Mission Accomplished

Well, we did it. My brother Jeremy came over at 9am yesterday to help me unload our "new" swing set from my truck. I was a bit concerned that it was too big for the area that I had in mind. It was, sort of. It was about 5 inches too wide. I had placed it between two oak trees behind our garage and the two trees were just a little too close to each other to allow the swing set/playhouse stretch out like it needed to. The really annoying thing was that both of the trees were dead! I need to cut them down. I would have done this if Jeff Turner had brought his chainsaw over last Friday like I asked him to, but he's a slacker. (Actually no, he's a great friend and I should get my own chainsaw. He's been a bit preoccupied now that he's running his own company.) Once I decided where to place the set the re-assembly was actually easier than the disassembling process. Fortunately, father-in-law was there to help. So was Joshua. He served as the "motivation" to get the project done quickly. "Dad, can I use it now? Can I get on it now? How about now? How much longer until it's done?"

The area we set it on wasn't exactly level so we had to prop up and stabilize some of the base. It worked out ok, though the bottom of the slide is about a foot lower than it should be. The result is the steepest and fastest slide in Braintree. A couple of days later I went back to Craigslist looking at the swing sets that were for sale rather than "Free". I found one that was almost identical to the one we have that a family was trying to sell for $500. Granted it was newer and in a little better shape, but I felt pretty good about our hand-me-down! Josh has already declared that it is his "lab" that he and his cousins will use to solve "investigations" when they visit. I'm sure our first set of stitches will arrive soon!

So Soon???

Somewhere out there in cyberspace there is a lonely blog belonging to...me. I never used it. Who knows if we'll use this one?!?! But as I linked to several friends' blogs from Facebook, I decided that it was probably a good idea for our family. So thanks to the Scalera's, who linked me to the Casler's, who linked me to Amanda Marble, who linked me back to th Casler's, where I clicked a link to the Fringers, where I found a link to the Wyborney's. It was the Wyborney's where I saw a picture of a toddler with a too-full diaper dragging almost to the floor. OK, so that's an exaggeration, but not much. I had, in fact, seen it before on my children. However, I'm not sure I would have thought to post pictures of it and describe it in such detail. That's why we need people like Kim Wyborney. To remind us of the funny things in child-rearing that we take for granted but actually are special. From the Wyborney's I linked to Betsy and Dave Scott's blog and read about their son and a little bit about their brief time living in community at Fuller. That settled it for me. It was time to start a family blog. We'll see how it goes. I think, with Josh as involved in the internet as his mom and dad will let him be, I'll have the proper motivation to post updates. He's been wanting his own Facebook account, mainly so he can play games. He saw me Playing bowling Buddies the other day and wanted to know what website it was. Simply telling him it was Facebook didn't suffice and he asked for a better description. I said, "It's kinda like WebKinz for adults." Oops. He then begged for me to let him create an account. I told him no, explaining that he needed to be able to read to use it. Then he said, "So Brayden could have one?" Brayden is my brother's three-year-old who learned to read pretty early on. I think it was the same day he learned to crawl. OK, that may be a stretch, but it was early. I think it was before he was weaned. Hey, he's 3 and he read me a bedtime story from the Charlie Brown encyclopedia the other night. He's the only three-year-old I've ever felt smarter after listening to. Good kid.

Joy and I have a couple of great kids too. Joshua is pretty smart too, only differently. That may change soon, because there is nothing he'd rather do than play video games. One Saturday not too long ago I heard my mother's voice coming out of my mouth as I exclaimed "NO! You may not play Nick Tunes Unite on your GameCube. It's a beautiful day! Go outside and play!" (Don't you hate it when you start saying things that you hated hearing your parents say? I do it a lot.) Today we made a move to entice Josh to go outside a bit more. We acquired a playhouse/swing set from someone on Craigslist. It was free, so the price was right, and I left to get it first thing when I woke up today. He's pretty excited about it because of the "playhouse" part. He's got a great imagination and I can't wait to see him play on it when/if I get it back together. As much as I think he'll like it, our daughter Jordan was the real stimulus for the "purchase."

Sunday on the way home from church we passed a yard sale on Quincy Shore Drive. Those of you that live in the area or attended ENC might remember a house on Wolly beach that always had stuff in front of it for sale. I think it was the same house. Pretend it was. Anyway, as we drove by Joy noticed there were some things there that she "might like". Go figure. I did the right thing and turned around to go back. Sure enough there were a couple things she liked. The item of most significance was one of those plastic kitchen areas for kids. Joy wanted to get it for Jordan so badly. While Jordan isn't exactly neglected, Josh still gets the lion's share of the gifts/toys. Jordan is content with the hand-me-downs. So when Joy saw this kitchen stuff she wanted it for Jordan. It was used but in good shape and it wouldn't take a big bite out of our gasoline budget. Unfortunately, we didn't have any cash and the guy wouldn't take a check. We took about ten minutes to go to the ATM only to return to find that someone else had purchased the set. Joy was pretty upset. I felt bad for her. I think she was more excited to get it for Jordan than Jordan would have been to receive it. It was a bit upsetting because the man holding the sale wouldn't set it aside for us. He wasn't to apologetic about it either. Joy decided not to purchase the other stuff just because... We got back in the car and continued on our way. As I expected, a few minutes later I heard a little sniff. She wanted it for Jordan pretty badly. I understood. I did what little I could to try to make her feel better about the situation. I suggested that we could look on Craigslist to see if anyone was giving one away. Well, what she ended up finding was this swing set/playhouse thing. We were the first to contact the seller and the rest is and will be history once I get it set up.