Good Times, Good Times...

When we first moved in the house, we were in heaven. Not only because of the house, but because we had a backyard with a free swingset and makeshift fort-house in it for the girlies to play in. Over the years, those two playsets have been so good to us.

Last summer we were pushing our luck everytime the kids played on them, because they looked like this. . . (Not THIS bad, I'm not that bad of a mom to make my kids go out and play on stuff that could hurt them! I just took these pictures after this winter's snow melted, and they look worse now, but you get the idea.)

We just knew it was time to say goodbye to our good friends, fort and swingset. The girls and I sat one night while we watched Dad take apart the swingset piece by piece. I was surprised to see Malia start crying, which in turn made Lose start crying, and so on. I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised. These are the same girls that wouldn't stop hugging the suburban when we traded it in for our first minivan! Malia turned away before I could get her tears on camera, but Lose wasn't all that shy about sharing. She's smiling while crying because Naki and I were teasing the girlies, which Lose can never resist smiling from.

Eli, by the way, seems to me the only one not sad about this. I think it's because she secretly holds her own vendetta against said swingset and readily tells anyone who will listen that "yesterday" (every day besides the current day is "yesterday") she cut her finger on that swingset, and that's why we're getting rid of it. She's right. That was my last straw. However, she was not supposed to be playing on it in the first place, so that's what she gets for not listening!

I started hunting for some replacements, and knew that most were way out of our budget. I finally found a STEAL on KSL and Naki was a wise man and listened to me when I told him we could not let it pass us by. It was in someone else's backyard up in Sandy, and so bless his heart and all those that helped him with lending labor, trucks, trailers, time, etc. He had to go take it apart in chunks and drive a couple of trips to get it all here. Here are a few of the pieces.

Naki's family came over for Family Home Evening this past Monday night and spent a good chunk of time putting it all together, and they were even succesful despite me asking them to move it to a whole new location after they were almost finished in the first location. (Made me think of Mom and Matt and the little green couch...anyone else know that story?) It's now in it's new home, and we are loving it! It still needs a good staining and a couple of missing bolts screwed in, but we are in heaven. Thanks again to all of you great people out there that helped us get this thing into it's new home. We're super excited to give it it's proper place as the newest member of this Maile family. I have pics of it completed and will post those after we stain it. Yay!