Priceless...

Renting an excavator for a day to dig our trench:  $153

22 cubic yards of gravel delivered:  $375

Having awesome friends who will dig and dig and haul gravel and sweat just because you ask for help:  PRICELESS

Seriously, people are good.  Over the course of 2 weekends, we had 20 friends show up and help us out.  It was amazing and we are so grateful!!!

 Here are the guys digging out more to get the slope right.  They were also working on removing some MAJORLY huge rocks that Matt wasn't able to scoop out with the excavator.

Look how massive that rock is!!! (side note:  we unearthed hundreds of rocks...hard to believe there was any dirt in there.  I'm seeing a new rock wall in our future)

 When we got the right slope, we lined the trench with fabric, put in a bit of gravel and then put in the piping.  An amazing day of expected rain that never came meant we had guys all morning hauling wheelbarrowful after wheelbarrowful of gravel to the trench.  It was a miracle how fast they got it filled.

Then it was folding the fabric back over the top to keep the dirt from mixing in with the gravel.

 Covering the last few inches back over with dirt.

 A nice perspective of depth...this section was 4 feet deep.  The kids thought this was an awesome adventure!

We aren't out of the woods yet, but we are close.  The trench is 140 feet long and I'm guessing we have 40 feet left of it that we still need to put dirt over.  Then it's on to hauling away the hundreds of rocks we excavated and getting rid of the extra dirt.  But the trench is in and with a LOT of rain this past week, it's doing its job.

This should keep our basement from flooding like it did last winter, which will make us happy campers.  In the meantime, we are feeling grateful that it is practically done.