Mar 27, 2012

in our own backyard

We live on a very busy street. We knew how busy it was when we bought our house but decided to be okay with it because buying a similar house on the same amount of land in our city without being on a busy street would have cost us close to twice as much as we paid for our house! So...busy street it is!

There is a nice bike path and park within walking distance...but you have to walk up the busy street (with no sidewalks) to get to it. In the past 5 years I've only done that once or twice because I can just see one of my kids darting out into oncoming traffic!

So...we stay in our own yard and house as much as possible and sometimes drive to play at other parks.

Over the years the kids have had a blast playing baseball in the backyard and digging holes in the dirt. We had almost complete shade in our backyard...until we took out some trees shown here...and had one of our biggest trees die. Now we have sun and look forward to being able to grow grass in the future. :) But we still haven't had a playset or anything the kids could do out there other than dig and run around. (which has kept them busy for the past several years...but it's time to add some fun)

I tried to create a sand box for the kids to play in (shown here) but it didn't have a top so it got very gross. (let's just say there are lots of creatures in our yard that probably spent some time in there...ewwww)


The dream has been to have a nice swing set that ALL the kids can play on together. And the dream came true last weekend! :)

My parents have looked into swing sets for a while and wanted to give us one for a big combination of presents from the past couple years of birthdays and holidays. Now that we're back in our house and the fence is up...it was time to get one!

Here's the process of getting it set up:

The boxes arrived and were unpacked to lay out all the materials. Whoa...that's a lot of pieces! And they're all cedar which made the yard smell pretty cedar-y!
My dad came down to put the whole thing together. I wasn't much help since I had to wrangle the 4 munchkins constantly...but thankfully my cousin could come over and my aunt and uncle were in town and happy to help too. (Thanks guys!!)
The frame of the structure went up pretty quickly...and was taller than I had even envisioned. To the peak it's over 15 feet tall! (and please ignore the icky shed you'll see in the background of these pictures...its days are numbered!)
 A little break for cuddles with Henry. :)
The kids had fun playing on the slide before it was attached...I think in this picture they're pretending it was a boat.
 Day 2: The main part is done and the swings had to be put up.
All done! Emma modeled for me so I could get some pictures of the final product.
Looking through the telescope...climbing up the rock wall...
 ...sitting at the picnic table and making silly faces...
 It pretty much makes our little slide from last year look SO tiny!
Needless to say...the kids LOVE their new play set!! They have been outside every day since we put it up and each day they say their favorite part of it is something different.

In total...it took a handful of people a full day and a half to put it up. (about 7 solid hours the first day and 5-ish the second) Lots of work but ssssssoooooo worth it because the kids will enjoy it for many times the number of hours it took to assemble. (and as far as the length of time it took to make it...it paled in comparison to this project my dad and I did last year)

Thanks Dad & Mom for the incredible gift!

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. It is! Although...I would LOVE it if we lived across the street from a park like you do! :) But I guess this is like having a mini park in our yard.

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