Just like yesterday, another gorgeous summer day in Maine. The forecast calls for sunshine at near 80 degrees, and hopefully I will be able to enjoy it and relax. Yesterday was a fun day, but an adventure consisting of a comedy of errors.

We promised the kids that we'd get them a trampoline against the advice of a few peers. Kids can fall off a Razor scooter and skin a knee, a leg can break falling while climbing a tree or they can get hurt with getting hit with by a baseball, so in the end we said, sure, they're safe enough if played on responsibly.

Over the past few months we had been eying a trampoline at our wholesale club for $279. Lynn and I thought with the income tax refund coming this week, we'd make good on the promise. Yesterday morning we go next door to our neighbor, Jim and Elaine's and ask to borrow their truck because our car is too small for a box that big. Jim said "yes" however we find out it is a standard, then go back to them and say, thanks but neither myself nor Lynn know how to drive a stick. They are such a sweet couple, both in their 80s knowing our problem they decide they'll drive the truck to the store as long as we do the lifting. I really can't thank them enough.

Off to the store we go. We get an associate to help take a trampoline off the stack, the trampoline in the box gets put on one of those flat carts and *boom* the purchase is made. Lynn and I get it on our neighbor's truck bed and home we go. At home we off load it onto the backyard, and now the fun really begins, building it.

If this trampoline was a circle it would have been easy, but being an oval, not so much. We started around 10 am and finally finished around 5 pm. After assembling the frame thinking it was correct, we started the process of getting the mat on and this is when we figured out the frame was assembled incorrectly. It's about noon and we're resembling the frame and finally got it right. In the process we lost a screw, after counting, we see that they provided no extras, so guess what, Daddy had to go to the local hardware store to buy another. I got back and we finished the frame.

Again, because the thing is oval, the mat placement is important as is the spring hole counting, after a discussion and giving into my wife something I should probably do more often the mat goes on easily and the netting and the vertical poles were also a breeze to install. The first half of the job was frustrating but the second half was a cake walk.

Now we're at about 5 pm, my hand is killing me from the spring stretching tool and I'm sunburned but the trampoline is finally ready for bouncing. A project that should have taken two hours took all day.

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A few years ago I helped a family member put a trampoline together so I thought I had this figured out, however, theirs was a circle, not an oval. A different animal entirely.

Today, we're relaxing and enjoying the kids and their new toy.

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