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.

Good Things Are Happening

I spent all day Friday cleaning our floors in the house. First it was vacuuming and then mopping. It's a lot to do in this much bigger house! I did a little dusting as well while I was vacuuming. We were getting ready to have visitors on Saturday afternoon, my dad and mom Laverne. I'm glad I had motivation to get it done because we were getting sick of seeing dust everywhere, even in places that had been vacuumed, like under the fireplace and the recliner. I knew that I wouldn't have as much time on Saturday since I would be going to Jack's band competition for at least half of the day, so I wanted to get as much done as possible on Friday.

Saturday was Jack's first band competition and fortunately it was right here in Kennewick. His band performed very well and was the 2nd band to perform of the day, at 9:15am. After that, Curtis went home to work on tiling the bathroom again and I stayed to watch more bands. It was fun to see some bands from Idaho at this competition. There was Ridgeview from Nampa (which is where one of my nephews went until he graduated last year), Timberline from Boise and Vallivue from Caldwell. (I didn't actually get to see Vallivue perform though) I was about to go home at the lunch break but got a call from Dad and then Jack asked if I could give him and his friends a ride to a burger place since the concession stand was very busy. They didn't realize how close this burger place was and could have walked but it was fun to drive him and his friends and join them. I also dropped them off afterwards. I went back home to finish tidying up the house and watched some Full House with Garrett. Dad and Laverne showed up around 3:30. They only stayed for one night because they were headed to Astoria to take care of Laverne's mom for a couple of weeks. I'm glad they were able to come and that we finally have a guest bed for people to sleep on! 

It wasn't long after they arrived that Curtis quit and cleaned up for the day. He had put a ham in the smoker and cheesy potatoes to have for dinner. Jack got a ride home for dinner but then wanted to go back to watch the rest of the band competition with his friends, so Curtis, Dad, Mom and I all rode together to drop him off and then we drove around to show them some places. It was getting dark fast, but we were able to stop and see the light house on the river and then the Columbia River Temple. We stopped at Baskin Robbins next to get some dessert and then drove by Curtis's office building before heading back home. We showed them the nighttime view from our neighborhood and then drove by the kids' schools. It was hard to see much since it was dark, so we went back to the house where I showed them the video of Jack's band performance and then an episode of The Story Trek on the BYU channel where they ended up in Boise and Nampa! Everyone was really tired by then, so it was time to get to bed.

Our school got 3rd place in their division but did not make it to the finals (they were 4 points short). It's the best they've ever done.

We met up with Jack after the performance to get pictures. The theme is "Thor's Hammer". We bought shirts to show our support. Mine says "Thor's Hammer". Curtis's says "Band Fan Club".

We all got to eat dinner together. Ham, potatoes, green beans and rosemary sourdough buttered toast.

The view of the light house was beautiful!

The temple was beautiful too!

The ice cream was yummy!

Dad and Mom had to leave Sunday morning, but I was able to cook some muffins and sausages with a side of orange juice for breakfast before they left. Fortunately, we have 12:00 church so I had time to fix a nice breakfast. Curtis would have helped but he had a lesson to prepare for the priest group. 

After church we had tithing declaration with the bishop and then that evening, we fed the missionaries. One thing that made it even better was that Garrett told me last Tuesday (after conference) that he wants to start going to the temple every week to do baptisms and that he does want to go on a mission. He wasn't really sure he wanted to before. He also asked Curtis to start reading the Book of Mormon with him each night in his room. Dad and Mom brought some names for baptisms and we scheduled for him, Curtis, Jack and I to go this coming Saturday morning. I need to find somewhere for the girls to go while we're at the temple. Good things are happening!

(Oh, and I almost forgot. I'm typing this on my new laptop computer! I told Curtis to take me shopping for one last Thursday at Costco and we picked one out with the help of my brother Colby. Then I finally got it set up yesterday.)

Conference, Decorations and Sage

 Most of us watched or listened to the Saturday morning session of conference. Jack had to leave for a special band practice, so he missed most of it. We had missed mowing the lawn that Tuesday so we decided we'll do it that day. I started trimming after eating lunch but then after Jack came home he did the mowing. He borrowed my phone and earbuds so he could listen to conference while mowing. He got to listen to it but I didn't. I am okay with that because I don't mind listening to it later and I love that he listened to it. The other kids were busy putting away pool toys since we are done using the pool for the year. It took awhile for them because they had a lot of air to release out of the inflatables. I also trimmed the rose bush and a tree branch that was hanging down low. I had to have Jack help me with that one because he's stronger than I am now. Curtis started work on tiling our shower. He spent most of the day doing that.

He's doing his cutting on the deck this time.

One thing I did the week of conference also was to finish painting the hand rail for the stairs. Curtis got it hung back up last week. 

I painted the hardware underneath to match the chandelier.

Conference was really good, as usual and I was quite surprised at how well it seemed Garrett was listening to it on Sunday, even after I had told him he couldn't watch Full House during the break and that he was found reading his Percy Jackson book instead during the 2nd session. I saw him reading and let him know that conference was on and a little later he came out and watched. Usually you'll see my kids sleeping. Curtis even slept. But every time I looked at Garrett it looked like he was listening, so I was definitely happy about that! The thing that stuck out the most in this conference was the last one where Pres Nelson's talk centered on the phrase "Think Celestial". I love that and I love President Nelson!

Last week I decided to try listening to at least one of the Saturday afternoon talks that most of us had missed since we were working, while getting ready in the mornings and while driving the boys to school. I like starting our day out with uplifting talks. I have also decided I needed to be a better example of reading scriptures. The best way to do that is to read my old set of scriptures I had when I was a teenager and doing it after I wake Garrett up and he starts eating. Curtis wakes up Jack earlier so he can shower first but then he comes up to eat. It's better for them to see me reading printed out scriptures rather than trying to read on my phone, because they usually can't see what I'm actually doing on my phone. It just looks like I'm doing other stuff. And to be honest, I haven't been reading as often as I should be. I do have to use my phone to look up the come follow me stuff for the week though, but I have my set of scriptures right next to me to do the reading from. Sometimes I will listen to scriptures while I'm working.

Alice got me in the mood to put Halloween decorations up. After cleaning up pool toys, she found the Halloween bucket in the garage and had me bring it inside. I spent Monday morning shopping at the thrift store and then Monday afternoon putting up decorations. It was nice to do some things I wanted and take a break from working.

Our front entry. 

I put Autumn and Halloween decorations up together.

The family room in the basement.

Family room again.

The decor in the window by the front door. Nikki had painted that pumpkin.

If it wasn't bad enough that we had thought we lost Coco last month, Sage ended up being missing for a couple of days last week also. The last time I remembered seeing her was Tuesday afternoon after I picked the boys up from school. She was wandering around out front while kids walked home from the middle school. I think she likes to get attention from them. She never wanders very far though and she always comes back the same day. I didn't think I had seen her that evening but thought maybe somebody let her outside before bedtime. Well, I expected that if she was outside during the night that she would be waiting by the sliding door in the morning. I kept looking out the windows and doors expecting to see her and saw nothing. I also looked all over the house and in the garage. It was very unusual for her as she does not wander like Coco does. Charlotte was getting sad by Wednesday night and I was a little worried also. Thursday morning I was thinking of posting about her being missing on the lost pets Facebook pages but I decided to wait. Thankfully, later that day I saw that someone made a post that they had found her and were looking for her owners. She didn't have a collar on and she's not chipped and yes she's skinny, but she does eat. It turned out that a girl walking home from school thought that maybe Sage needed help and she took her to her grandma's house in a nearby neighborhood. Her grandma is the one that made the post trying to find her home. I was so relieved though that she was safe and well taken care of until she was returned to us. I need to get our cats into a vet and get them chipped so that if anyone else finds them they can find out sooner where they belong.

After her little adventure.

Garrett's 17th Birthday

My computer is starting to act up again but in a slightly different way. The screen keeps flashing white and purple vertical lines and it seems the longer I'm using the computer the more it flashes. I made sure I copied all of my pictures from the last year to my external hard drive last week. Now I'm going to try doing a blog post and see how it goes.

Two weeks ago, was exciting as we got our new bed set up and new curtains hung, as well as Garrett's birthday! I didn't initially want to go with blue and silver, but we didn't have much to choose from the night we were looking at Walmart. I'm actually really liking it now. I found the curtains on Amazon, and they were delivered on the 29th (Garrett's birthday). Sage was a good model for my picture. We also got some nice nightstands that have USB connections for charging. The only problem is that our phone chargers have a C connection on both ends so we can't use them unless we find a different cord. For now, we charge them in our closet on the shelves since there's an outlet there.

 

My in-laws were planning on coming to visit the weekend of Garrett's birthday and general conference, from Thursday to Monday, but my father-in-law started to get a sinus infection. They went to the quick care, and he tested positive for Covid. Unfortunately, that means neither of them could come since they both needed to quarantine for a few days. We were really bummed and now we're not sure they'll make it over here until next year. It stinks having to worry about driving over the Blue mountains. 

Friday the 29th was Garrett's 17th birthday and I told him he could invite some friends over, so he invited his two guy friends from our ward (Connor and Dallin) and two girl friends (meaning just friends 😉). One he met in band last semester (Emily) and the other is our friend's daughter (London). I'm so glad I let him invite friends over, especially since his grandparents couldn't come. They ate food and visited. We waited for Jack to come back from band practice (sectionals) and then sang and opened presents. Garrett took his friends and Jack downstairs to play video games. I think they had fun but the girls ended up leaving earlier than the boys. I wish Garrett would have played a board game with them instead of just video games, but I left it up to him what they were going to do. I'm not sure if the girls got bored and decided they wanted to leave or if that was because of parents. Either way, it was fun to have them over.

He chose to have the apple cider cinnamon donut cake again. He must really like it because I think this is the 3rd year in a row that he's had it for his birthday.

Garrett patiently waiting for Charlotte to light the candles. It was her first time doing it.

He's having a little fun in his "old" age. (swapping the number candles)

He loves this show (as do I) and really wanted it on dvd. It's the complete series of Full House. We had previously borrowed it from Tamara, so that's how he knew he wanted it.

A Legend of Zelda hoodie.

Hawaiian shirt because he likes wearing them. Jack does too actually.

The new Percy Jackson book that came out the week of his birthday.

The traditional birthday snack. Jack suggested to get root beer, so I did.

Garrett and his friends - London, Emily, him, Dallin, Jack, Connor