Sunday, May 22, 2011

The King Size Sandbox

I built a sandbox for my kids a few years ago.

A BIG SANDBOX!!!

When I was a kid we had a nice size sandbox and all of the neighborhood kids loved playing in it with us! My dad built it for us out of sandstone and it even had a little roof over it and everything. We spent many very happy hours playing in it.

So I wanted my kids to have that as well. But as in everything it seems, I had to make it BIG!! :)

Yep, I said big. 10' long, 5' wide and 16" deep.
Oh yeah, it holds 2 tons of sand!

So anyway, I built it several years back and got it filled up with sand but guess what? When kids play in a sandbox the sand seems to slowly disappear! So this year it needed a fresh filling, so Tammy and the kids shoveled what was left of the old sand out and got it cleaned up and ready for the first load.

It's hard to see but there is a little bank that makes
it interesting to get the truck up to the end this way!

Oh yeah, I have a really cool gadget called a LoadHandler! :)

So the first load is unloaded it's off to the gravel yard for load #2!

So while I'm off getting the second load, let me tell you about my back yard. From the back of the house there is about 40' and then a drop off into some woods. (That's the trees you see in the left hand side of the pictures. The small bank in these first pictures cuts across from the back corner of my garage back to the woods. At the other end of the house is another bank that does the same thing but is about 8' high and quite steep. (It's a bear to mow!)

Being the perfectionist that I am, (despite there being no room to move in the back yard on a bicycle let alone in a full size pickup) I had to attempt to get the second load of sand into the empty end of the sandbox so this is what I ended up doing to achieve that:

It took about 20 minutes of maneuvering to do this during which time,
Tammy was cringing every time I came within 3" of hitting the house!
(Which was quite often!)

Well, we got all the sand in the box where it belonged, got the truck out of the back yard and with the exception of a few tire tracks in the grass, there was no harm done!

And now we have a very happy little boy!




OK, make that two happy little boys!



I love tunnels! :)

So there you have it! One big sandbox, 2 tons of sand, some beat up trucks, cars, and other toys, and a whole summer of fun!! What could be better? Well, maybe the GIANT slip-n-slide I'm going to put up but I'll save that for another post! :)

8 comments:

  1. WOW! This is awesome Andy. I would have cringed too if you were getting that close to the house! lol What a ton, errrr two tons, of fun, it sure looks like your son is going to have days upon days of fun in the sun! Enjoy!

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  2. I love it! The British climes mean that sandboxes are impossible, so my inner child is going nuts at the sight of a sandbox that big.

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  3. Thanks Darlene, I thought you'd like it! Wesley is in his element now! We got home yesterday afternoon about 4 and he went straight out there and was out there still at 6:30 when we called him in to get a shower so we could go out to dinner! I think he would have stayed out there all night! :)

    Hey Jamie, If there wasn't that great big puddle between us you could just hop over and let your inner child loose! :) I don't play in it as much as I used to but I still love to get dirty once in a while! :)

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  4. That is pretty much the coolest sand box ever.

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  5. OH MY GOSH, I want one....
    Also I want a yard. Adam and I were talking and decided we want a little house on a bigger piece of property. I used to love playing in the backyard as a kid.

    My Dad built us a play house in our old old house. It had a wasp nest in it. Ahhhh it was so fun/scary to play in it. We also had a "forest" in the backyard.

    It was probably 6 trees, but we spent hours back there.

    ♥ theMRS.

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  6. Yes it is, Karen, if I do say so myself! :)

    Yes Celina, you do need a yard! I wanted to expand on the sandbox by building a playhouse above it but never had the money to do it. The kids have definitely made use of the sandbox though! :)

    The woods we have are a favorite place. We live right in town but the way the lots are laid out it left about two acres of woods with lots backed up to them on three sides! The guy who actually owns them is really nice and lets the kids play in them as long as they are careful! A little taste of the country right in town! :)

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  7. That looks like so much fun. I never had a sand box growing up. My brother would've been all over it if we did though. And I would've been right next to Tammy cringing every time you got too close to the house!!

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  8. We loved our big sandbox when I was growing up. I think of all the toys and activities we had available to us, the sandbox was what we came back to most often.

    You ladies just have no faith in us men's driving abilities! :) (Of course, we normally don't give you any reason to have faith in us but that's no reason!)

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