On Her Playset, Pre-Party

The house we bought here in NC came with an old playset in the back yard. The deck floor was old plywood that was rotting away, and most of the safety rails had come off. There was no longer any slide or swings, and the ladder was rickety and unsafe. But the basic framework for a playset was still intact and sturdy, although there weren't any true right angles and the posts were far from level. Still, I thought we could fix it up.

I've been working on it off and on for a while. It was easy to put in a toddler swing, so we've been using that from the start. I finished rebuilding the deck (out of alternating 1x4's and 1x6's rather than plywood), and I found a good deal on a slide and some other accessories (like the toy telescope you cans see on the left) and ordered them a month or two ago. But then I got bogged down with other projects,and didn't finish it all until the day before the party, when I added the last safety rails (1x6's), connected a ladder I built out of 2x4's, and created a sandbox under the deck.

Aletheia, as you can see, was delighted. She loves scrambling up the ladder and being a whole four feet off the ground. She does this funny kind of skipping dance when she's really happy, and we were treated to about 10 solid minutes of it when she first climbed onto the deck. And then she said "Thank you, Daddy!" and gave me and her Mommy lots and lots of kisses.

So, that was worthwhile.

Monday night we stayed up on the deck for a while after sunset and watched the fireflies.

For the party Tuesday, we had ten kids around between 2 and 5, and the newly rebuilt structures got a lot of use. It was a blast watching them all.