A quiet week

 When I took Sally out this morning to go potty, I could tell a difference in the air. It smelled damp which is a good indicator that the snow and ice are finally melting away. Now, there is still snow on the ground but, as the week has advanced and temperatures have risen from single digits, it is gradually going away....except for where it was piled up or where it has became ice. 

My new bird feeder had to be taken down and the camera had to be re-charged. I suppose because it was overcast quite a bit last week and the solar panels couldn't keep the battery up and running. The birds are glad to have it back in business.

I awoke last Sunday with a touch of vertigo AND a UTI!  I took a half tablet of the vertigo medicine but it still made me drowsy during church and I went to an urgent care in the afternoon for the UTI and I have been on antibiotics since then. 

On Monday, I dropped my sewing machine off to be cleaned and serviced since it was still under warranty until the end of this month and the cleaning was included with the extended warranty.  Without a machine, I have been busying myself with making clothespin soldier ornaments for next Christmas gifting. I had a package of twenty and there was quite a bit of painting to do, then spraying them with varnish, then gluing on black pom pom hats. I have also been tying baby quilts and cutting out fabric for more patchwork quilts (all of these are for donating to Happy Hookers venues). Additional ongoing projects include working on Finale, my music writing program, to transcribe the music from three books of violin solos with piano accompaniment  (because they were not available for cello) and working on compiling photos for the 2021 Lambson Life book. 

Steve and I have continued to walk every day (except me on Friday) at the Carondelet Rec Center. We even brought Fred with us and signed him up on Monday. Beckie joined us on Thursday as my "guest". I did not walk on Friday because on Thursday, I started coming down with a cold and I was just too tired on Friday to exert myself. I am feeling a bit better today. 

We had the first English class of the new year for the Afghanistans on Thursday night. It was good to be back. We watched All Creatures Great and Small on Monday and re-watched Arrival on Friday. I re-watched Ender's Game on my own and Steve re-watched Les Miserables on his own. 

We got to see Elise very briefly Friday evening after we finished at the temple. She drove in from Columbia so she could attend. She handed off stuff for us (some mending, some choir music I am borrowing from Memorial Baptist, and a DVD return) and we handed off stuff for her (mail and a book that I borrowed).

We have pizza in the oven and Mary and Wally Bell are coming over in about 30 minutes for dinner. I have a green salad to make so I will sign off.  

A week of firsts

Because we had so much snow and cold the first full week of January, a lot of events were cancelled, including church. So, Sunday, the 12th was the first time for my new Primary class. I have been given a new set of children who are younger than my previous class - they are all four going on five. SO cute and SO different from the older class that I will need to change my teaching strategies. Thankfully, I co-teach with Chris Caldwell so I don't have to prepare the lesson every week, just every other week. Chris is also the alternate organist so we have made the plan that when one of us teaches, the other plays the organ and visa versa. 

Monday we STILL didn't have the Afghanistan women's group because the side roads are still like ice rinks and it is not safe to drive on them. I worked on a Christmas craft project in the morning and did some sewing in the afternoon and started re-watching Enchanted. Steve and I enjoyed episode one of the fifth season of All Creatures Great and Small. So, so fun to watch...

Tuesday was the first day back with home school orchestra - I am down to four students from the eight who started but these are the kids who are actually willing to put in the work to learn an instrument. It was also the first rehearsal of civic orchestra since our early December concert. And Sally got beautified at the groomer.

Speaking of Sally, I took her back down to Open Door to get a urine specimen Wednesday morning. It came back negative but I am not surprised since she just finished a round of antibiotics the day before! We fed the sister missionaries that evening.

English class was cancelled again Thursday night due to continued bad side streets so Steve and I finished watching Skeleton Crew. It had a satisfying ending and I was not as annoyed at the two boys by the end.

Oh, it was the first time that Steve and I used our YMCA membership to walk the indoor track two mornings this week. The sidewalks are still so ice covered that we couldn't get any exercise otherwise. It is a VERY nice Rec Center!

Friday was Steve's 72nd birthday and we started the day with Beckie buying us breakfast at IHOP. So delicious. I fixed battered cod and onion rings for dinner with a chocolate cake for dessert. And I gave Steve a Culvers gift card for his gift. He was a happy man!

Today we worked at the baptistry in the morning, I had two music lessons in the afternoon and we drove to Ballwin to have cake and ice cream with Quinn - who turned 12 -  this evening. Then we watched the movie version of Wicked. It was so good! 

Fiona decided to make herself at home on our coats! And that is my gluten-free Nothing Bundt Cake at the back of the chair. Emily is always so kind to provide something I can eat when we go over to celebrate birthdays.

 

Hunkering down for the week

Kirsti sent this photo to me from last Sunday. They have changed church meeting times to 1:30 and poor Ivan just couldn't stay away during Sacrament meeting. It is such a sweet picture. He is now a BIG boy and graduated out of nursery and into the Sunbeam class. 

We have changed our church meeting times, also, to 12:30 but we didn't get to attend last Sunday thanks to about 7-8 inches of snow that fell throughout the day. I took pictures to show the progress:

One can really see the progress via the boxwood bushes as the snow accumulates on them. By Monday morning, the snow had stopped but the accumulation of it and the painfully slow task of getting it off the roads (there are still side streets that have not been cleared!) caused cancellations all week long. Most of the public schools were closed all week - except on Thursday - because we got MORE snow on Friday - about 3-4 inches. Afghanistan Women's Meeting was cancelled last Monday and is again this coming Monday. The temple was closed Tuesday and Friday, the days that either Steve or I attend.  I didn't have orchestra rehearsal Tuesday night because we rehearse in a public high school and they were closed that day. The first day that either of us ventured out was Wednesday because I had a dermatology appointment that morning and I also needed to drive down to House Springs to pick up some antibiotics for Sally. She has another UTI! They drew a specimen back on December 18th but then they lost the sample for a couple of weeks. I was called on Saturday, the 4th to say it was positive.  Anyway, the major roads by Wednesday were fine and I had no problems navigating. Steve and I also did grocery shopping that afternoon and had no problem (except whoever is contracted to clear Walmart's parking lot did a terrible job). Sally was suppose to have a grooming on Friday but the new snow cancelled that. We are hoping that if we keep her little pee pee area trimmed of excess hair (a bikini cut, so to speak) and if we wipe her after she goes potty, it might prevent future UTIs. I am also putting about a tablespoon of cranberry juice in her morning food in hopes that it will help. I know cranberry tablets have certainly helped me.

Anyway, it is a good thing that Steve and I like each other because we have been cooped up in this house all week long. One of our major tasks this week was to clear our crazy-long driveway of snow. We did it over two days, fifteen to twenty minute shifts spread throughout the day to save our poor old bodies from too much stress and strain. Here is the driveway almost cleared to the road.... 

We have watched more things on the TV than we have in a long time. We are over half-way through Skeleton Crew and enjoying it (but the two boys are VERY annoying with their stupid curiosity). We watched the last two movies of the God Is Not Dead series. I really liked the last one. We watched The Inn Of The Sixth Happiness that I checked out from the library after we watched Empire of the Sun. It was good. We also watched Dune 2. So creative! So bizarre! So much story to relate! 

 One big project to keep me from getting cabin fever was to re-organize our family history stuff in the library on Monday morning. (below is what the looked like in the middle of the undertaking)

I also caught up on my Christmas thank-you notes and my scrapbooks throughout the week.

I have been working on patchwork quilt tops to donate to Happy Hookers and here are some of what I have been doing the last couple of weeks:

I was able to teach music lessons Wednesday, Thursday and today. 

I painted with water color and with acrylic throughout the week. It is always fun to paint! 

We put out our snow sign up this year in the front yard and I built a snowman this afternoon.

It has been a lovely, peaceful week. 

The only negative event has been the death of Tamara's mother on Friday. She was admitted to the hospital Wednesday evening and it was discovered that her liver was basically not working at all and by Friday mid-day, she was gone.  Tamara flew out to be with her family this morning and Steven will join her for the funeral. Sheila was a wonderful woman and she will be sorely missed. Her health had been declining for a few years so she is finally out of pain, at least. 

I will close with a cute Feathersnap picture of Sally as she runs out to go potty and a couple of pics of birds at the feeder: a junco and a female cardinal hanging out with a sparrow.

 

2025 will be a jubilee year!

 Fifty years ago on January 31, Steve and I were married so everything in 2025 will be commemorating 50 years of something for him and me. Nice, huh? 

We finished off 2024 being in Greenwood Indiana. We drove there Monday and we stayed until after a mid-day nap on Wednesday. We really didn't do a whole lot. I pulled out Julina's sewing machine and mended some things. We ran to a couple of stores for New Year's food and snacks but we didn't stay up until midnight. We watched the 2024  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and re-watched Red One. Julina worked much of the time. 

Once back in St. Louis, I resumed taking Christmas decorations down (the main tree came down last Saturday) and, by Thursday evening, I was finished. Steve took down all his nativities today so we just have outdoor lights and oversized balls on the deck to put away but it has been too cold to want to do much of anything outside. And, we are expecting a major winter storm tonight into tomorrow. State highway department information signs on the interstates have said "don't drive Saturday night and Sunday" so our church meetings have been cancelled as I suspect most other churches have, too. 

We worked in the baptistry this morning and, possibly due to the impending storm or because people are still on winter break, the attendance was light. Tonight, we watched the third movie of the God Is Not Dead series that we received last Christmas. All the movies are very thought provoking. 

I honestly don't have much more to report so I will close with a bird feeder update - the squirrels have discovered the feeder!  Bah Humbug!  Once temperatures get back into the 40's, we will look into installing a pole in the middle of the yard with some kind of squirrel baffle. In the meantime - SO. MANY. SQUIRREL. PHOTOS!!!!!  Plus snaps of Steve, me, our car....but, some fun birds, too. I am fairly sure the brown bird with the longer tail and beak is a nuthatch.