I came home on Tuesday afternoon for lunch, just like I do every weekday. When I got home on this particular day I washed my hands, just like I always do. While I was in the middle of this washing however I realized there was something odd about the water coming out of the tap-it was brownish orange. At first I thought I was imagining things so I turned on another sink-the same gross looking water came out. After I had tried the kitchen sink as well, with the same result, I called Jason in somewhat of a panic. He called Lehi City and they promised to send someone over shortly. They had received another report of the same thing just a few minutes previously somewhere else in our area and they were unsure whether these two reports were just the beginning of a larger problem.

At this point all the worst case scenarios went through my mind. What if we didn’t have useable running water for days? What would we do? Would we have to go stay at a hotel? What if we couldn’t drink our water, take showers, or wash our hands, clothes, and dishes. How would we get by? I was suddenly hit by the realization of just how much we rely on the conveniences we take for granted. Having running water is absolutely vital-what if all of a sudden we just didn’t have it anymore?

This made me think of the complete necessity of having a 72-hour kit. If there was a major emergency and our water system was compromised, and running to the store to grab some bottled water was out of the question, having a 72-hour kit could mean the deference between surviving and not.

Back to my story- we talked to the city water experts one more time and they said they would be at our house in about 15 minutes and that we should, in the mean time, turn on our water to see if this would flush the contaminants out a bit. We did this while we waited and by the time they arrived our water was looking much better. They examined it, took samples of it, and checked our neighbor’s water. They told us that dirt had probably gotten into our pipes from a contractor messing around with the lines in our area, a contractor that didn’t know what he was doing. They could find no traces of the contamination in our neighbor’s water. So they told us to turn on every sink and shower in our house to try to clean out our pipes and use all of the water in our hot water heater to flush out any sediment that may have settled to the bottom of it. They also said the water was safe to bath in and use-just not to drink.

In order to be sure our water was safe to drink we would have to wait two days for test results to come back. And with that they departed.

We were very grateful we could at least use our water for everything but drinking. It was a tremendous relief! But drinking bottled water did get kind of old over the next couple days. Jason and I always felt thirsty.

Our test results have since come back and our water is fine. Yeah!

Incidentally, we saved a sample of our gross water and although the particulates remained in solution for a whole day by the following day they had settled to the bottom forming a reddish brown sludge. It was not very appetizing.

Drink up!

We moved into our new house in mid-August. Although this move took place late in the summer we planned on putting in our sprinkler system and sod before winter. Jason and I unfortunately didn’t know anything about landscaping, sprinklers, sod, or any of that, since we have never had a yard ourselves. So we decided to brainstorm landscape ideas with a landscape designer. She was very helpful and I would recommend this procedure to anyone in a similar situation.

After we had planned out our wonderful yard we were temporarily delayed from doing the real work for a few weeks by the remainder of the boxes in our front room that still needed unpacking and Halloween party preparation.

As soon as Halloween had passed we immediately started the mad rush to get our yard ready for sod. This rush was mainly due to the fact that we had our sod scheduled for delivery on November 17, giving us only two and half weeks to get ready. With cold weather surely on the way we did not want the sod delivered any later than it had to be. Because we were short-handed we enlisted Jason’s little brother, Matt, to be our slave monkey. We bribed him with an enormous salary of $10/hr. Ah yes, I remember the good ol’ days when that was a lot of money. Fortunately for us, Matt still thinks that is a lot of money so he was happy to do strenuous labor for us.

In addition to Matt- Jason’s parents, my dad, and several of our siblings kindly gave up many hours of their time to help us. (Thanks to all of you! You are awesome!)

Despite our time constraints, we decided to do things right and not skip any steps. As the landscaping specialist had recommended, instead of putting in top soil we spread out a whole dump truck of compost over our yard and tilled it in to amend our soil. This compost contained good old horse manure amongst other things, which led to some poo flinging fights while we were working.

We worked every spare minute of our time and were fortunate enough to enjoy lovely weather for two Saturdays in a row. I was able to wear shorts and a t-shirt- for November that is pretty impressive. (It is unfortunately a far cry from the weather now.)

This good weather did not stay with us however for the duration of our lawn installation experience. A few days before our sod was to arrive it started feeling like one would expect November to- cold and bitterly windy.

But we had no choice but to keep working. So that is exactly what we did. The north side of our house became known as the wind tunnel. For some reason all the wind channels through it and it seems twice as cold as anywhere else in our yard. So we fought over who had to work on that side and drank lots of hot chocolate.

At last the day of sod delivery arrived and we anxiously awaited its arrival, which was supposed to be at 2:00 PM. Although I had gotten off work early to put in as much sod as possible before it got dark, 2:00 came and went and our sod did not appear. Finally at 5:30, after it was already dark, our 10 pallets of sod arrived. By this time it was extremely cold but we were so thrilled to finally have the sod that Jason decided to put in as much as possible in the dark using a flood light. Our friend Rowley volunteered to help and our other friend Cameron volunteered to watch everyone work. This installation continued for an hour or two until snow finally put a stop to it. But the next day, the day before Thanksgiving, we were back at it. We worked through the afternoon and not long after it got dark we were finally done. YEAH! I had to dance around on my new lawn! It was thrilling to have it in after all that hard work.

And for all of you that are thinking, “I hope their sod doesn’t die. Isn’t November pretty late in the year to be putting in sod?” no worries. We asked the sod people lots of questions. November is a great time to put in sod. Your sod will actually fair a lot better than if you put it in in the heat of the summer. It is actually going dormant for the winter by November so it doesn’t require much attention. It is better if you are able to water it a couple times before the cold weather sets in for good and if it is kept free of snow that sticks for at least the first couple of weeks after it is put in. But even if those requirements aren’t met, it’s pretty forgiving because it’s “asleep” for the winter. Luckily, it rained several times in the first couple weeks after we put in our sod and no snow stayed for long, until now. So when spring comes we should have a yard or awesomeness!!!!