Temple, Talk and Texture

Well, last Thursday we made it to the temple. The boys had an opportunity to go do baptisms the same day, only earlier but neither one of them wanted to go. That made me a little sad. Garrett gave excuses like he wants to go as a family first and he'd rather do it on a Saturday. I told him he could be waiting a long time if he waits to do that but hopefully he'll change his mind. Jack just said "I'm good", meaning he didn't want to either. I think the youth are scheduled to go again in June but I'm not sure if there will be any earlier than that. I hope both boys will be willing next time. Anyway, Curtis had to meet me at the temple because he didn't have time to come home first since he was traveling that day and had someone with him. He made it to the temple about 5 minutes before I did. This temple is a small one. I was a little confused at first where to go but I'm quickly figuring it out. We had heard about some changes in the endowment session and now that we've seen them, we have to agree that we like the changes. It explains things a little better and gives more visuals. The temple is closed for cleaning for two weeks but I hope to get back again soon after, especially after I get more family names to do from my dad. We also made a trip to Dairy Queen after our session, so that was our date for the week. It was a nice evening and good to take a break from working.

Temples are beautiful any time of day!

Selfie after our session.

Friday morning I was able to make some good progress on writing my talk while the house was empty and quiet. I think I spent about 3 hours on it. I really wanted to get as much done on my talk as I could before the weekend. I was in too much pain to help much with our projects last week. The pain keeps traveling from my knees to my left shoulder to now my neck. Sometimes they all hurt pretty bad but then other times it's just one area. Man, I know I'm not that old but my body is sure acting like it! Friday and Saturday nights we watched Harry Potter #5 and #6 as a family. It's been fun having these movie nights as a family. Pretty soon, we'll be doing other things besides movies. Back in Idaho we were usually all split up doing different things like watching a movie or playing video games in separate rooms. I love that all of us are finally watching movies together!

I took a walk in our neighborhood Friday morning while it was nice and to take a break from writing my talk. We get some pretty awesome views!

On Saturday Curtis worked on taping a mudding the bathroom and hallway walls. Things were taking too long and we wanted to get the painting done before the flooring gets installed, so unfortunately, Curtis had to do some work on Sunday evening to be able to make that deadline. He had to sand all of the walls and then spray the texture on. 

By Saturday night, I had my talk mostly done, I just had to do some touch ups Sunday morning. I finally practiced giving my talk and timed myself. It ended up being too long at 17 1/2 minutes, so I had to cut some things out. It turned out my talk length would have been just fine because the first speaker had a shorter talk. Oh well. I was feeling pretty good about my talk before getting up there but of course I still got shaky before, during and after giving it. It probably didn't help that I had taken some Excedrin (for the first time ever) that morning because I woke up with a lot of neck pain. I think the caffeine in the pills might have made me extra jittery. I did pretty well on my talk even though I stumbled over some words occasionally. I tried to make sure I looked around the room while talking but I know I looked down a lot. Many people gave me compliments afterwards so that was a good feeling and I'm glad it's over with now. 

Yesterday (Monday) my neck was hurting less but my knees hurt quite a bit in the morning. I wanted to just rest but I knew I needed to help Curtis get some prep stuff done before painting. I wiped down walls and filled holes, along with some sanding. Gradually and thankfully, my knees started feeling better. Curtis got off work early so that he could get the painting done but he had to help me do some prepping first. Prepping the walls and taping things off took longer than we thought also but we were able to get the primer and paint on last night. I will have to do touch ups later though. We also emptied out the rooms to get ready for the flooring people to come in today. After everyone showered (except the little girls) we disconnected the water heater and emptied it so that we could move it out of the utility room. We got everything out of there except the furnace. 

At the beginning of painting the hallway.

It's hard to see in this lighting but this is after we painted.

Empty utility room.

It looks like they never painted behind the water heater. I think we'd better do that before we put it back. Ha ha

Charlotte came home with a school assignment to create a potato head person using a real potato. When I took her to the store last night to buy a potato she didn't want to believe me that we had to use a real potato. I finally had Curtis send a picture of the instructions to prove that the ones in the picture on the paper were real potatoes. So she picked one out. Not only was she to create a person, she was also to write some things about it. At activity days yesterday, Charlotte learned how to make pom poms with yarn. She ended up using one of them for the hair of her potato person.

She named her Dolly

The flooring people showed up today and it's looking great so far! I will post pictures of it in my next post because he's still currently working on it and I want to get pictures after he's done for today. It's exciting!