Trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P and that stand for POOL

I'm talking about a mud pool. Like a 6-ft-deep mud pool.

Monday night our sprinklers were tested and working great. Tuesday afternoon, KC came by to hook up all the wires to all the zones in the control box, and the sprinklers were still working well. And then he and Mark noticed that there was a large amount of water right above where the main control box was buried way down deep. They kept digging and digging, and they kept finding deeper and deeper trouble. It turns out that the pipe we laid 3 years ago prior to our sideyard being covered in concrete steps had cracked somewhere, and water was leaking.

They shut off the water and came up with a quick solution. We had enough left-over PVC pipe to bypass the underground pipe. They glued a new pipe together, hooked it up at the water supply, hooked the other end up at the main control box in the backyard, and no more leak! For now we have PVC running OVER the stairs, and we will need to have some plumbing fixed in the basement in order to provide a new water supply out the back of the house. But that can wait. We needed water today for the hydroseed. It's not pretty, but it works.

We were just saying that things had gone way to smoothly with the sprinkler system.

Happy Birthday, Zack!

We had a party to celebrate sweet Zacky's birthday. I can't believe he is already 2. He is such a big boy now. He makes us all so happy, and we are so glad he is in our family.

He is actually potty training himself. A couple of weeks ago he started to tell us, "Zacky go potty." And then he grabs our hands and runs to the bathroom, do his thing, and then smile and shout, "Zacky did it!" He loves our praise and excitement about it, too. It has been very different from our other 6 potty-training experiences. I haven't been pushing Zack, because we are leaving on vacation, and, quite frankly, it will be a lot easier if he will still wear a diaper. So hopefully when we get back, Zack will still be eager to be a big boy.

Extreme Makeover

Our backyard is undergoing an extreme makeover. I am posting some "before" pictures, so that in a few weeks, you can more appreciate the "after" pictures.

Last week was hot. Very, very hot. Over 100 degrees hot. Of course, that was the week we had to do our irrigation system. We all worked very hard moving dirt. Our friend KC masterminded the whole job and helped every day after work. We couldn't have done it without him. Our neighbor Frank was very generous with his time helping us, also. By Saturday at 3:00 in the afternoon, we had all the trenches filled back in and the whole thing raked and ready for hydroseed. It was kind of sad that you couldn't even tell we had done anything!

Mark and KC have a few more sprinkler heads to install tonight, and set the clock for all 18 zones. It's crazy. It's a lot of grass, but I can't wait for it. Our backyard has been a project in the works for 6 years, and it is so unbelievable to be finally at the end of the project.

A dream is a wish your heart makes...

For a long time, I have wished for my own personal laundromat. It takes me 14 hours to do all the loads for our family. It is terrible. I hate my front-loader Neptunes. They are slow, and they don't do such a great job of washing. The dryer works fine, but the washer leaves much to be desired.

When we built our house we had it plumbed and set up for 2 washers and 2 dryers. I was thinking just 2 regular sets. But then I experienced the tortuously slow cycle time of "energy efficient" washers. It makes me coo-coo.

When we were in the Redwoods 4 years ago, I went to a laundromat. I had not been to one since our very first 2 months being married. I was astounded that I could do so many loads so quickly! Not just doing a lot of loads at once, but only 28 minutes each load. My dream was born.

In our finished basement, my laundry room is going to have 2 sets of commercial Dexter machines. I am so exicted about this. It's a lot of money, but I figure it will give me a whole extra day every week, and that's priceless! We're just having to run some new electricity and re-route the wash drains, but other than that, we are all set for happy laundry days.

Chaos

Our house is pure chaos. All the basement stuff is upstairs, the basement is being worked on, the backyard is 100% dirt, and the toys are all boxed up and stacked up out of reach. Our kids are starting to get a little cabin fever. Patience is wearing thin, and the kids are just getting a little bored. I'm glad we at least have TV again!

This week's project has been the irrigation system in the backyard. 12000 square feet of grass, a 310-foot shrub bed surrounding the grass, and 115 sprinkler heads. It's a huge project. Our good friend KC is helping us with it (basically he is doing it and we follow his orders), and it's really going well. He ran the trencher for 7 hours the other night getting most of the trenches dug. The offshoots going into the shrub bed were a little too steep for the trencher to handle, so those have all been dug by hand. It has been a lot of work, and we are all very sore, and some are a little sunburned. But next week when the hydroseed truck comes, we can just sit back and breathe a sigh of relief. We are teaching the kids about "sweat equity" and the payoffs of working hard.

Did you know hydroseed is only $0.08 per square foot? It sounds like the lazy way out, but it's all about the money. The way Mark does grass seed, we would spend 4 times that amount!

I'm just excited to see green grass out there. The drywall should be done by the first of September, and then we can get some boys moved to the basement and start to slowly get things back to normal. It will be the end of October before we are done with the whole basement project, but it will be worth the wait, I'm sure.

Smarty pants

It is always so fun to see your baby getting smarter and smarter. Zack is such a good verbal communicator now. He'll be 2 next week, but he sure talks a lot for his age. It is so fun. And also very helpful when trying to diagnose the cause of irritation.

For example, last Sunday as we were driving home from Utah, we were about 2 hours from home, and Zack woke up and started screaming. Really screaming. He was crying and screaming for about an hour, but I kept thinking he would just get over it and we could blast on home as fast as possible. But while Zack was crying, he was saying, "Mommy, Zacky done! I'm done! No buckles. Zacky done!" It was very sad, but I had to be happy about his use of words in trying to solve his problem. When he got no response from me, his words changed to, "Aubrey, Zacky done! Zacky done! No buckles, Aubrey!" I decided it was time for a stop, so with an hour left of our drive, we pulled over at a rest area by the river and let everyone run around for about 1/2 hour. Zack was a whole new bubba, ready for the trip home.

The other night Zack said something that made me realize he is not just smart vocabulary-wise, but his understanding of concepts is very impressive. I took him outside with me to deliver a Tiger Woods green Gatorade to Mark, who was spraying around his trees in the back 40. We gave Mark the drink, and Zack was pointing to things and telling me what they were. He pointed to trees, the orange truck (trackhoe) and yellow truck (bulldozer) parked in our backyard, rocks, airplanes, etc. Then he pointed to one of the big 150-ft douglas firs we have and he said "Daddy tree." He moved his arm and pointed to a 6-ft tree nearby us and said, "Baby tree." He made his tree-lovin' daddy so proud.

Surprise!

When I was at camp, I called home Tuesday night. Mark said, "You'll notice when you get here that our house is kind of......trashed." This surprised me, because Mark always keeps our house very clean when I am gone.

We are finishing our basement, and to get ready for that, Mark and the kids moved every single thing out of the basement and into the garage, our bedroom, and the boys's bedrooms upstairs. When we moved in 6 1/2 years ago, a lot of stuff got stashed in the basement. I had my foot-stomping, toe-smashing experience on the day we moved in, so I was flat on my back for a week while things just got taken to the basement. It will be good to finally go through the boxes and things from the basement, and toss the things we don't need (most of it, I'm sure). The toys are ALL in Joel's and Noah's room, the camping stuff is ALL in Abram's and Jake's room. Files pictures, and all my sewing stuff is in my bedroom.

The good news is that we were able to get good bids from drywall guys. Mark knew that we would probably get a cheaper bid if the basement was cleaned out already, rather than having someone come in and think they had to work around all that stuff. It's going to be so nice to finally have the basement finished after all of these years.

While I was in Utah last week, our backyard project also got underway. 1 bulldozer, 1 trackhoe, and a very different backyard. It's looking great--even though the grass is still a few weeks out. So basically inside and out our house is a construction zone right now. But in a couple of months, we'll have a backyard, and a 40% bigger house. I am so excited!

I'm back! (and I stole the pictures from Betsy's blog)

I have been gone for a couple of weeks. First, I went to Girls Camp. It was my first time ever going as a leader, and the first time I've been in more than 20 years. After I was old enough to have a summer job, I gave up on going to girls camp. Money talks, as they say.

I was placed with 2 other leaders over the 4th year girls. 3 leaders, 12 girls. I thought it was going to be a little overkill, but I'm so glad it was. I didn't know Betsy or Katie before camp, and I was a little nervous. I tend to be a little on the reserved side and don't talk much around people I don't know. However, I ended up with 2 very good friends out of it. We made a pact to go back each year and be 4th-year leaders together. People all week kept asking us how long we had been friends. They were always surprised when whe said, "We just met each other." Everyone thought we were joking. We all have the same haircut, and one of our girls braided our hair the same way with little pig tails sticking out the sides.

I discovered quickly that Betsy was my showtunes soulmate. The girls couldn't believe how one thing someone said would cause both Betsy and me to break out in the same song--usually one the girls had never heard before. We sang our hearts out all week long. It was a blast. Betsy was shocked to learn that I have never seen or heard Wicked. I was shocked that she did not know any Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. We are both remedy-ing the situation so that we can sing even more songs together next year. I also want to buy a 12-string guitar to bring along for the show next year. One of my girls brought up a 6-string acoustic, which I played a little. I need to bring up some music next time, though.

Our Stake's theme was "By their fruits ye shall know them." We chose Boys-n-berries as our group name. It turned out so dang cute. The name was my suggestion (thank you Megs), but all the cuteness was Katie and Betsy. They made our camp look like a berry stand. Little crates of fake berries, and cut-out boys were on the tables. Foam berries were everywhere, and empty berry boxes in just the right places made it all look so amazingly cute. We had the "Ripe Berries" platform for the leaders, the "Fresh Berries" platform for the girls to sleep on, and then a "Berries Changing" platform for all their luggage, and a dressing room complete with a full-length mirror and table of necessary camp toilette (sunscreen, bug spray, body spray, lotion). It was all very adorable. Hoepfully next year I can help with the cuteness.

Our girls were so fun, and I loved every minute with them. Saturday's trip home turned out to be very scary, though. The bus lost its brakes coming down the narrow, steep, curvy gravel road. The girls all thought they were going to die. My friend was driving right in front of the bus, and she had to step on it as she watched the bus nearly tip over barrelling down right behind her. At the bottom of the hill where the gravel road met the busy highway, the bus would have gone through a guard rail, and down a steep bank to a river. However, the driver was able to steer the bus into an embankment on the side of the road, which was the only thing that could have stopped it. Incredibly, nobody was seriously hurt. The girls all tell about the angels who kept the bus upright when it was tipped nearly on its side. We came upon the scene after all the girls were out of the bus and sprawled out on the lawn bawling. It was a horrible feeling to come around the corner and see a mangled bus, fire engines, ambulances, sherrifs, and 60 scared girls. We hugged and talked and cried. They all learned a valuable lesson about how important they are in the work God still has for them to do on this earth. They know their lives were saved for some reason. Many of them also expressed a greater love for their families that they had thought they would never see again.

I came home from camp, handed off my camping stuff to Mark, who was leaving for Scout Camp the next day, did a week's-worth of laundry, re-packed my stuff, and packed all 7 kids for a trip to Salt Lake City to see my family. Within 24 hours of coming home from girls camp I was off again with 7 kids on our way to Salt Lake City.