A Week at Home...

That's right, no road trips this week. We had a week we could stay inside every day in our wonderful little home. We were looking forward to this little week. Claude said it was like a transition from the holidays to real life. However, this made for a 'weak week' in the picture realm. We didn't stay inside every day. Things happen and we took time to leave our little bungalow to take care of assorted business.

Monday, January 5th, I was able to get some things completed like the minutes typed up and distributed from our Relief Society presidency meeting Sunday evening, adding a budget page to our Relief Society lesson schedule (this was fun as I haven't worked on formulas in a spreadsheet and had to do a little research to remember some of them), and I was able to get our hotels and some potential restaurant sites for our travel in February and March. 

Claude had a nice conversation with Katelyn which I was able to interrupt to get ideas of Raelyn's birthday in January. Katelyn texted me a picture of the skates Raelyn wanted. She wants to learn to ice skate like her dad, who plays ice hockey. Drew told her she needed to learn to skate well with roller skates first. I was able to place the order through Walmart and have them delivered to Katelyn's home. Yeah!! 

I was also able to work with Steve, my brother-in-law, to get names straightened out for initiatory at the temple. 

We opted to go to Taco Bell for our dinner and enjoy quiet time in the evening. A good day. Things were accomplished without pressure to accomplish more than one has time for. I like that.

Tuesday, January 6th, was our second day at home. Now, I had some reading I wanted to do. This was a perfect week to take some time for that. I am reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. We will see a play on this book in March. I did not make it through the book. I did make it through most of it. 

I received a call from the eye glass shop in our ophthalmologist office. They had my second pair of glasses. I stopped reading and went to pick them up. Then made a stop at CVS to pick up some herbal medicine that is supposed to be helping with my poor feet. Score on this stop. The medicine was discounted and if you bought one you could get a second for free!! Yeah!!

We called Kris and Cordell to see how he is mending. He tried to lay on his stomach and it caused the incision on his knee to bleed some. It appears to be okay. He has strict orders to stay in his recliner. Bless his heart. This is so against his nature. I marvel that, as we age, it often seems the things we liked the most in life, are taken from us or restricted in some way. 

I enjoyed a text stream with my BFF Laura. 

Claude made me some sausage/corn chowder for dinner. Oh My Heavens! It was delicious. This is such a good comfort food on a cold day.

Another good day for our transition week.

Wednesday, January 7th, I do not know what happened to me but I slept in till 10am. I NEVER do this. Claude is quite capable of it. Not me. It was good to sleep though so I must have needed it. 

When I got up, I finished the laundry I started on Tuesday. 

The remainder of my day was taking down the Christmas tree. I did this with the intention of counting how many ornaments I have on the tree. I would take a bunch down, count them as I put them in the boxes, then make that many hash marks on a sheet. I missed one time entering the hash marks about I had 75. I gave up on counting the ornaments. I read an item on Facebook that said the average tree has 75 ornaments on it. Well, let me just state my tree has about 10 times that many ornaments. So many memories with these ornaments. I also have an order in which I take down my tree. All the ornaments come down first. There is an oblong box that I layer ornaments with paper between the layers. There is a metal can that I put all the handmade and soft cloth ornaments in. Finally there is a copy paper box with the 20 White House Christmas ornaments in it as well as a few others that have their own boxes. The White House ornaments I keep in date order. So I collect them as I take them off the tree. Then I sit and find the right ornament for the right box and put them in their respective boxes. Next the ribbon garland and the wooden bead garland are taken off. The ribbon garland I sit and wind around a spool. There are two spools of ribbon. Then the lights come off. Each strand of lights goes in a plastic grocery bag and into a box that just for all the lights. Then I take each branch off of each limb of the tree and carefully straight all the twigs so they are going the same direction and crushed together. These are kept in piles of the same size. This make putting them in their two boxes it takes to store them much easier and much easier to get out for assemble the next Christmas. I put the tree stand on the bottom of one box and the two center poles along the sides of the tall box. Then I places the stacks of branches in their boxes keeping the stacks together. The garland over the back door goes in. The tree skirt goes in. Whew, it is complete. I also took the Christmas wreath off the front door, brought in the poinsettias, changed the flag in the flower bed by the front door and got all boxes to the shed. Well, Claude helped with the two tree boxes. It took 5 hours to get all this done and put away correctly. 

All this effort gave Claude, (who boxed the exterior decorations and got them to the shed) and I the right to hamburgers for dinner. Burger King was our choice this time. Then we nestled in to eat out burgers and watch Star Wars Episodes 4, 5 and 6. 

While watching, I received a text from Jeannie Watson requesting help with Jamie Kumar's funeral. They serve a meal to the family after the service. We agreed to have Claude make funeral potatoes and rolls and I would help with serving and in the kitchen. We were very happy to be asked to help with this for the Kumar family. 

Thursday, January 8th, it was time for a little grocery run. That means a kick-start at Bojangles for a biscuit. As we drove down McClellan Circle to turn left on Broadway, there was a plethora of sirens close and in the distance. We definitely counted 3 ambulances, 2 fire trucks, a lot of police cars, a couple of trucks. They just kept coming. We turned the corned and went through the drive thru at Bojangles and they were still coming from all directions. We knew they were turning into the medical office section where our doctor's office and physical therapists office are located. We knew there was not room for all those vehicles. It is hard enough to find a parking spot. It is not uncommon to find people parking at the places you can drive through. We had our biscuits and watched Broadway as the traffic started to return. Then we went grocery shopping.

When we were home from grocery shopping, I checked Facebook and found this notice about all the commotion in the medical office park. This is the oral surgeons office that once helped Claude getting an implant. Their office is the last one on that side. Someone must have come down the opposite side (there is a median thru the office park with trees on it) and turned to go to this end office. Not sure how they got the speed to run over the curb, up the sidewalk and into the door of the office. Later reports told us someone was standing inside the office and was pinned in by the car. Someone in the office managed to extricate them. They were taken to the hospital and, amazingly, had no injuries. The person driving the car was trapped in their car until emergency personnel could get them out. They had to shore up the door until the building could be inspected for soundness of the structure. Wow!! That was not a good start to this persons day!

I spent the afternoon clearing some of my documentaries off the DVR while Claude napped. I was also able to set up a time to visit with Howard and Laura. In the evening, we watched Castle.

Friday, January 9th, was simply a lazy day. Got a few things done on my laptop. Also found the pattern to crochet the Christmas ornaments for Relief Society for 2026, I got three of them made before my right arm yelled at me to stop. Ugh! They really are red. They look orange in this picture. But, they are red.

Saturday, January 10th, we gave our day to Jamie's funeral. Claude made his funeral potatoes and rolls in the morning. We left for the church at 12:30. Claude left the food in the kitchen. Then we went to the chapel. What a treat this was. We saw so many friends from when we moved to Kentucky 21 years ago. Some came all the way from Louisiana to be there for Jamie. It was great to get hugs from everyone. 

When I got the program, I realized that one of the hymns chosen has sever verses. JennThey Squire was playing the piano. She and I agreed we should sing the first their that are imbedded in the music. The last four are after the music and we agreed we should do the 7th verse to tie the story together. I found Bishop Perkes and asked him to announce that we would sing those verses. This hymn was "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief". Each verse tells the story of how someone was helped with a need. The 7th verse explains that the stranger giving this help was the Savior. Beautiful hymn. Very appropriate for Jamie. 

The other thing I learned was their would be a hymn sung at the cemetery. We were not planning on going to the cemetery as I was to work in the kitchen and help with serving and clean-up. Change of plans. We went to the cemetery and I led the hymn there. Then back to the church and Claude left me to do my part. 

So many kind and wonderful comments were made about Jaime. He was a large fellow with his ancestors being from India. He had a heart that was huge and cared for others. I marvel at the beauty of a funeral service. The coming together of family and friends. The kind words that comfort and uplift hearts that are a bit broken. The gratitude of a family for each little things done to make this day good for them. So much goodness at a very difficult time. The scriptures say there must be opposition in all things. A funeral give one a complete understanding of this principle. There was difficulty. Tears were being shed. Hearts were hurting. At the same time, there was so much positive energy, so much goodness. Opposites that confirm each other.

I called Claude to come pick me up when I was drying the last of the dishes. He took me to McAllister's for dinner. That Dr. Pepper was sooooo good. Then we headed home and put on our stretchy clothes and curled up in our recliners with our television shows. Another good, full day.

Sunday, January 11th, we awoke to a little snow coming down. However, our congregation is stretched out of a lot of land area. Some of our members got more snow and the streets were treacherous.

After sacrament meeting, I went to Primary to take pictures of all the sisters that serve in Primary. I want to also get pictures of the sisters that serve in Young Women's. I will do that in two weeks. Primary has two sessions. I finished part of the pictures and had time to sit in Junior Primary. A tiny little fella was to give the opening prayer. He may have been 3 or 4 years old. When he got to the front of the room, he automatically knelt down to prayer. Jenna Potter was the counselor conducting. She knelt with him and helped him to say the prayer. My heart melted. Usually the kids come to the front and stand with their arms folded. Everyone folds their arms and bows their head for the prayer. Clearly this little guy is from a family that prays and kneels by their beds. I always ask Heavenly Father to give me one 'cup filling moment' each Sunday. This was that cup filling moment. 

We had Jimmy John's for lunch. The man that manages Jimmy John's knows us by the Jeep. He told us he will be leaving in a week as he is starting a new job at Toyota. How nice to know the people well enough to sincerely share this lift changing point in time. Will miss his cheerful attitude and smiling face. His banter about the Jeep and his motorcycle rides. Happy he will have a job that may actually pay him enough to live. 

We had a quiet evening at home. 

Aubrey posted pictures celebrating 5 years of sobriety. That is a very worthy goal. Very proud of her for staying the course with this goal. These are the pictures she posted of her and Nelson, her child and our grandmonster.

This was a good 'transition week' for Claude and me. We started it with no where to be. We filled it with some important outings. Now, let's see what real life feels like again.