By Duane St. Clair
Last summer’s birthday present for Mattie and Reagan Musser is the fun center of a three-yard playground for a bunch of kids in Dublin’s Ballantrae neighborhood.
The attraction is a “Sunshine Castle 2,” a combination of swings and other accessories built by Rainbow and sold at Recreations Outlet in Powell.
The Mussers visit Recreation Outlets frequently to play on display sets and the trips were enough to convince Jennifer and Jon Musser to install something similar in their backyard.
“We got it for our birthday,” Mattie explains, “but we don’t know whose.” Both kids have birthdays in May – Mattie is 6, Reagan is 4 – so Mattie adds that it’s a gift for the entire family. Brother Harrison came along in April 2008, shortly before the play set arrived.
On a recent sunny April morning, Mattie and Reagan spent several hours in late morning on the swings and shared them with a neighbor, Jack Kneuve, 6, who has two brothers, Luke 5, and Jonah, 3. The three are the sons of Mark and Meredith Kneuve. The kids switch back and forth between the Kneuve’s crawling and climbing structure and the Musser’s set.
The Musser’s play set is designed to depict a pirate ship: the swings extend from an awning-covered platform that serves as the “ship’s wheelhouse.”
“We have a telescope,” Reagan says proudly, pointing out one of the set’s many accessories. She also highlights the colorful plastic steering wheel: when deep into a game of make-believe, she says she steers her ship “with one hand.”
In addition to the dual swings (below them are rubber mats and mulch for protection against hard falls), Mattie says she enjoys the rubber tire swing, which is suspended below the platform on three plastic coated chains.
One way to get inside the platform is a three-step climbing wall. One way down is a bright yellow slide.
The play set also features an elongated mesh swing, what the girls call their “pirate swing,” that will hold both of them. Harrison likes to be pushed in it with one of his sisters, and sometimes the family’s newest addition, Lily – a docile yellow Labrador retriever pup – also gets in the swing with her “brother.”
The young family of Rick and Susan Moreland on the other side of the Musser home also has a swing set, which arrived not long after their neighbor’s play set. On the same April day Mattie and Reagan played with the Kneuve brothers, 5-year-old Amelia Moreland came outside after lunch, and the Musser girls joined her on her swing set.
The Moreland family also includes twins Macie and Chloe, 2, and Ashley, 1, who have yet to become full-fledged play set users. The Moreland’s set has swings, two with bucket seats for tots.
At home, Reagan says she loves to swing, although she has yet to reach her desired air time.
“I don’t know how to go high yet,” she says. “Mattie does, though.”
As the kids showed on that spring day, the play set is not just a yard ornament. It’s a social gathering ground for friends and neighbors, a hotspot for games and fantasy, and a practical diversion for a busy family.
“It keeps them busy when we’re inside (or when) we’re doing yard work,” Jennifer says, adding that it therefore also makes her husband happy.
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor for Dublin Life.