Monday, September 10, 2012

I didn't even know it was Grandparent's Day?

It wasn't until I looked at Facebook late last night that I realized it was Grandparent's Day!

We celebrated it all weekend.

Our grandson has had a dream of a tree house for quite some time.  His dad found a great design in one of his magazines early last year.  When they moved into their new home this January Luke patiently waited for his dream to come true.

All summer we talked about building it but with the extreme heat that seemed to last forever this past weekend was our first opportunity to get it done.

My son, Ryan came down and helped us on Saturday.

We started with the digging of the 4 holes to set the support poles.  Monty took advantage of Ryan and Tyler's youth and muscle!

Ryan checking to see if it's deep enough?  Nope -- it had to be deep enough for only the handle of the spade to show!  Keep digging!

Tyler and our ergonically correct post hole diggers.  No matter, his shoulders still felt the burn!

After getting the posts set we were on the way.  We got the floors in and the rail around the "deck" of the house.  So cute!



 With the rails up and everything ready for the actual house part and the darkness setting in we decided to enjoy the pizza dinner Stacy brought in for us all and continue our plan tomorrow morning.  Ryan wasn't able to make the trip back and we knew we would really miss him.  We had so much fun all day Saturday.  Luke and his friends couldn't even wait for us to get it finished before asking if they could take a look from up there.

Sunday morning got started with trying to figure out the design for the house part.  The magazine wasn't too detailed in their plans and Monty has studied it all the night before and even into Sunday morning trying to figure out just how it was to be built.

His idea --- sidewalk chalk!  Yep, draw it out on the driveway to make sure we had the right angles in the right places.  And guess what --- it worked great!  I love his creativity!  (among other things of course)


With Ryan not there we needed Tyler's muscle even more and he was up for the task!  He learned to use all sorts of power equipment and told us at the end of the day that he was going to get one of those impact drills -- no matter if he couldn't think of anything he needed it for right away!  He used it all day long putting the screws in everywhere.


Okay --- I have no idea what happened to this picture as it uploaded here.  It doesn't look like this on the computer?????  Blogger has it's own mind sometimes?  Anyway, you can see the frame start to take shape.  Luke smiled when he figured out how the A-frame house got its name.


The end result?  Success for sure!  Those smiles tell it all.  It still needs a bit of cedar trim, a coat of primer and paint but the kids could care less.  They were thrilled.  We even "borrowed" a ladder that a neighbor was getting rid of to fill in until we can build one. 

The finishing touch was adding the hammock underneath!  Priceless!

The highlight of the weekend for us?  A picture is worth a thousand words!

So Happy Grandparent's Day to us!!!!  It couldn't have been any better!!!!

Until next time . . . it's such an amazing blessing to become grandparents!!!!    Susan and Monty

1 comment:

Treasures from a shoebox said...

We missed you at the party, but we can see you were definitely needed elsewhere! Love and miss you both!