Weekly Review August 30 '24

We had a pretty busy week (mostly Seminary dominated). Here are the details.

On Saturday Seth worked from 8:00 to 2:00. Things seem to be going pretty well there. He's learning a lot and seems to somewhat enjoy it. Frank and I went on a date. We went out to lunch together, got some Crumbl cookies, and then ran some errands I needed to do related to Seminary. I know...super romantic! 😄 We picked up Seth from work and then I spent the rest of the day doing Seminary related things...mostly working out all the details for Monday's lesson / activity. Who knew organizing a nerf gun battle could be so complicated? Yes, you read that right...we had a nerf gun battle for the first day of Seminary. More on that a little later. 

On Sunday after church I had a few more Seminary things to do, which included a trip to the church in the evening to do some set up. Between that and watching Music & the Spoken Word and reading scriptures, the day was filled up. Seth went to our stake's mission prep class that evening. Frank took him to that and stayed to bring him home...the class is held at the teachers' house which is about 20 minutes away so it didn't seem worth coming back home. Seth drove there and back so he got in some driving hours. Meanwhile, I was at home doing one last thing...sorting through the nerf guns I borrowed to choose the best working ones to take the next morning. I discovered that in the large bin I borrowed from a friend, several of the guns were water guns, not nerf guns, and that a few were a different kind that didn't use the same ammo. Thankfully, there were still just enough for the number of kids in our class if I used one of Seth's guns. I borrowed guns & ammo from a couple of friends and one of them had labeled some of her ammo but not all of it so I labeled all the rest of hers so I would be able to return the right bullets to the right person. I also counted how many bullets I got from each person...I knew some would get lost, but I wanted to get as many back as possible. That all took a lot longer than I anticipated so I got to bed later than I planned and by then I thought Frank & Seth should be home and they weren't so I was slightly concerned and didn't go to sleep until after they got back. Turns out that Seth stayed inside talking with some friends for about 30 mintues after the meeting ended! Going to bed later than I planned was kind of a theme for the week, actually, but trying to get to bed by 8:00 is always challenging...the world in general doesn't operate on that kind of schedule.

As I mentioned earlier, we had a nerf gun battle on Monday morning. First we reviewed the last part of Mosiah and the entire book of Alma because that's what we missed over the summer break. Hopefully many of the kids read scriptures with their families over the break but we wanted to do a brief review anyway. One of our main goals for this week was to give the youth a chance to have fun and get to know each other better so that's why we planned a nerf gun battle. We tied it into all the wars in the book of Alma and talked briefly about how the tactics the Nephites used to fight the Lamanites relates to the tactics we can use to fight our spiritual battles. For the "battle" we hid a "flag" and the two teams were racing to see who could find it first. You tried to slow down the other team by shooting them with nerf guns...anyone who got hit had to return to the gym and read one of the Doctrinal Mastery scriptures before they could return to the search. I think the kids had a lot of fun and bonded a bit and also got to know some DM scriptures a little better. I enjoyed seeing them play and I tried to get some photos; it was hard because they were moving around so quickly! Here's a photo of all of them right before we started:

Seth and a few others reading Doctrinal Mastery scriptures:

A few of the boys hiding in a doorway:

The youth were great about helping us clean up, but we still had quite a bit to do after they left like doing a final sweep of the building looking for stray bullets and also counting the bullets to see how many we'd lost. Miraculously, only about 5 of around 250 went missing! 

I guess I'll finsih with Seminary while I'm at it. On Tuesday my team teacher taught a lesson about how to give a devotional. On Wednesday I was in charge again and we had the youth mark all this semester's Doctrinal Mastery scriptures in their Books of Mormon and then they worked in pairs to make posters representing each of the DM scriptures. It was a lot easier to plan than the nerf gun battle, thankfully! It was a fun day because they were able to talk with each other while they worked. Here are a couple of my favorite posters:

Yesterday my team teacher taught a lesson about acting in faith. This morning we had asked each of them to bring in a paper lunch bag with three things that represent something about themselves. We numbered the bags and passed them around and everyone tried to guess which bag belonged to each person. Then we revealed the answers and each person explained why they had put those things in their bag. We had a smaller group today than normal because there was a "Senior Sunrise" activity at one of the high schools this morning that was at the same time as Seminary, so most of the Seniors from that high school went to that instead of Seminary. It was fun to have some relaxed time with the ones who came and to get to know them better. 

Overall, I am happy with the way this first week went. I feel like we have a different dynamic and a better "vibe" than we had last year, with more participation from the youth. Hopefully it will last! I feel like my team teacher and I have shifted a lot in our focus and maybe that is helping. We're really trying to focus on helping the youth feel loved and on keeping lessons simpler and trying to involve the youth more. We also implemented a "no phones" policy this year and so far that seems to be helping too although we've had to give a lot of reminders. (Not surprising.) One change I haven't mentioned yet is that we have a youth attending who is not a member. He's a senior in high school and has been meeting with the missionaries in our ward for a while. He has some really great insights! He may not come all the time, but he did come every day this week. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that Seth is the Seminary class president this semester. He's been doing a good job.

I promise this whole post won't be about Seminary, but that did definitely dominate my week. Besides actually being there every day, there has been loads of administrative type stuff to do every day and tons of communication to both youth and parents and planning and trying to work out carpool stuff still and trying to find rides to Seminary for one of the youth whose parents can't get him there. Hopefully things will settle down after a while. I'd forgotten that there's tons of stuff to do outside of Seminary besides preparing lessons. I'm remembering now that is part of why it gets to be so overwhelming. So here it is Friday afternoon and I have barely done any lesson prep for next week. Ugh!! It hasn't been for lack of trying. I have been sleeping okay, thankfully. My new pattern is that I get to bed later than I planned (more like 9:30 instead of 8:00) but I sleep until the alarm goes off. I think I have woken up 3 or 4 times every night but only long enough to see what time it is and I immediately fall back asleep. Much better than last year where I was going to sleep around 8:00 or 8:30 but then waking up at midnight or 1:00 and never going back to sleep! I'm grateful. I have also given myself permission to take a nap every day, even if it's only 30 minutes, and I have done that every day so far except today. That seems to help too.

All right, so besides all that, what else happened? Seth worked on Monday afternoon and will be going to work in a few minutes. He works a few hours tomorrow too. 

Frank started working at the temple on Tuesday. The temple president spoke at our stake conference and mentioned that they have a need for a lot more temple workers. Seth looked at me when they said that, but I really don't think I can be a temple worker and a Seminary teacher too. I actually was thinking about being a temple worker in the spring of 2023 and the feeling I got was "wait, not now" and then I got called to be a Seminary teacher shortly after that. Anyway, as I was explaining to Seth why I couldn't do it right now, the thought occurred to me "but Frank could." Then that afternoon Frank said to me "I'm thinking about becoming a temple worker." I told him I thought that was a great idea, so he contacted our bishop who immediately recommended him to the stake president and sometime late last week someone from the temple contacted him and asked him to come in on Tuesday for an interview and to get set apart. (He asked to work on Tuesdays because he works from home on Wednesdays so he doesn't have to get up so early on Wednesday mornings.) Anyway, his appointment on Tuesday was at 5:30 so I was surprised when he wasn't home by the time I got home from activity night with Seth around 8:30. I wasn't too worried though...it occurred to me that maybe he had stayed and worked a shift even though I thought he told me that he would just be getting set apart. I thought maybe I had it wrong. I fell asleep before he got home but woke up slightly when he came home. When I had a chance to talk to him about it later on Wednesday, he said that I wasn't wrong...he hadn't been planning to stay after getting set apart but they were so busy that they asked him to stay a while and he ended up working the whole shift. He'll be working every Tuesday. That means that I will be up later on Tuesday because I have to pick up Seth from YM activity night, but that's definitely a sacrifice I'm willing to make! It will be so good for Frank to be in the temple regularly and I'm sure our whole family will be blessed for it. 

As I mentioned, I did take Seth to activity night on Tuesday and rather than going back home, I just took one of the pillow covers with me and worked on quilting it while I was waiting for him. (I finished quilting the first one and I'm working on the second one now.) One of the YW who is in my Seminary class didn't really want to do what they were doing that night so she came over and sat with me and talked with me for quite a while. She's a senior and we talked about her plans for college etc and it was just really great to have a chance to talk to her outside of Seminary.

On Wednesday Seth had his Senior portraits taken. I'm not positive, but I think some of them actually turned out good. (He has never mastered smiling naturally on demand. I remember I struggled with that too and most of my school photos are terrible until about 11th grade!) 

Today I went to the temple and got to do an endowment session for the first time since about May so that was nice. I like the adjustments they've made. My session was packed with every seat full and I was in the back row so it took a while to get through but the temple is always a nice place to be!

We had quite a change in the weather this week from last week. Last week it was chilly in the mornings and warm and pleasant during the days. This week we went back to temperatures in the high 90s and high humidity. Yesterday was particularly muggy...it felt like a swamp outside!! We got a pretty severe thunderstorm last night and today it is not quite as humid or hot but it's still not super pleasant. It's been cloudy all day and we've had some sprinkles of rain. 

I believe that's all the news we have this week.

Weekly Review August 23 '24

 Let's see what I can remember about this past week. When I left off last week, Frank wasn't feeling well. He still felt pretty sick all day on Saturday and didn't feel super great on Sunday when he got up but he seemed to turn a corner on Sunday afternoon and he's been fine since then. 

Meanwhile, Seth and I had haircuts Saturday morning. Seth was supposed to have orientation for his job after that but shortly after getting home from his haircut he started feeling sick and he threw up, so he had to call and change his orientation to Tuesday. Apparently it was one of those strange episodes that he sometimes has when he feels sick, throws up once, and then he's fine. I was glad he didn't have the stomach flu or anything like that, but the timing was not ideal. 

Even though Frank wasn't feeling well, he had a few things he had to do on Saturday. Our stake conference was that weekend and Frank is in charge of the technology for our building. The Saturday evening session for adults is not broadcast to our building, but the general session on Sunday morning is broadcast from the stake center to our building. The guy in charge of the technology for the stake wanted to do a test broadcast, though, so it made sense to do that on Saturday evening during the evening session. So Frank had some things to do to set that up and then of course he had to be at our building on Saturday evening for the evening session to make sure the broadcast was working properly. Since Frank was going to our building, we decided that it made sense for me to go with him and watch the meeting from our building instead of going to the stake center by myself. I missed the interaction with other stake members, but since we were all alone, I didn't feel like I needed to dress up and I also took one of the September pillow covers with me to start quilting it. The broadcast worked fine, all the talks were excellent, and I got a lot of quilting done so that was great. I did stop quilting occasionally to write down some notes and thoughts that came to my mind as I was listening. 

On Saturday I also made two batches of muffins and froze them for later use during Seminary and I did the regular Saturday chores and a bunch of other Seminary things. I can't remember details now, I just know I was busy all day.

Frank had to be at the church a bit early on Sunday morning to make sure everything was ready to go for the broadcast of the general session. That broadcast went fine too and once again...all the talks were excellent. The temple president spoke and mentioned that they really need more temple workers. That's something I want to do but I don't feel like I can do it right now; however, it occured to me that Frank probably could do it and after the meeting he mentioned that he was thinking about being a temple worker. I told him the same thought had occured to me so he contacted our bishop and started that process. He asked to work on Tuesday evenings because he works from home on Wednesdays and doesn't have to get up as early. He can do his temple shift after work which is really convenient because the temple is only a few miles from his work. 

On Sunday afternoon we had an information meeting for the Seminary youth and their parents. At the end of the meeting we had refreshments and the parents had time to talk about carpools. We didn't have a great turn out so a lot of people were missing and it turns out that all of the people who were there from TJ didn't need a carpool...either their youth is driving now or going to a special program at a different school or something. It's actually not a really big deal to me either because Seth can go with one of the boys who is driving (he often went with him last year) and on the days that boy doesn't come to Seminary, I can take Seth to school myself. He actually has CTC in the morning the first half of the year so if I have a lot of cleaning up / wrapping up to do after Seminary I can take him directly to the CTC instead of to school to catch the bus to the CTC. I think it will all work out. That being said, though, for some reason I left the meeting feeling really anxious and kind of down. I'm not sure exactly why. I didn't sleep well that night either, but thankfully I've slept great the rest of the week and the really down and anxious feeling I had went away after a day or so. I mean, Seminary starts on Monday morning and I'm not ready yet so I'm not feeling totally calm about it but I'm not in a frenzy of nerves, either. I expect I'll be working on a lot of things tomorrow but by the end of the day hopefully I'll have Monday's lesson all ready to go. It's actually more of an activity than a lesson.

Monday evening was back to school night for Seth's high school which we normally would have skipped at this point because he knows his way around but they had a meeting for all the Seniors and their parents so we went to that. He also had to pick up a chromebook because starting this year the school district isn't letting students bring their own device from home anymore...they have to use a school issued chromebook. At the Senior meeting, the principal was talking about how fast the year would go by and encouraging the students to make the most of it. I had this weird moment where I suddenly remembered taking Seth to freshman orientation and it seemed like that was just yesterday...the last three years really did go by in the blink of an eye; how did that happen?? I'm not sure I'm ready for all this Senior stuff, but I guess I will have to be.

On Tuesday Seth had his orientation for his new job at Roy Rogers. Then the next day they called him back and said they forgot to have him do one thing so he had to go back in to get that done. I got all the usual chores done that day and I also made some breakfast things for Frank so that he has some quick options he can grab in the mornings before work. I made a batch of muffins, a batch of banana bars, and some egg bites. (These are all recipes for the diet that he's on.) We enjoyed being a part of Ammon opening his mission call via Zoom on Tuesday evening. 😊

Wednesday was the first day of school. 

His last "first day of school"! Seth is wearing a jacket because it was only about 53 degrees that morning. The weather really cooled down this week and we have had chilly mornings but gorgeous days with highs in the low 70s. 

I tried to get a lot of Seminary lesson prep done on Wednesday but I wasn't very successful. I'm not sure why...I got interrupted a lot by texts and emails...but really--I should have been able to get more done. I did a lot of other things for Seminary too, though, including a trip to the fabric store to get supplies for the bulletin board we are making for Seminary. I was really good and didn't spend any time looking at fabric for pillow covers, even though I wanted to! Another thing I did on Wednesday was to fill out all the school forms for Seth. Most of them are online now and I only have to go through them to make changes or updates, but it does still take time. Then he brought home a few things from the CTC that I had to fill out. He seemed to enjoy his first day back.

On Thursday I met with my team teacher again and we got the bulletin board mostly put together and did a bunch of other things too. As usual, it took hours to get everything done. Frank did some work for a client after work so he got home really late. I got to talk to Tanner for a while that evening...great to get caught up with him! Our ward activity night is on Tuesdays now but this week it was on Thursday because all three wards that meet in our building had a combined activity. They all watched the Church's youth music festival together. I actually forgot to ask Seth what he thought of the festival. I know he stayed late because he was talking with some friends from another ward. 

This morning I went to the temple, which is always wonderful. 

On the way home, I called Amy and talked to her...always love talking to her! 

Now it is Friday evening and I am home alone because Seth is at work (his first shift) and Frank is at the church. There is a special devotional for the youth tonight at our building...8 stakes in the area are invited and a member of the Quorum of the Seventy and his wife are there to answer questions. Frank is there to help with the microphones and all the other technical stuff. I'm kind of bummed that Seth is misisng it but we didn't get his work schedule until Tuesday and it was too late to make any changes at that point. 

Our baby all grown up and on his way to his first day of work! 

I will be going to pick him up in about an hour. I got a text from him about 30 minutes ago that said "On my break, this is honestly not that bad." I'm glad it seems to be going okay so far. 

That's mostly what I have to report this week. I can't remember a lot of details...just know I was busy all day long every day. In between lots of Seminary preparations and all the usual things I need to do, I did make a little bit of progress on projects. I went through a few more files and did some more organizing in the laundry / storage room. On Wednesday Seth and I took some things to the storage unit and now the laundry / storage room looks a lot better. I also did quilting whenever I got the chance and today I finished quilting the first September pillow cover. Seth is not getting much driving done but our plan is to have him drive whenever he has to go somewhere. It's going to take a long time to get 28 more hours, but we'll just keep chipping away at it when we can. I feel like even with the little bit of driving he's been doing that he's been improving and gaining confidence, so that's good. 

I'll finish up with this humorous moment. I've been trying to gather up a bunch of nerf guns for an activity we are planning to do the first day of Seminary. I wanted to get a gun for each youth, if possible...we could have up to 25 in our class this year. I borrow 10 guns from one friend and I had asked another friend too. She said "I have a few guns and a lot of bullets". I went to pick up what she has last night and she gave me this bin:

Does that look like a few guns to you?? There are about 30 guns in there!! Made me laugh...if that's a few guns, I'd hate to see what she thinks a lot of guns are. I'm just happy that I have more than I need now, though!

Ready or not, here comes Seminary! If I survive, I will write again next week and tell you about it.

Weekly Review August 16 '24

We had another busy week and it's all jumbled up in my head so don't expect this post to be organized. I'll do my best! I left off last week saying that Seth had a job interview the following morning (Saturday the 10th) so I'll start with that. Frank took him to the interview and when they came home Seth said "I guess I got the job because she (the interviewer) said 'we just need to do a background check and when that goes through I will contact you so watch your email and I will see you next week at orientation.'" I think it definitely helped him that Frank was there and that the interviewer knows him well. 😄 It took her a while, but she finally did contact Seth yesterday and he has orientation tomorrow morning. We are pleased that he has a job and Seth seems pleased about it too. 

Meanwhile, he has been earning some money this week too. Our friends who often ask him to check on their cats while they are out of town asked him to do that this week. (He lets the cats in or out of the house, prepares treats for them, replenishes food & water, etc.) He's been getting up every morning to check on them at 6:00 am, so he's also getting back into the habit of getting up early which is good since school starts on Wednesday. I go with him and he drove there and back every morning except Wednesday because he felt really sleepy that morning. Tomorrow will be the last morning that we need to check on them. 

Seminary preparation mostly dominated my week and I don't feel like I got much done in any other areas. Seth definitely didn't get as much driving time but besides driving over to check on the cats, I did have him drive to Costco and back last night so we could get him some shoes and on Saturday he drove to an activity at the Stake Center and back home afterwards. The activity was a post-FSY activity and even though he missed most of FSY he went anyway. They actually asked him ahead of time to say the closing prayer. He seemed to enjoy the activity...they had some of the youth share their experiences and an adult talked about goal setting and then they had a pizza dinner while watching a slide show of photos that people shared from FSY. Seth was even in a couple of them from the first day. There are probably a few other short trips that he drove, but I can't remember now. 

For Seminary, my team teacher and I visited another new girl coming into our class on Monday. She is a sophomore in high school...her family moved to Frederick over the summer from the Reno, Nevada area. From talking to them, it sounds like they aren't super active and she didn't attend Seminary much last year but hopefully we will see her sometimes. (Her family is not in our ward so we don't see them at church.) On Wednesday my team teacher and I met to do more planning and had a very long meeting; then I came home and worked on more stuff! That's about all I did on Wednesday. Frank is mystified about what we are doing for all those hours and I myself cannot explain why it takes so long to get ready...all I know is that we are not making up stuff to do! I've had a few other things I've done for Seminary on other days too but Wednesday was the busiest day.

Going back to Sunday, we had the missionaries over for dinner. We miss having Jared & Jessie here so it was nice to have someone else over that night. One of the Elders got transferred into our ward recently so we enjoyed getting to know him a little bit. I wanted Seth to start attending mission prep class that evening but the Elders were 30 minutes late to dinner so by the time they left, it was too late to go. (It's a bit of a drive to get there.)

On Tuesday (yes, I realize I am jumping all over the place...I did warn you) I went to lunch with my friend Rebekah. She left on a trip to Utah (taking her daughter back out to BYU) late this week so we wanted to get together and get caught up on things before she left. We went to the Honey Baked Ham cafe and since I had a gift card for that place, it was my treat. I always enjoy my visits with Rebekah. After lunch I went to Jo Ann's to get muslin, thread, and batting for my pillow cover project. I also ended up getting fabric for the August pillow covers. I hadn't intended to do that but noticed some of the fabric I had in mind for that was on sale. It ended up taking quite a bit of time for me to make decisions so I was there a lot longer than I had intended. I need to buy fabric for only 3 more sets of pillow covers now, though. The more I get done before Seminary starts, the better. 

I didn't make a ton of progress on pillow covers this week. I did finish sewing together the other September quilt block, though, and added border strips to both of them and I also sewed the quilt blocks--including border strips--for the October pillows. I washed all the fabric that I purchased this week and I cut out muslin backing and batting pieces for the September and October pillows. The September pillows are now ready for me to start quilting. I guess that's a decent amount of progress. Here are photos of the September and October quilt blocks. I really like how the September ones turned out. I'm not as pleased with the October ones...they look busier than I would like...but that's okay.

On the housecleaning / organizing front, I was able to finish the master bathroom and I got a few things done in the basement. After I cleaned up the area around the printer table in my office / sewing area, Seth came downstairs for something and he stopped and said "Whoa! Something is different down here!" You know you've done a good job when your 17 year old son who doesn't care a thing about clutter and doesn't even seem to know it exists notices that something is cleaner. 😂 I also started going through some of the files. Yesterday I went through two big files we had of all the documents related to the two car accidents Frank was in. (And basically threw everything away...just wanted to make sure there wasn't anything in there that was important.) Just going through those files reminded me how difficult those times were and one thing that was really difficult was the mounds of paperwork Frank and I had to fill out...he was in loads of pain but it was like a full time job filling out all the necessary paperwork and going to doctor appointments and such. What a nightmare! I'm so glad we made it through all that and that he's a lot better now (even though his back and his knee will never be the same). 

We have stake conference this weekend and today is our stake temple day. Frank and I planned to meet at the temple for a 3:00 session (he works about 7 miles from the temple) but he started feeling sick Wednesday evening and didn't go to work yesterday or today. He feels feverish and has a headache and is achy all over. He's been pretty miserable the last couple of days. Since Frank wasn't feeling up to going to the temple, I decided to go by myself but to go earlier so I would beat rush hour traffic coming home. I was able to get a last minute appointment for a 1:00 initiatory session. The temple has been closed for the last couple of weeks and I haven't been able to go very often over the summer so it felt really great to be able to go today. I encountered fairly heavy traffic coming home, but it wasn't as bad as rush hour traffic. 

Yesterday was Scott's 30th birthday. I'm not sure how we got old enough to have a child that age! Frank and I both had text message conversations with him yesterday but didn't get to talk to him other than that. Hopefully he felt loved. We got him one larger gift that he wanted and we also asked Tanner to get him a few treats from Costco from us (saved on shipping costs). I did get to talk to Tanner yesterday and I talked to both Scott and Jared last week. 

I started getting up at 3:30 most mornings last week and this week I continued to do that. It's been harder to get to bed at 8:00 pm, but I'm working on it. I've been sleeping really great most nights, actually. Hardly ever wake up at all, from the time my head hits the pillow until the alarm goes off. I hope that will continue. 

I am trying to read the book for book chat but haven't made much progress yet. I've been too busy with all my other projects to have much time for reading. The book is called Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien. I've only read a couple of chapters and it seems fairly interesting but as I said...I haven't had much time to read it. 

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

Weekly Review August 9 '24

 Last Friday feels like a long time ago to me...I guess that's because this week has been pretty busy. 

On Saturday (the 3rd) we went to dinner with the Hatch family to celebrate Jessie's birthday (which was on Thursday the 1st). Jessie chose Red Lobster. I haven't been there for a long time and decided to try their cocount shrimp, and it was really good! The server took a couple of photos of us but she cut Frank out of one of them and Jessie's grandma's face isn't visible in either one; oh well!

On Friday evening and on Saturday I spent a lot of time cutting out quilt block pieces and I was able to get all the pieces cut out (from the fabric I've purchased so far). I set up a little work station on one end of the kitchen table and cranked them out:

When I finished cutting out the pieces for each quilt block, I laid them out and took a photo. They're all a little off because of the seam allowances, but I can get a pretty good idea of how the finished block will look. Here are the blocks for September:

I actually finished sewing one of these blocks together yesterday but I haven't taken a photo of the finished block yet. The block design came from a full size quilt called Maple Mayhem. (The quilt has 35 blocks like this; I only had to make 2 since I'm making covers for 2 pillows.) Here are the blocks for October:

They will be simple Nine Patch blocks. I don't need to make covers for November because the original pillows are appropriate for November and I already made the pillow covers for December last year. Here are the blocks for January (bow tie and rail fence):

Here are the February blocks:

The first pattern is called Friendship Star. The bottom one is the Wedding Ring pattern.

For March, I made these blocks (Monkey Wrench and Le Moyne Star):

I haven't purchased fabric for April or May, but these are the June blocks:

These patterns are called Double Nine Patch (above) and Jacob's ladder (below). 

I haven't purchased fabric to make blocks for July or August yet either. All of the quilt blocks will need borders around them to make them the correct size to cover the pillows so I still have some cutting to do but I decided to sew the blocks first and then I can make the border strips to fit the blocks. I am having fun with this project and hope I will have time to keep working on them after Seminary begins. 

On Sunday Seth had meetings both before and after church. That evening, Jared & Jessie came over for their last evening with us of laundry, dinner, and game playing. We played Monopoly and Jessie cleaned all of us out. 

Monday through today I have been busy with all the usual chores, plus exercising, plus scripture study, plus taking Seth driving, plus a lot of other things! 

One of the "other things" was an online Seminary Training Symposium. There were 2 classes every day except today...only 1 class today. I was able to attend all but the first one and they were all phenomenal! I learned so much from all of these veteran master teachers. I'm sure I won't be able to implement even half of what they taught us but if I can even do a few things it will be an improvement. It was interesting to me, too, that many of the topics and / or the things they said are really in line with the list I made a few weeks ago of ideas I had for Seminary this year. That helps me to feel like I am on the right track. One of the things I found so helpful about this symposium is not just the content of the lessons being taught (even though the topics were great), but observing how the teachers taught us. They did so many good things such as calling on people by name, complimenting people for their comments, asking great follow up questions, and asking the class members to respond to a question or comment from another class member. Every one of them also testified at the end of the lesson and every one of them praised us and told us how amazing we are and how much they appreciate our service as Seminary teachers and really seemed to enjoy the experience of teaching and being with us. These are all things that I want to do better in my own class. It's interesting when I look back to the beginning of the summer and what I wanted to accomplish to prepare for Seminary and to realize that my entire focus has shifted in the last few weeks. I feel like the training I just received is the best possible preparation I could have had. I'm really grateful for all the promptings of the spirit that I receive to help me understand what I need to do and to move in the right direction.

While I'm on the topic of Seminary, I'll go ahead and mention the other Seminary related things that I did this week. On Monday my team teacher and I went to visit one of the new students coming into our class. Her family are not currently very active members so we thought we'd be visiting her to help encourage her to come to Seminary but when we got there and asked how she felt about coming to Seminary, she said that she was excited about it, just not looking forward to getting up really early. She and her mom both talked about it as if they are planning on her attending, so that was a nice surprise. Her mom does not speak a lot of English (although she obviously understands a lot) so throughout our conversation she would often stop in a sentence and turn to her daughter and ask "como se dice..." and say a word and then her daughter would tell her what the English word is. It was kind of fun! 

On Wednesday morning my team teacher and I met together again to do some more planning. We chose a class president and did some other things related to that. We also starting planning what we're going to be doing the first week of Seminary. We'll be meeting again next week to plan some more!

I finally found a few minutes last night to sort through my pile of stuff from the past Seminary year. It's still not as organized as I would like but it's better than it was. I have a lot of files on my computer that I need to organize as well.

I think that is all of the Seminary related stuff for this week. In the house cleaning and organizing department, I finished going through things in my bedroom and I also cleaned out Seth's bathroom. I am mostly done with the top two floors of the house now...just need to go through my bathroom and there are a few other things like washing windows and wiping down some of the walls and baseboards. The basement is the most cluttered part of the house and I'm sure I'm not going to get it all done before Seminary starts but I will probably be able to get a few things done down there. Frank already did a lot in the hallway and he is working on his office but I'd like to get the storage room in better shape (it's not terrible since we did a really thorough and good cleaning out a few years ago) and the really big project will be going through all the files. Hopefully I'll be able to get them in better shape than they are now, at least. I have also had Seth working on his room and that is very slow going but he's made a little progress.

Seth had his last on the road driving session with an instructor yesterday (Thursday the 8th). It went well, apparently. When I walked in to pick him up his instructor said "he is a great young man!" To help prepare him for this session, I took him driving every day and we tried to focus on the freeway for most of those drives (we knew they would take him on the freeway for his final driving session). On Monday we got on I-70 West and drove to Hagerstown and back, which took over an hour. We encountered road construction and then we missed our exit and had to get off at a different spot and wind our way around some back roads and Seth handled all of that quite well. I actually have seen quite a bit of improvement in his driving this week...he is starting to get a lot better at recognizing what he needs to do without me telling him to do it (things like slowing down or adjusting his speed for hills, curves etc.) There are still moments when I need to remind him to slow down more or when he starts to veer a little into another lane while checking his speed, but they are happening less often. I've tried to combine his driving practice with things we need to do whenever possible so on Tuesday he drove out to Middletown and back so we could say goodbye to Jared & Jessie, on Wednesday his friend Wesley invited him over so he drove to his house and back, and today he drove me to the library and back so I could pick up a book I had on hold. On Thursday morning before his driving session we spent some time practicing different kinds of parking in a parking lot and we also went over all the windshield wiper controls because it was supposed to be raining during his driving session (and it was, although not as hard as I feared). He has accumulated nearly 30 hours driving time now; he has to have 60 hours before he can take the driving test. Which is fine, because he definitely needs more practice before he's ready to drive on his own. I think after another 30 hours of driving, though, he will be ready. It's going to be a lot more challenging to get driving time in after school starts but we'll keep plugging away at it. Hopefully we will be able to get in at least a few minutes most days.

As I mentioned, we went out to see Jared & Jessie off on Tuesday morning. On Monday, we made cookies and put together two treat bags for them (they were each driving a car so weren't able to be together for the trip). They were very happy to get those cookies! 

Driving away (they were backing out of the driveway) Jared is driving the red car and Jessie is driving the blue one.:

We're really going to miss them, but we're so glad they have been able to live nearby the last 18 months! Jared sent me updates when they arrived at Knoxville, TN the first night, Little Rock, AK the second night, and Tyler, TX on Thursday afternoon. He sent me a little video walk through of their new apartment last night and it looks pretty nice. We're glad they got there safely!

Our ward's activity night for the youth switched from Wednesdays to Tuesdays this week. That's actually going to be somewhat convenient when school starts because Frank works from home on Wednesdays so he doesn't have to get up as early. That means he can pick Seth up from his activity and I can go to sleep before they get home. 

The last few days we have had a lot of rain...the remnants of tropical storm Debby. I don't think we got as much rain as they originally thought we would, but we did get quite a bit. It's good because we need it. We're lucky that we didn't get the severe weather that a lot of places did. We had flash flood and tornado watches but nothing really extreme materialized. They had a tornado warning at Frank's work this morning and they had to go to the basement for about 30 minutes but no thankfully no tornado showed up. Frank has had a busy week at work with a lot of meetings...he actually had to go in every day including Wednesday. He did get to come home a little earlier yesterday and today.

Seth never heard back from the job interview he had about 3 weeks ago so a few days ago he called them back and found out that the store manager who interviewed him wasn't at that store anymore. They asked for his contact information and told him they'd call him back. They called back today and asked him to resubmit his application and come in for another interview so he will be doing that tomorrow morning.

I believe that is all of the news from around here.

Weekly Review August 2 '24

 This summer has gone by so fast...I can't believe it's August already! Well, we've been busy the last 2 months. This past week was the only week we spent entirely at home since school got out, with the exception of the week that we all had Covid. It's no wonder it feels like it's gone by so fast.

This week we were mostly trying to get back into our normal not-on-vacation routine. I had a couple of extra things going on too. On Saturday Frank and I went to the temple to do some initiatories. It was kind of a last minute decision when we realized that the temple was closing for maintenance for the next couple of weeks. There was only one time slot with open appointments available, so we grabbed that time slot which was 1:00 pm. We ate lunch before we left and on the way home we stopped to get some ice cream. We're really glad we got to go.

That evening I went to the fabric store to get fabric for pillow covers. I found fabric I liked for the pillow covers I plan to make for September, October, and June. I still have to get fabric for 4 other months, but I didn't have time to do it all in one trip. I washed all the new fabric on Monday and I've been working on cutting out pieces whenever I get a few minutes. I've cut out all the pieces for September and I've cut out most of the pieces for October also but I've decided I need a little bit more of one of the fabrics so I'm going to have to go buy more before I can finish cutting out. 

Jared & Jessie came to church with us on Sunday because they had plans later and couldn't come for dinner. They came back to our house with us after church and ate some lunch, then went back to the church for their own ward meetings. 

On Monday morning I met with my Seminary team teacher, Tammy, so we could begin planning for this coming year. We talked for about 3 hours and could have talked longer! There is a lot to consider. We made a list of tasks that need to be done and divided them up between us. I have spent some time working on my tasks this week and have most of them done. (There will be plenty more to do, though!) We are setting up visits to meet the new youth coming in, preparing for the beginning of the year information meeting, planning the bulletin board, and lots of other things. Another project I wanted to get done this summer is creating a file of ideas for Seminary lessons. I haven't even started on that yet and probably won't get much done on it now, but I do want to get the things I have better organized at least. 

Seth had a presidency meeting on Wednesday before the youth activity. For the activity they had a mini Olympic games with javelin throwing, bocce ball, corn hole, etc. At the end they had food from different countries. He seems to have had a good time. 

Last night I went to a "Summer Birthday Bash" with a group of friends. One friend who used to live here was visiting so we all got to see her and get caught up and at the same time we celebrated all the summer birthdays...there were 3 other women besides me who had a birthday in July. We had taco salad for dinner (each of us brought one or two ingredients) and we had cake, brownies, and ice cream for dessert. One of my friends turned 60 and her kids sent a video with clips of them (and some of her grandkids) telling favorite memories and things they learned from her and that was really cute and sweet. 

Jared has come over a few times this week just to hang out. He and Jessie are moving on Tuesday, so he is trying to spend as much time with us as possible before they move. We will really miss them when they go! Today is Jared's last day of work. His workplace has a Facebook page and they put up a really nice post about Jared last week and some nice comments were added:

Besides all the things I've already mentioned, I have been busy with all the usual household tasks plus trying to take Seth driving most days and also working on some more house cleaning / organizing. I've been focusing on my room this week and so far I've gone through my nightstand and part of our large bookcase. I have thrown out or donated quite a few things already so I feel like I'm making some progress. I've also been watching some of the Olympics throughout the week...mostly while I'm jogging in the mornings but at a few other times as well. I enjoyed watching Team USA win the women's gymnastics team competition. I've also seen some biking, basketball, and a lot of swimming events. The last couple of days I've been waking up earlier which is good because I need to get back into an early to bed, early to rise routine. This morning I was rewarded for my early rising by getting to see deer grazing in the common area behind our house:

To finish up, here are a few photos of shells and rocks that we have picked up at several beaches over the years (most recently in Florida and Ocean City). We've been keeping them in an old empty peanut butter jar but this week I decided to get something new that will display them better and that will have more room for us to add shells in the future.