The bald ones

Monday we had an entire morning at home, which was wonderful. Dee spent a bunch of time cleaning floors and bathrooms, while I emptied the trash, worked on my lesson, and did a few things to the Magnanti laptop. Dee writes: We've been so busy that it's been two weeks since I cleaned. In truth, that apartment looks dirty in three days. We don't know why, but there's an incredible accumulation of dust on the floors in a short time. The raspberry-colored towels I love are STILL leaving lint on every bathroom surface and even shows up in the shower drain. So, that's why you see so many posts about me cleaning. Doug does the dishes and lots of paperwork while I fight the invading dust bunnies.  It was sunny and somewhat warm outside, though inside the Institute I was pretty chilly. Thank goodness that I could go into the library and turn on the overhead heater there. 

I spent almost the entire afternoon working on my lesson for Tuesday evening, on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Ugo normally runs that class, but I volunteered to teach this one because John D. Lee, who was tried and executed for his part in the massacre, is my great-great-grandfather (my middle name is Lee). Over the years I have taught this topic many times in Seminary, and I bring some family connections and perspective to it. It's such a horrible tale, but I try to explain some lessons we can learn from it. 

For home evening tonight, we had a good group, but only one girl! Our demographics are definitely unusual. Dee taught the lesson, giving some info on six of the apostles (she chose the bald ones :-) in preparation for General Conference next weekend. She assigned one to each pair of kids and had them look up a few things on the internet to share. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I wanted them to be able to distinguish these six men from each other and get to know something about them. Junior, one our nonmembers, took notes and was still studying them the next day.

 

Afterwards we had cookies, chips, and cake, which disappeared quickly. The best part is that Dee didn't have to spend time preparing them.

Our new quote book is working nicely for FHE. We asked Oscar if he could recommend an Italian vocabulary book for us to use, but he seemed rather puzzled by the concept, which has been the general reaction here. We hoped that, with his superb English and high intelligence, he would be helpful, but no luck.

April is back from Armenia, here for a week or so before going home. Several friends came by to see her after the lesson.

So far this week is happily shaping up as much less busy than the last one. Our district meeting got cancelled, and Dee is doing a family history lab instead of teaching a class, so there is no lesson prep, which is all much more relaxing for us.