Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Modern Marvel of Engineering, Part 1

Evidently Cousin Marcia and I had the same idea last weekend... new swing sets for the kids! Reagan got a new swing set as an early birthday present so she could enjoy it before the July heat/humidity makes Mommy miserable. And she found out first hand how handy it is to have a handy Daddy! David got to put that mechanical engineering degree to good use, with me as his assistant. Man, I bet he was wishing some of his other friends had been free to help! This thing is a BEAST! So, it isn't all the way finished... I'll have Part 2 up with the finished product.
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Here on our back porch table is the assortment of hardware... screws, bolts, etc. There are thousands. I know that none of these pics are going to do it justice. The manual was actually a BOOK!
This was my major contribution... opening up the 3 boxes and organizing the wood pieces. Had to measure each one, categorize it, and label with a postit. We did it together, but it took almost 2 hours alone!
Here's the box with all the plastic pieces.
The beginning!
R was already so excited... she thought it was an obstacle course. She enjoyed just stepping over the beams.

Here, you can tell that she was REALLY helping Daddy. Too bad this piece was to go near the roof!
Sitting on the piece she helped with.
I think she was pretending the slats were a raft because she kept laying on them and telling me she was swimming.

You can tell this was an all day thing since R now has on a jacket!
Day 2: big helper.
Daddy hard at work with the instructions. I was so proud how he actually followed them! :)
R having a picnic with some snacks under the fort. Sharing with Gloria of course.
This set is so cool because it has a playhouse! It is just so cute, and I would have LOVED this when I was a kid! Unfortunately for David, it was like building a log cabin log by log. He had to put in each slat with 4 screws! It took forever.

R standing on the roof.
She had so much fun outside for 2 days straight. Made huge messes with Gloria's water bowl creating mud that she obviously sat in. In 2 days she went through 5 pairs of pants I think! Fun times!

Before she was allowed inside, she enjoyed the shade underneath a lot.
I couldn't resist this pic of David drilling into the floor of the house! :)
The house is so cute... has a mailbox, chimney, even a doorbell. Here, R found the doorbell before it got attached!
The bell is blurry because she was having a BALL with it!
She ate lunch outside, then fed her baby too.
This was the first time she got to play inside the house. I think I was even more excited than she was though!

A little peekaboo...


Somehow I never caught a smile... but she does love it, I promise!
She was FREAKING OUT over the ladder. It is quite the big kid ladder, and we both thought we would have to help her up all the time. WRONG. This little monkey has no trouble at all with it! I don't even stand back there anymore... she so doesn't need me.
Lovin' the slide!!!
The swing set will be out to the left of the fort section. But for now, she doesn't care!
She had to have help with this maneuver.
Not this one though. She went up the wrong way all by herself!
Then the baby got a fast ride!

I'll put up swinging pics next! But for now, here is a glimpse of her in action... before we were brave enough to let her climb the ladder by herself. She runs like this all the time, but even worse when she is excited. SO CUTE!

10 comments:

Hollie Reese said...

That is the cutest swing set. Man, you must have some patience! Justin was so happy when our new house already had a set in the backyard!!! She is a cutie patootie!

Marcia said...

Wow that house part is super cool!! Ours isnt that fancy. R is too sweet! PS yes Addie did get her ck pox shot at 12 months. UGH

Anonymous said...

Wow! David needed to call in the troops for help. Super cool looking playhouse. AND LOTS OF WORK! Can't wait to see it.

Dad

Melissa Taylor said...

It looks like Reagan is having just as much fun playing with all the parts as she did sliding! I wish I'd had a cool house/slide/playground like that when I was little.

Kendra said...

Wow! It looks GREAT. Much better than when we saw it :) Great job!!

Alli said...

Wow, cool set! I do know how hard those buggers are. After me trying to "help" by organizing all of the wood (I so wanted to do what you did with the post-it's!) and screws/nuts/bolts, Jason quickly told me to stop and then he called his friend to help over several days. :)

Tell David I loved his booty shot!

Amber said...

This blog must have taken you forever to post! Thanks for doing it! So cute, I'm glad that she enjoyed it before it was put together! What a good Daddy to put all that together!

Tracy said...

wow. that swingset looks great!!! i feel so bad for david though! the instruction book was litterally a book?!! yuck. it looks great though :)

Alicia said...

Cool swing set! I wouldn't even know where to start putting that thing together!! That is what I like to call "man's work." ha

Mandy said...

So cute! I love it!