King of the Mountain

In all the craziness of the beginning of this summer season....having Alden ended up blessing us more than we'd thought. Through our Aflac coverage, we found out about a portion of our policy that all children born while on the mother's coverage are also included for the first 30 days.

An unknown financial blessing came our way :)

And like most parents....you love your children despite the days where they mutate into little monsters.

In the backyard, we have a ghetto swing set up. It is a long chain stretched tight between two large trees with 2 regular and one baby swing. It works pretty well and was the least expensive route to go. We had always drooled and envied those with the wooden set ups with the tower to climb and/or monkey bars. But they've never been in our budget. So when we had some unexpected funds become available...we thought this would be the only time we could do something like this.

We searched online and instore...did our research...compared and weighed the pros and cons.

Hey, look....Walmart has one on rollback!

.....but when it came to hitting the complete purchase button....we got cold feet.

Never had we spent this much money on a toy for the kids. Shoot....not even that much on a stroller!

These things have been known to be a beast to assemble. An all day job at that, and that is assuming you know what you're doing. By the time it would arrive, and be constructed...I couldn't help but wonder if they'd have a month to play on it before the weather turned sour. Kinda like giving a kid a bike for Christmas in the North East.

We don't own our place and is unknown as to how long we'll stay here. So we skipped the idea, since it was really the tower we wanted so the kids would stop climbing us or the furniture. Ain't nobody got time for that! But what else was there to climb on?

Low and behold....Amazon!

Step 2 had a mountain and it came with free freight shipping. Hooray!

It is over 6 ft tall and has been our solution. It ended up being cheaper on the budget too! It is rated for up to age 8 and should last a long time with the kids. And in the event we have to move, this should be more manageable to take with us. If not, we should be able to get a few bucks back out of it :)























Nolan can already climb to the top and drop inside to the middle platform.

Overall, it is a big hit with the neighborhood. Now if only I had room to bring it inside for winter play!