Ice Skating, Replaced Water Heaters, Working, Thanksgiving, Shot Blocker, Church Speaking, Sickness, Weirdness

Another two weeks have flown by.  We are keeping busy.  Two weeks ago Aaron and I had the chance to attend an afternoon endowment session at the Ogden Temple.  It was nice to be back there again.  After we got back home from the temple the youth had a combined young women/young men activity and we got to go ice skating.  It was a lot of fun.  Here’s Daniel:

Sarah and her friend, Laurie:

Here’s most of our youth that got to attend:

I love to ice skate and enjoyed going.

Between Covid shot clinics and Flu shot clinics I have gotten to work with my sister, Johanna, a few times.  It is fun to chit chat while we shoot people--haha!

Every month Josh’s Mission President’s Wife puts together a newsletter for all the missionary’s families.  This last month she also put together a slide show of all the baptisms for that month.  It was fun to see Josh in a few of the baptism pictures.  Here’s one of the pictures that was in it:

We have a plug on our island in the kitchen. However, it is the one that gets used and abused quite a bit which has made it very loose.  It got to the point that you had to use one hand to hold the plug in place and the other hand to work whatever item you had plugged in.  It was a bit frustrating.  Aaron ended up changing out the plug for me so it wouldn’t be so loose anymore.  He even got Sarah to come help him out, too:

Aaron and I flip flop cars quite a bit.  If I am driving a long distance to work I will take the Camry and he will take the van to work.  The Camry gets better gas mileage.  He doesn’t really like driving the van to work because he says the guys at work make fun of other guys that drive mini vans--haha!  I just shared these memes with him:

It works out most days, however, the other day I was late leaving for work down in Salt Lake when I got in the Camry and found that I only could drive 29 more miles until I ran out of gas--DOH!!

I HAD to drop by the gas station to fill up before I could get on my way.  Aaron didn’t run out all the gas and leave it like that for me intentionally, but maybe subconsciously though--haha!  Oh well, no worries.

Aaron is always up for a good steak.  He has also figured out that our local grocery store will put steaks on clearance every night around 8-ish pm.  Sometimes there are good steaks and sometimes there’s nothing at all.  The other day Daniel was craving a steak and talked Aaron into going to the grocery store to try their luck with the clearance steaks.  They were both in luck and scored two cheap steaks.  They came home and Aaron showed Daniel how to prepare and cook a yummy steak outside on the Blackstone for a late dinner.  I figure there was some man-bonding going on as I looked at this picture of them as they watched their steaks cook--haha!

We had some unfortunate events last week.  Our water heaters decided to die on us two days before Thanksgiving.  DOH!!  They needed to be changed which was a bit daunting of a task.  We had a family friend who is a plumber who was able to get us a good deal (however, they were still a TON of money!) on two 40 gallon water heaters and had them delivered to us.  They are pretty big so until Aaron could get to installing them they had to be put in the garage which meant there wouldn’t be room for Daniel to park in the garage until they got installed.  Now if you can’t have fun/tease your kids who can you do that to?!  After the water heaters got delivered Aaron texted Daniel this:

Daniel was so excited.  When he got home he Facetimed his friends as he opened the garage to see what was parked there.  He was sorely disappointed when he saw it was just water heaters and came inside the house with the universal teenage annoyed face look:

Daniel was even less excited when Aaron asked--okay let’s be honest--TOLD him that he needed to help him move them both downstairs to the basement.  

Water Heater #1:

Water Heater#2:

Thank goodness for Youtube!  Aaron and Daniel were able to do most of the work, but at the end Aaron had a question he couldn’t figure out.  

He called Bryan, my brother, who was able to stop by for a few minutes to help.  At that time they also changed out the expansion tank.  Aaron thought it was empty, but was sorely mistaken.  When he went to pull it off, 5 gallons of pressurized water sprayed him from head to toe.  Daniel and Bryan thought it was pretty hilarious--Aaron did, too, once the water stopped spraying him and he was able to come up for air.  Nice.  They are now all installed and it is nice to have a hot shower once again.

The next morning when Daniel had to go somewhere he actually had to scrape the frost off his windows and had never had to do that before.  Luckily, Aaron was leaving for work about the same time so he showed Daniel how to scrape his windows.  Daniel is spoiled by being able to park in the garage--haha!

We hosted Thanksgiving this year.  I was trying to get everything ready when I looked over and saw my kids sitting on the couch with their devices.  I figured it was time to get them to help!  I assigned Sarah and Noah to clean and organize the cupboards/drawers.  Daniel got to clean out the pantry.  For an added bonus Sarah even cleaned out the fridge for me.  It was awesome!!  They weren’t very excited to do chores like that, but they did it anyway which I am grateful for!  Here’s Sarah and Noah doing the cupboards:

Like I said we hosted Thanksgiving this year.  We had G&G T, my brother Bryan and his family, my sister Johanna and her family and us.  Thankfully everyone offered and brought something for dinner.  Aaron smoked two turkeys--one cajun flavored and one traditional.  It turned out very yummy.  It was nice to visit and the cousins had fun hanging out.  However, that morning we realized our dishwasher had stopped working.  DOH!!  That is a lot of dishes to do by hand.  After dinner my brother Bryan helped troubleshoot it and between him and Aaron realized it was actually a quick fix that was related to replacing the water heaters, but not after I had done the dishes by hand.  Sigh.  Oh well it is up and running and we are good to go now!!  When we found out the dishwasher wasn’t working we were scrambling.  We were late getting our part of dinner ready and were afraid those who would show up would see something like this:

I am sure everyone is glad that didn’t happen.  We did get our act together and dinner went well.  Here’s everyone that was here:

Thanksgiving morning I couldn’t sleep and was awake at 5 am.  Josh happened to be on Messenger at the same time so we were able to direct message that morning.  Josh asked for my mashed potato recipe and told me a bit about what he was going to do that day.  It was fun to be able to ‘talk’ to him right when he got up.  Josh was also able to call right after Thanksgiving dinner and Facetimed everyone.  It was so nice to talk to him and have everyone say hi!  Here’s a few screen shots of some of the people he talked with:

We just mailed off Josh’s Christmas package this week.  His mission emailed and said they needed all packages to be delivered by December 6 so we did a fun 12 days of Christmas for him with some small things with added scriptures.  I didn’t realize how much I would miss him at Thanksgiving and I am assuming Christmas will be the same.  It is hard not having everyone here.  

Anyway, Aaron found some clearance roasts on sale.  He bought some and him and Noah helped prepare them to turn them into pastrami.  It takes two weeks for the meat to cure in the fridge, but Noah had fun injecting the meat with the brine solution:

Homemade pastrami is really tasty, too!

Noah got his first Covid shot two weeks ago.  He has recently developed a severe phobia of needles.  It took Aaron and me holding him down to get him his flu shot this year so knowing he needed this shot soon was not a good thing.  The local high school did a Covid shot clinic, however, it was on a night that I was working so Aaron would have to take Noah by himself.  I talked to Noah and told him some things he could do to help have the shot not hurt.  I lent him my ’shot blocker’ which is a flexible, plastic thing with plastic nubs that you wrap around the shot area and pinch while you are getting the injection.  This is what it looks like:

This helps trick you into not feeling the shot.  I also told him to put a bottle of ice water on his arm to numb it up for 30 minutes before he would get the shot.  Aaron took him and said he did okay.  Noah told Aaron later that he didn’t feel like he could totally freak out in front of this nurse because it wasn’t his mom and that would be embarrassing.  WHAT?!?!  What a punk!!  Had I known that I would have had someone else give him his flu shot because he was fighting Aaron and I tooth and nail when we had him get it.  Anyway, Aaron texted me this picture after he got his first Covid shot:

I am glad it went okay.  I am hoping the second one goes just as well.  I got my Covid booster a few weeks ago.  I had to wait until I had a few days off afterward just in case it made me sick.  Luckily, all I had was a sore arm no other side effects.  I was happy about that!
 

Two Sundays ago Matthew finally got set apart for his calling.  He was so excited!!  He even invited G&G T to come see him be set apart as the assistant building representative.  

Speaking of church Sarah and Daniel got cornered into being youth speakers.  When we went in for tithing settlement the second counselor in the bishopric asked them to speak.  They weren’t too excited about it, but I think everyone needs that experience.  However, Tuesday of that week Aaron got a call from the same counselor asking him to be a regular speaker, too.  I had a good laugh about that.  

However, early Sunday morning about 2 am Aaron woke up feeling like he’d been hit by a truck.  Body aches, horrible sore throat and a hoarse voice.  He did not feel well.  He ended up texting and saying he probably shouldn’t come to church because he was sick.  He felt bad about leaving them in the lurch, but they filled in just fine.  Sarah and Daniel did great.  They both wrote their own talks and weren’t too terrified to get up there and speak.  Luckily, Aaron was able to watch from home via Zoom since our ward is still doing that.  G&G T were able to come and listen to them, too.  

Later that Sunday Aaron went to see a doctor to get tested for Strep Throat.  He amazingly didn’t have that so they decided to test him for Covid, RSV, and flu.  All of those came back negative as well so I guess he just has a nasty virus.  I started teasing him saying he just has a ‘man cold’.  He doesn’t think I am very funny, but at least I think I am--haha!  He was really sick though and ended up staying home from work Monday and Tuesday as well.  He is starting to feel a little bit better, though.

Matthew got to try out making some Funeral Potatoes.  He called me and asked for the recipe and it had to be sent RIGHT THEN because he was grocery shopping and wanted to buy all the ingredients.  One thing Matthew struggles with is patience, but luckily, I had time right then to text him the recipe.  He made it and LOVED it.  The last recipe he loved he ended up making it and eating it every day last month.  That is how you can tell how much he likes a recipe by how many days he will eat it in a row.  So far Funeral Potatoes have made it every day for a week so far and counting--haha!

I took Sarah and Daniel Christmas clothes shopping last week.  They are both getting to the point they have to pick out their own clothes because they are picky.  I took them to Old Navy because they were having a really good jeans sale.  However, the only pair of jeans that Daniel liked that was in his size was on the mannequin.  I tried to discreetly undress the mannequin to get the jeans off of him, but I couldn’t get them off and just ended up looking weird and creepy instead.  Daniel and Sarah were so embarrassed and walked away pretending not to be with me.  That just made me look that much more weird trying to undress a male mannequin by myself--haha!  Good thing for me an employee walked by a few minutes later and asked if I needed help.  I sure did!  He got the pants off the male mannequin for me, but Sarah and Daniel were still not very excited to be with me for a while afterward--haha!

We hung out with the Einzinger’s last Saturday night.  It had been a long time since we had all gotten together and we had a lot of fun.  The kids all hung out together and had a good time while the adults played games.  It was a good night!