The beloved pond

 I title this post with a tiny bit of sarcasm.
Don't get me wrong, we love our pond, our fish, our turtles.  But...it does cause a little more work for us.  And when I say "us," I really mean Luke.  I try to help out (and I would like to do more but I am usually just corralling 3 children), but the heavy duty/gross work mostly falls on Luke's shoulders.

We had a leak in the pond (or so we thought), and plus, it was time to clean it out.
We decided to go for it Memorial Weekend.

Step 1: Drain the pond

Step 2: Catch all of the goldfish, mosquito fish, turtles, & sharks

Step 3: Transport (in a trash can strapped to the back of our truck) all of our friends up our long driveway to their "temporary home"

Step 4: Set up the "temporary home" in the garage

Step 5: Lunch and The Jungle Book in the garage to occupy the kids while we continue working

Step 6: Pressure wash the liner (pushing all of the "gunk" out the bottom drain)

 Step 7: Re-engineer the "temporary home" due to feisty turtles and flying fish

Step 8: After naps (still working), continue to make sure the kids don't hurt themselves with all the fun stuff laying around

Step 9: Scour the liner for leaks, patch some holes, replace some rocks, reseal waterfalls, etc.

Step 10: Start refilling

Step 11: Reintroduce the species into the pond (minus 2 sharks & one goldfish...our turtles went Discovery Channel on them!)

Step 12: Enjoy the nice, clean pond again!