Sunday, March 4, 2012

What a week!

This past week was quite out of the ordinary. Monday I went visiting teaching and with my partner visited all 3 of the sisters on our route. We had lovely visits and I feel like I'm getting to know these sisters better. While at one of the sisters' homes, I received a phone call from one of my daughters-in-law who told me that one of her 3 boys was sick and could I come watch the other 2 while she took him to the doctor. So I said sure. I thought that I would have about an hour between the end of my visiting teaching and going to babysit the boys, but one of the visits ran over and I ended up with only 15 minutes! So I ran home quick, grabbed a lunch to take with me, and got ready to head out to babysit when the phone rang. It was my daughter and she wanted me come by and get the appliques she was cutting for me (on her new die cutting machine-a Silhouette Cameo) that evening. I told her that I was just heading out the door to babysit and she suggested that I just go by her house afterwards. So that's what I ended up doing. It was fun babysitting the boys-they were showing me their "workbooks" and I read them lots of books-and their brother got put on antibiotics. I then headed over to my daughter's and her boys were glad to see me too. It's sure fun being a grandma when the grandkids are happy to see you! I got to see how her cutting machine works, it is pretty amazing!, and then stayed for a little while before heading home just in time to fix dinner. My afternoon didn't go as originally planned-I had thought that I would get some fabric cut out for the next baby quilt but that obviously didn't happen, plus between 9 am and 4:30 pm I had only been home for 15 minutes!

Tuesday after voting in the primary election, I again went to my daughter-in-law's and joined them in a trip to the zoo (the doctor had said that her son was ok to go out and be with other kids as long as they were over 6 months old). Her oldest son, the 4 year old, pre-school class was going to the zoo and they said that siblings could come too. Of course his younger brothers wanted to come too and my DIL said she didn't think she could handle the 3 boys alone, so I went along to help her out. Even with the 2 of us, we sometimes couldn't keep up with the boys. Luckily the youngest is only 9 months old and was either in the stroller or the sling most of the time. We spent 4 hours at the zoo, going from one end to the other, the only area we didn't get to was the desert area, but since we live in the desert, that didn't seem to be too great a loss. We did get to the petting zoo (there were only goats to pet, I thought that there had been other animals to pet when I had gone with my own kids' classes to the zoo), the rain forest (Tropics trail) area, the savanna (Africa trail) area, as well as the lake area. We saw lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my!) as well as tortoises, giraffes, rhinos, elephants, and zebras (the boys favorite), and lots of different kinds of monkeys (apes, primates, whatever their classification is)-tamarins, orangutans, gorillas, baboons, and mandrills, as well as something that looked like a chimp but the sign said it was something else. Lots of animals at the zoo! Luckily the weather was nice-not too hot and not too cool (upper 60's or low 70's) and there were clouds for part of the day as well. By the time we left, our feet were hurting but the boys were still going strong, or at least that is what they wanted us to think-they fell asleep on the way home, or one of them did, the other 2 were almost there. I had to quickly get back to my car and head home as it was my oldest son's birthday and my husband offered to have him come over for one last birthday dinner at home (he gets remarried in two weeks), and I had still to fix the dinner plus my visiting teachers were coming to see me! I got home and briefly washed up and started to get things fixed for dinner, visited with my visiting teacher when she came (her partner had gotten sick and didn't come), and then finished fixing dinner, but didn't get it all ready before my son, his son, and his fiancèe showed up, but we were eating not too long after they got here. My youngest son showed up on his bike and asked where he was supposed to vote so we told him how to get there and even let him use our car to get there as there was only 15 minutes left to vote and his bike's handlebars were loose. He came back after voting and grabbed some of the food and called his wife to join us which she did (she had been getting their car from the repair shop and, with the help of friend, returning her mom's car). My grandson didn't really like the meat for the dinner so my youngest son and his wife ate it! Then we invited my next to the youngest son's wife (this son was on his yearly training for the National Guard) to join us for the dessert and when she came we all had strawberry shortcake after which everyone went home. I am quickly getting used to being able to send everyone home!

Wednesday I was able to stay home but instead of working on the baby quilt, I worked on the cover for my oldest son's wedding book. I've made 3 covers previously with very few problems, but this time I had to unpick stitches 5 times!!! I'm glad this is the last one I'll have to make! I use my embroidery sewing machine to embroider their names, wedding date, and temple for the front of the book as well as quilting motifs around that and on the back. I kept getting the placement of the quilting motifs wrong but finally got it all done, it's not perfect but will do-after picking it out 5 times, I thought it would be better to just stop instead of making it perfect. That evening my husband and I went to the temple and did baptisms for family names. Since that didn't take as long as we thought it would, we also helped with sealings (not family names though). That made a good end to the day.

Thursday and Friday were my regular days for babysitting my daughter's boys and so I was home doing that. While the baby slept, I managed to get the fabric cut out one day and then the appliques ironed on the squares the second day so I might get this baby quilt done in time. But I will have two more to do-one for May and one for August-my 3rd son and his wife announced that they are expecting and due in August and they just found out it is another girl. That will make a total of 7 grandsons and 3 granddaughters for us by the end of the year!

Saturday my husband and I went to my middle son's house, the one with the 3 boys, and while my husband helped him with his computer, I played with the older two boys, the youngest was napping. Once done there, we did some grocery shopping, man, our food bill has gone down a lot since it is just the two of us now (well, most of the time)! That evening we went to the temple again to be with our soon to be daughter-in-law as she went through for the first time. We also got to meet more of her family, including her dad who served his mission in Peru the same time that my husband was serving his mission there so when they met they talked about places and people from Peru. It was another good ending to a busy day.

So as you can see, we (I) had a busy week but it was all good! Also this week, my 2nd son took the bar exam in Minnesota, and my middle son found out that his contract will be renewed so it looks like he will have his job for another year, something they are relieved about (and us too)! Always something going on! But we are happy and blessed so there are no complaints here!