Playing in the Dirt

We were so on the ball in getting our yard in right after we moved in, but sadly as more yards have been finished ours started flooding. We ended up with a swamp that looked a bit like this. Actually at it's worse, the much extended out to where you couldn't get within 5 feet of the grass. At least 10 feet, was soft all the time. It was gross.
Then we got new neighbors. Yay! No more ugly empty lot of garbage next door. But...
their yard was about 3 feet higher than ours. So Nate, Matt, and Matt's dad spent last weekend playing with some Komatsu toys.

Nate was able to get both a mini excavator and a skidster. They took dirt from the Johnson's yard and moved it into the back of our yard.

Both families went to the carnival Friday evening, so the guys just didn't want to stop playing even after it got dark. I don't know if it was a good thing or not that those machines have headlights.

Saturday I ran away to our ward's Super Saturday and left Nate home with the toys and the girls. Allie couldn't wait to help Dad.

Then Kayla traded the camera for the mini-ex and hopped on with Daddy.

Kayla got to work the controls and do some work all by herself.

We no longer have a marshy yard; now just dirt. We had another 13 tons of topsoil delivered. Nate used the equipment to mound it all in the backyard, and now we've got to finish leveling by hand before we spread the top soil. I'm being stubborn and making us wait until fall to get sod. I want to make sure we don't flood again this summer. For some reason, I'm getting really sick of buying sod and dirt. Whoever said "cheap as dirt" obviously never completed a yard made up of clay.