Chiggers, Fences and Quilts - OH MY!

Jason's parents were in town this last week with the sole intention of wanting to help us with our house and start on the wood fence. I felt really bad that they spent so much time working their tails off, but I'm not sure how else we could have gotten any of that work done ourselves!

And they were so dedicated too - they were up at the crack of dawn making Home Depot runs, digging out chain link fence posts, replacing electrical plugs in the house, installing motion sensors for the driveway - it really blows my mind how much they were able to accomplish and it blesses us to no end!! Really, I can't say Thank You enough!!

I didn't take a whole ton of pictures, because Jerry, Sherry & Jason were BEYOND dirty the majority of the time, so I knew they wouldn't appreciate their pictures plastered all over the Internet. But I did get a few that I thought you all might enjoy!

Here's Jason after digging some of these cement chain link posts out of the ground - he was SO tired this week from all the hard work!
And here's Jerry about ready to start on the frame for the fence! Our backyard is unrecognizable, they raked, dug, cleared brush, trimmed branches and gotten eaten alive by mosquito's and chiggers!! Poor Sherry counted a total of 186 chigger bites all from the knees down. I felt SO bad for her. Chigger bites are awful and look so bad too. This picture was taken after only the FIRST day. There were many more bites to come that week for her :-( I did my best to cook as many meals as I had time for to keep them well fed and full of energy. Then during the evenings once the sun had gone down, Sherry would work with me on learning how to quilt. She had bought me a Featherweight Singer antique machine for my birthday a couple years back, but I've always been too afraid to use it. But this last week, she came armed with a quilt kit and we set to work. Check out my cute quilt top!!
On Friday night, Jason had planned a writer's round at Douglas Corner with a couple of his songwriting friends, Aaron Sherz and Doug Forshey. It went really well, though there wasn't much of a crowd since the debate was on TV that night. Still, I got a couple shots of the show.

Jason and Aaron Sherz during Doug's turn of playing.

Doug watching during one of Aaron or Jason's songs.

And speaking of working on the house, I also included a couple pictures I took back when we repainted the dining room over the Labor Day weekend. We painted over the yellowish tan that the original owners had painted throughout the whole house, with a very calming stone beige. It only took us a day, so then a week later we painted the guest bathroom a light sage green. You can see the difference between the two colors in these first two pics. Here's a little after picture of the dining room once we finished.
It's been a busy month! But it feels great to get so much done too!