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The New Play Set!

August 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

It arrived!

The amazing and fun play set that I won from Mom Dot and Skip to my Lou is here.  I still can’t believe that I actually won this thing.  It’s been surreal and very exciting.  I can’t thank everyone enough.  The people at HomePlace Structures have been wonderful to work with.  Their truck delivery driver was amazing and Bonnie (the logistics manager) was always quick and helpful.  It got here so much faster than I ever imagined.

We organized an “erection party” this past weekend.  I know, I am juvenile.  I don’t care.  We dubbed it the party for all men who have ever had an erection, ever wanted one, or who wishes to have one again.  HA!  Again, I know.  You don’t have to tell me how gosh darn clever I am.  Anyhow, we had a couple of friends come over and we made a 2 day party out of erecting our play set.

It was HARD. *snort*

We tried to do a “time lapse” of the play set going up.  Unfortunately, I kept moving the camera (oops).  But here is the general idea of how we got it up:

playsettimelapse

OMGosh! I just can’t stop with the jokes.  LOL

playset7How many men does it take to read the instructions??

playset6This part scared the shit out of me!

Everyone ended up having a great time.  I had hot dogs and pizza for Saturday and then my mom made hamburgers on Sunday (Thanks, mom!).  The kids swam in the pool.  The pool is GREEN now.  So gross!  But it got a lot of use and was handy for keeping the kids off the play set.  It wasn’t hardly done and they were chomping at the bit to get in and play.  They were so excited!!

I can see there being some “issues” though.  It wasn’t completed an hour before BoBo tried to give me a heart attack.  The backside of the raised fort is open so that kids can climb in easily from the rope and rock wall.  I can see one of my boys shoving another one off!  So they will have to be supervised while out there.  Which, I suppose isn’t necessarily a bad thing anyways. I guess I’ll watch my kids if I have to…*wink*  Also, all three of them have already fallen off the steep steps.

With some getting used to, this thing is definitely going to last us a LONG time.  It’s VERY well made and sturdy.  I love that it’s vinyl so there won’t be any splinters.  The general consensus is that it is AWESOME!

playset1playset2

The Rope Wall.  I did this part.  I was so freaking helpful.

playset3playset4playset5

Thank you everyone again!!  We will enjoy this for a long time!!!!

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Life in Slow Motion

August 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I’ve never had one of those moments.  You know what I’m talking about.  Where your life flashes before your very eyes.  Where everything ssssllllooooowwwwwssss down to a halt.  But today, I did, and it was awful!

My very cool playset that I won from MomDot.com arrived on Thursday.  We spent the weekend building it.  It was not easy, and I have lots of pictures and stories about it set for another post.  This story is about what happened once we let the kids loose to play on it.

We had been joking and making “bets” on who would get hurt first, who would climb on top of the structure first, etc etc.  We do live with a house full of monkey boys.  I just did not expect it to happen within the first hour.  All bets were on BoBo for climbing on top first and he did not disappoint!

I walked around the side of the house.  My mom said “Rhea, look.”

I stopped and it took a moment to register.  I kinda chuckled and turned to get Bob’s attention.  This is where we saw BoBo (he’s the red picture…don’t knock the artist!):

bobo

No sooner did I get Bob than I turned to see his feet swing off on the outside of the structure.

He was hanging!

About 8 feet in the air.

This is where my universe stopped spinning and slowed to a halt.

I took off running (which is not something I do) and all in the same moment…

I tripped over a big tree root.  I started falling.  I knew that I was going down but I was still running.  In slow motion.  Like a movie.  In my head, I knew I was falling.  The only thing I could think of was that my baby was going to fall to the ground and my fat ass was going to be sprawled in the dirt unable to get to him!

Then I went down.  Like a giant sack of cupcakes.

And it hurt.  Bad.

Thank GOD that Bob was right behind me and jumped past me to get to BoBo before he let go and fell.

I was hurt.  Both of my palms were skidded up, both my knees were bleeding, and the air was knocked out of me.  I was a sight to behold for sure.  It bet it could have made us $100,000.00 richer on TV!  Nothing funnier than a big butted woman doing a belly flop on the ground!

But all I could think of was if BoBo was okay.  And he was.  Bob got to him and got him down.  He got a stern lecturing from grandma about not climbing on the outside of the fort again.  Mommy spent the rest of the evening trying not to cry about it.

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