Weekly Wrap-Up for the Week of August 31

Our week can be summed up as . . . lots and lots of dirt and rocks! 

My parents were here most of the week and our "project" was working toward getting the sump pump line buried underground. It turned out to be a MUCH bigger project than any of us realized. . 

First we worked on digging by hand. Lexie and Ashlyn were AWESOME help and spent the better part of at least one day, maybe two (the whole week kind of runs together in my mind), hand digging a shallow ditch.

Then we decided to rent a trencher and use it to dig down deeper (and not have to worry as much about the line freezing). But we still had to hand dig closest to the house/septic line/generator, so they dug down deeper there. Little Bit got in on the action too!

And helped Papa!

Even getting down into the ditch to help dig out what the trencher missed.

 What we discovered, when we used the trencher, was that, as soon as you get down past the topsoil, our yard is FULL of rocks (see the pile in the foreground of the picture below, those are just a few of the hundreds we pulled up)! The trencher couldn't handle them, so it was extremely slow, hard work to dig with the trencher. We finally decided that, for this winter, we'll just get the water past the driveway (to approximately where Lexie's standing) and pipe it across in front of the garage. Next year we'll figure out how to get it on back behind the garage, our long-term goal.

Ashlyn had to have a picture of the biggest rock that she and Lexie pulled out during their hand digging near the house. She has big plans for using it in the flower beds along the side of the house that she has claimed as hers :)

And that was pretty much our whole week. The girls did very little school, but plenty of "physical activity" LOL. Little Bit happily monopolized Mama's time as much as possible, but was also really good about understanding when we all were busy working on the dirt and rocks. And as seen above, she "helped" too! By the time Mama and Papa headed home on Friday afternoon, the digging was, essentially, done. This next week's project is actually laying pipes and filling it all in.

Friday night the weather was lovely, and while I admit my energy level was such that take out pizza sounded like a perfect supper, Lexie (current supper "cook") and Daddy (grill master) both voted for grilling, so we did. The girls and I enjoyed grilled corn and tried grilled peaches (they could have been riper, I was concerned that too "ripe" would just fall apart and fall down into the grill . . . I think I prefer my peaches raw, but we'll see if the girls convince me to try again sometime). And tofurkey hot dogs.  Daddy enjoyed chicken.

 Even after all their manual labor this week, the girls weren't too worn out to do an impromptu dance after supper, silly girls! Both big girls got new flip flops this week that have hard sole so they "clack" nicely on hard surfaces, I think it was that click clacking that inspired their dance. And of course, once they were dancing, Little Bit wasn't about to be left out.