Greg Michael’s Daughter’s Birthday Present – Some Adult Assembly Required

On Sunday May 31, it was our daughter Vikki's 4th birthday and we had her birthday party. We had close to 20 people, both friends and family. It was quite a celebration, mostly because of a surprise present that took 14 hours to build.

Thanks to my sister in-law Stacy, we were able to make this a surprise as she took Vikki overnight Saturday night and brought her back for her party on Sunday at 1 p.m.

We bought a backyard cedar swing set that came in two boxes. When I saw the two boxes, I thought how hard can this be? The job was a lot tougher than I thought.

As we opened the boxes, out came dozens upon dozens pieces and planks of wood and hundreds of screws, nuts, bolts and other thingies to do the job. Then it came, the overwhelming sense of the job. It was me, Lynn, our son Dylan, his girlfriend, Lynn's sister and a family friend helping on the job.

The swing set took us 12 hours to build on Saturday and then we spent an additional couple of hours on Sunday morning in the pouring rain to almost complete it before the party.

It is done for the most part, we need to put the ground stakes in and affix the slide properly, but we'll do that when the sun emerges and things dry up a bit. Of course sun would be nice so Vikki can play on it.

The picture is a bit blurry, be here is Vikki's reaction to the surprise.