a crazy busy week

Last week was a totally crazy busy week for me, and this week looks to be quite similar. Lots of that crazy-busy stuff comes from RS. I am doing visiting teaching interviews and I have a total of 28 sisters to meet with ASAP. We've also had some changes in our ward boundaries, resulting in the addition of 4 new families, so we've been visiting with those new sisters in their homes hoping to get to know them better and welcoming them to the ward. I also had Enrichment meeting on Thursday evening. We chose to do an openhouse evening from 5-9 and give the sisters the opportunity to help with a variety of different humanitarian projects. It was supposed to be easy...but then things started to fall apart with unexpected happenings. I'm going to spare the details because in the end everything went just fine and we were able to get a lot of projects completed.

The most memorable event of the week was Jared getting his teeth pulled by the oral surgeon. He is having baby teeth pulled because some of them are anklose (spelling?) and will not fall out on their own. Besides that, keeping them in any longer is going to cause his jaw bones to grow in an arch instead of a straight line. So, Thursday morning Mark took him to the doctor to have 4 teeth pulled. He came home with having 7, yes 7, teeth pulled. Once the doctor got into his mouth he found 3 other loose teeth and decided to pull them to spare us the falling out/pulling out at home in a couple weeks. Jared didn't have any pain after he woke up from the procedure and his gums are healing well. That's a relief! Basically the poor kid has nothing to chew with though. However, we can already see some of the permanent teeth peeking through, so it's all good I guess. Here's a couple of pictures:
Jared holding the tooth with a lot of root left on it. Most of the teeth were molars.

All in a row -- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7!

One of the great things that happened this week was the warm spring weather which has brought out the tulips in front of the house. Love these!

The nice weather drove us outside to do some yardwork. Jared cut down all the raspberry canes and Mark raked up a ton of leaves left over from the fall. He also discovered a snake living in our lilac bushes where lots of leaves get trapped -- ewwww! Um, that pretty much squelched the urge to do any more yard work!

Ryan got very creative over the weekend and built a huge fort in the family room. He furnished it with his radio, mp3, blanket, and snacks. What a life! I need a fort.

Last week was of course St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do something to celebrate, so we started the day with green pancakes. The kids were a little worried that they might taste weird just because they were green, but they got over it and ate well! For dinner we had stuffed green peppers, pistachio salad, and cucumbers. I was going to do green rolls, but totally ran out of time, so we had to do the rhodes rolls thing. We had a yummy lime cheesecake for dessert.

I am also in the process of painting a bedroom that we're turning into a craft/toy room. (Jacob & Matthew are now roommates) I spent a good deal of time working on that on Saturday only to realize that I totally hated the paint color. So I had to find a new color and get new paint during this last week. I talked Mark into helping me paint this last Saturday and then I finished the second coat yesterday. I love the new color --buckskin. I'll be working on getting all the tape off and getting things moved into that room this week.

Also this past weekend we had stake conference meetings to go to and on Sunday we got to attend the Draper Temple dedication. Ryan, Jared & I were able to go to that while Mark stayed home with the other boys. It was a good experience for all of us to be able to participate in that, especially after being able to tour the temple in person in January.

As I said at the beginning, this week is crazy as well. I've got more RS interviews and meetings, Ryan plays his last basketball game of the season, and Jacob's spring soccer season kicks off this week.