Fun afternoon Dec 19

This afternoon when we got home, the kids went into the backyard to play.  I followed them out w/ the camera a while later.  I love getting candid shots of the kids.  I got to watch 2 funny things occur while I was there.

First, we just got a "Dogloo" for the puppy that's coming home to live with us this weekend.  When I walked into the backyard, there was not 1, not 2...but THREE children inside the dogloo.  LOL!  The little goofballs were all checking out Coco's new home & kept commenting on "how big" it was inside.

After they came out of the doghouse, Andrew busily began a project.  I just rewind a bit-- when they moved in with us, we had a tree swing in addition to the swing set.  There was a cable/rope thing hanging from one of the bigger trees with a board on the end.  It wasn't much to look at, but all of the kids in the neighborhood loved it!  When we built the bathroom on this summer, we had to cut down the tree swing because it was right in the middle of where the bathroom would stick out from the back of the house.  We've all missed it since then.  This afternoon, Andrew was trying to recreate the swing. 

He had found a piece of rope & tied a pretty thick stick onto the end.  The stick was tied in the middle of its length.  He was planning to use that for the seat.  I watched him repeatedly try to toss the stick over the limb where our old swing had hung to no avail.  He couldn't throw it high enough or hard enough to get it over the limb.  I pointed out a different tree with equally thick, sturdy branches, but they are all lower down.  I figured that would help since he couldn't throw the stick far enough to get it over the branches.  About that time, Savannah decided to get involved.  In the 2nd tree, there is a fork about 3 feet up, so she climbed into the tree & perched herself across the forked area.  Their plan was for her to take the stick with the rope trailing behind up the tree, and then throw it over the branch from mid-way up the tree.  Over & over she tried only to miss & send Andrew chasing after the fallen stick.  They tried to use tree limbs (from the ground) to push the stick in the right direction,  tried all sorts of different kinds of throws, but nothing worked.  After 40 minutes of this, it was time to go in so I could cook dinner.  I announced that they could give it one last try before we had to go in.  They groaned, but in their enthusiasm to make this work, they got enginuitive.  Andrew spotted a long stick with a little "hook" on the end.  They took the "hook" & stuck it into the rope that is tied around the stick.  They figured they could hook the stick/rope & get it over the brand (via Savannah who was still 1/2 way up the tree).  They get pretty creative when they're getting into mischief, ya know?!  Finally, after 40 minutes of failure, it seemed they had the perfect plan in mind!  At the bottom of the tree, a crowd drew.  Savannah was in the tree, Andrew stood beside it.  The other three kids, a neighbor friend & me all stood, watching in surprise as the hooked stick/rope finally make it over the desired branch!  Hooray!  Victory!  (or was it?)  As we cheered, we heard a thud.  When we investigated further, we discovered that the stick....the one that was tied to the end of the rope....had fallen &  hit the ground.  Alas, the rope was over the branch in the tree, but our "seat" was on the ground.  We were all stunned at first, but then couldn't help but laughing ourselves silly!  After all that work, the very thing they were trying to get up there fell out, leaving the less useful parts behind--yet parked in the right place.

How often do we do the same thing?  We work so hard to get our "stuff" in order, only to miss the point entirely & we end up flopping around, stuck on a tree limb when what we really need is on the ground, totally out of reach.  Of course, had we not climbed the tree to begin with, we would've had easy access to the part we really needed to begin with.

I'm so glad that I know the One who is pushing my swing...the One who is stringing up my tree swing!