Sprinkler System

This past week my brother, Ben, took a week off of work and came to Idaho to help Tracie and me put sprinkler systems in our yards. What a way to spend a vacation, huh? Monday we rented a pipe puller - the first half of the day was spent at Tracie's house and the second half of the day at my house.




















Tracie holding the pipe for Ben















Ben with the pipe puller.

They worked on Tuesday and Wednesday at Tracie's house and finished her sprinkler system. I had to work those two days so neither Darren nor I helped there. Late Wed night Andy and his girlfriend, Kat came up to Tracie's house. So Thursday morning when I came back from my run I found Ben, Tracie, Jeff, Andy and Kat already hard at work in my yard. We spent the day digging and putting in the sprinkler system. By the end of the day most of it was done. There were only a couple of things left to do when they all went home (to Tracie's house).















Me - I must be taking a nap or something.















Darren















Ben - I think he's letting Jacob listen to his I-pod. Hopefully not an Alice in Chains song.















Andy















Kat
















Jeff















Tracie

Friday afternoon they came up again. Unfortunately this day didn't go as smoothly. The last step was to cut into our main water pipe and install the sprinkler. This was the part Darren was very nervous about. Because our house is over 50 years old, something seems to go wrong every time we do a project. After several trips to the plumbing store there were no parts that would work. It was Friday night, the day before a holiday and after 5 pm. We had no water in our house. Darren's worst fears were realized. We had to call a plumber, hoping that he would have the right parts. But we found out plumbers don't have after hour privileges at plumbing stores, either. He only had the parts on his truck. He was able to fix it temporarily so we would have water over the weekend but can't fix it permanently until Wednesday. So we still can't see the benefits of Ben's hard work and our new sprinkler system. Hopefully that will be a future post.

Oh, and before anything could be done, Ben told us we had to dig down to our main water pipe, which was about 6 feet down. So Darren, Tracie, Jeff, and I all took turns digging. We didn't have it finished by dark on Saturday night. Since Ben was going to start Monday morning we had to finish digging the hole on Sunday. Darren said it gave new meaning to keeping the Sabbath Day holy :-)





















Darren digging the hole



















Ethan kissing a huge worm Darren found in the hole. This picture is for Mary Ann since we were told she likes kissing worms.



















Another worm photo















And still another one
















This toy dinosaur was also found in the digging. If only it were a real one and we could sell our house for lots of money.















This is just a random picture of my beautiful rose bush. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's only in bloom for a couple of weeks.