The woes of home ownership...

For the past month, we've noticed a puddle of water in front of our house. It never goes away and we've attributed to over watering the front yard. So we toned down our sprinklers from 5 minutes to 3 minutes to 2 minutes. Then we went from daily to every other day to twice a week. This morning, we noticed the puddle is slowly becoming a pond. Crud... there's gotta be a leak somewhere. As we walk home tonight, in the quiets of the evening, we hear water gushing out from the ground... as if someone left the sink running. Upon further investigation (ie flashlight inside the bushes) we indeed found a leak. CRUD...no what?!? We're not even sure where the sprinkler valve is. After another 5 minutes of poking, we found "a" valve. Not knowing what it is...we shut it off and the leaking stopped!!! PHEW..... Go back in the house. 5 minutes later, Joycie comes out saying, "We have no water." CRUD, again. We turned off the main valve!! So we had to go out and search for another valve. Tomorrow, we'll have to dig up the pipe to see if it's fixable. Honestly, I have no idea what's fixable and what's not. Sigh.....home ownership. Why bother??????????