping Frank's dad could come up here to ordain him, but his dad is having some health problems right now so a trip up here would be too much for him. We did briefly discuss the possibility of us driving down there instead (in that case, he would have been ordained today so we could be back here by Sunday morning) but we realized that would be too difficult for us with all the other things we need to do and Seth having to miss school and Frank having to miss work. So a good friend of Frank's is going to ordain him instead. We know his parents (and other family members) will be with us in spirit! The other counselor in the bishopric is going to be out of town this Sunday so Frank will be conducting and he also is in charge of conducting, choosing topics, and choosing speakers for the month of March. Baptism by fire! I'm sure our bishop is really relieved to have someone to help him, though. The former 2nd counselor had a stroke at the end of October and he has been recovering since then and hasn't been able to come to church or do anything like that since then, so they've basically been a 2 man bishopric for nearly 4 months. (The former counselor sent Frank a really nice text message on Sunday, by the way.)

Okay! Now for the rest of the week, which hopefully won't take as long to talk about. Monday was Valentine's Day; we didn't really do anything to celebrate besides exchange cards because we considered our excursion on Saturday as our Valentine's date. We got Seth a card and some candy too but I told Frank a few weeks ago that if he truly loved me, he WOULD NOT give me candy for Valentine's Day. He didn't get me any candy, so he must truly love me! For family night we played a game called Forbidden Island, which is fun because it's one of those games where you all have to cooperate to win the game...so either we all win or we all lose together. It involves capturing 4 treasures and getting off an island before the island sinks. It was close, but we did manage to win the game! I like games where we're working together rather than competing against each other.

On Tuesday the other counselor in YW and I went to the YW secretary's house to help her get the nursery set up for her new baby girl (due in about 3 weeks). She asked us if we would come help her because she was feeling overwhelmed with what needed to be done. We spent a few hours with her and got a lot of stuff done, including getting most of the clothes put away in drawers or hanging in the closet. It looked a lot better by the time we were done, and we enjoyed visiting while we were working. 

Wednesday was my VITA volunteer day, as usual. There were not as many tax preparers there this week but the site coordinator scaled back the appointments a lot and a few people no showed, so things were pretty calm and I enjoyed that. I completed a couple of tax returns and reviewed several others. Nothing crazy came up, either...just straightfoward returns, which was nice for a change!

That evening we all had youth activities, which will be the norm from now on. I actually really like that we all get to go to the activities together as a family. This week was class activities, so I didn't really see Frank or Seth much after we got to the church. The YM went to the gym to play gaga ball. The younger YW class was working on their film script. The older two classes met together (we do that once a month) and we talked about the importance of each unique person in our class and then we made bead animals (there was an analogy between each bead in the animal being important to the whole). Making the animals turned out to be fairly challenging so it took a lot longer than we expected. I did manage to finish mine, which was a ladybug. It turns out I chose one of the simpler patterns; so glad I did! It was a lot of fun, though. We were talking and laughing while we worked. 

Everybody working:

Showing off finished products:

A bee

Working on a monkey

An otter

A panda

An elephant

My ladybug

Yesterday my friend Rebekah came over and we had lunch together. We have had very little chance to talk to each other since December, so it was nice to get caught up! Last night I had a practice for the song we're singing in Stake Conference. We did end up with 2 people singing each part and I ended up singing alto, so I'm happy about that. It turns out that 4 of the 6 singers are in our ward...so is the pianist. So I'm singing with a lot of friends (the other alto is the YW president) and that makes it really fun. The guy who asked us to sing sent us a recording of the song earlier this week so I was able to listen to it and by following along with the sheet music, I was able to learn a lot of my part before the practice. It is a medley of Lord, I Would Follow Thee and Love One Another. It was sung at the Women's Meeting (General Conference) in 2014, if you want to go listen to it! It's quite pretty and I have enjoyed learning it. I came home last night just feeling fantastic, and I realized that is the first time I've been able to sing with a choir / small group in person since all the Covid-19 mess began. Singing with other people really does bring me a lot of joy!!

Today has really zipped by and I'm not sure how that has happened. There was no Seminary this morning so we got up an hour later than usual. It was nice to have an extra hour of sleep, especially since I have had a lot of nights this week that I didn't sleep well. Today is midterm for Seth and all the schools got out 2 hours early which means he was done at 12:15. Frank and I picked him up from school and we went to Roy Rogers for lunch. There is a mushroom / monterry jack burger that they are test marketing right now and I wanted to try it. It is actually really good! I spent some more time practicing the song this morning but other than that and exercising, showering, and scripture reading that is all I got done this morning. And now it is almost 3:30! I haven't even started on the budget yet, but I will do that next. I guess I've had a few text message conversations going on today and Scott called as well so that has taken some time too.

In between everything else, we've been busy with all the usual school work, work, and household chores. I'm still plowing my way through Ben-Hur...going much slower than I would like, though. I'm on page 374 of 610. We continue to make preparations for our trip to Hawaii, which mostly consists of buying things. It seems like a new package arrives every day...shorts, a snorkel mask, locks for our luggage, clear waterproof containers for our phones (so we can take photos underwater),  water shoes, reef safe sunscreen.... The list goes on! I hope we are almost done buying things! We got the financing figured out for the new windows and I have our tax return for this year almost done but in the process realized that I made a mistake last year so I'm going to have to file an ammended return for last year. I got to talk to Amy a few times this week which is the first time we've talked (not counting text messages) since I was in Utah last summer, so that was nice. Oh, and Southwest airlines caused us a great deal of consternation by changing all of our flights! The flight to Honolulu is okay...we are actually getting in an hour sooner than before...but our flight from Oahu to Maui was changed to a few hours later which meant Frank and I would not be there in time for an excursion we booked. Besides that, Seth's flight home from Utah was changed from a non stop flight leaving at 2:00 pm to a flight with 2 stops, a plane change, and leaving at 7:00 am. After spending over an hour on the phone, Frank was able to get our Maui flight switched to an earlier flight so we won't miss our excursion but there weren't any options for changing Seth's flight home. We aren't thrilled about that because we purposely put him on a nonstop flight since it will be his first time flying alone. Now he will have to make a plane change in Chicago. There is a stop in Cincinnati too but at least he can just stay on the plane for that one. Since we can't change his flight, we are going to make our trip from home to Honolulu his "trial run". We have to change planes in Los Angeles, so we'll be able to walk him through the process of what to do. He's flown a lot, so he's familiar with the process, we just want to make sure he will be able to figure it out on his own when we aren't there to help him. I'm sure he'll be fine, but it would have been a lot nicer if he could be on a nonstop flight!!

Frank had an interview this week with the head hunter about that job in La Plata Maryland which I mentioned last week. It went well and he found out more details about the job. It sounds a lot like what he's doing now except he would be the manager with 4 people to help him. Nice! It also pays significantly better. He did tell her that he is just not interested in moving right now. She said if he is willing to spend some time going down there at first (maybe 3 days per week), until he is trained and things are going smoothly, that after that they could probably work something out so that he works remotely most of the time. I don't know...we'll see if that's really an option. I definitely don't want him driving down there every day (or even 3 days per week on a consistent basis)...it's about an hour and a half away. But he'll have another interview with the owner of the company and we'll go from there.

Finally, to finish up (very long post this week!!) I can't believe I forgot to mention last week that Jessie got a job offer in Cary, North Carolina so she and Jared will be moving there. They are actually leaving Utah on Monday and arriving in Cary on Thursday. We are very excited for them, and we're really happy that they are going to be so much closer to us...only about a 5 hour drive away!! This has all happened quite quickly...she just got the job offer last week. They have managed to sell the lease for their place in Utah and have signed a lease for an apartment in Cary. When I talked to Jared a few days ago, he said they had a lot of packing done. They have been going through their things and selling or donating a lot of stuff. They are only planning to take what they can fit in their car, so they have sold most of their furniture. He said they had done a trial of trying to pack all of their things in their car and it looks like it's going to work. A note about Jared's health: he did see a specialist and that doctor is almost certain he has a fistula, but since the surgery he needs for that would take quite a bit of recovery time, they decided it would be better to wait until after the move for him to have surgery. So he will have to find a doctor after they get to NC. Please continue to pray for him (and for both of them, that the move will go well.)

This was quite the marathon post so if you're still reading, I commend you for successfully making it to the end!

Weekly Review February 11 '22

 This week was quite busy--let's see how much I can remember now! 

On Saturday I went to a baby shower for the lady who is currently serving as the secretary in YW. The shower was at a relative's home in Virginia; I rode there and back with my friend Rebekah and her daughter Emily. There were a number of people there I didn't know (family of the mom-to-be) but there was a small crowd of women and YW from our ward too, so it was pretty fun. We had brunch and everything was delicious. That evening Frank got my phone and Seth's phone set up with our new mobile phone carrier. I am not getting great service coverage so far...I've noticed several times in the last week when I try to send a text message that I have no service so it doesn't send for quite a while. The strange thing is that Seth can be sitting right next to me, and his phone has service, so that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Hopefully the problems will clear up soon. It works most of the time, but it has picked some very inconvenient times to not work. I do like the new phone...it's nice to have a phone without lots of cracks and chips in the screen! Sometimes my fingers would get sore when I was using my old phone.

We had our usual church meetings on Sunday and then Seth and I had another meeting that afternoon...it was a training meeting for all the new quorum and class presidencies for the YM and YW. I was doing part of the training and Seth was just called to be the 1st Counselor in the Teacher's Quorum, so we both needed to be there. That evening I had another meeting via Zoom...this one was with the stake YW president, who was giving us information about the upcoming FSY conferences this summer. The YW president in my ward asked me to go in her place because she had some plans with her family. I was really glad that it was a Zoom meeting so I could attend at home, in my pajamas! (It ended right around bedtime.) Meanwhile, Frank had to work that night...another data base test, but this time it worked!! He actually got home before midnight which neither he or I had expected. There were only a few little glitches that showed up, so he still has to work those out but he is mostly done with that project now (and it was a huge project that he has been working on since he was hired 3 years ago.)

On Sunday I also received an email from one of the members of the high council asking me if I would sing in a trio for a musical number for stake conference. I was surprised to get that invitation...who knows how he came up with my name (although he did used to be in our ward so he knows me)...and singing in that small of a group sounds pretty intimidating to me, but I did say I'd do it. Apparently he is having trouble finding people to sing though because the last I heard from him (a few days ago), he still didn't have enough people lined up. Although he also said maybe we'd double up on the parts which sounds like a great idea to me, but that means he's trying to find 6 people instead of 3. Anyway...stake conference is only 2 weeks away and we haven't had a practice yet so that makes me a bit anxious too. I do have the sheet music, but I'm not sure which part I'll be singing yet (2nd soprano or alto) and since I don't have a piano, I can't really practice on my own anyway. I wish there was a way to listen to the song, but an audio version doesn't seem to be available. Hopefully it will all work out, though.

I had a mishap with my new contact lenses on Sunday. I have daily contacts now, which means you wear them once and then throw them away. I wore some on Saturday without issues but on Sunday when I put a new pair on, the right one was kind of bugging me so I took it out and put it back in. It was okay for a while but started irritating me later so after church I took it out again, rinsed it with solution and put it back in but it still didn't feel right so I took it out again only this time I only got a small piece of it! Yikes!!! I pulled two more pieces out of my eye and that appeared to be all of it. At that point, I decided I was going to wear glasses for the rest of the day. 😟 Frank went to the eye doctor (follow up visit) on Monday and he told him about my contact coming apart and the eye doctor said that shouldn't have happened. He recommended that I get some re-wetting drops and put those in before removing my contact lenses. I wore another pair on Tuesday without incindent but on Wednesday evening my right eye started feeling irritated and it still does. That's not incredibly unusual for me--my eyes get irritated and / or infected often, which is why I thought daily disposable contacts would be a good idea. Plus, I don't wear them that often anymore so a 90 day supply will last me a long time. Anyway, I started doing a little bit of online research and I'm pretty sure, based on what I've read, that I have "dry eyes". I know...don't believe everything you read on the internet, right??? All I'm saying is that the symptoms fit and I also have most of the higher risk factors. It would explain why I've had so much trouble with my eyes the last few years. I decided to get some OTC eye drops for that so I've been trying those out for the last few days. They do seem to help a bit. I'm thinking a visit to an eye doctor (ophthalmologist, not optometrist) would be a good idea too though. 

All right, I promise I won't write that much about every day this week! I actually don't remember much about Monday other than doing all the usual chores, which usually takes up a lot of the day. Frank and I ordered some walking sandals for our trip (and all trips hereafter) and they need to be broken in a bit so I walked around the house wearing sandals (with socks, because it's way too cold for just sandals) most of the day. (I've worn them a few other times this week too.)

For family night we played a game called The Amazing Labyrinth...we've had it for a long time and it is fun but also really tricky. 

On Tuesday Seth had a dentist appointment but he also told me one of his wires on his braces was getting loose again so I called the orthodontist's office and managed to get an appointment for him to see the orthodontist right after his dentist visit. I was happy about that because they are near each other, but about 30 to 40 minutes away from our house so it was great to only make one trip out there. I had decided a few days before this dentist visit that I needed to give an invitation to the Washington DC temple openhouse to our dentist. He knows what church we go to, and told me in the past that he had a good friend growing up who is a member of our church, and he seems to have a fairly positive opinion of the church. Because of that, I was pretty sure he'd be interested in the open house, but I had no idea what a positive response I would get. When I explained to him what the open house is, he got so excited!!! He said he's been wanting to go inside the temple since he was a little boy, and he thanked me profusely for inviting him. The hygenist that cleaned Seth's teeth wanted an invitation too. (I brought several cards with me.) Then when I was up front making Seth's next appointment, he came back up and told me that a lot of the people in the office wanted to go and that they were all going to go together for an office "party"! And he thanked me again for letting him know about it. So that was pretty cool!! 

Tuesday evening I went to a RS activity. It was kind of like a white elephant gift exchange, but with a twist. I was supposed to bring something that is a favorite of mine, wrapped up. Then when someone chose that gift and unwrapped it, I was supposed to explain why that item is a favorite of mine. It was kind of a fun and unique way to get to know each other better. I brought a word puzzle book, and explained that I like doing word puzzles but I also do them because some research shows that doing word puzzles helps stave off Alzheimer's disease, and I really don't want to get that! The person who opened my "gift" loves to do word puzzles too, so she was happy to get the puzzle book. My gift that I opened was baby wipes, which was kind of hilarious. My friend Tammy brought them and she explained that even though her "baby" is 7 years old, she still has a couple of containers of baby wipes in her house at all times and she uses them a lot to clean things. So I guess I will try that too!

I spent Wednesday at VITA doing taxes again and it wasn't as crazy this week, thankfully. As a matter of fact, at one point most of us were sitting there with nothing to do. I got more returns done in less time and I also had time to eat lunch! So that was nice. It's amazing to me, though, how many little issues come up. At one point I said "they always look simple, but they never turn out to be simple" and all the other tax preparers laughed so I guess they were experiencing the same thing. A note about lunch...I made a GOLO (GOLO is the name of the diet we're doing) Mongolian Beef recipe the day before and took that for my lunch...just had to warm it up. Several people at different times commented on how good it smelled. ("Who's lunch is that? It smells so good in here!!") I ended up promising to bring the recipe to share next week. 😂

The YW had a combined activity Wednesday evening. We decorated Valentine cookies and then took plates to some of the people in our ward. I was not in charge of this activity, so all I had to do was show up and help where needed. I think the girls had a really good time. (We got to eat a few cookies too!)

Yesterday morning I woke up around 2:45 and never went back to sleep. In spite of that, I put in a full day and never took a nap. I'm not sure how I managed to do that! I got all the usual work done and I also did some work on our tax return. (So busy doing taxes for other people that I haven't had time to do my own yet!) 

Frank has been pretty busy this week but maybe not quite as busy as the last few weeks. His toes are still hurting but they aren't as bad as they were at first. He's been breaking in his new sandals quite a bit too and that has been nice for him since his regular shoes hurt his toes but his sandals don't. Seth has continued to have quite a bit of homework each evening. He hasn't had as much homework for English but he's had some homework for history and qutie a bit for his computer science class. Thank goodness Frank can help him with the computer science stuff! When they are talking about it, it sounds like they're speaking a different language! 

I have not had a lot of free time this week (as you may have surmised) but I have done quite a bit of reading here and there and I am almost halfway through Ben-Hur. I'm enjoying it, although it moves rather slowly. I'm pretty sure I have never read a book with so many obscure words in it before! I'm reading a digital copy on my tablet and when I highlight a word I don't know the meaning for so I can get a definition, 98% of the time it tells me it's not in the dictionary! Thankfully, I usually don't need to know the meaning of the word to get an idea of what's happening, I'm just curious. (And trying to expand my vocabulary.) 

Frank was contacted by a head hunter yesterday about a position in another town in Maryland...he says his client is really interested in Frank. We think it would probably be too far away for him to commute, so we're not extremely interested (because we'd rather not move) but he may look into it just to see what the job is like and what they are offering. It probably won't go anywhere, but it's nice to know someone is interested. 

We've had some really cold days this week but today it has warmed up quite a bit (up to 60 degrees!) so that is nice for a change. It's supposed to be in the 50s tomorrow but then it gets cold again on Sunday. I looked at the forecast for the next 15 days, though, and 10 of those days are predicted to have a high temperature of 50 degrees or higher, so maybe we are starting to inch our way out of winter. 

Our application for new windows was approved by our HOA a few days ago and our windows were ordered yesterday so hopefully we'll be getting those installed pretty soon. It still may take a number of weeks for them to arrive, though. 

That's probably more than you really wanted to know about our lives, so that's it for this week.