It has been over a month since I've posted and over three weeks since this incident happened, but now that everything is resolved, it is all much easier to laugh about.
So, we got our water bill last month: $164.00! Of course, I was immediately on the phone telling American Fork City that there must have been some mistake. I demanded they come and recheck our meter. They came the next day, but unfortunately the meter reading was right...and it indicated we had a water leak...somewhere in our front yard. (Oh, is that why our grass was already so green?) Anyway, so we turned off the water for the day. Fortunately, I had my trusty 72-hour kit water (28 gallons worth) in my garage, so I was able to survive...barely.
I couldn't stop fretting the whole day. How in the world were we supposed to find where the pipe was leaking? And IF we ever found it, how were we supposed to know how to fix it? That night, Ryan called one of our neighbors over to help him figure things out. The next thing I know, Ryan had a glazed look in his eyes (with a hint of boyish excitement) and he told me they were planning to dig up the yard and fix the problem that night. Thirty minutes later, I peaked outside and noticed there was one of those Bobcat back-hoe diggers on my drive way. Yikes! Fifteen minutes later, while putting the kids to bed, I daringly looked out again and saw the back-hoe's huge metal claw hacking away at my front lawn!!! I stared speechlessly and within seconds, to my horror, I saw water spraying 15 feet into the air from a pipe they'd hit. I took a deep breath, shook my head in disbelief, and continued reading "Where the Wild Things Are."
Once the kids were finally in bed, I looked out again and saw that Ryan was neck deep in a HUGE muddy hole shoveling; our neighbor was holding a light so Ryan could see inside the hole. Our neighbor's friend, the one who operated the back-hoe, was at Lowe's getting the supplies to fix the pipe. It was POURING rain, dark, and VERY cold outside. I ventured out to join the fun and to find out if Ryan had any intention of eating dinner. He kept digging, so I decided to just feed him mouthfuls of chocolate chip banana bread between shovel strokes. After some questioning, I found out that the back-hoe had completely broken the leaking pipe (remember the geyser) and they were searching for the other end that they needed to reconnect.
Well, to make the rest of a long story short, Ryan finally came to bed around 1:00am, drenched and freezing cold, bless his heart. It never stopped raining, but they did fix the pipe. After another long day without water, we had a plumber clean out our pipe filter that had gotten filled with little rocks and we got our water back on again.
We are so grateful to our neighbor and his friend who helped us find and repair the pipe. I am amazed that they were willing to stay out there in such miserable weather until after midnight to help us out. I cannot imagine how much it would've cost to fix the pipe if we had hired someone else to do it. We feel very blessed that it turned out as well as it did.
I would never wish a lawn geyser upon anyone else, but this experience has taught me a great lesson about service. I have learned what a blessing neighbors can be during a crisis. It has renewed my determination to look out for and help those around me, even when the circumstances aren't the most convenient. I really hope that I will be someone that my neighbors and friends will call when they need help getting through a crisis. After all, isn't that what neighbors are for?
I know what you are thinking. It is WAY too late to post about Easter. Perhaps you are not a miserable procrastinator like me. I apologize, but you will just have to put up with a quick post so I can share a couple darling pictures of my little egg hunters.
Grandma Rocque always puts on a HUGE egg hunt. Although she only had four grand kids come over this year, she hid enough eggs for 20 kids or more. Maybe that is her way of encouraging us to have more kids--so the sugar will get spread out over more little bodies.
Um...case in point. But it sure was fun!
Because at Grandma Ostler's, there was about 20 kids for roughly the same number of eggs, my kids think they need to get a little more creative to get their fill. You can see that Preston has abandoned the on-foot egg hunt and resorted instead to racing for the eggs in his favorite set of wheels. We also enjoyed dying eggs with the kids and eating a nice dinner. How grateful we are for our Grandmas' houses!
