TIMBER!!!!

In April we had for about a week, storm after storm after storm! It was ridiculous, seriously! The first storm of the week, the wind blew really bad but not so bad that we were concerned. It ALWAYS storms at night here so it's not like we can see what is going on without running outside during the storm; so since our roof didn't come off we were able to fall asleep knowing there was going to be another storm the next night. In the morning I took Sam to school and he noticed that our neighbors flag poll had fallen over....weird, its a flag poll. I dropped him off came home and got ready for the day and I get Logan back in the car to run some errands, When Logan casually remarks 'why, the slide is upside down?' HUH!? I turned to look in our backyard and sure enough the slide is sticking straight up in the air. ( SIDE BAR: I told Dave and his Dad when they were building the big toy that they should anchor it down; with our little swing set I had to sit on the slide and Dave had to hold down the opposite side every time the boys played so it wouldn't tip over. Anyway, they told me 'Its so heavy, it won't tip over really it weighs so much it would be a waste to anchor it down.' ) After surveying the damage, I ran to the car to get the phone and call Dave. I told him it tipped over and he couldn't believe it. As I walked around the back looking closer I realized there was more damage than I thought. It wasn't just 'stand it back up' fixable. It was really broken, the roof wasn't that big of a deal Dave could rebuild it and put it back on, but the 4x4's that were the support of the whole thing were broken not in half, but split down the middle. We are going to have to take the WHOLE thing apart to get it fixed. It took Dave and his Dad over a week to build this and it wasn't from a kit, Dave thought it up in his engineer brain. There is no way Dave can do this rebuild this, it wasn't cheap to begin with and now we have to start over no way could we do it. Dave said he would come home and check it out since I tend to over react about things. He came home and we were able to get the slide, swing set bar and the bridge off before the weight of being sideways broke them. He said we could fix it, it would just take time because he could take a week off of work to fix it. Within the next few days he was able to stand the sections back up in the right spots only to have them blown back over by the wind so they stayed in the ground for a few weeks. Since April he has been able to work on it here and there. He has the sections back in place and anchored this time. We are still waited to have the time to get the roof back on hopefully this weekend. We are glad however that the strongest wind got our big toy and not our house. The wind didn't even knock over our lawn furniture, seriously it didn't even take the cushions out of the chairs. CRAZY!! The next storm a few night later that knocked over the big toy again also took our grill for a ride through our yard and Dave being determined not to lose anything else to these crazy storms ran outside, during it mind you, to collect the grill and bring it back and barricade it in before coming back in. Here are a few pictures of that day I found it.