After getting Tucker's playset we started making him a playground.  Our plan is to fill the area with rubber mulch made for playgrounds and put in a sandbox, his playset, and a water table which is like a sandbox table but with water.  We'll also have lots of outside toys too.  Here's how our project is going so far.

I forgot to take a before picture but if you look past Tucker's head in this picture you can kind of see how crappy it looked.
















The first 3 days we dug up all the gravel (I hate gravel), bark (thanks to the dog area we made that they never used), and did our best to level it out.
















The next day we tamped everything down.  We also put down sand so our flagstone and border wouldn't sink into the ground.















Today we put up our stone border and put the flagstone path back, except now you can actually see the flagstone since they sit on top of the ground instead of underneath it.  Next we will put up a small white fence to keep the dogs out and I'm ordering my rubber mulch.  Since we are going on vacation to California next week we won't be able to finish until we get back but I will update as soon as we do.