Our Day with a Snort

*As a side note, in our family a snort is an excavator. We love the children's book Are You My Mother, by PD Eastman. In it, the little bird thinks that an excavator is his mother, until it snorts at him and he calls it a snort.  Technically I think it's a steam shovel, but looks like an excavator.  Anyway... my kids have all grown up calling them snorts.  I think it's cute, but I know that someday they are going to embarrass themselves by calling it a snort in front of their friends.- sorta like when I was little and didn't know that it was just my family that knew about bobbly-knobs (known to the rest of the world as ponytail holders with balls on the end- remember those? yeah).

So... we had a problem at our old house with water leaking into the apartment in the basement. This has been an ongoing problem for years.  We'd tried several different solutions, but after a while when it rained we'd get another call from our tenants saying that there was water in their bedroom again. Rob ended up having to cut the driveway and dig down 8 feet to the bottom of the foundation to seal the foundation again.  The only way to do it was to rent a mini snort.  We had it for 24 hours.  Twenty-four hours of joy on Rob's face, and many, many projects completed that would have taken much longer by hand.  Rob said several times, "I gotta get me one of these."

After fixing the problem at our old house, he took it home to see what he could get done. He moved boulders out of our garden, tore down dying aspen trees (why cut them down when you can just knock them down, roots and all?!), and built up islands... He worked as fast as he could before his 24 hours was up. We'll just keep it in the back of our minds that a mini snort is on his wish list. someday...

I got to try it too, but had to stop myself because I was tearing up the grass too much. It was so cool!