Piecing Things Together Late

I completed my July and August do.Good Stitches blocks...in September.  The struggle is real.  I don't get any sewing done during the summer and then life got super busy in a different way as soon as school was back in session.  My kiddos are living their best life and I'm their ride.  

The first block a very large 16.5". It needed to be blues and greens in the 9 patches and gray for the background.

The 2 August blocks were any combination of the primary colors with one half solid and the other half parented.  Gratefully, both blocks came together quickly. 

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.

Two More

I went to 2 more new temples when I was in Utah.  Red Cliff Temple is in St. George and is about ready for the open house.  We stopped on our way up to Cedar City, and then on our way down we stopped at the Cedar City Temple.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  I loved the stained glass. 

These are temples #85 and #86 for our family. 

Cedar Breaks National Monument

Up by Brian Head, Utah is Cedar Breaks National Monument.  It's a small national park with beautiful rock formations.  You can drive the main highway through the park and stop at 4 lookout points.  We also chose to do one of the easier hikes.  

Pictures don't do it justice.  It is absolutely gorgeous!  The weather was also perfection.  It's about 10,000 feet above sea level depending where you are in the park, so it's very temperate.  Low 70s and sunny.  It was glorious after being a sweaty mess in Kansas heat and humidity.  I definitely felt the elevation though, because I live at about 900 feet elevation.  

The hike had a cool pond, and there was a guy painting it.  I swear it wasn't that long, but I think I may have almost killed off a friend or two on the hike.  They claim it was 5 miles instead of the 2.  In fairness I thought it said 1 mile, but uh we learned it was longer when we were already on it.  It had some steep sections, but it was so pretty and the weather was great.  I totally got sun burnt. 

We celebrated the hike by going to the pizzeria that is a well known establishment in Bryant Head.  The meatball calzone was massive!  We got the smaller size and still split it in half.  So yummy!  We also had fun watching sheep cross the road.  Everything about this area is so beautiful and fun.  

It's Sweaty Around Here!

I don't know how the universe got together to decide should be the hottest place in the nation, but the stars aligned and we had 115 degree weather with 85% humidity.  I don't know for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Hell shared its weather with us.  I took a picture of our back window, because it hadn't rained but it looked like it had.  So gross!

In other news, the sunsets are still lovely.  I've been taking our oldest out to a nearby church parking lot to start driving.  It's absolutely terrifying and we're not even on real roads yet.  Pray for us. The sunset during the drive was nice though. 

 

An Embarrassingly Late Finish

I put this quilt top together months ago.  It sat for quite a while like that, but I was motivated to get it ready for hand binding during General Conference in April.  I like to have something to do with my hands while I watch.  I'm not good at just sitting.  I hand sewed about 85% of the quilt during conference and then it sat on my desk that way until this week.  Oops.  

 

Little Lady wanted to watch another Jane Austen movie.  She chose Emma.  I ran upstairs and grabbed the quilt.  (Can you tell I don't watch TV very much?). Twenty minutes later I had a finished quilt.  It's ridiculous it took me so long, but it is now complete!

Turning 3

The girls are three!  They are still very much in their destructive phase, but they are absolutely loved and adored by the kiddos.  You can tell just how much joy they bring the kids. That's Little Man's genuine smile.

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.