What a BIG mess!

The trunk was at least 3 1/2 feet diameter!!!

Max was happy to pose as long as he got to be outside around the job site. Afterall, how often does all this equipment come to our own driveway?

This is actually after 3 huge truck loads of lumber and at least 6 heaping car trailer loads of limbs were already hauled away!

Good thing we have a big driveway!!! (There was also 2 cars parked in our front yard and a trailer for the skid loader across the street.)

Here's one of Dale hard at work.

So, all of this commotion was in our driveway this past week. Actually, there's still some mess to be cleaned up in the next few days. Then we'll work on repairing our neighbor's yard.

It started a little over a month ago when a third of the gigantic oak tree next to our driveway fell into our neighbor's back yard at about 1:30am on a perfectly still (no storm) night. Luckily, we found someone who would come chop it up for free because they wanted the wood. We had another friend who helped the two of us remove all the mess from our neighbor's lawn (except for the 2 or 3 5-6 foot holes left by branches shoved into the ground and the enormous tire ruts left by the truck that had to pull those branches out.

Then began the process of getting quotes for cutting the rest of the tree down. The two thirds of the tree left standing was showing some weakness all the way down to the bottom. If it fell, it would either take out our car, kitchen and Max's room or our neigbor's car and part of his house. So, Max slept in Sydnee's room for last few weeks as it took awhile to get tree guys in to do quotes and then find time to come cut it down. On days when it stormed, we hung out in the living room, which is in the corner furthest from the tree.....just in case. God blessed us with a guy who cut it down for less than half of all of other quotes. Dale and my dad did some cutting...then.....these are the pictures from Friday night when the guys (who thank God worked for free) moved in with the huge civil trucks, skid loader, and other equipment. They worked for 2 hours alone trying to break the big trunk part in half. Only to find there were steel poles running up the middle! This tree is around 100 yrs old....so those rods or fence posts or whatever they were have been there for a looooooong time and caused much frustration for this work crew.

Finally, it's gone....just a few more trailer loads of brush and a really dirty driveway to clean up now. Then filling in holes and repairing our very patient neighbor's yard. I need to stop right now and give God all of our honor and thanks because He really blessed us in this situation because there's no way we could've afforded to get this tree removed. For the entire thing, before it fell...plus clean-up, it would've been over $2000!!! God allowed us to find the right people and we got it done for under $500 plus the cost of a chain saw which we really needed anyway. (This is not the only tree on our property needing worked on.) The stump is still there, but we're not gonna worry about that right now.... And.....if you ever need tree work, ask us we'll definitely give you our recommendation!