No lazy Saturday for Phil

Phil has been putting in some really long hours for the last few weeks. And it looks like there will be a few late evenings at work yet to come, so I kind-of guilted him into a nice new swingset for the girls. After all, if I'm going to have a couple of extra hours during which I need to keep them occupied every day then we have to add something cool to the arsenal, right? Thankfully Walmart had just marked down a nifty swingset, so we picked it up and poor Phil had his work cut out for him.

Of course the girls knew he was up to something when he started banging around in the garage. Claire joined him a bit to "help Daddy with his project" and it didn't take her long to announce that her daddy was building her a PLAYGROUND! We really had her going for awhile, trying to convince her that it was actually a shelf for my plants. She got pretty exasperated with us and started talking to us slowly like we were 3 years old, "No guys. Mommy's plants would slide right off of that slide. It's a PLAAAAAAYGROUNNNNNND!"

Phil built the whole thing himself (I occasionally held things in place when he ran out of hands) and the girls thought he did a great job.

He started in the garage:

Then moved to the backyard:



Then (after a short rain- and lunch-break) he put in the final screws and the girls got to play!

Now for the unending chorus of, "Mommy, come push me on the swing!" or, in Maddie-speak, "Mommeeeee! I 'unt fwiiiiiing!"