Goodbye Ash Trees

When they announced all of the Ash trees would be getting cut down this past August, it felt like a personal loss. I know it’s silly and they’re only trees, but I was so grateful when they started on the opposite side of the neighborhood. Our neighborhood is lined with these trees, so they had to cut down over four hundred trees. As they cut down the trees in front of my house, I felt grateful that I got one last Fall with them.  It took them a while to get to us even though they started in August. They didn't get cut down until mid-October.  People decorated them and put lanterns on for Halloween. 

The week of Thanksgiving they came around and ground down the tree stumps.  Little Guy felt some dramatic poses were needed.  Today they filled the hole and put down grass seed.  I don't think we're going to get much grass since it's supposed to snow this week.  

I'm still sad about the trees, but it is what it is.  They are supposed to be planting new trees in the Spring.

Parenting is not for the Faint of Heart

My youngest needed help finding glue, because he said he wanted to work on a craft project.  It turns out he and BB had broken 3 of their dresser drawers, and they thought Elmer's glue was somehow going to fix it.  That didn't end well for anyone, because then I found an exorbitant amount of food wrappers behind their bunk-bed.  The trash can next to the bed was empty.  No doubt they thought they could hide the food they weren't allowed to be eating by putting the evidence behind the bed.  It didn't work out so well for them.  This would explain why my grocery bill is astronomical.  It's not all inflation.  They're not even teenagers yet.  Sigh.

Labor Day Weekend

Joel's been sick with a rather bad case of Bronchitis, but he still had to work 2 twelve hour shifts over Labor Day weekend.  We had a rather low key weekend at home.  It involved a lot of stuffed animals taking over the front room, enjoying the beautiful weather, and the boys even got the neighborhood pool to themselves for a little while. 

 

Phew

I've been worried about our large tree in the front yard for the last 2 months.  There has been a long wait to get the broken tree limbs cut.  I finally got a call on Friday saying they'd be here on Tuesday.  I was so relieved, but the next day one of the dead branches fell and hit our neighbors fence.  We quickly moved it, but Tuesday felt a long ways away.  Yesterday they finally trimmed the tree.  It looks a lot better even if the middle is now missing.  They said it's still really healthy, so here's to hoping we don't have any more issues with it.  

Curious Kitties

 You never know where the cats are going to show up.  I've been trying to de-clutter the house this week and Stella thought she was helping.  Luna also likes to be literally in the scriptures. 

I Love Fall

 The leaves changing colors makes me smile.  I love forward to it every year. 

Things are Buzzing

We had the oddest occurrence happen in our yard this week.  We had a swarm of bees take up residence in the tree above our driveway.  It is really rare for this to occur in the Fall.  It normally happens in the Spring when there is more than one queen, so a group leaves with the second queen to find a new hive.  These bees decided to form an open-aired hive on our tree.  It would not have ended well for them when Winter came.  Fortunately, I remembered this happening in our neighborhood a couple of years ago.  They had a bee keeper come pick up the swarm.  I called the same man and he came straight out to get them.  He's going to try to keep them alive through the Winter. 

Finally!

 The crew showed up on Monday to work on the cabinets, but they didn't have enough time reserved.  They thought they were only fixing one of the doors, so they went through the things that still needed to be done and then left.  I was bummed.  Yet another delay...

Gratefully, they came back later that week and finished the cabinets.  It's a Christmas miracle in September!  It took almost 11 months, but the cabinets are finally done in our kitchen.  Sadly, they left quite a bit of stuff in the garage, so it's still not usable.  I have to try to get a hold of the company to come get all the stuff.  Hopefully that won't take another 11 months.  I'm tempted just to rent a dumpster and get rid of it myself.

Here's the before and after:

It's a major improvement from the 90s built-in desk.

Getting to the Root of the Problem

 We've had a lot of drainage issues with our house and part of our gutter also came off, we found someone to come out and try to find all of our underground drains.  They were so clogged that we couldn't actually find them.  They hadn't been cleaned out for the 7 years of the previous owner, and it turns out when we were paying people to clean out our drains they were only cleaning the gutters up top when they should have been cleaning out the rest of it.  It took them the entire day, but they located every drain and cleaned them out.  He found full root systems in every single one of them.  We have the honors of being the worst drains he's ever seen.  There was even a dead frog that go stuck in the roots in one of the drains.  So crazy!  I'm just glad it finally got fixed.

Home Update

The installation company got a hold of somebody who was willing to install the oven and fix the fridge.  The pipes had gotten kinked when they put it back against the way, so that was an easy fix.  We now have the oven - wahoo!

Meanwhile, our sprinklers were broken.  We thought it was a leak, but it turns out a massive tree root had grown so large that it popped off the sprinkler head.  The sprinkler guy says we win the prize for largest root he's ever had to cut away.  I don't know that I want that distinction, but I'm grateful he found it and cut it away, because it was starting to grow under the driveway.  It would have caused all kinds of damage.  It's nice to have sprinklers that work again, and the lawn wasn't torn up as badly as we feared, so all in all we're grateful to slowly but surely take care of the issues. 

Too Good to be True

I was so excited!  After waiting 7 months the kitchen cabinets were getting installed yesterday.  It started out great and then they realized that one of the cabinets was 10.5" too short.  Ugh.  2 other cabinets are also not wide enough, so there's a gap in the cabinetry.  This means they have to reorder the cabinets and it will be in limbo for another 6 weeks at least.  They also left without installing the oven.  They stated it needed to be wired, so they didn't feel comfortable doing it.  Gratefully, I can at least use the cabinetry that has been installed while we wait for them to finish the project.  Sigh.  I should have known that there would be yet another complication with this project.  This is the second set of cabinets, because the first one they sent (still sitting in our garage) was made poorly and had to be remade.  This put us back another 2 months.  At this rate it's going to probably end up being a full year from ordering them to completion.  

I do absolutely love the pantry portion of it though.  I'm so happy to finally have a pantry!!  Little Guy wanted to show me just how roomy they can be. 

Birthday Chaos

Little Man's turning 14!  I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that he's getting so old.  He's grown up so much this year.  High school and early morning seminary has been good for him.  His birthday was a bit crazier than normal around here, because he has 3 finals and half our kitchen was getting demoed.  We're getting rid of our 1990's built-in desk to put in a pantry.  Our garage door also broke yesterday.  One of the coils broke, so they're trying to get it fixed before the demo team has to trail all the kitchen debris through the house instead of the through the garage.  It's a bit of a mess around here.  To avoid the mayhem we went out to lunch to Cactus Grill.  It's no surprise he wanted Mexican.  It's his favorite.  Then he went on a shopping spree at Barnes and Noble with his birthday gift cards.  He was one happy teenager. 

It didn't take them very long to tear everything out, so we enjoyed his birthday cake at home.  It was also no surprise that he wanted a chocolate fudge cake.  He's my Hershey baby all the way.  

Before and after:

Baby Steps Progress

Today the painter and plumber were supposed to come finish up the bathroom.  The painters came in the morning and then put the mirror back up.  The plumber got in a fender bender on the way to lunch right before he was supposed to come to our house, so that meant no toilet and sink again.  I wasn't really that surprised.  At this point it's almost laughable that they've never come the first time they schedule something.  It is painted though, so it's still not usable, but it looking better.

Walking Along

It's been 4 months since our upstairs bathroom flooded.  It's has been a very painful process to get things done.  The communication from the restoration company has been sorely lacking.  One step will get done and then they just disappear.  We have to call and call just to find out when they're coming back.  I don't care if it's not right away, but I need to know they actually have it scheduled, because more than once they were just waiting for some random reason that wouldn't have resolved if we hadn't called.  Every single step of the renovation has gone like this.  After another 2 weeks of radio silence Joel finally just called the CEO of the company, because at this point it's almost comical.  The manager of our project called the next day and said he thought they had left flooring samples for us to choose.  He was waiting for our choice, but the samples were still in his car.  Then it turns out the original tile we had wanted was suddenly back in stock.  Either way they finally came yesterday and today to do the flooring.  Hallelujah!  We have a floor!!

Partial Work

Right when Spring break started the workers came in and replaced the dry wall.  Wahoo- all the walls are back in place!  On the following Monday they were supposed to place the vanity and put in the base boards.  The guys who were supposed to move the vanity were sent to a different job, so they only put up half the base boards and called it a day.  We didn't hear back from them for another week.  They said they'd be back this week to do the floor.  The tile we wanted to use was on back order, so he was just going to pick up samples that were readily available since it's a small job.  But...we haven't heard anything since then.  

Who knows how long we'll be waiting for the next step, but I'm trying to be content with some progress. 

Let There Be Light!

The electrician came on Monday.  He added 2 outlets for behind the vanity, and then he replaced our light fixture downstairs.   After over 3 months the downstairs is finally fixed.  The heavens rejoice!  There's no date for the next step of the upstairs bathroom, but at least the flood damage is partially fixed.   

The electrician also rigged a handy way to keep the cats out of the bathroom construction zone.  So far it's worked.