Pond Cleaning

Wesley spent better than a week cleaning out a pond in one of the pastures recently.  Every night he would leave the bulldozer and come home a gigantic ball of mud.  

On his last day working on the pond, he asked me to bring the boys out not just to watch him (which we had been doing every day) but to ride on the bulldozer to the very center of the pond.  It isn't like him to make such a request so I was happy to oblige him.... even if there was only a 22 degree windchill out that day.  

By this time poor John was already frozen but we threw him on the dozer anyhow.

Here's a picture to help you gauge just how large the pond really is.
That was an awful lot of mud to push out.

This part absolutely made me giggle.  Wesley kept shouting at me to zoom in and then he' instruct the boys to wave.  This was the most I could zoom in without completely switching out lenses on my camera, which is not something my little frozen fingers were about to do.  Can you tell if they are waving???

 They took at little drive along the dam to inspect the backside of the pond...

My poor, frozen little popsicle of a son.  Notice how John's expression really doesn't change much throughout the photos.  I don't think he could physically move his face at this point.  No worries though.  Once he got back in the car and warmed up he was all smiles and giggles and babbled incessantly about his 'man time'.