A pipe, a rock and a camera... oh yeah, and overalls

My dad still helps me with maintenance around my house. He called early evening Saturday to remind me to unhook my hoses before they froze that night. Everyone but me (I was on the computer of course) had gone to bed and at 11:45 pm I heard my garage door opening. I was scared, but knew only a handful of people know the code, so it couldn't be anyone dangerous. Right? I yell through the door and it's my dad again. This time he remembered that I hadn't shut of the main water line to the sprinklers. Dang those pesky details! So he had to get in to get the key to drop it down and turn it off. That is when the mayhem started. He couldn't turn it off. It seems a certain 5 year old, who claims "It wasn't Mmmeeee!", had dropped a big enough rock to block the valve. Now, we couldn't just reach down there and grab it. This is a two inch pipe and is 4 feet deep. And it's snowing outside. Dad and I tried to put duct tape (use #4253) on the end of the turn key to try to get it out. After about 10 tries, we tried to just push the rock out of the way with the end of the key and happened to lodge it very tightly halfway under the pipe. I mean, it was moving a little. About 30 minutes later, in my jammies, in the snow, we decided that we would have to try another day. So, we let the hose in the back yard trickle a little into the garden to try to keep it from freezing.
Fast forward to today. We didn't do anything on Sunday. Jason had today off so my dad came over and they tried all kinds of things to get the rock unlodged. No luck. Jason was resolved to have to DIG a 4 foot hole, pull up the pipe, and get the no-good rock out the old fashioned way. Enter the engineer. Tim came over (in OVERALLS no less!) and brought an infared camera to lower in the hole to see this alleged rock. This in itself was entertaining. It was better than dinner and a movie, only it was freezing outside! We couldn't get the camera to work because the antenna wouldn't work through the earth. I had some floral wire that we used to be the antenna and hooked it up. Luckily it worked! So we are watching the camera on his DVD screen in his Jeep that he backed up on the lawn. We got a coat hanger and Tim, in all his overall'd glory, unlodged it after about 30 minutes of prying. It really was about an hour total of this chaos. YAY! Now, how do we get the rock out? It kept falling off the hanger. Vacuum. Genius. Rock out, valve closed. No frozen pipes.
***Make note. Find cap for valve.

The camera on a string. Everyone needs one.

Dad vacuuming out the rock. Tim standing by in his overalls. I don't know why this struck me so funny. Only, if you knew him- you would totally see that it is hilarious!

Debi in the front seat admiring in the warmth of the running car. Okay, I was in there for most of the time holding the floral wire to make it connect to the camera and we had the heater on.