Last Week

I forgot to mention it in my last blog, but my term for jury duty was for the first two weeks of October. Fortunately for me, the first week they didn't need any jurors. The 2nd week my number was not on the list for those to report. That means I'm done and didn't have to go in! The nice part was that I only had to call in twice, on the Friday before each week. It's so much better than calling in every day for a whole month, like they did in Idaho!

A week ago Monday, I was asked to help out at Activity Days for Charlotte's group and so Alice got to come also. Sister Gale was in charge and she was having the girls help to give treats to elderly ladies in the ward. She over planned and ended up getting there late and had too many things to do while there. Technically we're not supposed to bake anything in the ovens at the church. They are just for warming things up but she had brought some rolled up cookie dough for the girls to slice up and lay on pans. They only took 7 to 8 minutes to bake. The problem was, we were running late and needed to speed it up. After baking the first batch I put two pans in at one time side by side on the top rack. Things tend not to bake evenly if there's one pan on top of the other. Well, when I pulled open the oven door when the cookies were done baking it must have trapped a lot of the smoke/steam and it all came out at once. Not long after, it set the fire alarm off. Wow, that's the first time I've ever experienced the alarms going off at the church. Sister Gale called the fire department and let them know that nothing was on fire but we did need them to come shut off the alarm. We felt so bad that they had to come out to help us that we sent them with a plate of cookies. They were pretty happy about that. Now we know why they say not to bake anything in the ovens! At home if our alarm goes off, we just fan it off and it will turn off on its own. No such luck here! Most of the girls had actually been picked up already by the time that all happened but it was exciting for those who were still there.

Charlotte in the blue and Alice in her white dress. She wore it to school for a dance party in her class that day.

That same night, Alice had some spelling homework to do. She is to pick an activity from a list of ideas. This time she decided to build her spelling words using her glass gems. It took a lot longer than we thought it would and said we better get a picture of them. I also sent the picture to her teacher and she loved it and showed it to the whole class.

Last week I started bringing in boxes from the garage and trying to find places for things so we can have more garage space. There was a box of the girls' stuff that they had already gotten into and was practically empty by the time I got to it, but I did discover a small bag of clothes that were waiting for Charlotte to grow into. I totally forgot about them! They are her size right now. One of them was a set of coveralls and she looked pretty cute in them. She says she'll wear them when she plays at home. I guess she doesn't like them well enough to wear to school, ha ha.

She finally had a reason to wear the belt that she owns.

Last Thursday I scored a deal on Facebook marketplace. I found an entryway bench with shoe racks to go by our front door. It was in like new condition and only $30. She said it was bought new for $50 a year ago at Home Depot. It was a little dusty but cleaned up easily. The funny thing is, this was the same person I bought the girl's bookshelf from just a couple of weeks ago. As soon as I looked up the address and saw it on the map, I knew it was the same person. De ja vu! I'm happy and love it! Now we have a bench to sit down on and take off or put on shoes that might be wet or dirty. And a rack for the wet shoes to dry on.

Garrett recently told us that he wants to go do baptisms at the temple as a family and wants to try going weekly. Well, I don't know if we can manage to get over there that often because of band competitions right now but last Saturday we had an available day and so I finally set it up. I say finally because he wanted to do this last spring also but we were just too busy with the house. Dad and Laverne had brought us some family names to do and I set up our appointment for Saturday morning at 9am and we dropped the girls off at a friends' house in the ward, the McShane's. These friends have 5 kids also, 3 boys and 2 girls. The oldest boy is Dallin, the friend of Garrett and Jack. The two girls are close in age to our two girls, so it worked out great. We had brought 19 female and 14 male names to baptize. We decided that Curtis would baptize me first and then Garrett would baptize Jack. There was a big group behind us and so we weren't able to do all of them ourselves. I think we did maybe 7 each, but they squeezed in the rest of our family names with the youth group that was behind us, so all of them got done. It was Garrett's first time baptizing and he said he loved it. Jack said Garrett did a good job. It was so great to finally do it as a family! Unfortunately, we did not get any pictures. We took a trip to the store afterwards to get donuts for everyone.

The girls had so much fun playing with the McShane girls that we decided to invite them to go skating in Richland. The kids had free tickets from the library reading program to use up by the end of the month. The boys didn't want to use theirs so we let the girls invite friends. The girl's mom (ShaRae) and I visited a bit while watching the girls skate, but her oldest daughter was having a hard time wanting to go out and skate because she's not experienced. We finally got her to go around the rink at least once while holding on to the wall, but not long after that she took the skates off and put her shoes back on. I felt bad for her but at least she tried. They have never been to a roller skating rink before. We were there for about 1.5 hours. Charlotte also used up the few dollars that I had to win two balls from the grab machine. One was for their friends to share and the other was for her and Alice to share. It was sweet that she wanted to give them one. 

Charlotte, Alice, Laila, Ashlee

While I was gone with the girls, the boys were having a D&D game session while Curtis worked on tiling the shower and tub. Curtis was so busy that he didn't even know we left and I guess I forgot to tell him. After we finished roller skating, we had another coupon for the kids to get a free popcorn at Popcorn Northwest. We then went our separate ways, although my girls really wanted to go over to their house again to play. They had a neighborhood party they were going to so they couldn't. I think our families are going to be great friends. 

It was a good thing that they didn't go play again because by evening time both of our girls had low grade fevers. I had suspected something might be up with Charlotte because she was tired when we drove over to Richland and when we got home she just wanted to relax. I know she has more energy than that usually but she just said she was tired. I finally checked her temp and it was at 101.8. Alice also seemed a little more tired when we got home. I checked her temp before I did Charlotte and hers was at 100.4. I gave both some medicine and let them watch shows or play on the Switch. I had to take Jack to a birthday party to the bowling alley in Richland. He has been fighting a cold all week but thought he felt better today. Well, I think he over did it because he was extra tired when driving over there. After I dropped him off I went to the nearby Rite Aid and got him some cold medicine pills. I don't think he had a fever but I'm not sure. He just seemed tired and had nasal congestion. I had already decided that the girls would stay home from church the next day but wasn't sure about Jack. When he finally woke up Sunday morning, he decided he'd better stay home. He slept almost the entire day. Since he was home though, I was able to leave the girls and go to church with Curtis and Garrett. The girls were thankfully fever free Sunday morning. Alice just has a little cough now. They watched the BYU channel while we were gone. All of them were well enough to go to school on Monday.

Saturday afternoon, we were also "Booed" by someone. It's a fun Halloween tradition to leave treats anonymously. They also leave you with a cute poem and instructions to keep it going, as well as a sign to hang on our door to let people know that you have been "Booed". After Jack came home from his party he figured out that it was his friend Eli from school who "Booed" us. Now we need to pass it on.

This skull candle came in the bag of goodies. The girls wanted to light it up.

Hard to see because the candle is black.