While Kirsti, Ryan, and Alice were here, we had day after day of cold and rain. They left and we have had sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures - for over a week now! Go figure....
The nice weather, however, has allowed me to work on my last must-do project of the year: to create a flower bed in front . The seller planted four small boxwood shrubs to the east of the front porch and right under the front window. I want to extent the front porch to go under the window and put a flower bed in front of that. So, every morning throughout this past week, I worked on the bed and dug up three of the boxwoods and repositioned them. Then, yesterday, I planted hyacinth and crocus bulbs around the boxwoods. If the nice weather continues, I will go into the backyard and continue to create beds along the east fence line and behind the garage but those projects can also be tackled next spring....
On Monday, Steve and I delivered small plates of cookies to our neighbors east of us (west neighbors got theirs two weeks ago). Five houses down from us lives a member of the church that Steve has been assigned to minister to. Fred. So, we met him for the first time and he is a really great fellow. He is Steve's age and blind. And yet, he is so competent and independent. In the course of our conversation, we mentioned that we walk by his house twice a week and he mentioned how he needed to start walking again so he has been our walking companion since then. He brings his dog, Stacy, who is NOT a seeing-eye dog but a very calm and sweet German shepherd mix. We also took him shopping with us on Wednesday.
Tuesday we voted. I worried about super long lines so we put off going to the polls until mid-afternoon and I was armed with a book and a folding chair ready to spend a long time. Well, we walked right up to the door - no lines at all - and we were done in fifteen minutes! It was great. Weather was so nice, Steve grilled hamburgers that night for dinner. Oh, there was no grandma preschool that morning because the Southerlands were on a mini-vacation through Wednesday.
Aside from grocery shopping on Wednesday, we had to configure our stores around a handyman who came in the early afternoon to look at our projects. FINALLY! We have been trying to get someone since we moved in - reaching out to four individuals - and this guy, who is a brother-in-law to a friend of mine, was the only one to actually come. He will have an estimate for us by early this week, we hope. Some of our repair needs will not be done by him, though... the leaking basement shower and bathtub. I can't remember if I even wrote about those. The first time we used the basement shower was when the Merrills were here and water just poured out from under the stall! And, the first time the bathtub was used to bathe Alice, water dripped in a constant stream down from the ceiling in the basement. It never leaked when it was just being used as a shower - just as a tub! So, we submitted a claim with our home warranty company and, on Friday, a plumber came and he took care of the tub issue lickety split. The shower might not be covered by the warranty - he will have to get back to us. Our home owners insurance with USAA is looking into the broken sewer pipes right where the foundation of the house starts. This has been a cloud over our heads ever since Labor Day weekend when we had the huge sewer back up in our basement (luckily, nothing was damaged) and we had to call an emergency plumber to clean out the line. The line had already been cleaned out by another plumbing company before we bought the house but I am pretty sure they didn't go far enough. Because the emergency plumber sent in a camera and there is definitely a break where the clay pipe meets the cast iron. Home warranty will NOT cover that (ugh) but we hope USAA will.
Thursday, Steve and I checked out a different grocery store close to Beckie (they advertised .65 cent per pound turkeys and $1.99 half-gallons of ice cream) and we went to Ikea for a few houseplants. We ended up with three. And a hazelnut chocolate candy bar.....
Friday was lessons day - my two virtual cello students in the morning and Southerlands in the afternoon. Saturday our windows were finally fixed. The seller had taken money off of the asking price for this project and a window company came out in September to assess the needs. Happily, they just needed repairs and not replacement. But, it still took over a month to get the needed parts !?!? and now we have fixed screens and we can open our windows and they stay open. Which we have been doing with this gorgeous weather.
Steve and I had a visit from the bishop on Wednesday evening and we have been called to be ward missionaries. And, I will be leading the music in sacrament meeting every other week. Since we will be working with our full-time missionaries more closely now and meeting the individuals they are teaching, we attended a baptism that occurred last evening.
Movie watching this week: Monday night was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Tuesday was the Current War, Thursday night was the 2009 Star Trek reboot (with Chris Pine as Kirk), and Friday was the second episode of the Mandalorian.
Happy November, everyone!
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