Summertime and Septic Tanks

Isn't that title just amazing?

I'm sure you just can't wait to see what it's all about.

As always, we'll start with Ellie.

One morning Will let me sleep in and he took Ellie for a couple hours while I got to rest. (He also got her dressed, which explains the outfit.) He grabbed the camera and took a bunch of pictures, most with Ellie posing like this. I have no idea where she learned to stick her butt out like that.

I think it might have started with her showing off her underwear, but now she poses like that a lot. I've tried to deter her.

The next shock came after I bought her some new clothes. And by new, I mean from a second hand store that was going out of business.

I washed the new clothes and was folding them when Ellie came up and grabbed a dress (used as a skirt in the picture above) and held it up to herself. "Oh, so so cute!"

Um, what? I did not teach her that. 

The only explanation is that she aged 10 years while I was folding laundry. She then proceeded to grab several article of clothing and create the look shown in the picture. Now all I need is for her to become obsessed with shoes and I will be sufficiently lost.

Last week we briefly lost power when a tree fell on our road and knocked out a bunch of power lines. I had pizza dough rising and Will was due to start home soon and then out goes the power. So I managed to get a hold of Will with my cell phone (miracle of miracles) and he grabbed us a pizza on his way home. Except that our road was blocked by the tree. So he had to find a way around. Needless to say the pizza was cold and Will wasn't going to make it to mutual that night. But we had a picnic in the living room, much to Ellie's delight (she LOVES picnics now) and it was nice enough outside to open the windows. All was good.

Right after the power went out I got the camera because Ellie was being ridiculously cute. It's dark, but the good part is hearing what she's saying. Her vocabulary just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Anyway, on to the septic tank!

Basically, we have one. We didn't know where it was. There was no record of it. More importantly, there is no record of it having been pumped. The house is 40 years old.

Yeah.

So finally, after much digging in the yard, calling around and metal detecting,we still had nothing. Finally, we called Roto Rooter and for several hundred dollars they found it for us. We think.

Now we can have someone pump it! Except that it's like 5 feet down and the pumping people refuse to dig. So Will had to do it. But we think we found the handle, so that's lucky.

What a man!

Of course Ellie had to help too. We didn't let her help with the hole, so she worked on the driveway for us.

See the dead, brown spots? That's where we've dug. There are three or four in the picture. Good thing the actual septic tank was on the other side of the house.

And this is a random picture that I took this morning. There are 2 fawns and a doe, and just the right of the doe you can see a couple turkey heads. Ellie and I thought it was pretty cool.