Swing Set!

For the past year or so, we have been saving here and there - everything from Christmas money for us or Meredith to a little from some freelance work Neal has done so that we could get a nice swing set for the backyard. I was really hoping that we would get one soon so that Meredith would have something super fun to do knowing we would probably be at home more now with Jillian almost here. We finally had just enough to buy this great set we found on sale last week and brought it home. Then we realized that we had no idea when we would actually put it together - between Easter this weekend and bringing home a newborn next week, we figured the boxes would sit on our porch for quite a bit.

We got a great surprise from a friend on Friday - he called Neal telling him that he had assembled a crew of our other great friends to come over and put it together today. We were beyond touched that our friends were willing to give up part of their holiday weekend to do this for us - we are so blessed!

The instructions said that it would take 2 people 10-14 hours. Well, Neal and I spent about 3-4 sorting wood, screws, bolts, etc on Friday and then a revolving group of half a dozen guys spent from 7am until 5pm to get it all together.

All the sorted wood ready to be put together.
By 9ish we can actually see a structure taking shape!
By 11, I am still stunned by how much the guys have done!

Around 1, Meredith and I come home from the Easter Egg hunt to find lots of the fun stuff like the rock climbing wall done!
About 2:30 we have a play house with adorable windows - the guys had to put each of the boards on individually on both the roof and those too cute windows - good thing Meredith immediately noticed how cute they were!

They are almost done by 4 - just the slide is left!

Just in time for Meredith to wake up from nap, the swing set was ready! And her friend Jacob stopped by just in time to help her test it out!

Again, we are so grateful to Jason, Brady, Taylor, Kris, Micah, and my dad for giving up all their time today to make one little girl very happy!