Ziplining Away…

My dad loves being a grandpa. Like he LOVES it. He doesn’t love changing diapers, but he loves hanging out with my kids and Emily’s kids, and spoiling them pretty rotten. Santa ALWAYS fills stockings for the grandkids at my dad’s house, and the Easter Bunny seems to make a stop at my dad’s house to hide all of his eggs so the grandkids have to go help my dad find all the eggs the EB hid, and then of course they get too much Easter candy…

So basically my dad is a big kid.

This past Christmas, my dad got a zipline for the grandkids. It is strung up between two trees in my dad’s backyard and the kids all LOVE it. Lauren & Liam & Mallory & Carson will zip on that zipline for HOURS if we let them.

When my dad first set up the zipline, he put a little ladder at the starting point. But the ladder wasn’t quite high enough for the kids to get themselves on the zipline, so my dad built a platform. Now the kids can basically zipline themselves (not really *all* by themselves, since an adult has to help retrieve the handle from where the kids drop).

Mallory can totally go from one end to the other all by herself and drop from the line without killing herself, and Carson can ride the line by himself too but both Rick & I are a little too nervous to not spot him. The looks on their faces as they fly through grandpa’s backyard is priceless.

Here are entirely too many pictures of Mallory & Carson ziplining, but I couldn’t pick which ones to show.

This is why we make Mallory wear bike shorts under the dresses…her new “thing” is asking if we want to see her underwear.