Cheap Slave Labor

 One of our big projects this fall was fixing our back patio.  The retaining wall had started to lean, and the cement had severely sunk.  This has been a problem for a few years, but we were not brave enough to tackle it until a friend (with really big dirt loading equipment!!!!) offered to help.  We were very grateful.  So we dug up the whole thing and secured the retaining wall to the house foundation.  

We then built a small retaining wall and repacked the dirt.  It was a lot of work.  We all did a lot of shovelling.  

We began to do some terrace landscaping. We are going to try to finish up the project in the spring with a new deck and more landscaping work.

We also seized the opportunity to do some work on our driveway.  We heard lots of wisecracks about slave labor from the boys, but they were awesome workers!  We really appreciated all of their help.