CATCH UP

Sometimes I feel that is all I do.

So let me catch up on this blog. I think I fall behind since I don't think anyone would notice. So please if you are out there and reading this let me know. Maybe that will help me stay on track.

In the past week and a half we have been busy busy busy.

I picked up the swingset I had in layaway at Walmart much to my husband's dismay. He was thoroughly against this swingset but I pushed forward and got it. You see he likes the grass just so. A swingset disrupts this process ruining the grass and making it much more difficult to cut. While I say a backyard is to be enjoyed. She will only be a kid once and what does it hurt to allow her to play in our backyard since we don't often make it to the park.

So I picked it up on a Saturday evening and then the trouble started. It is a wooden swingset and needs to be built. I get home after they load up the two boxes in the back of my van (that doesn't have stow and go seating and therefore requiring me to take out the 2 seats and then lift and put them back in). The one box seems to be sealed and the other.... Well let's just say it wasn't sealed. In fact when he pulled it out you could see the slide was cracked. UGH. So I called right and told them about the slide but that I wouldn't be able to open everything and check it out for a couple of days possibly. I got up early the next morning (Sunday) and decided to start to lay everything out to see. Well we have a new undamaged slide as well as the broken one. Also a bunch of other duplicates but NO wood.

So I call Walmart again and speak to a manager and explain everything. She said she would see if they have anything else there. They didn't. She said I can return it. I asked what about getting them to ship me one from the website. They said I would have to do that on my own. I said I wouldn't do that since then I would have to pay an extra $150 in shipping. I asked what about any other stores. She called me back and said she could get another one from another store near her house (on the other side of town) and would bring it to her store (near me). So it was a plan. On Monday I take the seats out of the van again and head back up to the store. The manager loads only 1 of the boxes as her vehicle wasn't large enough to bring them both at the same time. She said she will bring it on Wednesday. OK.

I call her on Wednesday since I only had a small window to go to the store that day(so to be pro active I removed the seats in the van before work after dropping off my daughter). She says she had a flat tire and wasn't sure when she could bring it. Bummer. But she is helping me so I tell her to let me know when she does since I probably can't start working on it until the weekend anyway. She calls me on Thursday and says she brought it to the store and I can pick it up from layaway as she is leaving for the day. So I hurry up and take the seats out of the van again and rush up there since I don't want this box to get lost. Luckily there was no lines at layaway and this gets put in my van pretty quickly. I go home and add this to the growing mound of boxes in my driveway. They don't want any of the broken parts/extras back since they will just have to throw them away. So I had said I would just trash them at home to save everyone some extra time and trouble.

Along comes Saturday and we didn't have time to try to start this project.

On Sunday the fun begins. Now my husband is not the best when trying to do a "project". Especially one he didn't want in the first place. Next thing we know our neighbors from across the street come over and say they went and got one also from another farther store and are going to be building theirs at the same time. They came over to compare notes since our directions were a little bit different.

We were off to a good start when the sky decided it was time for us to take a break and thunderstorm for a couple of hours. That did not help us. So I started making the chocolate chip cookies I needed to bring for the 4th and of course the rain stopped. I put the baking on hold and we went back out to build some more. We got the entire fort piece built by 7pm and decided to call it a day. All that was left was the actual swing area with jungle gym bars.

Monday we had to work so we tried to finish but my precious little girl decided to tell her daddy a lie about knowing how to use the brakes on her bicycle so he stopped working on the swingset. Much to her dismay. Let's hope she learns her lesson about lying.

Tuesday was a full day and another post about the 4th. We got home around 6pm and finished the job. So now we have a fully functional fort/swingset with rock climbing wall and slide in our backyard. YEAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

Jaclyn is sooooooo excited. Even in her sleepy head one of the first things she asked was if she could play on it when we get home after work. Poor thing. I had to tell her maybe since we have to go to swimming lessons first. But she can after that.

Here is to fun in the backyard and no injuries....