Rebecca and Tony Greiner keep their daughters busy (and active) all through the year with an innovative obstacle course that they built in their backyard. When friends come over for playdates, they tell Caroline, age 11, Susanna, 9, and Mary Kate, 7, that their yard is "so cool" — and they're not talking about the shade trees.The course began with a donated playset, to which Tony, an engineer, added a climbing wall, tree-stump stepping stones, a tree house big enough for sleepovers, a zip line, and more. In fact, with all the additions, it's now possible for the kids to make a complete circuit of the yard without ever touching the ground. Tony was inspired by tree-house designs he saw in books, and learned how to build the rope walk from the Internet, but mostly the course is the product of his imagination, with ideas hatched even before their first child was born.
"It's been evolving as we watch them play and see what they might need next," says Rebecca. "For the rope walk, we added lines to the overhead guide rope to let the kids swing like Tarzan. The zip line is so popular that some families in the neighborhood have copied us and added zip lines to their backyards."
