Oh, my aching body...

Well, our backyard now looks like an archeological dig site, although the only discoveries were giant blocks of concrete and a pile of broken bricks.

Two out of three of us were up by 8am ready to carve up the backyard with heavy machinery. I was in bed, trying to sleep in a few more minutes and wishing I'd had one fewer glasses of wine on Saturday night. Dan, our equipment operator and friend of Justin's mother, graciously volunteered to run the equipment. And Justin, eager to get some full body exercise stood in as the dirt schlepper, ferrying a 1/2 yard of dirt at a time to a dirt broker a few miles south. Ultimately, I pulled weeds and separated out rocks that we can use for our drainage project.

Here you see the patio space and pathway to the garage excavated along with a drainage trench along the house.

Here's our giant pile of dirt...only 2-3 yards found a new home so far. We're going to use the other 12 yards for a bmx jump :)

Dan's going to try to come back to finish up...we had so much extra dirt that maneuverability was too limited to dig out the pathway to the alley.