Happy Birthday, Big Girl!

Mack has always loved play grounds. She loves them so much that " swing" was one of her first words followed not long after by " slide". As much as we'd love to have had the luxury of swinging and sliding in comfort of our back yard, we never actually had our own back yard. Well...Now that that's changed we couldn't help be be giddy at the thought of finally making her dream of having swings and a slide in her own back yard. Since we're on the cusp of spring, all of the local stores have been advertizing their model play sets and each time we pass one, Mack can hardly explain how badly she NEEDS one. Lucky for her, Mike and I decided way back in December that our back yard was definitely in need of a play set.

The only way we could imagine giving it to her was by surprise. The anticipation of giving a gift to your child that you know they will absolutely love is intoxicating. Our only option for surprising Mackenzie was to work on putting the set together the day before her birthday so she would see it when she woke up on the actual day. I would take her out for the day while Mike ( going on four hours of sleep after working three in a row! ) worked on putting the play set together, a job that was said to take up to 8 hours with two adults. Thankfully, my mom offered to come over and help Mike while I entertained Mackenzie away from the house. We played at the play ground, celebrated the last day of "3's" with a mini- blizzard, hung out at the library, successfully ( though Mack did wear her ear muffs) saw " The Lorax" and had dinner at Chick- -Fil -A. We were BOTH exhausted by the end of that afternoon:


Mike and mom worked diligently and got about half way done by the time it was dark enough for Mack and me to come home. Mike and mom closed up all the windows that faced our back yard ( including Mack's bedroom window). When we got home I quickly ushered Kenzie upstairs for a bath and put her right to bed. From there, Mike and I worked another three hours and got the play set to with in an hour of being done. At that point it was 10 pm and we decided to call it quits before the neighbors were disturbed. We turned off our work light and set our alarms for 6 am.

6 am -Sore and exhausted, the thought of surprising our little girl on her birthday was the only thing that pulled us from our beds. While the weather the day before was gorgeous- full sun with 70 degrees- things had changed drastically over night.We were now faced with a 50 degree temperature drop and were being pelted with tiny beads of frozen rain. But we were so close to finishing and a little freezing rain and wind wasn't going to stop us now ( even though the screws for the play set froze to the structure as soon as we set them down)! FINALLY, all the lumber was used up; the roof top tarp was the only piece left to hang. Mike worked to secure the first side and I glanced at my watch to see that it was nearing 7:30, when we heard a tiny knock coming from above. Mike and I looked at each other and then up at Mackenzie's window where we saw a bed-headed, super excited little girl with a look of disbelief written across her face. I raced ( well, race-waddled) into the house , up the stairs and swiped up the newly 4 year old girl, put her coat , boots and hat on over her pajamas and set her free to see what waited outside for her.



She could hardly believe it was true. She hugged Mike and thanked us for such a great birthday present .She made comments like " I never KNEW I'd get one of these!" or " I'm gonna swing ALLLLLL day long!' and " Great work, Daddy!" Mike and I smiled at each other ,knowing that all the exhaustion, stiffness and frozen fingers were completely worth it for just one look at our sweet girls contented face as she hurried onto a swing, kicked off and threw her head back with an excited "WHOOOOOHOOOOOO" , on her way to swinging allllllll day!


Even with all the excitement, it was hard for even Mack to shake the yawns: