Our Weekend

So, things are going ok at our house. Last Saturday Courtland was supposed to have his birthday party, but late Friday night he woke up throwing up, so we had to call everyone and cancel Saturday morning – which was too bad since the house was already totally spotless and the birthday cakes were done. At least Courtland isn’t really old enough to get it yet anyways, so he wasn’t really disappointed. Camden got sick once early on Saturday, but then everyone seemed fine after that, so that was good.

On Saturday morning I went to one of my new favorite stores, Plato’s Closet, in Henrietta (it’s a thrift store, but they only take nice clothes in recent styles from brands like Abercrombie, GAP, American Eagle, etc., so there’s a lot more to choose from than other places like Good Will). Michael had heard on the radio that they were having a sale on their clearance items where you could fill a bag for $15, so I went and tried to get there right when they opened. When I arrived there was a line out the door, and it was quite a cold morning to be waiting outside, but I survived. The bags were really quite tiny – maybe 8 x 12 inches, and you couldn’t have anything hanging out of the bag, it all had to be down inside it. But I went in with the big crowds and dug through the bins of clothes, tried on an entire pile of shirts, and then rolled up everything as tight as I could to get it in the bag. I ended up getting 14 shirts for $15 (plus, I used my money from Christmas and birthday gifts, so it was actually free).  :) So that was fun, and was actually good that I was able to get so many shirts because I only really had a few short-sleeved shirts I could wear once it gets hot and humid in the summertime.

Later on Saturday evening we went to the Men’s Wearhouse because I’d seen a commercial saying that everything in their store was buy 1 get 1 free for the weekend, and Michael has been needing a new suit for a long time – his suit pants that he got when he interviewed to get into med school had worn holes through the knees a while back, so he’s been just getting by without a suit jacket (or sometimes mixing and matching jackets and pants when necessary) for a while, so we went to check it out. We ended up finding two really nice suits that he is going to save until he starts interviewing for dermatologist jobs. They looked really, really nice on him – what a handsome guy!

On Sunday we got up and went to the church out in Palmyra because Elder Scott, a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles in our church, was visiting the area and called a special meeting to come speak with everyone. We got ready and went early to get seats, arriving at about 8:30am for a 10am meeting, and we got close enough to see, although didn’t get seats on the benches in the front part of the room (someone said those seats were all full by 6:30 or 7am). After we got our seats we took the boys out into a side room and used the little portable DVD player we got from Mel and Christian last Christmas for the boys to watch a Sunday movie to pass the time before the meeting started. The boys did quite well for having to sit still and listen for a two hour meeting, and it was a nice talk. Elder Scott focused the majority of his talk on husbands and wives having respect and love for each other, and he spoke about his wife who passed away a few years ago – he said he never speaks about her in public, but felt impressed to do so that day. Then, that evening we had the missionaries over for dinner, and I guess all the missionaries got to have a separate meeting with Elder Scott. It was kind of funny – they said Elder Scott talked about marriage and the importance of not putting off getting married after they finish their missions (and missionaries for our church aren’t supposed to date while on their missions, because they are supposed to focus entirely on the missionary work, so it was an interesting topic for a group of missionaries, but I suppose it was something that was important for them to hear from an apostle).

So, yesterday was fun because the boys have this week off of school for their ‘mid-winter break,’ and since the boys finished all of their daily and weekly chores all week last week (we started a new chore system, which has been working out pretty well), we decided to have a family movie night last night for our family home evening. Michael got ‘Ramona and Beezus’ from the redbox on his way home, and we watched it together. The older boys liked it, the younger boys mostly liked it but got a little bored, I thought it was fine but rather long, and Michael thought it was so long and boring that he fell asleep for the end of it. But the boys had fun.
Last night Eli woke up in the middle of the night throwing up. I thought we were over this. We’d rescheduled Courtland’s birthday party for this upcoming Saturday, and I’m really hoping we’re totally healthy by then, because if we have to cancel it a second time I think he’ll have a family party this year. Lijah seems ok now, but at one point this morning I couldn’t find Kolby anywhere and finally found him asleep in his bed, which is quite unusual for him to do something like that, especially in the morning. So hopefully he’s not getting sick too. I really wouldn’t mind if I never had to clean up throw up again. At least the bigger boys are old enough to make it to the bathroom.

Oh, and our dishwasher broke. It’s usually quiet, and has been getting louder and louder over the last few weeks. We finally had someone come today, and the motor is shot. He’s coming back this afternoon with the parts to replace it – at least once that’s done he said it will basically be like having a new dishwasher. And it’s not like we can just go without fixing it – as much as I’d hate to be without a dishwasher, we could handle that – but we can’t just leave all the big fixit things until we’re ready to sell this house eventually, or it would be a much greater expense to do it all at once, and no one would want a broken dishwasher. So, we do what we have to do. With all the fun expenses of life, I don’t know how we’re going to be able to save up enough for a down payment on a house when we move in a year and a half, but at least we’ll have a working dishwasher between now and then.

Well, I don’t mean to be too negative. Even with sick kids, it has been nice having a week off of school and just enjoying spending time together at home.