Lots of Fun on an Ancient Burial Ground

Ever since the fun, aka new pool, arrived, it's been another one of those adventures we are so well-accustomed to by now. It's us, of course a new pool is going to be an adventure. 

First, it has stormed. A lot. That is not great weather for putting in pools. At all. 

Second, it's not actually fun to put in a pool. At all. 

I documented it all & I get to share a wee bit of the photos with you, in case you decide to get a pool that is not one of those blow-up ones. Because the blow-up guys, the ones I've always had up until now, are so much easier than this. But I ask you, when have we ever shied away from an adventure?

We had wicked storms that washed mud into the perfectly leveled & sanded ground. The ground that needed to be rock-, grass-, & debris-free so that the liner would lay perfectly & not hurt anyone or poke holes in it. We had parts go missing, causing hours of searching, only to discover they had never been packed in the boxes by the pool company in the first place. We had items in the directions that hadn't been on the original Necessary Items List, only to find out we really, really needed them & couldn't continue without them. We had weather stop us in our tracks. We had issues with a certain metal piece falling between the liner & the wall, necessitating the partial emptying of the pool & a 15 year old boy stretching his arm as far as he could to reach it, while fingers were cut in order to protect the liner from being cut by the metal edges. We had antsy people, including certain 27 children of mine, that we not happy about waiting to fill the pool twice...& wait for the chemicals to do their job twice...before they could swim. We had fun.

8 hours of digging & leveling dirt, & pulling rocks & roots was oh so...muscle building fun. Like when hubby told Big D to grab the shovel needed to chop up a particularly tough-to-pull root. Big D decided he didn't feel like walking all the way across the big circle to get said shovel & he would just pull it instead. Because that sounded like less work to him. Do you see how I just knew this would be a great series of photos? 11 year old logic that pulling a 100 year old tree root is easier than the walk to get a shovel makes for great entertainment. 

I wasn't wrong. 

"Told ya I got this."

You can see where Big D actually started pulling the root, where that broken line of dirt is at the bottom of the picture. He pulled & pulled, with hubby using the shovel to bring up more & more of the root. Like the Energizer Bunny, it just kept going & going & going & going. 

At this point we were all laughing
because it looked like it would never end.

I was expecting our house to start tipping over as the root showed itself to be coming from under there. I envisioned our entire street being upturned at Big D's determination to find the end of this root instead of just cut it into tiny pieces to get it out of the way. How do you explain that to your neighbors? "Um, I'm sorry your house is laying on its side. I hope your China & cat survived"? Or "I realize all of our houses are flipped over like so many toys & our street is crunched like King Kong came through, but hey, the good news is: we know the root belongs to a tree up on the hill, 3 streets over"?

It was so much fun that hubby decided to
 help get in on it too.

Together the 2 of them were able to get that darn root out of the ground without cutting it. No houses were tipped & no streets were crunched up. And we all got a great laugh when both of them went flying just as the root came free. That was great fun for all!

With 6 Million roots being uprooted for the sake of the pool, we started a fire to burn those stinkin' things. First, we needed a way to get the roots from one side of the yard to the other. Enter Big D & his love for survival shows on the Discovery Channel. He's told me all about the things he's learned to survive in the wild for days on end & decided this was a great time to show off some of those things he's learned.

He weaved & braided a few of the
roots, wrapping them around
the rest of the roots...

...to form a pretty cool pack, leaving
his hands free. 

Who needs that pesky wheelbarrow in the shed when you can make a back pack out of roots?





Speaking of Big D's love of the survival shows, he also showed me how he learned to make paint. I was greatly impressed & cannot help but share pictures on this. He took ash from the fire pit, added spit (thankfully he was polite enough to do that part away from me so I wasn't grossed out), & mixed it all together on a leaf. Then he used a small piece of a stick to paint a couple tic-tac-toe boards on the bottom side of the deck.

 

It actually works. Who knew!

Back to the pool fun.

After our Landscaper Man used his fancy dancy tools & machines to level everything just perfectly & worked with hubby man to get the dirt & sand just right, my father in-law, Dad 2, came out to help too. It's awesome that we have family so willing to set aside days of their life to help us. It was long & hard work & we appreciate Dad 2's helping set it up & running around getting us various bits & pieces as we discovered they were needed. 

Big D & Dad 2 each holding a side while
hubby...well, he was doing something here.

Whoa, it's actually holding up. 

It didn't get knocked over in the storm, so I'm pretty sure they did everything they were supposed to. Now the fun work of getting the liner in, the filter in place, & the water held where it's supposed to be held. 

Now if only I could get certain visions out of my head. 

The visions of the bones we removed while digging the spot for the pool. The bones did appear to be human in nature & well...it's not the memories of the bones themselves that haunt me. What I can't shake are visions of my furniture floating in the air & 1 of my children talking with a really creepy voice through my TV, because I am now quite positive that my home was built on an ancient Indian burial ground & we are all going to regret having moved those bones. Big time regret.

I really, really do not want to find myself
in her shoes at any point in my life.

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