Link for my YW class movie

 Frank helped me fix the issue with my Google Drive, so here is the link for my class movie:

Annette's YW class Movie

Weekly Review April 28 '23

Greetings on this very rainy day! It's very rainy where I am, anyway. I just got back from picking up Seth from school. Today is midterm, and they got out 2 hours early. He is doing homework now and will hopefully be going to a friend's house later. 

Last week I forgot to include a couple of pictures I took of a United Way newsletter. The first picutre is of an article about the VITA program:

The second picture is a close up of the photo at the bottom of the article:

The gentleman on the far left of the photo is the program director for VITA. The woman next to him is the United Way employee who oversees the program. The other three men are some of the greeters. (They welcome the taxpayers when they arrive and give them paperwork to fill out, but they don't prepare the tax returns.) The reason I'm including a close up of this photograph is that on the far right of the photo, below the elbow of the man on the far right, you can sort of see part of a light green shirt. That's me! 😄 I was there when they took the photo, sitting at a computer behind that guy. They actually invited me to be in the photo, but I was in the middle of preparing a tax return and really too busy to pause for a photograph. I guess I gave up an opportunity for fame! 😂

On with this week's events...

Saturday the 22nd was quite busy. I had my last stake choir rehearsal that morning. While I went to that, Frank took Seth and another boy in our ward to a stake activity for the youth age 16 and up. It was a service project...they did hedge trimming and other outdoor clean up work at a state park. After the service, they had lunch and games but Seth and the other boy were being picked up by the boy's sister, and she came to get them before lunch was ready. Seth didn't seem to care about that, though, and it had started to rain anyway so he was happy to come home and eat here instead. 

After my choir practice, I ran a few errands and then went to get my hair done. Frank came over and got a haircut too while my color was processing, but Seth was still at the activity so he still needs a haircut. Shortly after Seth got home from the activity, Frank and I left because we had an appointment to do sealings at the temple that afternoon. That's what we decided to do to celebrate our anniversary, and it was a really lovely way to celebrate. We stopped on the way home at a favorite Mexican restaurant for some dinner. I'm mad that I forgot to take a photo when we were at the temple, but I did remember to take one of Frank at the restaurant:

Frank got me beautiful flowers too, which he brought home from work on Friday. I was really surprised!:

Our actual anniversary was on Sunday, but Frank wasn't feeling very well that day. He didn't sleep well at all Saturday night (I woke up at 2:45 am and he hadn't been able to go to sleep yet) and when he woke up after only a few hours of sleep Sunday morning he had a really bad headache. He ended up staying home from all of his meetings, including church. He slept some more but still didn't feel too great all day. 

I had a presidency meeting with my YW class presidency before church and that evening was the Easter concert. Frank and Seth would have come to the concert if Frank had been feeling well. I had to be there an hour early to go over the choir songs. There were a lot of other musical numbers and we were nearly at the end of the program. I really enjoyed the concert...lots of beautiful music and some scripture reading and inspirational words as well. I think we did a pretty good job, although I would have liked to have known the songs better than I did. It was a blessing to me to learn these songs; there's nothing like singing praises to the Savior to lift the spirits! I would always come home from the practices feeling on top of the world, and had the beautiful words of the songs going through my mind often over the last month. 

The rest of the week has not been as eventful as the weekend, but we still had a decent amount of things going on. Jared came over on Monday so that he and I could finish editing my YW class movie. He also put together a little slideshow of photos from last week's scavenger hunt activity. 

They didn't need me to help with Seminary as much this week, but I did arrive 10 minutes early for pick up on Tuesday and Thursday mornings so that the other teacher could leave for her medical treatments. Tuesday evening was the long-awaited youth movie night. All the families were invited to watch the movies with us. It was a fun evening and all the movies turned out great! A lot of people afterwards told me how impressed they were with Jared's editing skills. He really did do a great job and I am enormously grateful to him for all the time he put into it. I never could have done it myself! 

The other two movies (the YM movie and the older YW class movie) were also expertly edited and I'd say they were both more "polished" than ours, mainly because their actual footage was better. They both had written scripts, whereas my class just had an idea and the whole thing was ad-libbed. I think my girls did a really great job, though, and really said a lot of funny and clever things. Everyone laughed a lot all the way through all the movies. 

I'm not sure I have mentioned before now that our movie was a spoof on shows like America's Got Talent. Our show was "Walkersville's Got Talent" (because our ward is Walkersville Ward) and all of the "talent" acts were purposely really bad. There are only 6 girls in my class so they did multiple acts, dressed up in different hats and wigs. Hopefully by next week I will be able to include a link to our movie so that you can watch it. I'm having some issues with my Google drive so I haven't been able to put the movie on there yet. The YM movie was a mystery and was very clever and funny. Seth and Frank are both in that movie, and actually I have a brief cameo in it too. All the drone footage was taken by Frank, using his drone. Here is a link for that movie:

YM 2023 Movie

On Wednesday I helped my friend Barbra. She was trying to get tags for a pickup truck and switch the title to her son's name so he can drive it. She can't drive anymore though so I picked her up and took her to the title company where we met her son. He missed his bus, though, so we ended up waiting an hour for him to get there. Then the inevitable problems cropped up and I ended up taking them to the motor vehicle division also. In the end, they had to make an appointment to go back the next day so unfortunately they weren't able to accomplish their task. When I volunteered to help, I thought this would take an hour or two; instead it took four hours so that wiped out my other plans for that day. I was hoping to go to some thrift stores to look for some clothes for Trek for Seth, but that will have to wait for another day.

Jared and Jessie came over for dinner Wednesday evening. I had book chat that evening too so I didn't have as much time for visiting but we did have dinner and played a game together before I had to leave. We played Dead Ringer, and we all finished within 3 points of each other, but Jessie had the highest score. I still feel like I won the game, though, because I missed the first 2 rounds and was only one point behind Jessie. 😆 Book club was fun as usual; we discussed The Hobbit, which everyone liked. Now we are reading a book called Dear Theo by Irving Stone. It is letters written by Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. I just ordered a copy of the book on Wednesday so I haven't received it yet.

Yesterday I went to the temple. The traffic going down was terrible and I was worried I was going to miss my session but in the end I got there in time. I brought a name with me (using the "ordinance ready" feature) but it wasn't until I was sitting down waiting for the session to begin that I looked at the information closely and realized that this sister was born nearly 300 years ago in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I immediately felt this overwhelming feeling of how long she had been waiting for her ordinances to be done, which caused me to feel really emotional, but also grateful. It was sweet. 

Going to the temple took a good portion of my day because the session I was in was full and I was near the back so it took a long time to get through. Plus, I didn't really want to leave. 😊 By the time I got home and ate lunch, it was nearly time for Seth to come home from school. I still needed to get some groceries so I did that anyway even though I knew Seth would get home before I did. He had homework to do, so he was working on that when I got home. Frank and Seth helped me get some of my other chores...like vacuuming...done that evening after dinner. We also went on a walk and I ordered some new church clothes for Seth...his church pants are way too short. Hopefully the pants I ordered will fit him. He is at that age where it is really hard to find pants that are long enough but with a small enough waist. I've had this problem with all of my boys during their teenage years, because all four of them have been really tall and skinny. All in all, Thursday turned out to be a fairly productive day. 

Today I spent the morning updating the finances. Seth has been home for about 3 hours now; I stopped working on this post for quite a while to help him with an English assignment. Now he is finishing up his homework for CTC and then I will be taking him to a friend's house. It has been raining literally all day and it is supposed to continue raining until the early hours of tomorrow morning. They keep saying we need more rain though so it's a good thing we are getting a nice steady downpour. 

That is all of the news from these parts.

Weekly Review April 21 '23

This week we got back into our regular routine, mostly. Saturday was quite busy. I had stake choir practice in the morning, as I have the last few weeks. When I got to the church for the practice, I thought the blooming trees next to the building were beautiful. I had to take a few photos:

After I got home from the practice, I did some sewing. In the past, I have done some sewing for a friend who used to be in our ward...fixing baseball uniforms for him. (Mostly hemming pants, adding elastic to pants hems, and sewing on patches.) He had a couple of pairs of umpire pants he needed hemmed, but he asked if I would be willing to show his 13 year old daughter how to do it. She has a sewing machine and has learned some sewing basics. So they came over and I showed her how to hem pants and we got both pairs of pants hemmed. That evening, we got a call from some other firends who used to live in our ward...they live in Winchester, Virginia now. They were just leaving the temple and wanted to know if we wanted to meet them for dinner at a restaurant in Frederick. We enjoyed getting caught up with them...haven't seen them in quite a while. They are excited to be getting a temple in their area soon.

Sunday we had all our regular church meetings, but in addition to that Frank and I had our first meeting with the food committee for Trek. It's going to be a fun group to work with! We have a menu planned and a list of tasks that need to be done, and divided up those tasks. Frank and I are going to help buy the food, among other things. 

I did go in to help with taxes on Monday for a couple of hours. The site director emailed me on Saturday to ask if I could come in because a lot more people had made appointments. Gotta love all the procrastinators! I prepared a tax return for a woman who was separated from her husband, had a restraining order against him, and is currently living in a shelter with her two very young boys (both under the age of 2). In spite of the difficult situation she is in, she was very serene, patient, and kind. I was really impressed! When I finished and she thanked me, I told her I hoped things would get better for her soon. She smiled calmly and said "they will". I'm really glad I could help her in a small way. 

On my way home from VITA, I picked up Seth from school. He had a doctor appointment that afternoon so I took him to that. It was just a check up for his medication. After that, we had dinner and family night. We played Mario Kart and somehow I managed to come in first on one of the races; I still have no idea how that happened! I ended up coming in 3rd overall which for me is really good.

Jared came over as we were finishing up family night so that he and I could work on editing my class movie. On Sunday they actually decided to move the movie night to next week, but we had already planned to work on it so we went ahead with our plans. We were up pretty late working on it but we got most of the main movie done; we still want to add a "behind the scenes / blooper" reel at the end. Jared is going to add some more special effects too. It's good that we got a lot done because Jared is quite busy with work and we haven't done anything else on it since Monday. We will be finishing it up this weekend. 

Meanwhile, because the movie night got moved to next week, they decided to move next week's activity to this week and my class was in charge of that so I suddenly had a week's less time to prepare for that. Fortunately, I had most of it ready but I had been planning to tweak some things and get everything ready to go this week. Instead, I got it all ready on Tuesday morning. The activity was a photo scavenger hunt in downtown Frederick. I used a bunch of information from a scavenger hunt that Seth's school class did when he was in 8th grade. I put booklets together with photographs and descriptions of all the things they were supposed to find, along with a list of the rules and a map showing the boundaries. It took a decent amount of time, but luckily I did most of the work last fall (we were planning to do the hunt then, but decided to put it off until spring). I didn't have photos of everything so I had been planning to go downtown to take photos of those things but I just didn't have time so I didn't include those things in the hunt. It really didn't matter because I had a ton of things on the list already...more than they would be able to find in the time we had. I wanted the hunt to end at a soda shop that sells unique sodas and also ice cream, so that everyone could get a treat. Frank thankfully thought to suggest that we check the hours the shop was open...they close at 7:00 pm, which is when our activity was starting. I decided to check another place that sells pretzels and they were open until 9:00 pm. Again, Frank suggested that we call them to make sure if we showed up at 8:15 with about 20 people that they would be able to make that many pretzels. Fortunately, they said they could. 

I think the activity went well and that everybody had fun. My only complaint is that it took much too long for everyone to gather at the church (even though we asked everyone to be on time so we could get started) and then to divide into teams and get everyone in a car to ride downtown and so forth. We didn't actually end up starting the hunt until close to 7:30. We ended up dividing into our classes...all the YM went with the bishop and 1st counselor, the older YW class went with their advisor and the YW secretary, and my class went with me and our class advisor. (The YW president couldn't be there that night.) Frank opted to take care of the pretzel order. He had the idea to print out the pretzel menu and have everyone choose what they wanted at the beginning of the hunt so that the order could be called in early and ready for us when we finished at 8:15. I'm really grateful that he thought through all these things! Especially because even though he walked over to the pretzel place and put in our order at about 7:45, we still ended up waiting until after 8:30 for them to get our order ready. It would have been a disaster if we had showed up at 8:15 and had to wait another 45 minutes. 

Here's a few of the photos I took of my class:

We are going to put together a little slideshow with photos from all the classes to show at the movie night on Tuesday. (Jared is going to help me with that too.) It was a little bit challenging to go with a group for the hunt because I had to be careful not to help too much...I already knew where everything was! I watched them walk right past a couple of things on the list and didn't say anything because I didn't think it would be fair if I did. I still had a fun time, though. We tallied up our points at the end and the YM won, but they only beat my class by a few points. 

I was surprised that on Wednesday my back and arms hurt a lot! My feet hurt too but I wasn't surprised by that...I forgot and wore my boots instead of more comfortable walking shoes that night. I didn't feel like we had walked all that far, but apparently it was hard on my back. I was mostly just sore on Wednesday, though. By Thursday I was feeling a lot better. My feet are still a little sore but nothing else hurts anymore. 

I was busy on Wednesday getting caught up on household chores that I didn't have time to do on Tuesday (because I was preparing the scavenger hunt). Jared & Jessie came over for dinner that evening. We also played some games and went to get some ice cream. It was fun to spend some time with them!

Yesterday I mostly did the usual chores but last night I went to a "End of the Tax Season Celebration" for VITA. We met at a restaurant downtown and had pizza and appetizers. It was pretty fun. I'm glad that we finished up the tax season but I'm kind of sorry I probably won't see the other volunteers until next year. They are all really nice people! We each got a certificate of recognition from the Frederick County executive. Here's mine:

Last night they told us an estimate of how much money had been refunded to taxpayers because of our efforts and also about how much money the taxpayers saved because they didn't have to pay to get their taxes done. I can't remember the numbers anymore but they were a lot higher than I anticipated...in the hundreds of thousands. I'm glad I can help people who are struggling financially. I still remember what it was like to be worrying about every penny I spent. It's not an easy situation to be in.

Today has been a normal Friday so far. I've spent most of the morning getting the finances updated. I did go to Seminary this morning, which I don't normally do. I have been getting there about 15 minutes early for pick up every day this week so that one of the teachers could leave a little early to go get a medical treatment done. Today I was there for the whole class, though. I think I will be helping next week too.

The weather here has been unpredictable. One morning this week it was only 37 degrees and it's been somewhat chilly during the days but now today it is in the high 80s! It's going to cool back down tomorrow, but only to the 70s so I'm not complaining about that. Everything is blooming, there is pollen all over everything, and everyone's allergies are acting up. Mine haven't been too bad, thankfully, but Frank's persistent cough is back with a vengeance. Leaves are starting to appear on all the trees. A few weeks ago there were only blossoms on all the trees but now everything looks so green:

I will never get tired of our backyard view! It is always so beautiful.

I can't think of anything else to report so that's it for this week.

Weekly Review April 14 '23

 When I wrote last week, I had a headache. It did go away, but I have another headache today. I'm wondering if it is allergy related. I've been feeling rather itchy all over lately and I think that might happen every spring too. I'm still glad it is spring, though! It was chilly when I wrote last Friday and it stayed fairly chilly over the weekend but each day this week has gotten a little warmer than the day before so by Wednesday temperatures were up into the 80s and Thursday was even hotter, up to the low 90s. Today is back in the low 80s, which is my happy spot. I actually haven't been outside today though and inside I've been getting cold because the air conditioning is running. I'm grateful to have air conditioning, but I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with it!

Last Saturday was pretty busy...I had stake choir rehearsal along with the regular chores. I also filed the annual report for Frank's business. I was happy to discover that we no longer have to file a personal property tax return, just the annual report. (There were some changes in the law since last year.) The filing fee is the same, but the annual report is just very basic information (name of business, address, etc...no financial information) so it takes a lot less time. No more taxes to file until next year. 😄Jared came over after he got off work and spent some time with us that evening. We all went out to dinner together too.

We kept Easter pretty simple this year. Seth said he didn't care if he had his own basket or not, so I just put all the candy I purchased into a big bowl and we've all been sharing that. (He did get his own chocolate bunny; he requested that.) We didn't dye Easter eggs either but we were all up early for church. I had choir practice before church, Seth helped set up the sacrament, and Frank was the only member of the bishopric in town so he needed to be there early to make sure everything was ready. The ward that meets before us got out really late, so our meeting ended up starting late too. We didn't have 2nd hour meetings, so it all worked out. Jared came to our ward and it was nice to have him there with us. (Especially for me, since I usually sit alone until after the sacrament when Seth sits with me.) Thank goodness Frank thought to bring bread with us because no one else brought it. (It wasn't our turn, but with many people out of town, someone must have forgotten about it.) Our meeting was really nice, with some really great talks and music. The Primary sang as well as the choir and the returning sister missionary gave a perfect Easter talk. There were a lot of people there, too. Even though many people were out of town, others were visiting family here and a number of members who don't come often came too.

After church we enjoyed spending the day together as a family. Jared stayed most of the afternoon and evening and had Easter dinner with us. 

We had to get a silly photo too:

Jared and I started editing my class's movie for the upcoming YM / YW film festival. Jared has a lot of great ideas which is going to make it a lot better. He also knows how to do all the editing...I don't! So I am very grateful for his help.

This week has been quiet since Seth hasn't had school all week. I did end up having something to do nearly every day though. On Monday I went with two friends...Jane and Cecily...to visit our friend Wanda. We were going to take her out to lunch but for some reason when I called to set that up, the nursing home people said we couldn't take her off the premises, but we could bring some lunch and eat it outside with her, so that's what we did. She did say that people from her ward had taken her to church the previous day, so I'm not sure why we weren't allowed to take her anywhere. We are trying to find that out. Anyway, we did get to visit her and she enjoyed the lunch we brought her. 

That evening we went on a walk and then went to get family night treat at Rita's; then we came home and played a game. Everything around here is blooming!

Here's a big limb that broke off a tree in that wind storm I mentioned last week:

We went on a walk Wednesday evening too, but I didn't take any photos. 

Tuesday was the one day I didn't have something planned, but I kept busy with the usual household chores. Seth helped me clean the bathrooms. That evening, Frank and Seth went to see the new Super Mario Brothers movie. I had no desire to see that, but they enjoyed it...said it was pretty funny.

I did my usual VITA shift on Wednesday. That was probably my last shift because the program director doesn't think they are going to need my help on Monday. They don't have very many appointments scheduled. He will call me if they get busy and need me to come in. We thought we were going to be sitting around a bit on Wednesday because we only had one 9:00 appointment and two 10:00 appointments, and then no more appointments scheduled until 1:00. However, a couple of people showed up (thinking they had appointments even though they didn't) and at least one person was able to get a last minute appointment so we ended up keeping fairly busy the whole time (which I prefer to sitting around anyway). 

Yesterday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. We went to a pizza place near my house which I had never tried...it was pretty good. Jared & Jessie came over in the evening to have dinner with us. We took them to Rita's to get treats too. Jared and I worked on my class movie a bit more. They didn't stay very late, though, because Jared was feeling tired. He had an endoscopy the previous day (Wednesday). The procedure went well but they don't have the results yet. He was still recovering from that and feeling a bit tired. 

Today I was planning to go to the temple but I had a really bad night...didn't sleep well at all...so I decided to go another day. I was sorry to miss going, but I didn't feel good about driving down to the temple and back when I was so sleepy. I was able to sleep in a bit and feel more rested now. I got the usual Friday work done, which is mostly updating the budget...my favorite "chore"! 

Seth has enjoyed being home all week and has mostly been playing video games and getting caught up on a few of his favorite shows, plus watching some of the Hobbit movies. I thought it would have been fun for he and I to go on a day trip somewhere, but he really prefers to stay home and I ended up being busier than I had anticipated. Oh well! I think we are going to have a pretty busy summer so it was nice for him to have some down time. He goes back to school on Monday but he doesn't have Seminary until Tuesday. There are only 22 days left of Seminary this school year because they finish when the seniors finish, which is a few weeks before school gets out. I don't know why they do it that way here, but it's always been that way. I will probably be helping with Seminary next week because one of the teachers is having some health issues and needs to get some medical treatments. Frank is her ministering brother and he gave her a blessing last night; while he was there he volunteered me to help! I'm happy to help, though. 

I can't think of anything else to report for this week so that's it until next week.

Weekly Review April 7 '23

Today is one of those days when I feel like everything is taking longer to get done than it should. Hopefully this post will go quicker than everything else today. Even though today is the first day of spring break, I still woke up shortly after 5:00 am. Now it is after 1:00 pm, and all I have accomplished is updating the budget and exercising. The budget took a lot longer than I thought it should have. 

Since it is the first day of spring break, of course it is a bit on the cold side! The last 3 days we've had temperatures in the 70s and 80s...it's been so nice! Today it is cloudy and temperatures are in the 50s. I guess I shouldn't be complaining since it's still snowing in Utah. I'm not really all that upset, it just seems like the weather always gets colder as soon as spring break arrives.

When I left off last week, Frank wasn't feeling very well because he had just had a Covid booster. Thankfully, he woke up feeling a lot better on Saturday. He also found out that the only other shot he has to get is for Hepatitus B. It's a two shot series; he got the first one yesterday. It made him feel a bit dizzy and his arm hurts, but other than that he feels okay.

Last Friday evening we had a big wind storm. Since then, we've seen quite a few large tree limbs and some trees down in the neighborhood. One house down the street had a tree fall on it. I feel sorry for the owners because they just purchased the house about a month ago. Welcome to home ownership! At least the damage didn't look too bad...no big holes in the roof or anything. 

The weekend was busy with General Conference meetings, of course. I also had a stake choir practice on Saturday morning...it's for a community Easter concert that we're doing at the end of April. We invited the sister missionaries over for dinner on Saturday, and to watch the second session of conference with us. I thought Conference was super good! I think it gets better every time! I loved the emphasis on Easter. We have been trying to more thoughtfully prepare for Easter this week by reading scriptures from the last week of Christ's life, listening to music, and so forth and it's been nice. I feel like there has been a great spirit in our home and I have felt extra happy all week. I had another choir practice on Sunday evening...this one is for our ward choir because we are singing two songs on Easter.

We're excited about some of the temples that were announced this General Conference. I am really happy about the temple announced for Charlotte, North Carolina since that was my mission headquarters. We are also happy about temples being announced for Winchester, Virginia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They are both about an hour and 15 minutes from our house, which is not closer than the DC temple (unless the traffic is bad) but they will be much closer than the Philadelphia Temple. In the future when the DC temple closes for maintenance, we'll have some other options of reasonbly close temples. Of course, it will be so much better for the people who live in those areas!

I didn't sleep well at all Sunday night so I was pretty tired on Monday and got started later than usual. I did get all the regular chores done, though, and I was able to take a short nap before taking Seth to the orthodontist that afternoon. His teeth look good except he has a small gap still between two teeth on top so they put something called a "power train" on the top teeth to help close the gap. Hopefully once that is done, he will get his braces off. I'm not sure how long that will take, though. When we got back from the orthodontist, Seth mowed the lawn and I pulled weeds. The lawn was looking like a jungle before he mowed it:

 It looks much better now:

For family night that evening we went for a walk and then played a game. Photos from our walk:

We went on another walk on Wednesday evening. We are trying to go on at least a couple of walks per week to help Seth break in his hiking boots in preparation for Trek. (Plus it is good for our health, too.) 

Speaking of Trek...we worked things out and we are going! The food committe will be staying at a campground at a state park and preparing all the food there, then transporting it to the location where the Trek group will be for each meal. The food committee chairs were fine with us staying somewhere else at night, and we were able to find an airbnb just a few miles away. (We looked into renting a trailer or RV since the campground has electrical hookups, but that would have cost a lot more than the airbnb.) We'll be attending some meetings between now and then and I'm sure there will be a decent amount of work and preparations to do. I'm sure Trek itself will be a lot of work also but I'm actually pretty excited about it. Seems like the best of both worlds to me...we get to be a part of it but we don't have to hike for miles and we get to sleep in comfort!

On Tuesday evening we had youth activities as usual. The Primary activity leaders asked the youth to help with an Easter egg hunt for the Primary kids so that is mostly what we did. My class also filmed a couple of scenes for our movie, using the Primary kids, and we played a game during a short time we had in between hiding eggs and helping the kids redeem prizes for their eggs. I got a great picture of my class, with a funny photo bomb by Seth:

Wednesday was my usual tax preparation day. I felt like I got to help more people than usual, which was nice. I helped one man set up estimated tax payments for this year, because the past several years he has owed quite a bit and has been charged penalties for under paying. He was really happy to get that set up, and I feel happy when I'm able to help someone in that way. I only have two more shifts left...next Wednesday and then the following Monday. They may not need me to help for the Monday shift, though, so Wednesday may be my last shift. I've really enjoyed this year's volunteer work. I think maybe I've gotten to the point where I've become pretty comfortable with it so I'm enjoying it more and feeling less anxious. I really enjoy interacting with all the other volunteers that I work with, also.

Seth had a dentist appointment after school on Wednesday. His hygenist is in our ward and I'm her ministering sister, so this gave me a chance to talk to her and find out how she and her family are doing, so that was great!

Yesterday I went to the temple to do initiatories. It was really sweet...I felt like one of the sisters I did the work for was really happy about it and another sister had the same birthday as me (different year, of course). After I was done, I walked all around the temple taking pictures because it was a beautiful day and the grounds were absolutely gorgeous! So here's a photo dump from that:

(Sister missionaries reading scriptures!)

Believe it or not, that's not all the photos I took! I really didn't want to leave, but I had to return to the real world eventually.

Last evening we went to an openhouse for a missionary who just returned. We are good friends with her family. She left for her mission from our ward, but her family moved to Utah shortly afterwards. She wanted to speak in church in our ward after returning, so they are here this weekend and she will speak on Sunday. We enjoyed talking with her and her family, as well as with some of the other ward members who came. 

Today, as I mentioned, is the first day of spring break for Seth. He's been playing games all day. Jared came over this afternoon and is hanging out with us...he'll be going to dinner with us tonight. (Jessie is on her way back from Idaho with her sister Emily. She flew out there on Tuesday and is helping her sister drive her car back here for the summer.)  We were going to go shooting but I have a bad headache so we decided to postpone that to another day. I took some Tylenol but it isn't helping much. Hopefully it will go away soon.

I'll finish up with a few photos from our yard (or neighbor's yard). It is looking very pretty in our neighborhood, too!