You know when something comes with a hardcover BOOK and a DVD of instructions (not to mention 5 enormous boxes of parts and pieces and one giant yellow slide that completely fills the bed of a Texas-sized pick-up truck) your weekend project has just turned into a month long project. And that’s what it was…for Dave.

I can honestly say that I didn’t really help out much on this one at all. I helped pick out the placement of the new swingset, and I helped hold some boards together a few times. But other than that, one parent had to keep the tiny screws and bolts out of Mia’s mouth and keep Olivia from trying to climb the new rock wall up onto our fence so she could scale the barricade to the neighbors. And really, Dave and I undertake projects in two TOTALLY different manners which is really not conducive to working together on major installations such as this. So, I just hung back and offered my support, constant encouragement, and distraction services to our kids to keep them out of his construction zone.

And clearly that was the right move, because in all honesty, I could not have built this thing if left to my own devices. I would have gotten frustrated by the 2,898,873 different parts and pieces and INSANE installation instructions that were meant for civil engineers. But Dave did great, hung in there, and built a damn good swingset.