Sam's Birthday Present

We got a Woodplay playset for Sam for his birthday. He's got tons of energy lately and he loves the park so we wanted him to have something fun to do in the back yard.



The whole project started with getting approval from our HOA to put the playset in our backyard. This is the drawing that was approved. We have a 15 foot setback on our property so we had to be very exact when placing the playset so that it was the maximum distance allowed away from our house. We also had a hard time finding a playset that was long and narrow like this and still allowed for proper safety clearance for swinging and sliding (and running in circles around it).



We'd had the installation postponed once by rain already last week, so we were hoping that the rain could wait long enough to get it installed. We didn't tell Sam that it was coming, so he was extremely excited when it showed up. He helps Chris build all of the Ikea furniture that we buy, so he wanted to help "the guys" build the playset. We could not pull him away. He kept walking around the backyard, jumping up and down, and clapping.



Here's the tower going up. We have a pretty good slope to our yard, so they had to dig in on one side and raise it up with a beam on the other. We hope to regrade the yard so that it is more level, but that is another project for another year.



Sam found ways to play with the playset before it was even finished. The neighbor kids where in their backyard. They had climbed the fence to watch the playset going up.



It was short-attention-span theater when the playset was completed. Sam went from one thing to the next and only stayed on one thing for about 15 seconds before moving on. He couldn't really get the hang of the trapeeze so we put the belt swing on for him to try out. I think the belt swings at most parks are too high, so he still likes the safety of the toddler swing.



The climbing wall is Sam's favorite part of the playset. The angle is a little too steep for my liking based on the slope of our yard. I think we are going to try to build it out a little more to get a safer angle on it until he gets a little older.



Sam has a racing wheel, a telescope, and a periscope in his fort.



This is, without a doubt, the fastest slide that I have ever been on. If you launch yourself off with the beam above the slide, you will fly off the end of the slide, and you have to be careful not to go into the fence. Sam doesn't have that problem at his size - he just flies off and lands on the ground (and laughs). I tried to talk Sam (and Chris) into getting one of the slower slides, but those daredevils wanted the fast one.