Sod Service Surprise

August 9, 2007

Julie’s up at girls’ camp for the Young Women this week, so we’ve been juggling our kids back and forth between her parents, my sisters, and me. Well, yesterday, I returned home from picking up the kids after work and had a few messages from a lady in our ward wondering if we wanted any sod because a friend of theirs had a couple extra pallettes and was just going to throw it away. Do we want sod??? Are you kidding? It had been awhile since the last message she had left, so I frantically called her back hoping that the friend had not thrown the sod away. Turns out they just assumed we wanted it (like I said, a very safe assumption), and her husband had borrowed a company truck with a pallette jack and gone to West Jordan to pick it up and bring it back to us and he would be back up here by 7:30 or so. WOW! So cool.

So I ran out to get going and my home teacher was outside, hard at work filling in sprinkler holes. What a man! I told him the story and we hurried to prep the parkways for the coming sod. Julie’s parents had got the parkways all cleaned out of weeds and junk so it was just a matter of pulling out some dirt and leveling things for the most part. The sod showed up and as the truck came pulling up to the curb, about 10 of the youth in the ward from age 12 to 17 came walking up the street, ready to help. I passed out shovels, rakes, and gloves and some continued the parkway prep and others started laying sod. Well, that is after we had quite an adventure getting the sod down off the truck. It had a hydraulic lift and we thought it would be pretty easy, but I ended up laying into the pallette like a blocking sled to keep it level and on the hydraulic lift.

After about 20 minutes of sodding, another friend in the ward showed up to help pass out drinks and do whatever she could. That was a huge help because about this time, Logan needed help inside, Peyton and Soren were hungry, and Eden was about ready for bed. So she took over in the house and made sure the kids were taken care of and eventually put to bed, so I could stay outside and work.

It was now starting to get dark, so I pulled out the construction floodlights and turned them on the parkways. We finally got all the sod laid and the mess all cleaned up around 10:00 pm. We got all the front parkway and about half of the side parkway done with the 2 pallettes. It was awesome! Even though it was just parkways, IT WAS GRASS!!!! I haven’t taken pics yet, because Julie’s got our camera, but as soon as she’s back we’ll post some up here. I can’t wait for Julie to get home. She is completely out of cell range at Aspen Ridge so I haven’t talked to her. But I wouldn’t tell her, even if I had. She’ll be so excited for that surprise awaiting her. I’ll just tell her I had it planned all along!

Posted in Home Projects