Cry Sis!

We had a bit of an adventure last Thursday, (actually, two Thursdays ago by the time this publishes). It was a bit of a catiwumpus day to begin with, Daddy’s phone died so he slept in, then Winnie had a fever, but Mommy had to go to a tax appointment, so Daddy had to stay home from work.

But Daddy was able to get his work done form home, and by lunch time things had more or less ironed themselves out.

Daddy and the three older kids drove to Tacoma to buy feed from our local feed store, and drove back to unload it in the barn. Then, since we had time, we decided to load up a load of sand and run it back in the field to finish making the pipe bed in the trench.

All was proceeding smoothly until…

Daddy backed too close (about a foot) from the edge of the trench, and the trench wall collapsed from a combination of wet dirt from the recent rain, and the extra weight of the sand in the truck. The rear of the truck slide sideways and tipped, and pulled the front of the truck over as well until it also collapsed the trench wall and fell in.

No amount of forward and reversing was going to be useful, so we put out an urgent call to our men’s group to ask if anyone with a truck could come and lend us a tow. In the meantime, Ryan dug ramps in front of and behind both trapped tires, and then began unloading the 1000-1500 Lbs of sand that was in the back of the truck…

And running it one load at a time 200 feet down the lane to its final resting place.

Evelyn sat in the grass and sewed on her sewing project (a cape for a friend’s stuffed kitty) and asked, “Daddy, have you ever been in a crisis like this before?”

“Well, there was this one time in Iraq… and then that other time in Afghanistan… But I wouldn’t really consider this a crisis.”

“Well it’s a crisis to me!”

“Why? Are you… crying, ‘Sis!?”

She has perfected her post-dad-joke eyeroll.

Ellie and Seppi, meanwhile, immediately manned the shovels.

Seppi is still too little to lift a decent shovel-full of sand.

But he is great at maintaining a constant stream of “Why?” and “What-if?”

And he can carry the shovel back, no problem.

One of our men’s group buddies, who was on a business trip, asked his wife to bring a truck to our rescue, but we ended up not needing it, though we appreciated the willingness to come to our aid. We eventually got it unloaded and some decent ramps built up behind the tires and then Uncle Adam just drove the thing right out.

The geese did not approve of the crisis at all.

And, God be praised, we managed to get the whole pipe covered except the connectors (we want them uncovered when we turn on the water line so we will be able to see any leaks), and we still got finished in time to go out for family dinner.