Weekly Review December 15 '23

Well, here we are only 10 days until Christmas. I am thankful to say that I am a lot more prepared for it than I was at this time last week. I am much less prepared for next week's Seminary lessons than I usually am at this point, but I can only do so much so I had to prioritize. I have read both of the lessons for next week and they require less preparation than usual. I should be able to get them done tomorrow. 

My last post was written late Saturday night, so I will start with Sunday this week. It rained hard most of the day. Frank gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting; he did a great job. That evening there was a Stake Youth Standards Night, which the parents and youth leaders were also encouraged to attend so we all went to that. The meeting was really good but also long. I was wishing they had started it earlier because it didn't end until 8:40 and there were refreshments after that and Seth wanted to stay to eat those and talk with his friends. Meanwhile, Frank was feeling really nauseated. We finally headed home but didn't make it far before Frank had to pull over and jump out of the car so he could be sick by the side of the road. Poor guy! Seth and I were sitting in the car waiting for him to be able to get back in the car and Seth says from the back seat "Well, at least it's not raining quite as hard as it was when I had to do that." This struck me as kind of funny (I mean, not really)...this was the second time in just a few weeks that we had to pull over and wait while someone was sick by the side of the road, and both times it was raining! I drove the rest of the way home and thankfully Frank didn't have to stop again. He didn't feel well on Monday either, though, so he took a sick day. We're still not sure if he had picked up a virus (there are a lot of those going around right now) or if it was a side effect of his medicine. He felt mostly better by Tuesday morning and he seems to be fine now and put in a full week after Monday.

I had one of my bad sleeping nights on Sunday night which was especially bad timing since we got to bed a lot later than usual. I was out of the shower and practically ready to go by 5:00 am; when I checked my phone to see what time it was, I had a text message from the school system saying there was a 2 hour delayed opening due to inclement weather. What?? I looked out the window and there was no snow or any other indication of why school may be delayed. But regardless...there's no Seminary if school is delayed or cancelled, so I contacted my team teacher and then sent out a message to all the kids and their parents to let them know there wouldn't be Seminary. It's just too bad I didn't know that was going to happen; I could have slept in! As it was, I was wide awake by then so I just stayed up and got stuff done. Since I had already prepared 2 lessons for this week and my team teacher was going to do 2 lessons and a review (but hadn't fully prepared her lessons yet), we decided that I would go ahead and teach my two lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday and she would do the review on Thursday and combine her other two lessons into one lesson for Friday. 

When I went out to get some grocery shopping done a little later in the morning on Monday, I noticed that the distant hills had some snow on them:

Also yesterday when I drove to another part of Frederick County, there was some snow on the ground. So apparently it did snow in some parts of the county and that must be why school was delayed that day. I finished sewing the pillow covers on Monday. I am very happy to get them done and I'm pleased with how they turned out. They look better in real life than in photos because all the fabrics I used have a little bit of glitter in them. They look pretty and sparkly, but it isn't really showing up in any of the photos. I will attach a few anyway. We played the game Life for family night activity that evening.

Seth woke up early on Tuesday morning feeling sick to his stomach. He stayed home from Seminary and then decided to stay home from school too. Since Frank had just been feeling sick, I thought maybe Seth had picked something up from him. Seth never got really sick, though, and he probably could have gone to school but that's always a challenging call to make. Since he wasn't feeling terribly sick, he worked on assignments for his CTC class and got them all finished. Frank had a potluck luncheon at work; he made meatballs for that. They had some sort of event he had to go to also so he didn't get home until late and he wasn't hungry because they had so much food from the potluck. (He brought a lot of meatballs home too). 

That was the second night in a row I didn't have to cook dinner...Frank wasn't feeling well on Monday so he warmed up some soup and I ate leftovers from Sunday's dinner. On Tuesday I just made myself something simple. I haven't had to cook dinner since then, either, because on Wednesday I was out running errands until kind of late so Frank was awesome and got dinner in the oven for me. Then last night there was a RS dinner so I told Frank & Seth they could have a boys' night out. Tonight Frank and I are going to the temple so we won't be home for dinner and tomorrow night is our ward Christmas party. Nearly a whole week of not cooking dinner...Merry Christmas to me!!

For Seminary I taught a lesson about worship on Tuesday and on Wednesday I covered Revelation 6-11 which included a lot of the events leading up to the 2nd coming--like the 2 witnesses being killed but then rising from the dead, the Mount of Olives splitting in two, the Savior fighting for the Jews, and the new Jerusalem being established. I was doing a lot of talking for that lesson so I gave the kids paper, pencils, and crayons and told them they could draw what we were talking about while they listened. I don't think many of them drew anything but some of them did. Two crazy incidents that happened this week related to Seminary: on Wednesday one of the boys accidentally left his saxophone at the church. Seth also forgot to take his medicine that day, so I ended up going to the school to give him his medicine and also dropped off the saxophone for the other boy at the school's front office. (I'm leaving out a lot of the details, which included figuring out whose saxophone it was, trying to contact him, and contacting his mom to ask if I should leave it at the office.) On Thursday one of the boys who goes to Seth's school got left behind at the church somehow. That was trickier, because as teachers we are not allowed to be one-on-one with any of the kids. My team teacher was driving her son and one of the girls to the other high school, so we decided that she would take this boy to his high school first and then the other two kids to their school. It all worked out...she even managed to get everybody to school on time. 

On Wednesday my friend Sherrie and I went to visit our friend Wanda...she's the one who is in a nursing home, even though she's only a little older than me. I haven't been able to go see her since April, so it was really great to see her again. She seems to be doing well although I think she's lost some weight. She was really happy to see us. I enjoyed visiting with my friend Sherrie on the way there and back also. We hadn't had a chance to really talk for quite a while.

On Thursday I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. Then I saw her again that evening at the RS Hawaiian Christmas Dinner. For the dinner, we had Hawaiian haystacks and it was really good. We each got a lei to wear and they had Hawaiian decorations and Hawaiian music playing. It was a fun and relaxing evening. I gave Rebekah a ride home afterwards. Frank helped get the music set up for the activity. He ended up having to go do some work for one of his clients (the one who is pretty far away) so he went straight from work to his client's place and then straight from there to the church to help set up the music. Then he came home and I left to go to the dinner and Frank took Seth to Panera for dinner. I'm sure he was really tired after all of that.

I can't remember what I did what day now, but in between everything else, I was busy all week doing Christmas preparations. I got all the cards addressed and mailed, and all the shopping done. Now I need to start wrapping things and next week I will make some cookies and candy. It's a relief to have so many things done, though! 

I have also been reading the book for book chat--mostly while I am eating breakfast and lunch. It's very interesting so I'm enjoying it a lot, although I'm very grateful I didn't live in 15th century China!

In spite of the chaos and "busy-ness" of this time of year, I have found a few quiet moments like this one, reading scriptures by the Christmas tree:

I'm grateful for those moments! 

This week we also got this lovely tower of treats from one of Frank's clients:

(Lots of candy, nuts, popcorn, cookies, and delicious pears. Yum!!) 

I'll finish up with some photos I took of the river behind our house on Sunday. They aren't great pictures but hopefully you'll get the idea. There was a mist hanging over the river and it looked really pretty.

Oh, and here's a few of Seth holding a flaming tennis ball in his chemistry class:

Now I'm really done!

Weekly Review December 8 '23

 I seem to be too busy living life to blog about it. Friday was very busy so I ran out of time to write this week's post. Now Saturday is almost over too. I guess it is to be expected at this time of year. 

Last Saturday--as usual--is now fuzzy in my memory. I worked on Seminary lessons in the morning and got them done by midafternoon. I watched / listened to the live stream of The Messiah that Amy and Maddie were performing in that evening. I started quilting one of the quilt blocks (pillows) while I listened; it was really nice!! I love The Messiah--such a beautifully and divinely inspired work!

Late that evening we got a lot of the Christmas decorations set up, although we saved the tree for Sunday. The two Christmas village pieces I got from Mom:

Sunday was really busy. We had our regular meetings in the morning. Then Seth had Ward Youth Council and I had choir practice. After church we put up the Christmas tree and the remainder of the Christmas decorations. Jared & Jessie came for dinner and we played a game of Aggravation, which did indeed get many of us aggravated. 😆After Jared & Jessie went home, we got ready for bed and after some debate decided to stay up late to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. (We thought about watching it for family night on Monday night instead.) It was lovely, as always.

I did somewhat regret staying up late to watch the devotional because I had one of my bad sleeping nights and felt really wiped out on Monday. I managed to get in a 30 minute nap in the afternoon which helped a bit. Both of my Seminary lessons this week went okay. Not great, but okay. I mostly stuck with the lesson manual and didn't get too creative. One lesson was about symbols in the book of Revelation and the other was about the Lord both acknowledging our good works and giving us correction. 

I've been trying to be consistent with following up with Seth about his grades at school. I've been getting very concerned about his CTC class because I was seeing a number of missing assignments. It's frustrating because Seth will tell me an assignment is done, just not graded yet, but a few weeks later he will discover that he actually only did part of it, or he did all of it but forgot to turn it in. I'm trying to help him develop better routines to help him cope with his forgetfulness. Like checking his backpack for missing work every day and double checking to make sure an assignment has actually been turned in instead of relying solely on his memory. Anyway, I was thinking I had better try to find a way to contact his teacher but then on Tuesday his teacher emailed me. He had noticed Seth was missing a lot of work so he wanted to check in about that. That gave me the opportunity to reply to his email and explain what was happening on our end and to ask some questions. His teacher responded and was very helpful and supportive, and we worked out a plan to help Seth get caught up. I am grateful for good teachers like that! 

After school on Tuesday I convinced Seth to practice driving for a bit. We found another parking lot that a few of his friends recommended for practicing. It's much larger than the church parking lot so there's more room to manuever and there's space to get up to some higher speeds. Seth practiced parking and he did a pretty good job backing into parking spaces using the back up camera. He never wants to drive for more than about 20 mintues at a time, though. We ran some errands on that trip too--put gas in my car and picked up a library book I had put on hold. 

On Wednesday morning I had an appointment with the eye doctor. The trial contact lenses she ordered for me came in so I went in to pick them up and to get my eyes checked with a pair of the trial lenses in. The eye doctor sent me home with two boxes of the trial lenses to try out. I've worn a pair at least part of the day every day since then and they seem to be pretty good. 

Frank had a doctor appointment at the same time that I had my eye doctor appointment, and we got home at the same time. His appointment was just a check up and follow up on bloodwork he had done recently. His A1C is down a lot and he is actually back in the "prediabeties" phase, so that's good news. He's been on a new medication for several months and it has helped him lose some weight and helped his blood sugar. The medicine does have side effects...it's an injection that he does once a week and he usually feels somewhat nauseated for a day or two after he takes it. It does seem to be helping, though, so the benefits have outweighed the side effects so far. 

Wednesday evening we participated in the town of Walkersville's Christmas tree lighting. (Walkersville is just north of Frederick and quite a few people in our ward live in Walkersville). Our ward had been asked to provide a musical number. We've done this every year for several years. This year the youth, Primary children, and ward choir combined to sing "Angels We Have Heard On High". I think it turned out pretty well. Our group always seems to be the largest and sings the loudest. (It's often hard to hear many of the other groups.) Because it didn't start until 7:00 pm and our bedtime is 8:00, we decided to leave after we sang our song...didn't even stay to see the tree lit or to see Santa Claus arrive on a fire engine like he does every year. We did see all the fire engines and Santa Claus waiting in a nearby parking lot on our way home, though! Someone from the ward who attended the tree lighting took a photo and attached it to the RS weekly email, so I actually have photographic proof that I sang this year:

(I'm 5th from the left, next to the person in the light green coat). My Seminary team teacher is 2nd from the left and my friend Rebekah is 3rd from the left. 

The park where the tree lighting was held is right across the street from the library which was fortunate because I was able to pick up another book I had on hold. I got the notice that it was in earlier that day and at first I was frustrated that I had just gone to pick up another book the day before, but then I realized I'd be going to the tree lighting that night so I would be right over that way anyway. (I didn't expect the second book to come in so soon because I was fourth on the waiting list when I put it on hold last week.) This book is for book chat--Lady Tan's Circle of Women. It's set in 15th Century China. I haven't had a chance to read much of it yet but it's interesting so far and seems to be well written. 

I managed to get both of my Seminary lessons for next week mostly prepared by late afternoon on Thursday. I'm not sure how they will go...there are fewer activities for the kids to do than usual so I will be doing a lot of the talking. I actually think the kids might like having less to do, but they will probably fall asleep! There's going to be a lot of reading / summarizing scriptures and there's actually a storyline going on in these chapters (Revelation 5-11) which is new for me since we've been teaching epistles of Paul and other apostles the entire semester. Hopefully the storyline will make it more interesting for everyone...I know I found it pretty interesting while I was preparing. I actually think these chapters would make a pretty epic movie! 

Friday was super busy because I went to the temple, made dinner for a couple in my ward, and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner & to do laundry / play a game. We were actually planning to go down to the temple visitor center last night to see the lights and to attend the nightly concert, which was a handbell choir. However, Frank had a bad day with his blood sugar...it dropped quite low, for some reason...so he didn't feel well enough to go. He had to lie down most of the evening but thankfully he feels a lot better today. I was sorry to miss the handbell choir but we will be able to see the lights another night. Jared, Jessie and I played a game of Phase 10 dice. (Frank was lying down and Seth preferred to play video games.) After Jared & Jessie went home, I managed to finish up the budget (I started working on it before Seminary because I woke up a bit early and had some extra time). I was up quite late (11:00) but didn't get a lot of other things done. Frank and I did a little bit of online Christmas shopping and I ended up talking to both Scott and Tanner which took a lot of time but I was happy to talk to them, of course. 

Pictures from the temple (before and after):

The temple is always busy these days, which I am not complaining about, but it does mean that it can take longer. I usually end up sitting near the back of the room so I have to wait a long time at the end of the session. A couple in my ward was in the same session as me and I got to talk to them a bit afterwards which was fun but also slowed me down a bit more. 

I'm going to go ahead and write about today since I won't remember much about it if I wait until next week. I had another bad sleeping night last night and woke up only a couple of hours after I went to bed. After lying awake for about an hour, I decided to get up and do something constructive. I've been working on the quilted pillow covers throughout the week and finished quilting the first one on Wednesday. In progress:

Completed:

This morning I decided to work on the second pillow cover, which I had barely started. I worked on it from 2:00 am to 6:00 am and finished all the quilting. Then I went back to bed and was able to sleep for an hour before I had to get up to go to a hair appointment. I've been up since then so I've only had about 3 hours of sleep since about 2:30 Friday morning and it feels more like midnight to me than 9:00 pm. I will be glad to go to bed soon! 

The rest of today was full because I had a long list of things I was trying to get done. I cleaned the kitchen floor, practiced the ukulele, made power points for both of my Seminary lessons, talked to my team teacher about some Seminary items and then tried to call a couple of parents but didn't get in touch with either of them--had to leave messages, checked Seth's homework and had him work on some more, washed fabric for the backs of the pillow covers I'm working on to prepare it before I cut them out, and finished up the annual Christmas letter and made copies of it. Besides all of that, Frank and I went on a little date this afternoon. Today was Frederick's annual "Museums by Candlelight" event. We haven't participated in a number of years, but I used to take my kids every year when they were young (sometimes Frank was able to go with us and sometimes he wasn't). It's an event where a lot of museums and other historical places are open to visit for free and many of them have activities like games, crafts, music, and demonstrations and some have refreshments too. Earlier this week I mentioned I would like to visit one or two places but didn't really want to go alone. I was surprised when Frank volunteered to go with me. He's usually not really into visiting historical places. Since I had so many other things to do, I decided we would just visit one place. We went to the Schifferstadt Museum, which is the oldest house in Frederick--built 1758 by German immigrants. One of the docents who talked to us is a descendant of the man who had the home built...Elias Bruner. We visited this house once before with the boys when Seth was a baby, but it was nice to go without kids and spend as much time as we wanted and to do what we wanted. It was really quite interesting and Frank enjoyed it too. 

(If my hair looks lighter, there's a reason for that--I had highlights put in my hair today because I've decided I want to let my hair become it's natural color (gray!) and the gray will blend in better as it's growing in if my hair is lighter. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I won't hate it.)

After our visit to the museum, we did some shopping. Seth needed a new coat and some new jeans because he's growing out of those things so we looked for those things. He also needed new gloves. We found him a coat and some gloves but couldn't find jeans his size (no great surprise; he's in the really tall and skinny phase that all my boys go through and people who make jeans think anyone who is only a 28 waist will not need an inseam longer than 32 inches, but all of my boys have definitely needed a 34 inch inseam when they still have a 28 inch waist). We came home and I ordered some jeans online for him instead...it's easier to find his size that way. While we were out, we also found some warm fuzzy socks for Seth, but we are saving those for Christmas.

That brings you up to date on us and I'm ready to collapse into bed so I'll sign off until next week. 

Weekly Reviews November 24 & December 1 '23

 I didn't write a review last week because we were in NC for Thanksgiving. Now I have two weeks to cover but little time to write. I will try to summarize as much as possible. When I wrote last, Tanner and Scott were arriving that night. They didn't get here until after midnight and I got so tired that I took an hour nap before they arrived. A guy that used to live in our ward picked them up at the airport and brought them here--it turns out that this guy's son & his wife were on the same flight with Tanner & Scott (they knew each other and were friends growing up too...he's about the same age as Jared) so he offered to pick them all up. That was very helpful for us since Frank and I were both really tired. When the boys arrived, I stayed up a while to talk with them but finally went to bed and slept for a few hours. 

On Saturday (the 18th), Frank was gone most of the day helping with the organ workshop at the church. I didn't make much progress with Seminary lesson preparations on Friday so I spent a good portion of the day on Saturday doing that. I felt a pretty high level of stress and frustration over those lessons, but I did finally get all of them planned. I still had prep work to do, but they were things I felt like I could get done while visiting with the boys. Scott slept in quite a bit but Tanner was up fairly early because he was meeting a friend for breakfast. (A friend from his mission who lives out here now, attending UMD.). Later that afternoon all the boys did some yardwork...used the leaf blower to gather up all the leaves, did some weeding, and Seth mowed the lawn. That evening they decided they wanted to go see downtown Frederick and visit Carroll Creek Park where there are small boats decorated with lights moored in the creek. They convinced Seth to go with them and Jared met them there when he got off work. They got home pretty late but had a lot of fun. They had also visited a pop shop that has many unique flavors of pop and each brought home a different kind:

While they were gone, I worked on the Christmas pillows...I cut out and sewed the borders on each one:

We all went to church together on Sunday and the boys enjoyed seeing a lot of old friends. It really warms my heart, how many members of our ward are so happy to see our boys. They are so fortunate to have so many adults who love them and care about them, and who have been good examples to them and still mentor them. Jared was going to join us too but he ended up spending all morning trying to help Jessie because her car got towed the night before when she went to visit a friend in another part of Maryland (about an hour and a half away). Her car was towed in error...she had the proper parking pass...but they still had to pay a bunch of money to get her car back and they are still trying to straighten that out and get their money back. Sounds like the towing company is incredibly unethical. After church I had choir practice and then a temple recommend interview with a member of the stake presidency. Frank had a recommend interview too but ended up doing it at home, via Zoom. He took everyone else home after church so they wouldn't have to wait for me. Choir practice is always great and my recommend interview was really nice too. The counselor in the stake presidency who did the interview took the time to chat with me for quite a while about my life and so forth, and gave me some really encouraging words about Seminary. Jared & Jessie were able to make it in time for dinner so we all had dinner together and then played a crazy game called Bank. It was a lot of fun!

Since we only had 2 days of Seminary that week, my team teacher and I each taught one day. I taught on Tuesday because I was doing the doctrinal mastery review and we thought that would be more fun to do on the last day before vacation. I was super busy all day on Monday with all the regular chores (laundry, vacuuming, grocery shopping) plus working on Seminary lessons, sending emails for Seminary (trying to get a guest teacher set up for next week), getting an oil change for my car, and purchasing fabric and batting for the Christmas pillows I'm working on. Tanner helped me out a lot by taking my car to get the oil change while I did the fabric shopping. The oil change place was near the fabric store so he dropped me off and then picked me back up when the oil change was done. Tanner also made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins that evening for me to take to Seminary the next morning because I was running out of time to do that myself. (I didn't have to take muffins, but I wanted to.) Scott and Tanner went to lunch with a friend that day too.

Frank was able to work from home on Tuesday. We were planning to leave for NC when Seth got out of school that afternoon so Tuesday was busy too with more household chores, more Seminary lesson prep, and packing for our trip. Tanner & Scott helped Frank do a bunch of cleaning in the basement...they took two carloads of computer equipment to a place that recycles it. The basement looks a LOT tidier now, which makes me happy. (I wouldn't say it's all neat and organized, but it's a lot better than it was.) I got the batting and backing cut out for my pillows and gathered all the sewing supplies I would need into a bag so I could take that project with me on the trip. Silly me, I didn't stop to think about how crowded we would be in the car! Because of that (and the fact that it was dark for the first leg of the trip on Tuesday) I didn't end up working on that project at all while we were on our trip. But at least I was able to show the pillows to Frank's mom...she loves quilting so she really enjoyed seeing them. 

We got on the road about an hour after Seth got home from school. That part of the trip turned out to be pretty crazy because it was raining cats & dogs the whole way, the traffic was terrible from the get go (we probably passed 5 different accidents), we had 5 people (4 of whom are taller than 6 feet) packed into the car like sardines, and within the first hour we had to pull over so Seth could be sick on the side of the road. (He sometimes gets carsick.) We moved Seth to the front seat for a while! As the shortest person, I sat in the middle seat in the back and I had nowhere to put my feet because the bag of snacks was right in front of me. I actually started to feel slightly sick myself, which never happens to me. After Seth got sick, we stopped at a gas station for a restroom break and bought some dramemine for him. I decided to take some too and that really helped. (Seth felt much better too.) In spite of all the craziness, I did enjoy watching episodes of Call the Midwife on my iPad. Seth started watching them too, since he was sitting next to me, and he got pretty interested in the show which I thought was pretty funny. We drove to Christiansburg, Virginia that day and spent the night at a Fairfield Inn. 

On Wednesday the 22nd we drove the remainder of the way to Brevard. We got there around lunch time and had a little trouble finding a place to eat that was open but we finally found a pizza place. 

After eating, we visited Frank's parents and then went to the grocery store to get things we needed to make our contributions for Thanksgiving dinner. Boys at the grocery store:

Then we went to Dawn's house and spent the afternoon making food for the next day. We all went to get dinner at Arby's and Dawn came with us because Scott was staying at her house, so she was able to take him back home with her. Boys visiting with Dawn while we wait for our food:

On Thanksgiving morning we went back to Dawn's house to make a big pot of mashed potatoes. We watched some of the Macy's parade while they were boiling:

We all gathered at the church for Thanksgiving dinner and games / visiting afterwards. The food was great and we had a fun time, but I didn't take many pictures. A friend sent me a photo of herself with her family so I asked someone to take this photo for me to send to her (Frank was resting in another room):

On Friday we got back together to eat a bunch of the leftovers for lunch and had more family time visiting and playing games. We got sub sandwiches for dinner that night. 

We were up early on Saturday because we were driving the whole way home that day and wanted to get home in time for a family dinner to celebrate Tanner's birthday. I was kind of dreading the drive home but for some reason it seemed easier than the drive down. It probably helped that we made a place in the trunk for the bag of snacks so I actually had a place to put my feet. I had finished the last season of Call the Midwife, so I started watching The Chosen. I'm really enjoying that...it's so good! We made pretty good time and got home in time for dinner. Tanner had a headache and didn't really want to go out anywhere so we ended up ordering Chinese food and that was perfect. Jared & Jessie joined us too:

After dinner, Frank and I went to the store to get a few necessary grocery items and we also stopped at the storage unit to get the boxes of Christmas decorations. We haven't put any decorations up yet, but I wanted some Christmas decorations for my Seminary lesson the next morning and it just made sense to get all of the decorations as long as we were at it. (Hopefully we will get time to put up at least some of the decorations tomorrow.) We also did some laundry on Saturday evening. Poor Jared broke his toe while we were gone (banged it on a door frame)! Jessie had already left (they had to come in two different vehicles). Scott drove Jared to the ER to get his toe looked at (all the urgent cares were closed or he would have gone there). Although he knew they couldn't really do anything for his toe, he wanted to comfirm that it was broken and make sure he had taped it correctly. The break was confirmed and the ER doctor said he had taped it just right. Since he broke a toe on his left foot, he was able to drive himself home. 

On Sunday we all went to church together again, and Jared was able to come this time, in spite of his broken toe. We got some photos of all of us together...they didn't turn out great but here's one anyway:

I spent the afternoon putting together some little gift bags for Seminary the next day. The lesson topic was God's love, and since Jesus coming to earth is the greatest evidence of God's love, I had a Christmas themed lesson planned. So I had to have presents, right? 😉I found some inexpensive ornaments that had different names or titles for Christ on them so they each got one of those:

We had another family dinner that night (stew, salad, and rolls) along with a cake for Tanner since it was his actual birthday. Jared & Jessie came for that meal, too. The boys all put on some matching t-shirts that I got them last Christmas and we got a few pictures:

I didn't sleep well at all Sunday night so after Seminary I came home and took a nap. (My lesson went well, though.) Tanner got up as I was going back to bed but then when I woke up a few hours later, he was asleep again! Both Tanner and Scott got up around noon. After my nap, I got laundry and other chores done. When the boys got up, I went grocery shopping and Scott came with me to get some snacks for the plane ride home. Frank thought he was going to be stuck at work and not able to see the boys before we had to leave for the airport, but then he was able to leave just in time to get home in time to take them to the airport. I went also so that I would be able to visit with them on the way there. We miss them, but we are so glad that they got to come visit and that we had so much time with them. 

After we got back from the airport, I still needed to make cookies because I needed them for an object lesson for Seminary on Tuesday morning. Jared gave me a great recipe for chocolate chip cookies that always turn out plump and delicious:

The rest of this week I've been trying to get back into the normal routine. I've been able to get most of the basic things done, but haven't gotten any Christmas preparations done yet. As usual, my Seminary lessons for next week are still not very prepared. I have a basic idea of what I'm doing for each one, but still need to fully plan and prepare. I guess I'll be doing that tomorrow (again...always seems to take me until Saturday to get them figured out). 

We had a guest teacher for Seminary on Wednesday and she did such a great job. We asked her to teach because we thought she would be really good to teach that day's topic (work for the dead) and we were right. On Wednesday I did some Seminary lesson prep but I also took the time to mark both of the quilt blocks (pillows) I'm working on so now I am ready to start quilting. Frank took Seth to YM and he stayed at the church to do some work for his calling...he's working on getting a permanent camera set up in the chapel.

Yesterday I went to the temple which was--as always--beautiful and peaceful. (Before I went in and after I came out):

Last night I had book club. We discussed Lessons in Chemistry which I read earlier so I didn't read it again. Now we are going to read a book called Lady Tan's Circle of Women. 

Today I spent a good chunk of the day updating the budget...there was a lot to do since we were gone last week and I had 2 week's worth of things to go through. I also talked to Tanner for a while. There's been some drama with one of the Seminary parents this week also which has taken up a decent chunk of my time the last 3 days. 

For Seminary this morning, the bishopric of one of the other wards (who have kids in our class) came and made a hot breakfast for the kids. One of our two Seniors had the devotional today and he said he wanted to share his testimony of Seminary and then proceeded to say that even though he knows Seminary is hard and everyone is tired, it's valuable and helps with mission preparations. He also said "In the country I come from (he's one of our Spanish boys), there is a saying: "If you get up early, God will be with you all day." He said he knows that when we get up early for Seminary, God is with us all day. It was so sweet! 😊

Now it is my normal bedtime and I am tired so I will probably go to bed soon. The last three nights I actually slept well and didn't wake up until my alarm went off each morning, which was super nice!! I am grateful for any night that I get a good night's sleep. 

It's hard to believe it is December now and I am feeling a big panicked about how near Christmas is, but I'm also glad that we are into the Christmas season because I love it. I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful time of year too.

Weekly Review November 17 '23

 I'm starting this week's post on Thursday evening and will finish it up tomorrow sometime. We had another busy week. Hopefully I will remember at least some of what we've done. 

I'll start with Frank...he has barely had a free moment, I think. On Saturday he made another trip down to Waldorf to do some work for the client with the bad computer virus. He was gone for most of the morning. He is mostly done with that project and hasn't had much more to do for them but tonight he is doing maintenance for all his clients and he has also been busy this week with his church calling. We've been getting new televisions with carts for our building so he put one of those together this week. Seth helped him with some of it. There is also an organ workshop at our building tomorrow and Saturday and he had to do some set up for that. He will be gone on Saturday from 8:00 to 3:00 because they want someone on hand at the organ workshop in case they need IT help. 

I haven't had many free moments myself--that seems to be my normal life now. I woke up early on Saturday when Frank left to go to his client's. I mean, actually, it was a couple of hours later than I usually get up, but it was still early. I actually don't remember now what I did all day--just that I was busy. I know I finished up Seminary lesson preparations and started working on next week's Seminary lesson. It will be a doctrinal mastery review and we like to make it fun with doing some games, so I was looking up ideas for games. I did some sewing on the Christmas pillows I've been working on too, but not for as long as I would have liked because my stomach started hurting a lot. We had planned to take some friends out to dinner that evening and for a while I wasn't sure I was going to be able to go, but I decided to give it a try and while we were at dinner my stomach stopped hurting and hasn't hurt since. Strange, but I'm just glad it stopped hurting. 

I had a sweet experience Saturday morning when I was praying. I'd been realizing that all of my prayers lately have been very self centered...I feel like all I do now is pray for help, mostly with Seminary lessons. My prayers have just felt like me, me, me all the time. I was expressing regret for my selfishness when this phrase popped into my head: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God". The two lessons I had been preparing for Monday and Tuesday were about James 1:5-6. I knew having that phrase enter my head right then was Heavenly Father's way of telling me that it was okay...that He wants me to come to him in prayer, seeking help. 

On Sunday after regular church meetings I had choir practice. We are starting to practice our songs for Christmas. It's the first practice we've had in many months and I really enjoyed singing with a choir again and particularly singing Christmas music...my favorite! I always leave choir practices feeling happy. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner that night and we also enjoyed playing a game of Ticket to Ride.

My Seminary lessons this week went pretty well. My preparations for the next two weeks are not going so well. I just haven't made much headway with any of the 3 lessons I'm trying to prepare, and I want to have them done before tomorrow night. I have read all of them, more than once, and have thought a lot about them. I just haven't had the chance to get a plan down on paper for any of them, and I'm really wrestling with what I should do with each one. Hopefully they will begin to come together a lot more tomorrow. 

On Tuesday I talked to Mom on the phone...it's always nice to talk to her! I also did more sewing on the Christmas pillows and finished the second quilt block. 

I still need to add borders to both of the quilt blocks (the borders will be a dark green Christmas print) and then get some batting and some fabric for backing for each one. I'm hoping to get those things done before we leave for NC, because then I can do the actual quilting while we are on that trip (sounds like a good project for the car ride). 

On Wednesday a young sister in our ward came over for a few hours so I could try to help her with an accounting class that she is taking (through BYU-I). She's been really struggling with this class and someone told her I might be able to help her. I think I did help her a little bit, but she had a lot to go through and we didn't have time to do it all. She did seem to appreciate what we were able to do, though, and I told her she can call me with questions in the future. 

Last night Seth had a YM activity--they raked leaves for a family in our ward. Frank and I had temple recommend interviews with bishopric members and will do our interviews with a stake presidency member on Sunday. Our recommends expire the end of this month, so we are anxious to get that done. 

I talked with both Tanner and Scott this week on the phone, and we are excited that we will be seeing both of them late tomorrow! 

I'm still having some sleep issues and usually either wake up for an hour or more in the middle of the night or wake up an hour or two before I need to get up. It's frustrating, but there's not much I can do about it. I feel tired all the time and Wednesday morning I took a nap because I was trying to work on one of the Seminary lessons and I couldn't stay awake. I was reading some scriptures and writing some things down and I was literally falling asleep while writing! Well, it's helping me have more empathy for the youth in my class when they can't stay awake during Seminary. I can understand why they are so tired!

I guess this doesn't sound like I have been very busy, but with all of the household chores and trying to make headway on Seminary lessons, every spare minute has been filled. We have had cold mornings, including a few that I have had to scrape frost off the windows of my car, but the days have been fairly mild and the last couple of days have been very pleasant. Today it got up to 70 degrees! It definitely looks like fall though and some of our neighbors have even put up Christmas decorations already. I'm happy that Christmas is coming even though I haven't done anything to get ready for it. I think this year I am going to be simplifying a lot more than usual.

Both of Frank's parents have had Covid-19 in the last few weeks and both got quite sick and had to go to the hospital for some treatment (but were not admitted). We hear they are both doing better now, thankfully. We're looking forward to seeing Frank's family next week.

Now it is Friday afternoon. Last night the sister missionaries serving in our ward stopped by because one of them is being transferred and she wanted to say goodbye. 

Her companion said to us "Hey, I friended you two on Facebook and I noticed that one of you...I can't remember which one...is friends with my uncle." We asked his name and she said "Uncle Mike" Right then, I put "Mike" together with this sister's last name, "Rich", and I said "Oh! That's me! He was in my MTC district!" Such a small world. So then I had to take a photo with her so I could post it on her uncle's FB page and say "Hey, look who's serving in my ward!":

This morning we had a different set up in Seminary because they had all the chairs set up for the organ workshop already and we couldn't move them. It was kind of nice having everyone closer together, I think, although I doubt the kids preferred it...they like having the tables so they can put their heads down and sleep! I took a photo and only noticed afterwards that Seth noticed and looked right at the camera with a funny face:

Here's a few photos of the Seminary bulletin board:

After Seminary I went to the temple. When I got there, I could see that they are putting up the Christmas lights. Made me feel happy!! 

The lights don't show up well, but there are little white lights all over the green bushes:

Some of the trees have lost their leaves and others still have a few left:

I pulled over on my way home to take this photo from Beach Drive:

That's all the news and I need to work on Seminary lessons so I will sign off with a few more photos of autumn leaves: