Weekly Review March 31 '23

This year is one quarter of the way over already...not sure how that happened! 

I started last week's post saying that I was starting later than usual; this week it is even later. It's almost 9:00 pm already. I'm late because I went to the temple today. The traffic was really bad coming home so I didn't get home until close to 2:00 pm and I still needed to eat lunch. After eating, I worked on the budget until it was time to make dinner (around 4:00 pm). Jared & Jessie came for dinner tonight and Jared just left a few minutes ago (Jessie left a little earlier because she has lots of homework to do). So here we are! I'll try to be brief again, although our week was somewhat eventful.

Frank and I left for Florida on Saturday morning. Our flight was at 9:00, so we had to leave home at 6:00. Everything went well and we arrived in Orlando around lunch time. We picked up our rental car and headed to Frostproof. We stopped on the way to get some lunch. We went to Frank's Aunt Treva's house first, where we visited with her and her husband (Richard) for a while. Frank's parents and sister Dawn and her husband Mike were still enroute from North Carolina (they drove down); when they let us know they were getting close, we all went to meet them at Frank's Aunt Linda's house (she is the mother of Lynn, Frank's cousin who was in the car crash). There was a lot of family there and we had a good visit with a lot of Frank's aunts, uncles and cousins. In spite of the sad reason for all of us being there, it was really great to have so many members of the family together. It was hot...in the low 90's! There was not just a lot of family at Linda's house, there was also a lot of food (many people had been bringing her food) and a lot of flowers (so many people sent arrangements...and more kept arriving while we were there). One of Lynn's sons had a 2 month old baby; I got to hold her for a while and later Frank got a turn:

She has a unique name: Skylynn Rae (partly after her grandmother). I think it's pretty!

Linda has large trees in her front yard and her house is right across the street from a lake. When we left, the sun was going down...it was really pretty! 

Frank's parents, Dawn & Mike and Frank and I all went to a restaurant for dinner together; it was nice getting to visit with them some more.

Frank and I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express in Lake Wales. On Sunday morning we went to church at the local ward. Frank's parents and Dawn came too (Mike wasn't feeling well). I was impressed with this ward because 3 people welcomed us and introduced themselves within the first few minutes after we got there. They were having fast and testimony meeting and near the end two young children...a brother and a sister...got up. Their testimonies were short but very sweet and sincere; they testified about Heavenly Father's love for us. I loved it!! We didn't stay for the 2nd hour because we wanted to visit with family some more. We went back to the hotel to change and then went back to Treva's house for a while before we all headed to the memorial service for Lynn. They had this service at a barn--the kind where events are held. They thought they would have maybe 150 people come, but it was closer to 300. There were over 2 dozen flower arrangements sent from family and friends. Everyone was dressed in bright colors because they asked us to dress that way in memory of Lynn's bright spirit. They had a short service with some music, a few prayers and scriptures, and a couple of Lynn's friends talked about her. It was really nice. Afterwards, there was a meal. I really failed at taking pictures on this trip...I got hardly any pictures of family members...but here are a few:

Frank's mom and her brother Jimmy

Frank and his dad look so much alike!!

Here's a cake they had in honor of Lynn (I didn't think to take a photo until after they started cutting it.) Lynn really loved the beach, so that's why the cake is a beach theme.

After the luncheon, we went back to Treva's house for more visiting, then a group of us went to dinner together, and then we went back to Linda's house for a little more visiting and to say goodbyes. Our flight was really early Monday morning so we didn't stay very long. 

Even though it was a quick trip, I'm glad we got to go. I was reminded again how much I love the Bracken family. They are just really good people, and so warm and welcoming to everyone! 

We didn't get to bed until about 10:00 pm and we had to get up at 2:00 am to drive back to Orlando for our 6:00 am flight. We were surprised that the airport was actually quite busy at that time of the morning. While we were waiting to board our flight, I felt so sleepy that I was sure I'd sleep all the way home, but of course once we got on the plane I couldn't sleep. I spent about the first half of the flight leaning back with my eyes closed hoping to go to sleep and the second half (after I gave up on sleep) reading The Hobbit. I almost finished it...only had about 20 pages left when we landed...so I finished it later that day. (I spent most of the flight to Florida watching a movie on Netflix called The Imitation Game. It was about the group of people (mostly Alan Turing) who broke the German's Enigma code during WWII. It was pretty interesting.)

By the time we picked up our luggage and drove home, Frank and I were both dragging from lack of sleep. (He slept a little bit on the plane, but not much.) Jessie had left for class and Seth was at school (of course) but Jared was still here, packing up their stuff. We went to bed before he was done and I never heard him leave even though he made a number of trips from the house to his car. Frank and I both slept for a couple of hours and then got up and ate some lunch. Frank did some work from home that afternoon and I spent the rest of the day doing laundry, vacuuming, and doing some meal planning (I had to adjust the original plan for this week since Jared & Jessie were coming on a different day than I originally thought, plus I didn't know when I planned the week that Frank and I would be gone for some of it). That evening Frank came with me to the store to get some groceries. We were still really tired so we were happy to fall into bed that evening.

On Tuesday we tried to get back into our usual routine. Seth didn't go to Seminary though because he didn't sleep well Monday night and he had an important test at school that day. The test was the first half of his A+ certification exam for his CTC class. (The whole point of the class is to prepare them to take this test so they can get this important computer certification.) Seth has been putting in a lot of study time at home for this test since Christmas time. Thankfully, the work paid off because he passed the test! He will take the second half of the test in early May. We're really happy that he passed the test on his first try. It costs money to take the test, but the CTC program received a grant that covered the first attemp for each student, so we didn't have to pay anything for it.

We had youth activities as usual on Tuesday evening; we all continued to work on filming our movies. My class is mostly done with the filming now; we just need to do a couple more things at our next activity. 

I had my usual VITA shift on Wednesday. It was busy but went well. Only a few more weeks and this tax season will be over. 

Yesterday Frank had to get a Covid booster for work. He's going to be doing some work for the student medical center and some of it he has to do onsite; since he will be there in person they require him to have all his immunizations updated. He may have to get some other shots too but they knew for sure he needed this one. He got the shot Thursday morning and by the time he left work around 4:00, he wasn't feeling very well. He's been pretty miserable all day today...his arm is really sore and he is achy all over. Hopefully he will be feeling better soon! He took the day off today and has mostly stayed in bed. He did come down to eat dinner with all of us, but after eating he went back to bed while the rest of us played a game of Clue. (I won the game but only because both Jessie and Jared decided to guess before they were completely sure of the answer and both of them guessed wrong.)

Yesterday Frank and I were asked to be on the food committe for our stake's youth trek this summer. We're not sure yet if we will be able to do it, though. We need to talk to the head of the committee to see what that would entail. If it means we would need to be there for the entire trek, including nights, I don't think we can do it. Frank really can't camp anymore because he has to have electricity for his CPAP. Maybe we can work something out so that we can help with some of it; we'll have to see. 

I'll finish up this week's post with a few pictures I took at the temple this morning.

Weekly Review March 24 '23

I'm starting this post later than usual and I have some things I need to get done tonight so I'm going to try to keep this brief. You all know by now that I'm not good at "brief", though, so we'll see how it goes.

As usual, I don't remember a lot about the weekend. We all got haircuts on Saturday and went to church on Sunday. Frank had a meeting after church and I had choir practice (we're starting to learn songs for Easter) so Seth had to wait a bit to go home. Frank's meeting ended before my practice, so Frank took him home. 

Frank had Monday through Wednesday off work because it was spring break for the University of Maryland. Seth had Wednesday off of school because Tuesday was the end of term. I think Frank enjoyed having some down time. He helped me with a few things but mostly he relaxed and played video games, which he hardly ever does. 

I got our tax returns filed on Monday. We went for a walk for family night and I took a few pictures. It's really starting to look like spring around here (the tree next door bloomed a few days ago) although the temperatures are alternating between really warm (yesterday) and rather cold (over the weekend). We've had some rain some days and today it has rained off and on most of the day. I feel like the grass suddenly looks really green today!

We had youth activities as usual on Tuesday and continued filming for our class movies. 

Although Frank and Seth were home on Wednesday, I wasn't because I did my usual shift at VITA. We were pretty busy but I did get a chance to eat lunch which was nice. On Wednesday evening my ministering sister came to visit me. I've been worrying about how to edit our class movie so I was talking to her about that. She has some movie editing software and knows how to use it so she offered to show me. We planned to meet together tomorrow morning but I've had to change my plans (more on that later). In the meantime, I talked to Jared and found out he also has movie editing software and quite a bit of experience doing that so he's going to help me do it instead. He has more time than my ministering sister and he was kind of excited for the opportunity to do that so I decided to let him! I'm grateful to both my ministering sister and to Jared for being willing to help me. I am worrying a lot less about that now.

We got a call from Frank's sister Dawn late Wednesday evening letting us know that Frank's cousin Lynn was killed in a car accident Tuesday evening. They are still investigating the accident but they know she was turning left at an intersection and for some reason she stopped in the westbound lanes of the road. An oncoming car hit her car at her door and her car caught on fire. So sad!! She was the same age as Frank and he was fairly close to her. Frank was actually asleep when Dawn called; I had just turned out the light and lay down to go to sleep. Frank didn't wake up when the phone rang so I took the phone in another room while I talked to Dawn but when I came back in our room I discovered that Frank was awake and wanting to know what was going on, so I told him. Then we were awake for a while talking about it and trying to decide if he should go down for the memorial service or not (although at that point they didn't know for sure when it would be). 

Thursday morning and this morning I helped with Seminary...I was the second adult, so didn't have to do much. This morning they played a game with teams and I helped by keeping score. 

Last night Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and to do laundry (Jared worked on Wednesday this week again). While they were here, we got a call from Frank's dad letting us know that the memorial service would be on Sunday afternoon. Earlier that day they thought it wasn't going to be until next week or later, so that was a surprise and we quickly had to make plans. Ultimately, we decided that Frank would fly down instead of driving (its a really long drive) and because Jared & Jessie are willing to stay with Seth, I decided to go with Frank. We are leaving tomorrow morning early and we will fly back home early Monday morning so it's going to be a really quick trip, but Frank really wanted to go to the service and I really wanted to be there to support him and the rest of the family. It took quite a bit of time last night to work out all our travel arrangements and I also needed to work out some things for YW and VITA so I could be gone so we didn't get to spend much time with Jared & Jessie, but Seth played Monopoly Deal and Jenga with them. They got to the point with Jenga that they had moved all the pieces that it was possible to move.

Last night we had a brief but heavy thunderstorm in the middle of the night. It woke me up and then I couldn't go back to sleep for hours. I didn't sleep well Wednesday night either so I was pretty tired by this morning. I was planning to go to the temple today and even with our trip plans I was still going to go but when I didn't sleep well for the second night in a row I decided I'd better not go, even though I was sorry because I was really looking forward to going to the temple. After I got back from Seminary this morning I actually went back to sleep for a couple of hours--I really needed that!! After I got up I have spent the rest of the day doing the usual chores--mostly the budget. Frank and I will need to pack for our trip this evening.

In my spare time this week I've been reading The Hobbit. I'm about two thirds of the way through it now. It's been fun to read because as I read I start to remember things about the story. I listened to that record set of The Hobbit that we had so many times when I was young so reading the book has sparked a lot of memories. The book has the words to a song that the goblins sing when they have the dwarves and the hobbit trapped in the trees. For the record set, someone actually wrote some music for the words and the goblins sing it...I could still remember the tune. 

That's all I have to report this week...I guess I kept it faily brief after all!

Weekly Review March 17 '23

 In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I am wearing a t-shirt with shamrocks on it, but it's currently covered up by a sweater and an afghan because I am cold. The current temperature isn't bad (55 degrees) but it's been raining most of the day and the humidity is high so it feels colder than it is. The afghan does have some green on it, at least. 

This week has been pretty busy. On Saturday (the 11th) I went to a play at one of the local middle schools. One of the YW in my class was in the play. A couple of the other YW in my class wanted to see the play but their parents weren't available to take them so one of the parents reached out to me to see if I wanted to go and was available to do that. I had heard about the play and was interested in attending, but I had forgotten all about it until the parent contacted me. I'm glad she did, because I was available to go and I was able to take the two YW to see the play too. The play was called "Frozen Jr."; I'm not sure what the "Jr" part was about because it basically followed the same story line as the movie Frozen, with the same songs. (Except for one extra song.) The kids did a pretty good job and it was cute. My one complaint is that they didn't have an auditorium at the school so the play was performed in the cafeteria. Since everyone was sitting in chairs at the same level and the stage was only a foot or two above the floor, it was really hard to see, especially for short people like me. I could only see the top half of the actors, so anything that happened below the waist line (a few things happened on the ground) was impossible to see. (Plus of course a really tall, large person sat right in front of me so my view of the middle of the action was also blocked.) There was also an interesting incident in the middle of the play...someone in the audience had some sort of medical emergency. During one of the songs, I noticed that 3 or 4 people on the other side of the room and near the front suddenly stood up. They were talking among themselves, and then they and several other people got up and walked to the aisle on the side of the room and stood there. Other people were bending over and shining camera flashlights on the ground, and then some of the adults helping with ushering etc started running around in the aisles. I knew something must be wrong, but I didn't know what was happening. When the song ended, they turned on the lights and asked if there was a doctor or nurse in the room. There wasn't, so they called an ambulance and asked all of us to move to one side of the room, and then eventually (shortly after the emergency personnel arrived) they asked us all to move to the gym to wait. We weren't there too long before they let us all come back and resumed the play. I never did hear any other details about what happened; I hope that person is okay. The girl in my YW class played young Elsa (she was also in a lot of crowd scenes / dance scenes). I got a photo of her with the other two YW from my class after the play ended:

I spent a good part of the rest of the day working on an amended tax return for 2020. I realized when I filed our taxes last year that I made a mistake on the previous year's return but I never got around to amending it until now. Fortunately, it didn't change the tax we owed at all so there were no issues with needed to pay a penalty or anything like that. We just needed to file to correct our basis in an IRA. I also worked on our current year's tax return a bit more. After tracking down a few more pieces of information this week, I think we are finally ready to file for this year. 

I also needed to make some granola on Saturday (for some of this week's meals). I mentioned that to Frank before I left for the play. When I got home, I discovered that he had made the granola while I was gone...that was nice!!

I can't think of a lot to say about Sunday...we had church and Frank had meetings as usual. Jared came over for a while that afternoon and he stayed and had dinner with us. He brought a target practice thing / app that he has and showed me how it works, but I didn't do any target practice that day. We just enjoyed visiting with him for a while. 

Frank attended a conference for work on Tuesday in a place called King of Prussia, which is north of Philadelphia a bit. Since it started early Tuesday morning, he drove up on Monday afternoon and spent the night in a hotel up there. That means we didn't see him from early Monday morning until Tuesday evening. He got back just in time to go to youth activities with us on Tuesday evening. He had a good time at the conference and learned a lot of things. 

Meanwhile, it was mostly business as usual for Seth and I at home. I ran a few extra errands...going to the post office to mail our amended tax returns and going to the bank to get documentation that Frank and I are both signers on our business checking account. (We're setting up an automatic monthly transfer from that account to our Roth IRA accounts so our financial planning company needed that information.) 

For youth activities on Tuesday evening, each class was working on their class movie. My class made some props and then we started filming. We still have a LOT of filming to do but I think the end result will be pretty good. 

On Wednesday I did my usual VITA shift and it was really busy again. I did one really simple tax return and one really complicated one, reviewed a few more and helped another lady who showed up without her husband because he's currently in the hospital. We tracked down a form from the IRS that she could take to her husband to sign, giving her permission to file without him there but in the meantime I was looking at her tax documents and realized that her income was well above the limit for the VITA program so I gave her information on the AARP place so that she could go there to get help filing her return. She was grateful! 

Jared & Jessie didn't come to do laundry and have dinner that evening because Jared's work schedule was different this week and he was working that night. Instead, they came last night although they didn't bring any laundry, just had dinner with us and (as usual) played a game. We played a game called Stare, which Jessie had never played before but she won the game anyway! 

I spent most of my free time this week reading a book called Lessons in Chemistry. This is a book we considered reading for book club a few months ago until we discovered that there was a long waiting list at the library to get a copy of it. We decided to read something else but I went ahead and put the book on hold so I could read it at some point. To my surprise, I got it a lot sooner than I anticipated. I picked it up from the library 3 weeks ago but didn't get a chance to start reading it until late last week. It was due on Thursday of this week and since other people have it on hold I couldn't renew it. Our library doesn't have overdue fines anymore, but since I knew other people were waiting to get the book, I wanted to be couteous and get it back on time. I did manage to finish it and returned it Thursday morning. There were a few things I didn't like about the book, but I did enjoy it very much. Although I didn't agree with the main character on a number of things (she doesn't believe in God, doesn't think marriage is necessary and doesn't want children) I still found myself rooting for her. The story reminded me of the movie "Hidden Figures" in many ways. It was also quite funny at times. My favorite character in the book was the dog! 

This morning I went to the temple to do initiatories. I loved being there again, even though I wasn't there very long. (Initiatories usually don't take much time.) When I drove onto the temple grounds, there was a very beautiful view of green grass, daffodils growing, and a few trees in bloom. When I came out of the temple, I walked around the grounds a little bit taking photos before I left.

That's all I have to report this week.

Weekly Review March 10 '23

 Here we are at the end of another week. It's colder today and rainy. We even had a little bit of snow mixed in (didn't stick). Now that it's March and supposed to be getting warmer, I wouldn't be surprised if we get some of the winter weather that we haven't been getting most of this winter. 

Last Saturday morning (the 4th) Frank and I got up early to go pick up Scott from the airport. This morning we got up even earlier so Frank could take him back to the airport. (I couldn't go this time because someone had to get Seth to Seminary and school). It was nice having Scott here for the week. After he got here on Saturday the 4th, he went to bed for a while because he had flown overnight and didn't get much sleep. I went back to bed for a few hours too, but Frank didn't. 

Frank, Scott and I went to the temple together in the late afternoon. When we were driving through Frederick towards I-70, the GPS routed us a different way than we anticipated and we could see that there was an unusual amount of traffic on the usual route. We wondered why...Frank said "maybe there's an accident or something like that on 15, so a lot of people are getting off and going a different way." (15 is the main north / south freeway that runs through Frederick.) A few minutes later, I received a text from a friend that said "you guys okay?" and included a photo of a huge fireball and a headline that said "Fiery tanker truck crash causes massive explosion on highway near neighborhood." This accident had indeed occurred on 15, which explained the heavy traffic on the roads. We found out later that the driver of the truck was killed. The fire / explosion damaged 3 houses and 3 cars on a residential street that runs parallel to the freeway. One of the houses was pretty severely damaged and at least 2 of the cars looked completely destroyed too (we saw photos later). Thankfully, no one besides the truck driver was killed or injured. The residents that live on that street are saying they want a guard rail or (even better) a wall put up between their street and the highway. They've been asking for something like that for years. I can't blame them. The only thing between their street and the highway right now is a row of shrubs and trees (many of which were just destroyed in the crash). It's funny because I have often thought as I drove down that stretch of highway and saw the houses so close to the road that I wouldn't want to live there because of the traffic noise. But I never thought about the possible danger of a car crashing into those houses or a fiery crash spreading to the houses and damaging them. I hope they do put up a wall. 

Anyway, we went to the temple and it was wonderful as always, but especially nice to have Scott there with us. I snapped this photo on our way in:

And afterwards some other temple goers took this photo for us:

Scott was really tired on Sunday because he barely slept that night. He did come to church with us anyway, and even chose to share his testimony (which was very sweet). Frank had meetings before and after church but made it home by mid afternoon. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner that evening...it was nice to have so many of us together! We enjoyed dinner and playing a card game. 

For family night on Monday, we all went shooting together. (Jessie was studying for a test so she couldn't come.) Jared works at a gun store / shooting range, so he was able to get us some discounts. Frank and the older boys have been shooting together a number of times in the past and Seth went with them once too (for Tanner's "bachelor party"!) but this was my first experience shooting a gun. I was a little nervous about it and I'm definitely not very comfortable around guns, but I am glad I went. I started small and just shot a little .22 several times. Next time, I will try something a little bigger (although I don't know if I will ever want to shoot Frank's gun). There was someone in a lane near us shooting a bigger gun with a short barrel, and wow was it loud! You couldn't just hear it, you could feel it! I think I jumped every time it went off! Jared loaded the gun for me and showed me how to hold it properly. Afterwards, he asked me what I thought and I told him I would like to go often so that I get more comfortable with guns. I would like to feel like I could defend myself with a gun if necessary. I will need to get a lot more proficient and comfortable with guns for that to happen! I mean, I doubt I ever will need to defend myself in that way but I think it is a good skill to have, so Jared is going to help me practice. 

They have a cool wifi name!:

After we finished shooting, we got milkshakes.

We had youth activities on Tuesday evening as usual. Scott came with us and spent the evening with the YM. For the activity, each class met separately to start planning a class movie for the YM/YW movie festival that we are having at the end of March. My class came up with a fun idea for our movie, I think. Part of the fun is that we keep the movies secret from all the other classes until they see the finished movie at the movie festival, so I don't know what anyone else is doing. I will give short descriptions of each movie after we have the festival. 😎

I did my usual VITA shift on Wednesday. It was crazy busy the whole time! Nearly everyone showed up for their appointments and we had quite a few returns that were complicated and took longer than usual. I barely had time for one quick restroom break, let alone any time to eat lunch. I was able to complete several tax returns, though, and everyone left happy so it felt good to be able to help several people. 

I had book club Wednesday evening. We discussed When You Trap a Tiger and now we are reading The Hobbit. I've been wanting to read that book for a long time so I'm glad we chose it. I know the basic story line from a record / story book we had when we were kids, but I've never read the actual book. (I have read the Lord of the Rings trilogy though.) 

Thursday there was an RS activity but it was Scott's last day here and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and to play games again so I decided not to go. It's been great having so much time to spend with most of the family; we missed Tanner & Darlee though! (I did get to talk to Tanner on the phone this week.) During the days I've been doing my usual chores but it's been nice to have Scott here to talk to. Our house feels empty without him here tonight! 

This morning I got a mammogram...it was a follow up to one I had a month ago because the radiologist thought he could see a change on my right side from the last mammogram I had. They wanted to get more images and possibly do an ultrasound too but after looking at the first set of images, the radiologist said everything looked fine and there was no need to do any more images or an ultrasound. That was good news, of course. I've known about the issue for a few weeks and I was slightly concerned (but not a lot). I figured there was no point in mentioning it to anyone else until after I got the results from the follow up exam...no need for anyone else to worry!  

I didn't have much free time this week but I did spend a little bit of time helping a friend in our ward who had some questions about her tax return. I was able to answer a bunch of her questions and I also helped her find a place she could go to get her return prepared and filed for free. (She didn't qualify for the VITA program, but there is a similar program run by the AARP that I was aware of so I gave her information about that and she was able to get an appointment to go there.) It makes me happy to be able to help people in this way. 

A few updates on all the kids to finish up: Scott had a job interview via Zoom on Tuesday. It's for an inventory manager position at a new hospital that will be opening up in Lehi soon. From what he said, it sounds like the interview went really well. He's handling all the challenges in his life pretty well but he was a little quiet and preoccupied while he was here; we could tell he's got a lot on his mind and he's not quite himself. Darlee got a job at a hospital in Murray, working in the neurological ICU. She would prefer to be working in a pediatric ICU, but it's a start. Tanner is hoping to get an internship this summer. Jared's health is a lot better. He did go see a doctor here and that doctor decided he wants to test him again for celiac and for Crohn's disease just to make sure he doesn't have those because the liver readings and joint and back pain point to one of those things. Jared doesn't have to get another colonoscopy; they will do some different blood tests that haven't been done before and look at his colon from the other direction (with an endoscopy). He's been able to work regularly and he is enjoying his job. They are promoting him to be a floor manager so he is getting training for that. Jessie is taking classes and enjoys some of them and doesn't enjoy others. 😉 Seth seems to be doing pretty well with school...the 3rd term will end a week from today. He's now officially old enough to get his learner's permit but we haven't gotten around to getting the information for him that he will need to prepare for the written test. He doesn't seem to be in a huge hurry to get his license which is fine with us! No need to rush.

Weekly Review March 3 '23

 Another week has come and gone, and now it is March. I'm happy we are getting closer to spring, although I can't complain about the "winter" weather we've had this year. We've still been having fairly mild days overall. Today it is cloudy and in the low 40s, so it feels pretty chilly but the 40s are pretty good for early March. Late last week I started seeing a few trees in bloom and a few days ago some small daffodils in our front flower bed bloomed. (So crazy to see trees starting to bloom already but it's not surprising considering how mild temperatures have been.) I have been hearing a lot of birds singing in the mornings lately too. The squirrels are scampering all over the place, stealing stuffing from people's patio furniture to build new nests, but we saw them nearly every day throughout the winter, except for the very coldest days around Christmas time. 

We kept busy this week as usual, but I don't think there's a lot to write about. I should really take notes about what I do besides the stuff on my calendar because I can't remember much by the end of the week...I have a particularly hard time remembering the weekends. I remember that last Friday evening there was an ice skating activity for the younger youth in our stake, but I didn't have to go to that, in the end. I thought I might have to go, but our secretary went instead because her daughter was also going to be there. Seth spent most of Saturday working on schoolwork again. He didn't mention a few weeks ago when he was working all day on homework that he was only working on all the past due items from the previous weeks...in the meantime, he was getting behind on the current week's work. So he had to do some catching up again! This week he has been doing more homework each day after school so I think he is keeping up with things now. I spent quite a bit of time on Saturday preparing a lesson for YW the next day as well as communicating with my class presidency to finish planning this week's activity. (We were in charge.) 

Sunday we had only the usual meetings...even Frank got to come home right after church. It was nice to have a long relaxing afternoon. I usually read scriptures and a lot of other church related stuff. I'm really enjoying a book I've been reading about the Washington DC temple. I talked to Scott for a while on Sunday too.

The rest of the week we didn't have a lot going on beyond the usual things. I made some brownies on Monday evening, after family night, for the youth activity the following day. The youth activity was a combined activity for all the YM and YW. We divided everyone into groups and each group had to make a silly commercial. We had random things for them to choose for the object of their commercial. One group chose gum, another chose mac & cheese, and the group Frank & I supervised chose Pringles. (Not all the choices were food items, but every group ended up choosing a food item.) At the end of March we are having a "movie night"--each class will be preparing a movie for that event. The commercials are going to be shown in between the movies. I thought our group was never going to figure out their commercial...we had a lot of ADD kids in that group!...but they did finally figure something out and it was actually pretty cute, I think. After the commercials were done, we all got back together for brownies and ice cream. (Most were done eating by the time I took the photos):

My VITA shift on Wednesday went well...all the returns I completed were not very complicated and went fairly quickly. I even got to leave early because at least one of our 1:00 appointments didn't show up. (That's the last hour of my shift.) I actually had a pretty stressful dream about VITA on Tuesday night--thankfully my actual shift was not even remotely like my dream. I was telling the other volunteers about my dream and they were all laughing about it. Jared & Jessie didn't come on Wednesday for dinner because Jared's work schedule was different this week and he had to work on Wednesday. Instead, I worked on our tax return a bit more because we got the info we needed from our broker about our investment accounts. Not surprising considering the state of the stock market, we had a net loss again this year, much larger than last year's loss. So glad we opened an investment account last year...we've only lost money so far.😐 On the upside, our refund from the federal government doubled after I put that info in. I also figured out our state taxes and we're getting a refund from the state too...a much better one than the federal refund. We're still not completely done with our taxes but we are getting closer. Yesterday we opened up Roth IRAs for both of us which will likely lose money at first too but hopefully in the long run we will come out ahead.

Yesterday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. It was nice to visit with her again and get caught up on what's going on in her life. We had chosen to go to Firehouse Subs for lunch but when we got there we discovered they aren't open until 4:00 pm, because of a shortage of workers. So crazy that's still happening! After lunch I picked up a friend who is here visiting with her mom (my friend Barbra's daughter). She was here over the weekend helping her mom with some things and was supposed to return home on Tuesday (she lives in NC) but her car started having problems on Monday evening so she had to get it fixed. Turns out it needs a new transmission; not fun for her! So anyway, she needed a place to come do some remote work for her job, a place with a secure internet connection. She spent the afternoon here doing work and then had dinner with us before I took her back to the hotel where her mom is staying. (We sent some food back for her mom, too.) Her car was supposed to be fixed today and since I haven't heard from her yet it hopefully got done and she is on her way home. (She was going to come over here to do more work today if she wasn't able to head home.)

Frank and I finshed doing surveys for the study we are in a few days ago. We are happy to be done! We will have to do some follow up stuff in a year, but we are done until then. The nightly surveys were rather annoying but provided a source of humor too. We weren't allowed to discuss the questions or our answers with each other but we had a lot of jokes about them, in general. Some of the questions asked about how the other one treated us that day (cold vs warm, caring vs uncaring, etc.) so one day when Frank said something smart to me, I told him I was going to "slam him on the survey tonight" which made him laugh. That became a standing joke between us...I think we may say things like that for the rest of our lives even though we're not filling out a nightly survey anymore. 😅 Another example...some questions asked about whether the other one expressed confidence in our ability to accomplish our work and career goals, so one day when I was leaving for VITA, Frank said "good luck accomplishing your work and career goals! I know you can do it!!" 😂

I believe that's all the news from around here so I will finish up with this morning's sunrise:

Weekly Review February 24 '23

 We had quite a bit going on this week, but I'll try not to get too detailed so this post will be a reasonable length. 

When I wrote last week, Frank had been having some possible kidney stone symptoms. He had pain in his back and he also felt really nauseated. On Saturday morning we were assigned to help clean the church and he was able to do that with us, although he couldn't do a lot. After we got home he still wasn't feeling very well so he decided to go online to see if he could get a virtual visit with our doctor. (We did confirm that their phone system was completely down last week, which is why Frank couldn't get through when he tried to call last Thursday). Frank was able to get an appointment, and after talking to him about his symptoms they said he should probably come in to their after hours clinic to be seen in person. So we headed to the doctor. The doctor said it did sound like a kidney stone but to know for sure he would need to get a CT scan. She could order a scan for him, but he wouldn't be able to get in until Monday at the earliest. She suggested that he go to the ER instead so he could get a CT scan that day. Or he could wait...but that wasn't a very attractive option. Going to the ER wasn't a very attractive option either but we decided it was the lesser of two evils so we headed over to the hospital and spent a few hours there. (We left home shortly before noon and returned home around 4:30). The CT scan came back clear...no kidney stone. There was no sign of infection or anything else either. This seems to happen to Frank a lot...he feels terrible but testing reveals no reasons for that! It's frustrating, although of course we're always glad when they don't find something really bad. There always is something wrong, though...we just don't always find out what it was. (When he had appendicitis, for example--the scan they took then showed a normal appendix! But when his symptoms kept persisting, our doctor sent him to the ER and the surgeon decided to take out his appendix anyway and when he woke up from that operation he felt so much better! Clearly, his appendix was the problem even though it didn't look bad.) The ER doctor gave us a couple of possible reasons for his back pain / nausea and encouraged him to follow up with our primary care doctor and a urologist on Monday.

Frank continued to feel bad all through Sunday and at one point when he went to the bathroom he felt a lot of burning pain. After that his symptoms started to subside and he has mostly felt okay since then and seems to be completely back to normal now. We suspect that he did actually pass a kidney stone, even though it didn't show up on the scan. Who knows? I still want him to check in with our primary care doctor to find out when they last checked his kidney function, but we are both glad that he is feeling better.

Meanwhile, last weekend was our stake conference. We both missed the leadership session on Saturday afternoon since it started before we got back from the ER. (Plus we needed to eat when we got home since we hadn't even had lunch yet.) I was able to attend the adult session that evening, though. Frank wasn't feeling well enough to go, of course. On Sunday I attended the general session at the stake center because I was singing in the choir. Frank and Seth were able to watch it from home since they had a live stream available for people who couldn't attend in person (not widely advertised, but Frank knew about it since he's in the bishopric). Both of the meetings I attended were really good. We had a visiting area authority named Elder Carter from Montreal, Canada and he was a really good speaker--sometimes humorous but also said some really great, inspiring things. After the general session on Sunday I saw Jared & Jessie and got to speak with them briefly. It's fun having them in the same stake with us! 

I talked to Scott on the phone for quite a while on Sunday. On Saturday evening he and Lexy had a big falling out and he was not even sure if they would be friends anymore. He wasn't happy about that, of course, but overall he's been handling things with a lot of maturity and faith--I'm really proud of him for that!! I've talked to him a couple of times since Sunday and he is still doing okay. He has had some great support from his bishop and from some friends there as well as from family members like my mom. We're very grateful for that! He is going to come visit us late next week (arriving very early Saturday morning) for about a week. He's definitely had a lot to cope with lately, but overall I feel like these difficult experiences are going to help him get to a place that will be really good for him and that there are blessings in store for him. 

Monday was President's Day so Seth didn't have school. Frank didn't have the day off because they get a day off in December instead of President's Day. (This enables everyone to have the entire week between Christmas and New Year's off without using any vacation days.) It was a pretty regular Monday except that Seth had an orthodontist appointment which I completely forgot about until 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. (I was remembering it on Sunday night...) We live 30 minutes away from the orthodontist's office so I called them immediately to see if we could come in late or if I needed to reschedule. After looking at some other options, they told me to just get there as soon as we could so we raced over there and arrived about 15 minutes late. I'm glad we didn't have to reschedule since it's easier to go on days that he has off from school. The orthodontist said his teeth look really good so hopefully he won't have braces too much longer. (I know I've said that before but now that he has brackets on his 12 year molars, he really should be getting close to being done.)

My friend Sherrie and I went to visit our friend Barbra on Tuesday...she is in a nursing home getting therapy for her legs. We had a good visit with Barbra and I enjoyed talking to Sherrie too. That evening we had youth activities as usual. The YM rode bikes in the parking lot. I was surprised to find out that two of the other YM (besides Seth) have not learned to ride a bike yet! (There are only 7 YM in all.) They were helping these YM learn to ride and it was good practice for Seth who hasn't been able to ride since last summer and he was barely getting the hang of it then. He became confident enough by the end of the activity to ride the bike that he was borrowing from the bishop's family back to the bishop's house (which is in the same neighborhood as the church). That's the first time he has ridden a bike on roads or sidewalks, so that is an encouraging step in the right direction for him. 

Meanwhile, the YW had an activity to show love to each other and others. First we all cut out large heart shapes from cardstock which we then hung behind our backs and we all went around writing on each person's heart what we love about them. We also signed cards for six or seven members of our ward who are either sick, recovering from surgery, recently lost a loved one, or who just need encouragement. Then we finsihed up by making things out of clay to give away. I took a few photos during that portion of the activity:

It was a pretty fun evening. 

On Wednesday I did my VITA shift as usual. We were busy again but thankfully there was a brief lull around noon so I got to eat my lunch at least! One of the volunteers wasn't able to come in at the last minute so we were short handed all morning and for most of it the program director and I were the only ones there. There were more than 2 taxpayers scheduled for each hour but thank goodness a number of them either no-showed or didn't bring all the necessary documents with them so we didn't have to prepare as many tax returns as we had anticipated. I honestly have no idea how we would have managed if everyone had arrived as scheduled with all their documents. We would have gotten way behind and we would have had a lot of unhappy tax payers waiting for a long time. The last lady that I helped said she was recovering from a concussion and she was really relieved when I told her I would read all the forms to her and help her fill them out, since I knew she wasn't supposed to be reading. 

Jared & Jessie came over for dinner Wednesday evening and as always we enjoyed visiting with them. Frank and Seth had a ministering visit so they left for a while to go to that but after they came back we played a game of Apples to Apples. I failed miserably (my card never got chosen) but Seth and Jared both did great and Seth won in the end. 

Yesterday I kept busy with all the usual work during the day. I was trying to get everything done by early afternoon because Frank and I were scheduled to go to the temple that evening. Our appointment was at 5:00 so I needed to leave by 3:15. (Frank came straight from his office after work and met me there.) I picked Seth up from school because I wanted him to have as much time as possible to work on homework before I needed to leave. He enjoyed having an evening to watch television and play games while we were gone (usually he's not allowed to do either of those things on school nights). Thankfully the traffic going to the temple wasn't bad except for the few miles that I had to be on the beltway. The beltway was really backed up but that's to be expected for that time of day so I had anticipated that and I still got to the temple in plenty of time. As a matter of fact, I got there before Frank did. As you know, we've had a very mild winter here and yesterday was the warmest day we've had yet, with temperatures getting up into the high 70s! I was able to sit on a bench in front of the temple and enjoy the beautiful weather and the beautiful view of the temple. It was awesome!

When we got inside the temple and headed up the stairs, the sun was shining through the stained glass windows and they were glowing like jewels...so beautiful!! When I went to the temple last week it was swamped with people but our session yesterday was suprisingly small, with only about 18 patorns. I guess 5:00 pm on a weekday is not an ideal time for a lot of people. (It wasn't really ideal for us, either, but we wanted to do it so we made it work.) This was the first time either of us was able to attend an endowment session since the changes were made and we really liked it. Very beautiful, and I think for people who are new to the temple it's going to be a lot easier to understand. 

When we finished, we had to get a few more photos with the stained glass from the outside, with the lights from the inside of the temple shining through:

(Not a great photo of us...it was too dark!) When the temple was getting renovated, they removed every piece of glass in the stained glass windows and cleaned each one. You can't tell unless you are looking at them really close up from the inside, but the stained glass windows are made up of thousands of small shards of glass. (Even each section that looks like one color is actually made up of many smaller pieces.) It must have taken forever to take them all apart, clean them, and put them back together, but as someone who has been going to this temple for more than two decades, I can really tell the difference. The windows were beautiful before, but they are breathtaking now!

Because we drove to the temple separately, we couldn't ride home together but Frank called me on my phone, which was connected to my car's audio system, so that we could talk to each other all the way home.😀 When we got back to Frederick, we stopped to grab some food because neither of us had eaten dinner yet and it was after 8:00 pm. I was so tired by the time we got to bed, but I'm really grateful we got to go to the temple together. 

Today is not nearly as warm as yesterday but considering it's still February, temperatures in the 50s are pretty great. I've been keeping busy today updating the finances, as I usually do on Fridays. I can't think of anything else to share and it is well past lunch time so I will finish up with a few sunrise photos (from Wednesday) and go eat some lunch.