We are back up and running! Very happy and relieved to be working again. 
To start the week off, on Monday we had a delivery of two big boxes on pallets. We ordered 60 solar panels! And they are here now taking up my garage! Not sure when I will get around to that project.. My coworker sells solar on the side and they had a really good deal going through so we decided to invest a little earlier than we normally would have.
Wednesday the repair guy came. And can I just say wow… not a DIY job! But at the same time it wasn’t as intimidating or scary as I thought. But you do need the right tools! He had his massive service truck out there with a crane, cutting torch, pneumatics, hydraulics, grinders, welder (didn’t use thank goodness), a massive hydraulic pin press, and much more.  But needless to say he was well equipped. So it went well and he got me up and running.. very happy on wednesday. And then I got the bill on thursday. Very much less happy lol. So what happened was there is a rock guard on the track. It broke and a chunk of metal got stuck in the track which is why the track broke. So I had them replace the rock guard. Not necessarily necessary but I figured why not. Well turns out the new rock guard was a $1200 piece of metal. So had I not replaced that .. the bill would have been closer to expectations. It came in at $5200! ouch. But I called him up to talk about the invoice just for my understanding and he decided to knock the bill down for me because he said I was nice and good to work with. So $4700 all said and done (and if you just remove that rock guard I’d be at $3500!)  But I am still happy it is fixed, and if you have ever watched HGTV you have to know that not everything will run smoothly.
Friday/Saturday:  First thing Friday we made a camping spot for us to set up shop that is out of the way. Up until this point we have never had a very good place to “hang out”.  Again zero flat land on our property unless I make it. So we are excited to have that set up.The rest of Friday and Saturday I ran the dump trailer a bunch getting more dirt up by the driveway entrance.. still a bit of a drop down off the gravel road onto our driveway (passable but not great). The battery won’t last all day on the trailer though so on saturday I switched over to hacking down the ridge some more. I’m literally moving a mountain 🙂  (Which is both really cool and somewhat nerve wracking? I do have thoughts every once in a while, like do I really have any idea what I am doing? Or will this really work out? Who knows, most likely I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll keep pretending!! ) I am cutting down 4 feet more to the final grade of the ridge.  Once there we should be able to stake out the house!.  I moved A LOT of dirt on saturday but still have A LOT more to go. I also have been working on my rock wall to hold up our drainage crossing as I find rocks during excavation.  Anyhow, things are moving along, very exciting!  

We will be taking our camper up this weekend and will be camping out.  With the camper in place there will be an onsite “potty”.  So that will be somewhat of an improvement 🙂  As of right now the weekend is supposed to be very nice weather.  If anyone wanted to come say just let us know!

Thanks!

Mark