Books to the ceiling,

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
Arnold Lobel

The poem fits me well EXCEPT I already have read almost all my books, some of them several times AND I really hope never to have a beard.

But, it has nothing to do with this post.


What a weekend last week!

Andrew was ordained an Elder in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints..

Benjamin has been called as Teacher's QuorumPresident.

Ruth was released as Young Women's counselor and sustained as Primary President.

(Don't I have awesome children?! This is just last weekend's example of some of their awesomess)

David and Teresa came up from San Luis Obispo for the weekend for Andrew's ordination. DT and I went to the temple Saturday morning. They took me to lunch at the Hop Sings Palace in Folsom. We went shopping for shoes for Teresa. That was surprisingly entertaining. Teresa is a fun model.

Saturday afternoon David played with the amazing non-working TV/HD converter set up. He shared ideas with Joseph about what might be the problem and ways to test it. Today, the boys have done all kinds of re-configurations trying to isolate the problem. Individually, everything checks out fine, but when Joseph puts it all back together again, it doesn't work. We have gotten poor reception for some time. With the HD converter box, poor reception equals NO reception. It worked great this afternoon when Ben and Joseph took the converter box up on the roof and connected it up there. Even if the box was an all weather piece of equipment, channel changing would be a tad awkward. Generally, we watch fuzzy TV without the converter box. If we don't figure this out, when TV goes all digital, we will get nothing. not so fun.

Andrew and Benjamin returned relatively unscathed from their high adventure activity. Only somewhat sunburned. I think they had a grand time.

Last Saturday evening, we all went to a High Priest Quorum family potluck in the Welge's backyard (formerly Burr's backyard). Good food. Good People.

We finished off the day visiting over at Ruth and Tom's where we returned Sunday afternoon for a family dinner. And then, sigh, David and Teresa went home.

What exciting things happened during the week?

Fiscal Year End. Big push to get all our invoices scheduled by the 30th. Since I didn't want to do overtime Saturday with David and Teresa here, I started a little early and worked a little late Thursday, Friday and Monday the 30th. Monday, I worked 11 hours and cleared my desk just minutes before the system shut me out for the evening. Despite all the rush, naturally more fiscal 07 invoices came in after year end. We are going to have to accrue them. (Something I don't fully understand, but hey, I'll do what the boss tells me.) Waiting for the special accrual batchlog to be made available, now I find time dragging as there is only so much we can do. I am auditing the invoices as they come in so they will be ready to accrue and schedule when the batchlog comes through. And doing little odd jobs around the office. I wouldn't want to be going full bore like we were coming up to year end all the time, but actually it rather beats the slow time after the first day or so.

Joseph is not quite continually, but all too often plagued by bicycle tire problems. Makes his commute a strain. He is now considering going to solid tubes - if he can find them.

The Stake held its traditional Fourth of July Breakfast out at the Cordova building yesterday. In a stirring testimony, President Fisher reminded us of our legacy of freedom and faith and that it was not long after this country was founded that the gospel was restored. We enjoyed the breakfast and opted not to go watch the community parade. The boys helped load up the tables and chairs from our building and then put them back where they belong. (They had helped load them up the night before. Andrew was up and at our Bishop counselor's home around the block at 5:15AM so he could go help unload and set up. )

Andrew spent the afternoon working for Chris Pena.

Ben and I worked on sanding the sea floor. The guys and I worked on it again today. Who knew that after using a big ol power sander, there would be so much hand sanding left to do?!!! The guys and I worked on it again today. We are beginning to think we should have left the beat up old floor alone. Ship wreck. There are stains that are not going to come out. The worst, naturally in what will be open areas of floor not covered by bunk beds and dressers. Doesn't it figure. I am not sure how much we have to do or how I will know when is done. We patched a couple of holes and cracks. After they set or dry or whatever, we need to sand them. Then sand with a higher grade? Eventually, we can sweep and vacuum repeatedly, followed by a slightly damp mop. Still not sure whether to stain or not - largely because of the stains in the floor. Tom says even if we want the floor light, we should stain it. )- *tongue sticking out* The on-line instructions I read said we could skip that. I sure would like to skip something. Then we do the protection thing. Then redo the baseboards which were totally messed up by the sanding. Will this room ever be ready for the boys?? Will we ever get to the rest of the house?

When I couldn't stand sanding anymore today, I joined Ben's assault on the cliffs. and the volcano grew. Joseph tried to work on organizational projects in his room, but we constantly needed his expertise on thing unearthed. The recycle can is quite full now. (They empty on Fridays.) Innocent visitors would have no idea how much work we have done, so very much more remains. Sad, isn't it?

Last night we decided to stay home and watch fireworks on TV - despite the bad reception. Concern for our animals mingled with a little laziness. We watched the Boston Pops and Washington DC. DC was especially awesome - or would have been if we could really see it well. We enjoyed it. We ate hot dogs, potato salad, green salad, watermelon. cantaloupe and corn on the cob. yummy! We played 13 Dead End Drive. Ben (the Chauffeur) won. He is very good at leading players to try to get rid of people. They had my 3 pieces waltzing in front of the fireplace the first part of the game and then they did all my guys in. Two (the Butler and the Gardener) they finally got in the fireplace, the third (the Cat) got a chandelier dropped on it. We ate strawberry swirl ice cream with fresh strawberries out of blue bowls. The guys didn't want to have blueberries with their ice cream so I made blueberry muffins today.

Thursday, one of my Scouts from old Camellia Troop 40 called because he needs his medical form from last year so he can go to Scout Camp this year. I made a lot of phone calls and emails, but cannot find what happened to those records. In all the confusion and emotion of the ward breakup, we lost track of them. Fortunately, we have a chiropractor in our ward who will take care of it.

Thus I learned that Scout camp is the 14th! Since the ward was organized in October, I have repeatedly told the Young Men leaders who seem to think that Scouting is only for Deacons (they should read that Mormon.org glossary about Young Men) that "our" (now defunct Camellia City Troop 40) older boys enjoyed Scouting, liked helping the younger Scouts grow, AND go to Scout camp. Benjamin, who goes to all his meetings, has heard nothing about camp. The Scoutmaster said that he thought Ben was not interested. I spoke to the Scoutmaster yesterday at the Pancake Breakfast. Ben can still go. In fact, he told Ben today that he was emailing him the necessary forms. Fortunately, I kept a copy of Ben's medical form so we are good there. And the Scout budget - to which Andrew and Benjamin have contributed nicely by working the elections - pays for Scout camp, so I don't have to worry about that.

Speaking of medical. Andrew had a dental check Tuesday. He needs his wisdom teeth pulled. Disappointment, but no surprise. Another sacrifice for the Lord's work. Our dental does not cover being put to sleep for that! Another small investment I shall need to make! Even if Andrew was gutsy enough to face it, I am not gutsy enough to face him going through it. I told him we would have him fully knocked out. "Thanks, Mom." He also had his physical check Wednesday. Now we have to get his lab results. We still have to get his TB test, too. The timing was wrong because of the holiday.

We are slowly getting there. Pretty much covers everything.

It is way past my bedtime and not much likelihood of a nap tomorrow. Now that Ruth is Primary President and Tom is still Ward Mission Leader, they both go to ward council meetings 1st and 3rd Sunday afternoons and I babysit.

Good night.