Building Dreams & Memories
Building Dreams & Memories
My husband Bill loves to build things. Planning and building things for his family serves as a creative outlet for him – one that he doesn’t get to enjoy very often any more, with all of his global travel and busy-family weekends.
Except for this Summer – this Summer has been a backyard building Summer so far, and my husband has literally been pouring his “all” into building his little girls a backyard swing set and tree house play land.
We hired some help to assist with the swing set, which came with a set of hired-help issues all its own. But, as we’ve learned to do with so many things in our life in recent years, we let go of sweating the small stuff and let a “good enough” amazing swing set be good enough.
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Can you tell our girls think it is perfectly fantastic “as is”! In a kid’s mind, a swing set that swings is a fine swing set indeed – and this one is built for “kids” of all sizes (including me, Bill, my brother, and my sister-in-law, all swinging and chatting for hours after the kids were tucked in Memorial Day weekend!). |
Already, the new swingin’ addition to the Ely family has served as the stage for many special talks with our girls – sharing that comes easily and naturally with the beautiful Lowcountry marsh-view and breezes, just as the sun sets and the early evening peacefulness settles in.
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The “tree house” is actually a stilt-house being built among the natural beauty of old oaks, palmettos, and Spanish Moss, and it is sure to be the home of many little girl adventures and secret-sharing. So far, the trap-door is in, the official private girls’ club signage is up, and the mailbox is in place. (Yes, a mailbox… O.K., so maybe we girls got a little carried away at Lowe’s on Sunday!) |
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The deck railing, house walls, and must-have porch rocking chairs will be added in coming weeks.
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Until then, some little girls with big imaginations and endless creativity are perfectly content with “as is”, right now. And hopefully, they will look back one day and remember all of their Daddy’s love and dreams for them built into every square inch of their backyard play land. |
