Tree House

A Tree House

A tree house, a free house,

A secret you and me house,

A high up in the leafy branches

Cozy as can be house.

A street house, a neat house,

Be sure and wipe your feet house

Is not my kind of house at all~

Let's go live in a tree house.

Shel Silverstein

My dad (aka "Doe Doe" {named by my nephew, Bayer}) is making a tree house in Aiken for the grandkids.  This is mostly because he is just a big kid himself.  He's well-qualified for this job because he's a tree climber - not just when he was a little boy, but he's been known to climb a tree or two even at 62 years young!  Example: last spring, I walked outside onto our deck, and he was 20 feet up a dogwood tree, taking down a dead limb.  Unfortunately I missed that photo op, but here he is demonstrating his athletic abilities at a ceremony to get his black belt in tae kwon do.  He's the little guy on the left breaking a board with his foot.

He also has lots of practice building treehouses.  He built a house for my sister and me when we were growing up, and he's assisted friends in tree house building projects for years.  Here's a picture of the ladder that was on our tree house growing up - you can see he had us write our names on the wood, and he routed them in to make them permanent.  My handwriting at 6 years old is part of this ladder forever. 

Well, our treehouse came down about 15 years ago when my parents built an addition on their house, but my dad had the foresight to save the ladder.  Now its incorporated into the new treehouse for McCord and his cousins, Bayer and Calla.  Here are a few shots of the work in progress that I took last Monday on a trip to Aiken. 

Check back later for more pictures on the progress. 

I am so excited that McCord and his cousins will have the opportunity to grow up in a tree house like my sister and I did.  I'm sure this house will not only be a place for climbing competitions and tea parties, but will also be transformed into a boat sailing the high sea, a spaceship ready for takeoff, and a car ready for racing in the imaginations of their creative little minds.