4th

I spent most of last week cleaning and doing projects around my parents' and sister's house. Among other things I cleaned 2 cars, 10 bathrooms, lots of floors, and 4 bedrooms.

The most interesting project was building a french drain in my parents' front yard. I asked my dad if it was okay to dig it up since they have a strict HOA, and he said it was, but that we should wait until the 4th so no one would notice us digging a huge trench in the front yard.

one of my friends texted me "way to celebrate being an american by working like a mexican"

a leaky sprinkler head was causing most of the water accumulation problem - and made the job of digging a lot harder - my dad had put stone and sand in this area of the yard to get it to drain and the stone in sand turned into concrete so I had to use the pick ax to dig most of the trench

luckily my brother Steve also came over to help my dad and I - 20 feet is a lot of trench - this is the trench with the drain inserted and then surrounded by 15 bags of VERY HEAVY stone that my dad got at home depot

the trench at the end of the evening - had to leave the sprinkler head uncovered until it can be fixed - nope, no one's going to notice we did anything at all (sarcastic)

Here's a vid of what it was like to dig in the mud trench: