The Treehouse

My brother and sister-in-law kindly offered to help us do house repairs while they were here. Fortunately the house is in generally good shape, but I've been toying with the idea of building a tree house for Desert Boy for some time. Since my brother's an engineer and creative, I figured that might be a good project, and he agreed to give it a try.

I had picked out a location, next to a big poplar tree in the yard. There's an old dead stump for part of it, and I figured that would be a great location for a tree house for a three-year old, only a couple feet off the ground. The next step was assembling all the materials, which included a trip to the ever-fun equipment yard and its menagerie of stuff. (My husband continues to insist that it's not junk.)

Peter decided an old pallet would be a good floor.

It took some creative engineering to get it attached to the tree and make it solid.

Little Maria (wearing Desert Boy's coat) helped. She thought it was great fun to hammer with the little toy hammer.

Sarah helped add more stabilization while Maria peeked out of the new wall.

We found a fun sign for the tree house. Desert Boy helped put it up, although he had it upside down at first. He thinks the sign says that it is his tree house and every one else should stay out. I guess that's the gist of it!

Maria had fun climbing around the tree house.

Part of the tree house is a slide.

Besides sliding down it, Desert Boy decided it would be fun to send his little vehicles racing down the ramp.

Desert Boy was thrilled that he has a tree house. He even found a way to climb through the tree to get into the tree.

Maria thinks her dad is really cool.

She really enjoyed playing in the tree house and on the tree next to it.

Maria added a few final touches to the tree house.

And Desert Boy climbs through the trap door under the tree house.

A tree house with a tunnel is pretty cool.

Desert Boy is so happy to have a tree house. Thanks, Uncle Peter!