One of our last big projects to get done before Cashew’s arrival is to deal with some standing water under our house. It was a super lame project to have to do because it involved digging a very large trench in our backyard and a very big hole under our house. So what do you do when you have a super lame project to do? You ask people for help 🙂 With me getting bigger and bigger, spending an entire day digging was not likely, and getting me under the house was nearly impossible. Extra hands would be amazingly helpful and would actually almost ensure that we could get the project done. And because we’re so lucky we got many hands donated on TWO separate days. Lucky ducks.

This is what our backyard looked like on Saturday morning

As you may notice, there is no longer a car on our lawn. It took me, Chris and my dad to shove/pull it off the lawn a week or so ago in anticipation of this project to roll it out of the grass holes it had dug for itself. But we did it!

My step dad CBH was going to come help us later in the morning and my mom, brother Adam and sister in law were going to come around lunchtime. Chris and I got the party started around 9:30

We really lucked out in terms of weather. It had rained periodically throughout the week making the soil damp and easier to dig into. It was also overcast and just slightly drizzling that day, so we were kept cool throughout our digging.

Chris started on the long thoroughfare to the trench

And I got started on the trench

We worked pretty diligently (I made sure to dig slowly and take a break between every couple of shovelfulls), and CBH arrived about an hour into the day and got working

It was difficult for me to dig in the trench without getting in either Chris or CBH’s way (because by this time Chris was digging in the trench also) so as the hole got deeper and deeper I shoveled the dirt pile that the boys had already dug further back so the dirt didn’t fall back into the hole

Then it was time for lunch 🙂 My favorite pregnant parts of the day: food 🙂 I made burgers and cut up some fruit for us and my mom arrived just as I was finishing up and brought some olive bread a friend at the gym made her

And just as we were finishing up lunch Adam and his wife Christine came. (By the way, I find it hilarious that my partner is named Chris and my brother’s is named Christine, I affectionately refer to them as the Chris’). I gave them a tour of the house (every time family and friends come over you gotta show them all the stuff you’ve finished since the last time they were over, obviously) and then we put them to work

Chris went to HD to get materials for the sump pump under the house and the drain in the backyard, CBH kept digging in the trench and my mom, Adam and Christine shoveled the mondo pile of dirt we had now accumulated out onto the curb (FREE DIRT!)

I hopped in and gave people a break from time to time on their shoveling duties so people didn’t get overly tired and to make myself useful (standing around while other people work makes me feel completely lame).

When Chris came back from HD we started lining the trench with rocks

Shortly after CBH had to leave and my mom, Adam, Christine and I stopped for another food break 🙂 Homemade mini cheesecakes!

YUMMY!

And because everyone was such an amazing digger we were done with all the digging that needed to be done in the backyard, however, we were still left with the dreaded hole that had to be dug under the house. We originally thought the digging would take a lot longer, but with the soil being soft and our family being so awesome we were getting a ton done. We still have another weekend coming up that a bunch of other friends and family will be coming over to help us, but we decided to make use of the hour or so that my mom, Adam and Christine were going to be here and we shoved them under the house 🙂 Chris began digging the large hole that had to be dug for the sump pump, put the dirt he dug up into buckets and then my mom, Adam and Christine formed a little conga line and brought the buckets out from under the house passing them hand to hand

They brought the mud covered buckets to the edge of the crawlspace…

…and I carried them over to our dirt pile and dumped them out

My mom came out towards the end to help me carry the buckets to get emptied. Other people would come out from time to time to stretch their legs and my mom and I would jokingly yell at them to get back in their hole. For some reason we found this hilarious. Clearly we were getting delirious. But after another 10 or so minutes everyone was free to crawl out from their hole and call the digging DONE! 🙂

They’re a muddy bunch 🙂

Somehow Christine managed to stay relatively clean and fabulous, my mom and I were in awe of her. She kept it classy 🙂 Naturally we said thank you for their hard work by helping them clean their shoes

Thanks to all of their AMAZING hard work we have a nearly finished trench in the backyard

A huge pile of dirt in the front of the house (that is already much smaller thanks to craigslisters picking some up)

Our backyard looks a bit like a disaster, but that is of course the sign of progress 🙂

Of course with all the digging amazingly completed we have to think of another project to make use of the other 7 set of hands that are coming 2 weekends from now. We can’t turn down help! So what’s on the to do list now? The earthquake retrofit of course 🙂 We welcome your helpful hands friends and family on the 20th for our free “Earthquake retrofit 101 class” as Chris jokingly refers to it. Yay progress!