God Bless the Neighbors the Beer and the Rainbow Play System

What started out as a simple Friday night out at McDonalds,

and playing for free on a bunch of fancy swingsets,

later turned our backyard into a huge party, starting with a sea of wood.

Thankfully, we are blessed with 5 sets of great neighbors. Also thankfully, beer works on men as a dangling carrot does on rabbits.


Similarly, a slightly constructed playset works on children much like that dangling carrot!
I will stop to tell you that once the playset reached this point my stomach sank. You see it in the picture above? It was literally taking up the entire yard. The entire yard! Okay, fine... It only took up close to the entire yard (I'd like to say that I never ever ever exaggerate, but that would be an exaggeration).

So after asking the men repeatedly what my options were and hearing that I had a whopping no options, we decided to chop down our baby tree. This was, as you saw in an earlier post, slightly difficult for me and extremely difficult for Elisabeth. In any case, here are some pictures of the tree-chopping incident that are sure to put a smile on anyone's face:

I'm no expert here, but I think there may have been some kind of display of testosterone going on during the battle with the tree which at the moment, appears to be winning.

Ahh, yes. An axe! I've heard that helps when chopping a tree down. At this point I stopped taking pictures of the tree incident. You're welcome. But you'll be happy to know that the tree did in fact succumb to the men and the axe.

Day 2 started with a bit of very sweet father-daughter bonding, which Elisabeth loved.

Look carefully at the picture above. How much work do you think is actually being done? This picture was taken shortly after I brought out the cooler of beer for my beloved neighbors and husband. They quickly sprung to "action" when they saw the camera aimed at them. It was too funny to not share with you. Hope they don't mind.

Check it out! We're so close to being done! The kids had a blast testing everything out as soon as they could. Even the neighborhood ghost got in on some swing action.

Finishing touches for the day, before the rain started (which by the way, has not let up since! I think we have been able to play on the swingset twice.)

Once the rain started, we all came inside and enjoyed a celebratory bratwurst dinner. We were also rewarded with a very entertaining fashion show! Here is one of the samples, which will be in stores next season. Giggle giggle.

The finished product, minus a few details that we hope to take care of next weekend. As long as Mother Nature cooperates. Maybe I should have titled this post "April showers bring May play towers" (Hey - I tried.)

We are truly blessed to have so many great neighbors. It's nice that what could be considered a daunting task was actually fun!