The Playset, Oh that much work!

Pops, Noel's dad, asked us about three months ago if he could buy the "safari" a play set for Christmas. I stated that was fine. Well when Noel and I were on vacation Pops and us went and looked at play sets. We looked at Sam's, Lowe's, Toys r Us, and other department stores. Pops looked at Rainbow which wanted him to pay over $6000 for a play set. The ones that we saw did not have the support structure that Pops wanted, and Rainbow was smoking crack for what they wanted to charge.

I got onto the Internet and started looking for play sets. We found one at Gorilla that was what we wanted in support and there was no cement needed. So we picked out a play set and this is the one that we picked.



It is beautiful. Noel and I were excited. The delivery of the play set was the beginning of the fun. The play set was delivered by a freight liner. There were 8 boxes and the total weight of the boxes were over 1,300 lbs. So after the delivery we looked at the instructions and called Pops to let him know that it was delivered.

Pops came over on December 16 to cut the grass where the play set was going. Then he came back on Friday the 18th to get all the grass up. Well it did not come up as easily as we had hoped. So there was not much work done on Friday. Noel and Pops found a machine at Home Depot that would help with the digging of the ground.

On Saturday, Noel went and rented the machine that we needed. He dug the ground until about 11:30 when I asked him when the dump closed. We found out that the dump closed at noon on Saturday, so he left to dump the grass that he had dug up. I fed the "safari" and then went outside to play with the machine and did the rest of the digging. Also during nap time the Kiddie Mulch was delivered. We had 18 cubic yards of mulch dumped in our driveway. The "safari" thought that was pretty cool. We put some of the mulch in the backyard on Saturday and we got up the the first support beam up on Saturday. My brother Ben and Noel's brother Sean came over on Saturday to help and realized that they would need to come back on Sunday as well.

Sunday was the day that the play set got put up. The webpage stated that it can be put up in 8-12 hours, but the reviews stated anywhere from 2-3 full days. We are happy to state that the play set was put together in 12-15 hours, which is not too bad. The play set was the easy thing to put together. The hard thing was the digging the ground, laying the top soil and moving the mulch.

Monday, my dad and Noel worked on the slides. On Tuesday night Noel and I did the top soil on the the support cement blocks. On Wednesday night Noel and I did the mulch, and Thursday night we made sure the mulch was raked so that we could show the "safari" their present. You see the "safari" had not seen the backyard since the ground was dug up, the blinds had been lowered all week and they have been kept inside all week.

All the nanna's and pappa's and Pops came over on Christmas day around 3 pm for the big reveal. We caught it on tape. Here is the video.



We would like to thank Pops and Nanna and Papa Hensley for contributing to the play set for the "safari" this Christmas. The "safari" is thrilled and still excited about playing on it when they get a chance. Even though it was a lot of work and Noel and I were exhausted every night it was worth it when they saw their present.

Here is slideshow of the progression of our backyard for the play set. Thank you for all that helped with this endeavour and for being willing to help and be away from your wives during the Christmas season. We appreciate the time and the "safari" love you very much.