Merry Christmas!

The other night Steve was down in the basement staining our new mailbox post.  I decided to go down and start putting together the little house-thing that we were giving Evelyn for Christmas.  I'm sure you've heard this story before from other parents.  It's the age-old story of putting together the Christmas presents.  I figured we could work together once he was done the mailbox.

I opened the box and was met with about 50 pieces, all wrapped in plastic.  I started pulling stuff out of the box, piece by piece, as Steve watched.  It was when I pulled out a sheet of stickers that Steve told me I was on my own.

Fifteen minutes later, I had the window box, ball-catching device assembled.  The directions didn't say so, but apparently the placement of that little, purple plate at the bottom is crucial to the correct building of the rest of the window.  It was at that moment that I decided it was time to start photographing this endeavour for use in a blog.

After building the window, these were the pieces I had left to deal with:

Twenty more minutes later, and I had the door built and was ready to attack the slide.  Oh, and the mailbox post was finished being stained.

As I started to gather the pieces and scan the directions for building the slide I read that I would be using the six remaining piece X.  I flipped the directions back over to the handy-dandy diagram of all of the different components to this project to learn that piece X were the larger screw.  I began to dig through the bag of screws, sorting out the large ones.  After sorting, I discovered something that annoyed me even more than the nagging thought at the back of my head that Evelyn was going to like the very large box more than the toy I was building her.  What I found after pulling out all of the large screws was that there was a grand total of 5 piece X.  

So the question became do I deal with only having 5 screws and build the slide, knowing full well that every time she plays on that slide I would have a little panic attack that the whole thing was going to fall apart and she would fall the 2 inches the slide is off the ground (it definitely looked bigger in the pictures online!)?  Or, do I go to Lowe's or something and try to get a screw the same size?  Ultimately I made a compromise, the next day I went to my Dad and asked him for a screw that was comparable.  He found me two possible matches, one of which allowed me to complete the slide.  

From that point on, it was pretty smooth sailing.  All on my own I managed to build the whole play-set, and I only ripped one sticker when it came time to put them on.  The finished product looked great under the tree.  And the look on Evelyn's face when she walked in on Christmas morning and the fun she has had climbing through the window (not go through the door or down the slide) of her play-set is so fun to watch!

  

The obligatory Christmas morning, top of the stairs photo!