Weekly Review May 10 '24

I woke up about 2:15 this morning and now it is 9:00 pm so if this post doesn't make any sense, that's my excuse. I started last week's post saying that it felt like summer. Now it definitely doesn't feel like summer. It's been cool and rainy most of the week and I have said more than once "I can't believe it's May...it's too cold." I even wore a coat to church on Sunday! It's not too bad, and since the A/C hasn't been coming on I haven't been cold when I'm inside. I just feel bad for people who are doing things like getting married--you would expect to have a nice day for your wedding when you picked an early May date! 

Last Friday evening Frank and Seth went to our stake's Priesthood Commemorative Campout, just for the evening. This means I had the house to myself for the evening, but what I did with that time is completely lost to my memory! 

On Saturday Frank and I went to the temple...my team teacher's daughter was getting endowed and she (the daughter) invited us to come. She had some family and a small group of people from our ward there and it was really nice! 

On the way to the temple we talked about our Sunday School lesson that we were preparing for the next day. After we got home we got some dinner and finished up lesson preparations. 

Our lesson went pretty well, I think, and I am glad that we are done with it. After church I had a short choir practice and Seth had a very long Bishop's youth council meeting so I was waiting in the foyer for him to finish for a long time. I heard a lot of Jared & Jessie's ward's testimony meeting. As usual, Frank went to his self reliance class that afternoon and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games. We played Trekking the National Parks and Jessie won the game, although it was a very close game with Jared only one point behind her, me one point behind Jared, and Seth a couple of points behind me. (Frank didn't play because something came up that he had to do for a client.) We had taco salad for dinner which I planned without even remembering that it was Cinco de Mayo.

This week was the last week of Seminary and it was kind of different for me to not be worrying about preparing lessons for next week...not different in a bad way! I taught a lesson about Mosiah 5 on Monday and about Mosiah 7-8 (Prophets / Seers) on Tuesday. I thought I would be doing part of the assessment on Thursday, but after we discussed it my team teacher said she thought it would be easy to do and easier not to split it up so I didn't have to do anything for that. She taught a regular lesson on Wednesday, did the assessment on Thursday, and today we played a game. Photos I took during the assessment on Thursday (it's done in groups):

And a group photo we took at the end of class that day:

(All but 3 of the kids in our class are in the photo...two weren't there and one girl had to leave before we took the photo.)

I did help a bit with the game we played today...I actually found an idea online and sent it to my team teacher to look at and she liked it so she used that idea. It was basically a Book of Mormon version of the game Clue (with a few adjustments) but in order to make a suggestion, someone on the team would have to answer a question first. We had a list of questions like "what is something you learned about the Savior in Seminary this year?" so it was kind of a reflection on the year. Some of the kids said some really nice things. A few photos I took today:

One of the boys brought in flowers for my team teacher and I, along with cards signed by him and his parents...that was nice! 

I did feel a little sad when I was driving home from Seminary this morning. I will definitely miss seeing the kids every day. 

Since I wasn't preparing lessons, I definitely had a lot more free time this week than I have had in a while. I think I spent most of it talking to Amy on the phone. 😂 We haven't been able to talk in quite a while and it was really great! I also did some reading but honestly, I don't know where the time went. I had a few other things that took up time too like on Wednesday I had a doctor appointment (just an annual check up) and I helped Seth make cookies for the youth activity that night. (They had a service auction.) I also had random Seminary things to do like writing thank you notes for our class president and vice president.   

Today I went to the temple. Jared and I were going to go together, but he had some issues with his stomach and was up a lot of the night so he couldn't go. I felt sleepy driving down and struggled a bit to stay awake during the session but I'm glad I was able to go. It was another cool and rainy day.

Seth didn't pass his certification test this week, but we were kind of expecting that. One of his good friends in his class who is also in our ward now (got moved into our ward with the boundary changes) took the test the same day as Seth and he didn't pass it either. As a matter of fact, there are 14 kids in Seth's class and only 5 of them passed the test. After some discussion with him, we decided that he's not going to take it again. Maybe someday up the road, when he has more experience, he will try again.

My brain is too sleepy to think of anything else, so that's it for this week.

Weekly Review May 3 '24

 It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May! (That song has been going through my head.) It's May, and it suddenly feels like summer most of the time. We went from cool / warm to hot this past week. Mostly it is still very pleasant, though. A couple of days we got up to 90 degrees, but mostly it's been in the 70s or 80s during the day and the 50s at night. The air conditioning is coming on a bit and I am always cold when I am inside! It looks like we are heading into some cooler weather this weekend and next week, though, so maybe I will be warmer (ironically). There have been a couple of days this week that when I've gone outside, I've been struck by the beautiful bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and abundant sunshine. It's so nice, and brings me joy!

Going back to last Saturday, though...it wasn't May yet. It was cloudy and a bit cool. I had a haircut appointment in the morning. There was a stake service project for the youth, and we told Seth he was going to it (he preferred to stay home) but the forecast that morning said it was going to pour down rain and the service project was outdoors so we let him off the hook. Then it didn't rain much until later, so we wished we had taken him to the service project after all. After my hair appointment, I spent a significant amount of time preparing my Seminary lesson for Tuesday. It wasn't actually a lesson...it was preparing games that would help them review / learn their doctrinal mastery scriptures. I found a lot of ideas but knew a lot of them wouldn't work well with our class--they usually don't get into games much, which is frustrating to both my team teacher and me. (They don't get into anything much...they just want to sleep!!) As a result, I felt rather crabby on Saturday but I did finally make some decisions about what to do and I was able to get most of it ready. 

On Sunday I gave my talk in Sacrament meeting and I am really glad that is over with! I felt like it went really well, overall. Frank is in charge of the Zoom broadcast and camera and as part of the set up for that, he has a laptop hooked up to the microphone which enhances the sound for the Zoom broadcast. That laptop is sitting on the floor up front next to the podium, so that the bishopric and the speakers who are sitting on the stand can see the laptop screen, but no one else can. When I finished my talk and sat down, Frank flipped the screen of the laptop to a Word document that said "Great job, Sister Cleveland!" It was funny because the whole bishopric saw it and laughed too. (It was not visible to anyone watching the meeting via Zoom.) Just one of the perks of having your husband be in charge of the technology. 😊 After Sacrament meeting, we had our first Sunday RS meeting since the ward boundary change, even though it's been 5 weeks. (We had an adult combined Sunday School class the first week after the change instead of RS / EQ meetings since we didn't have a RS presidency yet, the next week was Easter, then General Conference, then Ward Conference, then Sunday School). The meeting was really lovely. The new RS president is one of the women who were moved into our ward from another ward which doesn't seem very fair to her, but she is going to do a great job. I know her a little bit because we co-facilitated a self-reliance group together several years ago. 

After church, we had lunch and Frank went to his self-reliance group. I took a nap and read scriptures and looked over my Seminary lesson for Monday. Jared & Jessie came over as usual for dinner and games. I think I forgot to mention last week that Jared & Jessie have decided that Jessie is going to go to graduate school in Texas, so they will be moving there this summer. We will be sad to see them go, but we are excited for Jessie...the Texas school was her top choice. 

Monday morning in Seminary I taught a lesson about Mosiah 3:19 ("putting off the natural man"). I felt good about the lesson going into it, but the kids weren't super cooperative (didn't want to answer questions or participate) so it didn't go too great. I didn't let it bother me too much, though...I know I did the best I can and it is their choice whether or not they get something out of it. Seth wasn't there that morning because he didn't sleep well the night before. After Seminary I got grocery shopping and vacuuming done and got the laundry started. Then I went to the dollar store to get "prizes" for the review games we were playing the next day. I also found graduation cards for our two students who are graduating this year and thank you cards to give to our class president and vice president. The rest of the day was busy with dinner prep and family night; I tried to squeeze in some lesson prep for next week too but didn't get very far.

The doctrinal mastery review games on Tuesday morning went pretty well. I prepared 4 games but we only did two of them because the kids were enjoying the second game. (I knew I was likely overpreparing, but it's good to have a few back up plans.) I can't remember what else I did on Tuesday besides talking to Scott, the regular household chores, and I'm sure I tried working on lessons some more. Oh, and we got our auto and homeowner's insurance switched to a new company...that took some time, too. (But well worth the effort...we are paying so much less now!) 

On Wednesday morning we had a guest teacher for Seminary...a young adult in our stake who grew up in our ward. He's Jared's age and he has an interesting story...went inactive for a lot of years and made a lot of bad choices but he's now fully active, just went to the temple, and has actually submitted mission papers (he's just below the cut off age for that). He was one of my Primary kids back in the day. 😅 He did a great job and the kids really enjoyed having someone closer to their age teach, I think. After Seminary I got a few things done before lunch time but not a lot. I did get to talk to Tanner for a while though. His divorce is close to being final...he signed the papers but his lawyer is waiting to get some tax information that Tanner asked for before he sends the signed papers to Darlee's lawyer. We are sad about it, but relieved that they have come to an agreement and that Tanner can move forward with his life now. We hope and pray that Darlee will also be able to feel some peace and be able to move on and be happy.

I went to lunch with some friends that day...one of them used to be in our ward but moved to a house in a different ward. She has cancer now and recently had surgery...we wanted to get together for lunch to show her some support and give her some love. We only had a small group because a number of people were out of town or had conflicts, but it was nice anyway. 

That afternoon we had a guy come by to look at our deck and give us some estimates on repairing it. We've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but it was just one of those things that we hadn't gotten around to doing yet. Since we just made the switch in our homeowner's insurance, though, and the new company is going to come do an exterior inspection of the house, we're sure they are going to be concerned about the deck and will want us to fix it. The HOA is doing inspections this month too and they probably won't like it either. Isn't it crazy how buying a new car can set off a chain reaction? Buy new car...get new insurance...fix the deck. 😆 The problem with the deck is that pieces of the railing have warped a lot which has caused sections of the railing to pull apart and if we went out there and shook them really hard, we could probably cause them to fall right off. Yikes...not very safe. Here's some photos:

The guy who came to look at it said he actually thinks he will only need to replace the top pieces of the railings and that he can probably pull the sections in and reattach them to each other because the rest of the railing pieces are in good shape. He will also re-nail some of the floor boards, add some extra anchor bolts underneath, and then power wash and restain the whole deck. We don't have the estimate for the work yet, but hopefully it won't be too bad. It was definitely good news that the whole railing didn't need to be replaced. 

Seth had YM that evening. While he was gone, Frank and I went grocery shopping (normally I go Thursday mornings, but Frank wanted to get some window shades for his car so we decided to go together that evening). When we were done, Frank dropped me off at home to put away the groceries and go to bed while he went to pick up Seth. I didn't get to bed before they got back though, because I remembered that breakfast needed to be made too (it had to set in the refrigerator overnight) but I got to bed shortly after they got home.

Yesterday morning my team teacher had the kids doing a project so I took some pictures:

These two weren't working on the project 😂:

After Seminary I spent quite a bit of time sending attendance and makeup work information to one of the parents who had inquired about it for her son. I got laundry going and did a bunch of other things I needed to get done and then I tried to work on Seminary lessons but started falling asleep so I decided to take a nap first. When I woke up, I was startled to see a text message from Seth, sent a few minutes before, saying that he was on his way home from school. (He sends me a text every day.) Could I really have slept that long??! Then I looked at the time and I realized that I had been asleep for only an hour...I had completely forgotten that they had a 2 hour early release from school that day! I actually didn't anticipate sleeping for even an hour, but for a minute I thought I had slept for 3 hours! After Seth got home I finally managed to get my lesson for Monday planned. After dinner Frank was really tired so he went to bed early. They had employee appreciation day at his work yesterday and he was on the planning committee for that so he was going all day long. Since I had taken a nap, I was less tired than usual so I stayed up an hour later than usual working on Tuesday's Seminary lesson. I'm not completely done with it, but I have most of it planned. 

This morning my team teacher's daughter cooked breakfast for our Seminary class. She graduated from high school last year and just got back from her first year at BYU. She is leaving on a mission next month...she will be serving in the Baltic Mission and speaking Latvian. She made waffles and sausages and she had lots of yummy waffle toppings like nutella, strawberries, and whipped cream. It was yummy! 

(Some of them even sleep when we are eating! 😝)

I spent this morning after Seminary getting the budget caught up. Frank put in extra hours yesterday so he got to leave early today and he is already home. Seth is home from school too. They will be going tonight to our stake's Priesthood Commemorative Campout, although they aren't actually spending the night. They are going up for dinner and to hang out a bit. 

In between all the other things going on this week we have been making more plans for our trip to Florida this summer. I have also been doing a little bit of reading...both the book we are reading for book chat this month and the one for last month. I purchased a digital copy of this month's book because I'm third in line to get the book from the library and I doubt I will get it in time to read it before we meet. It's pretty good so far. 

I forgot to mention last week that Frank's new CPAP arrived on Wednesday. He still seems to be pretty tired to me but I think he will need to get a few weeks of quality sleep before he starts to feel a lot more rested. 

We found out this week that Seth's CTC class ends next Friday (he's dual enrolled through the local community college and the college class ends that day). This means that if I sign a waiver for him, he will not have to go to school in the morning for the rest of the school year. He will just go to his two classes at his regular high school, which are in the afternoon. We're waiting to sign the waiver until after he takes his certification exam for his CTC class, which is next Tuesday. If he passes the exam, then we'll sign the waiver. If he doesn't pass it, then he could continue to go to the CTC in the morning to study some more and re-take the exam. (If he retakes the exam and passes it, then we can send in the waiver and he can stop attending at that point.) It kind of depends on how he does on the exam. If his score is close to a passing score, then it would probably be worth trying again. If his score is way below the mark, then we probably won't have him retake it because he probably wouldn't pass it again. I talked to the vice principal at the CTC this week and he told me that the exam Seth is taking is the most rigorous exam they give and that the pass rate is very low, which is good to know going in. Of course we would like Seth to pass the exam but we won't be terribly surprised / disappointed if he doesn't. (He already passed the final exam for the class...this is an extra exam that will give him a certification if he passes it.) Anyway, that was a long explanation but the bottom line is...it's really great that he doesn't have to go to school in the mornings once his class ends, and it's really nice that his class ending date coincides with the last day of Seminary. If we decide he doesn't need to continue going to the CTC at that point, then we will go from needing to be somewhere at 6:10 am every morning to not needing to be anywhere until 11:30! Nice! Not that I am planning to sleep in a ton. Frank still gets up early for work and I am used to getting up early and will probably continue to get up pretty early in the mornings at least until we start traveling this summer and my schedule gets all mixed up. (I will NOT be getting up at 3:30 am though...probably more like 5:00 am.) 

Frank and I still have a lesson to prepare for Sunday School this Sunday and I have Seminary lessons to finish up and I will be preparing part of the assessment for Seminary next week as well, but at this time next week I will be done with all of that! It's hard for me to believe, but I am starting to feel the weight lift and that feels good. I definitely have come to love the kids and there are many good things about Seminary, but it will be really great to get a bit of a rest! I have a list of things to do this summer, so I will not be sitting around, though. I have had many sweet moments preparing lessons and I have learned a lot but it will be nice to take a break from the constant lesson preparations. I do think I will be going through the lessons on my own this summer as part of my scripture study, though, because they are good and I learn a lot from them. It will be a lot easier to study them on my own and not have to worry about preparing a lesson for a bunch of sleepy teenagers, though! 

That brings you up to date on us for now. 

Weekly Review April 26 '24

I'm starting this post kind of late tonight, so I will try to keep it brief. I probably won't succeed. 😅

We ended up spending most of the day last Saturday (the 20th) buying a car. Frank's old car had nearly 250,000 miles on it and the engine wasn't sounding very good (in spite of regular oil changes). We've been worried about it for several months, so he's been looking around. Because he commutes about 100 miles / day, he really wanted to get another hybrid vehicle. He found a 2022 Prius with pretty low miles for a good price at a dealership in Baltimore, so we decided to go look at it. We decided to buy it, so about 5 hours later (why does it always take so long???) we drove away in a new Prius. It's even the same color as his old Prius! 

Goodbye to the old Prius (it was a good car!):

New (to us) Prius:

We stopped on our way home for "lunch" (around 4:00 pm). We did enjoy talking on the drive to Baltimore and back, and having a meal together. Just didn't enjoy the long wait while they worked out all the details. Thankfully, I brought my laptop and my Seminary bag along so I was able to work on a few things while we waited. When we got home, I worked on a lot more things until bedtime. I also got a call from one of the counselors in our bishopric asking me if I would give a talk this Sunday. How fun! (Not!)

On Sunday we had most of the usual things...church in the morning, Frank had his self reliance class in the afternoon, and Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games in the evening. I had some set up I needed to do for Monday morning's Seminary lesson, so after dinner everyone helped me with that. We started talking about King Benjamin's sermon to his people this week (starting with Mosiah 2 on Monday) and I decided I wanted the kids to sit in a "tent" the first day, kind of like they were some of King Benjamin's people gathered at the temple in their tents to hear him talk. (It would have been fun to leave up the tents all week, but there are too many wards using our building to do that.) Rather than set up little tents, which would have been challenging (locating that many tents as well as setting them up) and probably distracting, I had the idea to use some big canopy tents (luckily our ward has two of them and they were in the attic at the church building and Frank has a key to the attic so it wasn't very complicated). 

I took those photos Sunday evening after we set up the tents; unfortunately, both my team teacher and I forgot to take photos of the kids in the tents during the lesson the next morning. It went pretty well and the change in the set up of the room helped the kids to be a little more awake and alert.

On Sunday afternoon the couple who teaches the adult Sunday School class in our ward called to ask if Frank or I or both of us would substitute for them in two weeks (May 5th). I was the one who answered the phone (because Frank was at his class) and I think they were a little surprised when I didn't immediately agree to do it. I told them I would have to talk to Frank about it because I could not take on that job by myself so either he would need to do it or we would need to do it together. Just seems like when it rains, it pours. Could everyone please wait to ask me to do extra things until this summer when I don't have Seminary to worry about??! There's only 2 weeks left of Seminary so I feel like I'm so close, but I still have just as much work to do these next 2 weeks as I have had the rest of the year. Anyway, Frank said he could either do it or we can do it together so we'll be doing that the Sunday after this one.

I already talked about Monday's Seminary lesson. Afterwards, my team teacher and I were talking and realized it would be easier if I taught Wednesday's lesson (we had a guest teacher lined up for Tuesday) and she taught Friday's lesson, instead of each of us doing part of each of those lessons, which is what we originally planned. The bulk of Wednesday's lesson was already planned so it wasn't a huge deal for me to have to do it and overall it was better because then I was finished teaching Wednesday morning and could start focusing on next week's lessons and preparing my talk, but it did mean I needed to do some additional preparation work before Wednesday morning. I didn't get anything done on that on Monday because I had lots of household chores to complete and after Seth got home from school I had to take him to the dentist. (Just his bi-annual cleaning and check up). Then I had to make dinner and we had family night, and by the time all of that was done it was time for bed.

Tuesday was our 32nd wedding anniversary and Frank took the day off so that we could spend some time together. We certainly didn't have the whole day to sit and gaze into each other's eyes, unhampered by other responsibilities 😆 but we did go to lunch together and we got a lot of things done that we needed to do. Plus, Frank helped me get some of my work done too and we were able to talk a lot while we did other things which was awesome so overall it was a really nice day even though it was also crazy busy. 

Besides the regular Tuesday household chores, we also had a long discussion about summer plans and decided that we are going to go to Florida for the Bracken family reunion in July and to Utah in June, and we even got our flight to Utah booked. We were also busy getting quotes from car insurance companies. I've been saying for years that we really need to switch car insurance companies because we've been paying a ridiculously high price for our insurance, especially considering that we are both good drivers with clean driving records. But you know how it is...it's not urgent, so other things always get in the way and we never got around to making the switch. However, when we took the old Prius off our insurance and added the newer one, our annual premium increased another $2000! There's just no way we're going to do that. We've got a few quotes and the quotes are coming in over $1000 less than the annual premium we've been paying, so we will definitely be switching, we just haven't had time to make a final decision yet. 

In addition to all of that stuff, I had also signed up to take dinner to a family in our ward because the mom in the family had surgery last week. We got so busy that I almost forgot to put dinner in the oven in time, but thankfully I remembered in the nick of time. Frank helped me with that too, and then he made our dinner while Seth and I delivered the meal to the family in our ward. I was just getting ready to deliver the dinner when Tanner called me needing help with a tax return issue. I couldn't take care of it then, of course, but I talked to him enough to understand what the issue was and told him I'd talk to him the following day to help him with it. By the time we got through the dinner hour and dishes, it was nearly 8:00 pm and I still needed to finish preparations for Seminary the next morning, so I was up until about 10:00 pm doing that. It was a crazy day, but I did go to bed feeling like I got a lot done, at least!

I guess I forgot to mention that we asked the dad of one of the girls in our Seminary class to teach on Tuesday morning. He did a good job, and the boys in our class who are in his ward really seemed to enjoy having him teach. We haven't had a lot of guest teachers from that ward since we aren't in that ward ourselves and don't know a lot of the people in that ward. On Wednesday morning we went through two scenarios...one as a follow up for the lesson I taught on Monday (mostly about Mosiah 2:17...service) and the other as a follow up for the lesson our guest teacher taught on Tuesday (mostly about Mosiah 2:41...blessings for obeying the commandments). For the second scenario, we had the kids divide into groups and asked them to find a scripture or General Confernce quote to help answer the question of the girl in the scenario (I'm obeying the commandments, but I still have problems. Why aren't I being blessed?) We invited the sister missionaries who are serving in our ward to come help with this part so that we would have an adult to sit with each group and to help them as needed. Overall, it went pretty well.

During the day on Wednesday I worked on Tanner's tax problem and called Dan to get some advice about it from him. Tanner was at work most of the day so I didn't talk to him, but I did get a few answers to his questions and texted him to let him know. I got my Seminary lesson for this Monday prepared as well. That evening, I had book chat. I completely gave up on finishing the book before book chat, but I'm going to continue reading it because I'd like to finish it. We had a pretty small turn out for book chat because a few people in our group are out of town and at least one other wasn't feeling well. There were only 6 of us and 3 of the 6 of us hadn't been able to finish the book but we still had an interesting discussion, and those who had finished it said it was well worth reading. They said the book got a lot better at about page 150 and I'm only on page 61, so I have better things to look forward to! Now we are going to read a book called Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. 

My plan for Thursday was to work on my talk, but I didn't end up getting that done at all. I needed to hem Jared's temple pants for him first because he was planning to go to the temple this morning. I started working on those but I got interrupted a lot (both Scott and Tanner called and I did want to talk to both of them!) and it also ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would. I should have just done a regular hem, but my machine has a blind hem stitch so I decided I wanted to do that. I've done it a couple of times before, but it's been years since the last time I did so I had to re-learn how to do it and I ran into some issues and had to do some unpicking and in the end I didn't finish them until after Seth got home from school. (I did go to the grocery store right after Seminary which took some time too.) After I finished the pants, I still had laundry to fold and vacuuming to do and dinner to prepare...you get the idea...so in the end I only had a few minutes to work on my talk before it was bedtime. (Actually, it was after bedtime...I didn't get to bed until around 9:00). We stayed up a bit later than usual because Frank was doing maintenance for all of his clients.

Frank was able to work from home today. I spent the morning and early afternoon preparing my talk and I finally got it done. I struggled quite a bit with this talk because instead of giving me a topic, they gave me a Conference talk. I found it challenging to give a talk about a talk! I had a hard time figuring out how to organize my thoughts. (I did listen to / read the talk several times this past week.) I finally figured some things out and I do feel pretty good about it, overall. I'll be glad when it's over, though.

After I got my talk figured out, I spent the rest of the afternoon / early evening getting the budget / finances caught up, as well as making dinner. (Frank helped.) Now it is nearly 10:00 and we are pretty tired and ready to go to sleep. (10:00 feels really late when you get up at 3:30 am.) 

I'll finish up with this ugly photo of my foot. On Monday morning, I knocked a jar of jam off the top shelf of the refrigerator and it landed on my foot. Ouch!! Thankfully, the jar was plastic (not glass) and it wasn't very full, but it still gave me a pretty decent bruise (which doesn't show up very well in the photo). It's been tender all week but not too bad...I've even been able to exercise every morning although wearing shoes is slightly uncomfortable. 

Weekly Review April 19 '24

 I guess I'm doing better this week because I am getting this post written on Friday instead of on Saturday, like the previous two weeks. I don't feel like I was very productive this week. At the end of every day I would wonder why I didn't get more done. 

Going back to Sunday (the 14th)...I had choir practice before church because we were singing prelude music for our ward conference. It wasn't our best performance (we didn't have much time to practice) but it went okay. Our meetings were really good. I had been asked to substitute in nursery, but there is only one nursery age child in our ward and her family didn't come on Sunday so I went to the meeting that the stake RS presidency taught for all the sisters instead. Frank started an emotional resiliance self-reliance group on Sunday. Our former bishop (released last fall; Frank was one of his counselors) decided to have a group for men in the ward and he asked Frank and his other former counselor to attend. There are a number of other men in the group too. The group will meet for twelve weeks. He seemed to enjoy the first meeting. Jared & Jessie came over for dinner and games that evening as usual. That's always fun!

 I don't know if I've mentioned that Jessie has been applying to graduate schools. She applied to 3 schools and she has been accepted to 2 of them and is waiting to hear back from the third one. Last week she found out that she had been accepted to the second one, which is her top choice, so of course she is happy about that and we are excited for her. This school is in Tyler, Texas. The other one is in Chicago. The school she is waiting to hear from is in Towson, Maryland. If she gets accepted to Towson and she decides to go there, they will not have to move. Otherwise, they will be moving of course. As I mentioned, the Texas school is her top choice but there are advantages to staying here so if she gets accepted to Towson, they will have to weigh the pros and cons. We'll be sad if they move, but happy for Jessie, of course! Meanwhile, Jared is in the process of getting set up through BYU-I online so that he can finish his associate's degree. He only has a few credits left to get that degree.

Monday and Tuesday I taught Seminary, as usual. I taught about forgiveness (Enos) on Monday and Tuesday's lesson was about identifying gospel principles in Jarom & Omni. For Tuesday's lesson I decided to try something to make it more fun. I divided the class into three groups and each group read the chapters looking for gospel principles. For every principle they found, I gave them 2 popsicle sticks. Each group built a "temple" out of their popsicle sticks and at the end of class we voted on which "temple" was the best. Everyone got a treat, but the winning team got to choose first. I was pleased that all the kids participated and seemed to have fun. It was also good for us as teachers because we realized that the kids don't have a good understanding of what a gospel principle is, so we will be emphasizing gospel principles more in the future. 

My team teacher took a few photos too so I am actually in a few of them! (Proof that I exist!)😂

I actually didn't get a photo of the winning team's temple...I thought I took one, but it didn't come out.

My team teacher and I were surprised on Tuesday evening when we were contacted by the mom of one of our Seminary students...the student who decided to stop coming in January...to say that her daughter was thinking about coming back to Seminary and would that be okay? Of course it was okay with us! She started coming the next morning and attended for the rest of the week. We are happy to have her back. 😊

On Wednesday morning we had guest teacher for Seminary--we asked our stake Seminary supervisor to teach. She did a great job and it was good to chat with her afterwards. That day I got one of my Seminary lessons for next week prepared. My team teacher and I also spent quite a bit of time discussing our schedule for the last 3 weeks of Seminary. We decided to do something a little different with our doctrinal mastery lessons next week and that mixed the schedule up a bit. We did get everything figured out, though. We have a guest teacher on Tuesday next week and then on Wednesday we are each doing part of the lesson. I mostly know what I want to do for my part, I just need to work out a few details. On Friday we are working together again, but we aren't sure what we are doing yet so I will still have some work to do on that next week when we figure out exactly what we are doing. 

Seth had a doctor appointment on Wednesday afternoon after school...just a medication check-up. That evening Frank took Seth to his YM activity while I went to a VITA end of tax season celebration. We met at a restaurant for pizza and wings. (The United Way pays for the meal for all the volunteers.) It was fun...I got to see some of the other volunteers whom I have worked with in the past but didn't see this year because we volunteered on different days. It was a really nice day so we ate outside on the patio and it was really pleasant. 

Nothing out of the ordinary happened yesterday except that I made a breakfast casserole to take to Seminary this morning because I had signed up to provide breakfast. I didn't bake the casserole until this morning, just mixed it up yesterday. I brought doughnuts and fruit for breakfast as well. We had a doctrinal mastery review this morning which means we played games to help the kids learn / remember the doctrinal mastery verses. We played one game that involved shooting baskets (they are looking at phones sometimes because they are looking up scriptures in the Doctrinal Mastery app):

 After Seminary, Jared and I went to the temple together. We did initiatories so we didn't see each other much while at the temple but we had plenty of time to visit on the way there and back. We took my car but Jared drove and it was nice for me to have a break from driving (plus I wasn't trying to stay awake!) It's rainy and rather chilly today but the temple grounds still looked beautiful.

We went to the distribution center so Jared could purchase some white pants. When we got back to the house, he tried them on and I marked them so that I can hem them for him. Then we had lunch together and talked some more before he had to leave. 

I tried to read the book for book chat this week (It Couldn't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis) but I haven't made much progress. I haven't had a lot of free time to read in the first place and when I have had time I've been hampered by the fact that I'm tired so I'm fighting sleep! The book is not boring...I actually think it's pretty interesting...but it's not fast moving or super engaging so it's just hard for me to stay awake. It's also not an easy read...the kind of book you have to really concentrate and focus when you're reading it if you want to understand it. I very much doubt I will finish it before book chat on Wednesday but hopefully I'm at least put a dent in it. 

Frank had his annual performance review at work this week and he received "exceeds expectations" so he was pleased about that. He always works really hard so it's nice to be recognized for that. He has been really tired lately...his CPAP is not working very well. We have been trying to get him a new one for months (literally since last October, I think) and supposedly the new one will be here in the next couple of weeks. For Frank's sake, I really hope so! You wouldn't believe the run around he's been getting and all the hoops he's had to jump through to get to this point. It's really frustrating. 

Seth drove to Seminary nearly every day this week so he's getting in some practice. He is doing okay and I'm seeing improvement in some areas. We just need to get out more often, to give him practice at different times of day and on different types of roads. (He hasn't tried the freeway yet, for example.) He took the SAT a few weeks ago and got his score today. He did pretty well...scored in the 80th percentile. 

I was asked this week if I could help with cooking for Girls' Camp this summer. I helped in the kitchen a few days last year and one of the women I worked with then is in charge of the food this year and asked me if I can help. She would actually like me to stay for the whole week, if possible. Frank and I have been discussing it to see if that will work. It looks pretty likely that I will be able to go...if not for the entire week, at least for most of it. I really enjoyed working with all the women in the kitchen last year so I would like to do it even though I know it will be a lot of work.

I haven't given an update on Tanner lately so I'll do that to finish up. I actually can't remember what I have shared previously, so I will mention that at the beginning of March he filed for divorce. He didn't want to do that...he was hoping they could work things out...but Darlee would not communicate with him at all so he felt like he didn't have much choice. Darlee got a lawyer so Tanner had to get one too. There was a lot of silence for a while but he finally got a response from her lawyer last week and they are working out some minor negotiations. Hopefully they will come to an agreement soon and if so it may only take a couple more weeks. We are sad about it...they have made it clear that they don't want any contact with him. We do care about Darlee and want to know how she is doing but unfortunately it's not going to be possible for us to keep in contact with her. We thought she would be part of our family forever so this feels very heart breaking to us too. 

Tanner is coping really well, overall. He's definitely had some really difficult days but I think it was harder for him when he was "in limbo" and still hoping there was a chance things could work out. He has a little more peace and closure now and has been able to focus more on moving forward with his life. He has been meeting with a life coach and has been setting some good goals. He started exercising regularly about a month ago and he is actually training to run a half marathon at the beginning of June. He also started a new job this week. About a month ago he went to see his former mission president, just to get caught up with him. When Tanner mentioned that he was looking for a better job, his mission president, who owns Mr. Mac (a retail chain that sells men's clothing, particularly suits), said "I know what kind of missionary you were and I would be totally willing to hire you." Tanner said he would think about it, and a few days later his mission president emailed him and said "I was completely serious about hiring you. Let me know if you are interested." They talked some more and Tanner decided to accept his offer. He gets a lot more hours at this job than his last job and he also has the potential to earn commission on top of his hourly rate (which is pretty good to begin with). We talked to Tanner on Tuesday and he said his first day of work went really well, and he really likes it so far. He even sold about $800 of merchandise in the couple of hours that he wasn't getting trained. Hopefully things will continue to go well there. It is good to see him making some positive changes. 

Oh, and here are a few wildlife photos. On Sunday there was a duck in the common area behind our house and then on Monday I saw a goose out there. (Haven't seen much since then, though, except for the usual squirrels and rabbits.) I also saw a fox out there last week but it ran away before I could get a photo.