Flashback Friday- The best reward ever!

Back in May, Afton became obsessed with the idea of getting a slide. I decided to take advantage of this obsession by promising her that if she learned how to go potty in the toilet and wear big girl panties we would get her a slide... one of those little plastic ones you can put anywhere. It worked like a charm. We had a chart and she got a sticker every time she went potty and when it was full we went to Toys R Us to pick out a slide. While there I noticed that for just a few more dollars we could get one with a playhouse type thing attached to the slide. Way more fun, but I know Chris doesn't like them and it would take a lot more space than just a little slide so I figured I'd call him and get his opinion. He shocked me my saying "Why don't we just get a swing set?" Um. Okay. So he got on the computer and I was in the store and he looked at other stores as well as what I could see in front of me and we settled on one from Toys R Us and went for it. The boxes were too big to fit in my car with all the kids so we decided I would go back the next day with all the seats down and pick it up and then we would build it Saturday evening and then BBQ while the kids played on their new treasure. 

We were obviously very naive. 

So, the plan is to build at 5:00 and then do dinner and play, right? Wrong. So very wrong. 

Here is the before shot:

And this is what it looked like after we unpacked the boxes. 

That's right... tons of wood and more screws than I've ever seen or care to see. 

Chris was ready to dive right in, but being slightly OCD and noticing how similar all the pieces were, I insisted that we go through and find and label everything BEFORE we started. That turned out to be a great plan in the long run, but it took as over an hour just to sort it!

We were finally ready to start.

Open the directions. 

It says: "10-12 hours assembly"

Hmm... maybe they should put that on the outside of the box.

So much for dinner and playing. We threw together a super fast easy dinner and decided to start building and go until it got too dark to work.

Abby liked that this was an 'A'

Chris trying to sort through the hardware. 

Seriously... SO frustrating.

They weren't divided or organized in any way.

Blurry photo courtesy of Abby... 

and, no this wasn't staged.

And also, no, I am not pregnant!

At the end of the night this was all we had accomplished. 

We definitely had our work cut out for us.

Sunday after church we changed our clothes and had lunch as fast as we could.

We don't usually do this kind of thing on Sunday, but we were all out there together and it was actually a lot of fun to build and be together enjoying the cool, early summer afternoon.

A few hours into our work we noticed the dark clouds gathering and knew a Utah summer storm was rolling in fast. We started working as fast as we could to get as much done as we could before it hit. We did get rained on, but it only got bad enough to make us stop a little bit.

Starting to take shape. 

Afton was so patient. 

She just kept saying that she wanted to slide.

Getting there.

Almost done. 

We worked for a full 7 hours on Sunday and still weren't finished. 

On Monday when Chris was finished with work we put on the finishing touches (about 3 more hours of work) and finally, around 9:00, we were done. The kids went down the slide and played on the swings for a few minutes and then we ran and got dinner to celebrate.

The finished product!!

A swingset where there was no swingset before.

It was totally worth it!

We actually had a lot of fun building it as a family.

They haves spent HOURS out there this summer. 

It's been a castle, a water park, a cafe, a school, a broadway stage and even a Cirque de Solel show with synchronized acrobatics (we have very creative children).

Definitely quite a reward for learning to go potty in the toilet. 

We were joking that we'll never be able to offer Afton a reward again!