Bits and Pieces: Just keep swinging

Jim and I have been having a "discussion" about whether or not we should get the girls a swing set for over a year. Last summer we decided not to because we were tearing out the entire yard and it would have been terrible timing. I've been hounding him about it for a few months again now. Sometimes instead of saying "no" and having to deal with me he'll just find reasons to put things off. For example, I wanted to get it for spring break but it was raining. He kept saying we have a big park just a couple of blocks from our house that we can walk to and not having to pay for one and then have it take up room in our yard. I very nicely pointed out that it's not that easy to pack up two girls and take them to the park on a whim. Stella will have to go to the bathroom, they'll be thirsty, it's naptime, etc. It would be much more convenient to have our own in our fenced in yard. Then the flyer came. The Toys R Us one with the colorful pictures on the front showing 6 kids having a blast on a swing set and by the way... they're on sale this week. DONE! I pretty much told him I was doing it and asked if he wanted any input. It was a pain when we went to pick it up and they didn't have the one Jim wanted (and I'd called to put on hold), but they did have this other one, which happened to be the one I wanted, a bit less $, and they gave us an extra 10% off for making a mistake. Score!

So, as I mentioned earlier this week, we spent about 6 hours on Mother's Day putting this thing together and still didn't quite finish it. Stella had no idea what we were doing when we started, we wanted it to be a surprise. Once she figured it out she was pretty excited and kept asking how much longer it was going to be. I wish I'd taken a picture of ALL of the wood we had laid out for this thing, we kept telling her it would be done when all of the wood was done.

We spent HOURS outside on it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. When we came in Wednesday night Jim said, "honey, you're a genius." That one needed to be written down for all to read and for him to be reminded of for years to come. He doubted the swing set. He thought they'd tire of it in a few days. He thought they'd outgrow it in a few years. He obviously was not a little girl. I know that they'll use it for many years. I told him that when they're 12 and have friends over I can see them just going outside and sitting on the swings while they gossip about boys and how horrible they're parents are. I knew that at $315 rather than a thousand dollars or more this was going to be worth it's weight in gold (and this sucker is heavy!). It's the perfect size (it doesn't take up a quarter of our yard) and still has two swings, a "teeter totter", a playhouse, climbing wall, slide, and the cafe below. Plus, if we ever want to it would be easy to take the little plastic canvas "chalkboard" off the back and build monkey bars or a climbing net.

Now, on to the barrage of pictures!

Here's the hardware my mom laid out (needless to say, it's quite obvious where I get the need to arrange things in rows).

Being the genius that she is, my mom thought it might be a good idea to grab a piece of Stella's sidewalk chalk and number all of the pieces. I have no idea how much time that saved us, but it was huge!