Trampoline Builders
Sarah bought a new trampoline for the kids last week. It arrived yesterday, ready to assemble, on a pallet. A pallet with 7 individual boxes. Once we'd gotten the kids to bed, we went and read the instructions. "Takes 2 people 1 hour to assemble" the instructions said. Looking at the number of bits, I wasn't convinced.
I'd actually told people at work about the trampoline just before leaving work and they all gave me a "Oh good luck I hope you don't get divorced like we nearly did" speech about putting up their trampolines.
We started putting it up, it only had 48 individual springs. We were doing about the 6th once when the tool they gave us to bend the springs had a minor malfunction and the spring SNAPPED back, hitting Sarah's thumb really, really hard. I haven't seen it this morning, but last night it was so swollen and bruised. I was really worried she'd actually broken her thumb but she didn't. I was also super freaked out because my face had been very close to the spring. And we still had another 40 odd springs to do. We had to keep stopping to load up on Mozzie spray too, it was the perfect night for the little blood suckers and they were out in force.
Eventually we got a bit of a system going though and Sarah figured out how to hold the spring tool thing so that the bit that slipped off before wouldn't slip off again. Still seems like dodgy design of the tool. We'd gotten most of the springs in, had both expended about 1L of sweat (damn it was hot) and it was starting to get dark. We turned the backlights on and got our some torches...
Eventually about 10pm (We'd started about 7) we were done! And now we have the most giant trampoline you've ever seen in the backyard. We realised straight away our idea of "just dragging it where we want it" wasn't going to work so we'll have to investigate wheels or some other sort of solution to be able to move it about. The kids haven't seen it yet, Theo's sitting here next to me but I'll wait until Beth's up before I show it to them. I'm sure getting breakfast into them this morning will be an even more interesting task than it usually is.
Theo's sitting here next to me as I type this and telling me "Don't go fast Daddy, go slow" as I type. Doesn't like me typing too fast apparently.
Theo had his first day back with Grandma yesterday and, as expected, loved it. As soon as he arrives there he basically forgets Sarah exists! He's so cute like that.
Oh and Thursday Auntie Maggie arrives. Looking forward to that, though of course the circumstances that bring her here aren't good.
Update: Beth had a great play on it this morning, Theo wasn't so keen. Here's a photo of the assembled tramp.
Tim