re: What's the hardest Christmas present you've ever had to assemble for the kids?

the worst ever was for a kid my friends sort of adopted. On Christmas eve they got their giant swing set in. (was supposed to come in two days before and be put together and covered) They had all kinds of plans, I had none. I put the whole thing together for that girl, just so Santa wouldn't deliver a swing set in multiple boxes and piles of wood. Did it completely by myself.

Santa delivered her swing set.

Just finished putting together a Kidcraft kitchen. It took me about 4 hours as well.

Wooden swing set. It came in 3 boxes filled with boards.

The least they could have done is preassembled some of the pieces to lessen the blow. But everything, and I do mean everything - was disassembled and needed to be screwed together.

Crazy coup is a bitch, but I did the kid craft kitchen last year: started at 9:30 and finished somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30. Somehow managed to keep the cursing and noise down not to wake the kids.

I do. Those are simple and basically click together. Not many screwsand bolts required.

Some teenage mutant ninja turtles play set a couple years ago that we literally ordered from china. The instructions were of course in Chinese. That thing was a bitch from hell. I ended up just using a tube of superglue to hold it together. It's still standing.

I see a more Americanized and slightly updated version sold stateside now in Walmart. I betcha it has English instructions.

Put the kitchen together in 2 1/2 hrs

a cuckoo clock.

when completed, the sound of each tick and tock reverberated so much
that even when banished to the hallway, I could not sleep.

I gave my niece this

My brother in law had to assemble it completely, he said it took 2 hours