The Big Unit

Time continues to fly and it remains nearly impossible to keep this blog up to date. I'm not going to say that we are going to do a better job of posting, because I can't make that promise. What I will say is that this is the first of three posts that we need to get up here and we have a pretty relaxing 4th of July weekend in which to do that, so check back!

Courtney's parents (Grandmom and Pop) have been so nice to each of their grandchildren that they have purchased each of the three families (Courtney and her sisters) a swing set for the backyards.

Now we are not just talking any old swing set. I think that Uncle Darin once said that if the Kennedy children walked by and saw this swing set, they'd be jealous! This is no aluminum pipe and bag of quickcrete! This is solid wood, handmade in Pennsylvania. Somewhere there's an Amish guy who hasn't seen his family for 3 weeks because he's been putting in overtime building this play unit!

So we're heading home from vacation and we recruit a few friends to help get the unit up the driveway. It did come mostly assembled, but because of that the tower portion weighed about 13,000 lbs. (no exaggeration). The challenge with our yard is that we need to lift it over the fence to get it in.

So we have four guys...Pop, Uncle Louie, Uncle Brent and me...to get this thing in the yard. We decide that the game plan is for everyone to take a side and press it to get it over the fence. The only thing that we didn't think about is that as we traveled through the fence opening, the guys on the sides would get clipped off, making it exponentially heavier for the two poor souls on the end. I was one of them.

So I'm holding this thing up over my head and the eight seconds that I had to do that seemed like about 20 minutes. I look down and there's Courtney, scurrying beneath the unit trying to find somewhere to push on to help us. It was moving in slow motion and all that I could think about was and I quote "if I drop this thing I'm going to kill my wife!"

Well we got it over, assembled easily and the kids are loving it! Julia likes to walk up the slide and Emma likes to throw sand down the slide. It was a big hit at Julia's Birthday Party (coming post) and we can't thank Grandmom and Pop enough for the gift.

-Andy