We all hauled pallets up the hill and then I sawed one apart to make a ladder. Then we used another pallet (one that had a solid platform) as a floor, with two support beams made of leftover pieces of another pallet. The whole thing wedged in between the branches and pretty much held itself together. Kyle strung some rope up to secure it but it seemed solid, though a bit wobbly.
We were talking about having a tea party up there, and Kyle wanted to sleep in the treehouse and even went up there with a couple blankets. Kayleigh devised her own special way of getting down, which involved hanging from a branch and doing a backflip.
Even little Shaun went up and colored some pictures on the platform.
Mum and Dad came to admire the handiwork and then Shaun and Kayleigh came in to "help" me cook dinner. I made salad while Shaun made a sculpture of Orbit, their dog, out of carrots and green beans. After the sculpture was complete he went looking for Orbit to feed it to her.
Orbit let me pet her for the first time today--perhaps because she saw me playing with the kids and so she decided that I was OK.
The kids wanted to do all sorts of nice things for me since I had helped them build their treehouse. It was incredibly sweet. Kyle started putting my shelves together (that have been sitting there unfinished for a month or two) by nailing the sides on, but it fell apart after a few minutes. He swept the patio and the steps instead.
Kayleigh watched me trimming the grass with the electric strimmer and wanted to help with that, so I let her use it for a minute. She also raked grass and offered to water the plants. They were just fountains of industry!
They all got curious about how the layout of our flat corresponds to their house, so I invited them inside for a look. They paced around, saying, my room is down there, or the kitchen is here, and they told me about how they can hear me walking around at night or they hear the water going down the pipes. Oops! I better try not to do dishes late at night anymore. The kitchen is directly above Kayleigh's room and she goes to bed early.
I apologized that the house was such a mess, with suitcases and boxes sitting in the hallway--so they offered to help me unpack and clean the house. It was so funny! They wanted to help with everything. They also enjoyed seeing all the unfamiliar objects in our house and went around picking up everything and looking at it and asking me what it was.
The best part was that they were so excited about the treehouse that they insisted that I have my morning tea up there, and possibly my evening dinner as well. I probably sounded like an old stodger when I protested that there might be midges. But, we'll have a tea party up there sometime I'm sure. Shaun has a tea set, apparently!
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