Tree Fort of Awesome

This past week my father-in-law was home (he works out of state) and he spent a lot of time working on a pretty cool project. He built a tree fort years ago and he decided to upgrade it so that it's useful to both their grandson (our son) and their sons. The fort is built onto two trees which have both been long dead, though they are remarkably sturdy. To make sure it was safe he added posts on each corner which he sunk into concrete. He also cut the tops of the trees off to prevent the possibility of dead limbs falling and maiming people. Yay! the tree house was safe once more!

Did he stop there? Of course not. Being a man means you never stop there.

My wife's youngest brother recently became interested in the show American Ninja Warrior and is interested in trying some of the things they do on the show, so now the tree fort is no longer just a fort but also doubles as a work out area. On one side there is a salmon ladder. On another side is a climbing rope, which is actually a battling rope so you can take it down and use it for that. Along the bottom edge of the fort he made climbing hand holds. There are stairs instead of a ladder which allow you to climb up the back similar to the devil's steps. He also grabbed some used tires for various other exercises, though they aren't attached to the tree fort.

At this point that's it, but he's already talked about the possibility of hanging his punching bag from the underside of the fort. There's also the possibility of a climbing net or some other climbing stuff, as well as monkey bars or something similar to hang on the underside. I'm excited of course because if I want to I can use it too, and that could be fun. Now I too can be a ninja! An American ninja at least. Okay I wouldn't be a ninja, just slightly stronger and more agile than most regular guys.

Saturday was his last day here. That morning we went to the Farmer's market (me, my wife, and son) and got corn on the cob, squash, and zucchini for grilling. We also picked up a loaf of cheese bread (it is so good) and then got some turkey burger from Trader Joe's. Everything was grilled perfectly and instead of a bun I had my Turkey burger on some of the cheese bread from the market. It was delicious.

On Sunday we got the most awesome Chewbacca backpack for the boy. I'll have to post a picture of it. It's sweet. We also tried, unsuccessfully, to watch Snow White and the Huntsman. After about two hours of trying to get our player to read the blu-ray, updating the firmware, and trying to watch it through digital snow we decided that clearly our player remembered Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 and wanted nothing more to do with Kristen Stewart. I still want to watch it so I think we might try again with a DVD, because we never have trouble with those.

That's our weekend, how about yours?