The Pond

So this winter was WAY wetter than last winter. Jacksonville stole everyone's rain.  Our backyard literally had a pond in it ALL. THE. TIME.  To the point we had ducks and fish in it at some points. Now I'm a pretty cool mom when it comes to playing in the water and mud, but every single day was getting old.  Even when I would say, tomorrow, but not today, someone would still end up in it.  This picture is so deceiving.  This stretched the entire width of our yard and was 10 feet wide at the widest and about knee deep on me. We noticed in general our yard was just a sopping wet mess all the time.  

We decided to fill it in a little by getting some dirt.  We had a bunch of dirt delivered to our driveway.  My kids were in heaven!  We let them play in it while we wheelbarrowed it back to the pond. Now this was good, black dirt.  

And no, Isabelle is not wearing socks.  She is THAT black. 

 Well the dirt pretty much just pointed out how huge our pond actually was.  Pretty much didn't do anything. So then Mike hooked up some water hoses and we siphoned it out into the storm drain.  It was great!  Except for the fact we had to do it every time it rained and it took every hose we owned and two different neighbors hoses. So we decided to "dig a little trench.  Let's put in a french drain." Um yeah, sounded like a great plan on a Saturday with nothing better to do.  So we started digging.  Apparently we forgot that it took 150 ft of hose to reach from the pond to the street until we had dug 1/3 of the way to the road.  So we dug for a few days.  The kids had a blast running around and playing in more dirt and water.  It was a pain.  Took an entire week of both of us working on it and dinner was a mess, kids were ignored. We dug a ditch by hand, some spots 2 feet deep. Had a bunch of rocks delivered,  Filled it up with rocks, and then covered it back up with dirt.  There wasn't much of an after picture.  150 foot dirt trail is all it looked like.  We used the dirt that we pulled out to help raise the low spots where the pond used to be. It didn't look like much, but MAN IT WORKED!!!!!  Our yard was so so nice!  (until the voles were no longer drowning in our yard and showed up again.  Haha!  One problem switched for another!)  All in all, it was a good project. 

 Luke was "helping daddy." Trip after trip with the wheelbarrow, Luke walked along holding a handle. It was so cute!