This House is for the Birds

Life at the house has been one big pain in the you know where.  Several months ago we began noticing the hardwood floor in our kitchen was warping.  We were unable to find the source of the water causing the damage.  Had the hardwood floor guy, a plumber, and a restoration guy take a look to no avail.
That was until a couple of weeks ago after taking off the cabinet doors under the sink and the toe kick to the dishwasher.  The sink had clogged (you gotta love home ownership) and Drano didn’t cut the mustard.  With the sink backed up what do you do in a busy house – you have to keep washing dishes.  So with a clogged drain the dishwasher can’t empty.
The dishwasher has this sensor, I have learned by reading the owner’s manual, that tells the dishwasher to stop putting water in the dishwasher when the water level gets too high.  Problem with our dishwasher is when it gets to that point it begins leaking water from the location of the sensor (not supposed to be an added feature of this sensor).  So very hot water is dripping onto the hardwood floors and providing the floor with lots of water to soak up in our dry climate.  Can’t wait to deal with the home owner’s insurance to try and get this taken care of!
Then about a week ago our wonderful refrigerator stopped making ice.  This may have been going on for months, but when it has been as wet and mild for so long you aren’t reaching for ice often.  Well we have lots of experience with this kind of thing.  In the six years of living in this house three major repairs have had to be made to the fridge that came with the house – fan was replaced, condenser was replaced, and thermostat was replaced.
A very helpful technicians from Famous Appliance Service spent several hours trying to find the cause of our latest predicament.  Turns out the fridge wasn’t rejecting any of its transplants (fan, condenser, thermostat) but rather bleeding internally (i.e. leaking refrigerant in the back wall).  It was time to, literally, pull the plug on this patient.
So off it went to be replaced by a new fridge.  Sorry Mark, GE’s employee discount couldn’t compete with a 4th of July sale at RC Willey.
The flip side of having lived here six years is our trees are now big enough for birds to consider taking up residence.  A robin made a nest in our front yard this spring.  We discovered this several weeks ago after hearing all the noise being made.  Looking at the nest now I am glad I don’t always bag my grass.  It made the work of building this nest easier because there was a lot of building materials close by.  Watching mother bird making innumerable trips back and forth to feed her three chicks has been a family hobby for the past couple of weeks.

Along with the robins are the visiting ducks.  Yes it has been that wet here in Utah!  Ilene and Hallie have named them Sparky and Violet.

Yesterday the robins left the nest.  One was in the flower bed around 8 am.  We were afraid this one had been pushed out so I put on a glove and tried to put it back into the nest.  Well I didn’t get a hold of it because it squawked and hopped away.  Mother robin was soon screaming at me.
The last of the chicks wasn’t ready to leave the nest and sat on the nest all day.  Here it is reluctantly considering whether to leave the nest (it is clearly too big). 

So while the kitchen is still a problem life is pretty good.

Genealogy – I am Doing It!!

Most people know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church) is very interested in genealogy.   The church has a repository for microfilmed records of all kinds—census records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, parish records, and all sorts of stuff from all over the world—in Utah called the Granite Mountain Records Vault.  Some of these records now only exist as microfilm because the original records have been destroyed by fire, floods, etc.

Last year I decided to try it myself.  I went to the Family Search website.  Here you can search the records already “indexed” by volunteers the world over.  So wherever you may be in the world you can type in an ancestor’s name and see what records are available.  In mere seconds you have access to all the genealogical data available from census records to family pedigrees entered by others.

Another part of this website is devoted to “indexing”.  What is indexing you might be asking?  Indexing is simply typing the information found on a digital image of some microfilmed record.  Once you have typed the information you have converted it into searchable data for anyone to access for free on the Family Search website.

What do you need to index?  A computer, an internet connection, the ability to type, and a little time.  Since you are reading this blog that means you have all four of these things!

What do you index?  Well it all depends on what you choose to index.  If you are doing an U.S. census record (a page completed by a census worker) you enter the census page number, the family number, given name, surname, sex (male/female), age, marital status, place born, father’s place of birth, mother’s place of birth, year of immigration.  That is only eleven bits of information and half of it will auto-fill once you have entered it once.  One page usually has 50 lines so you are entering between 500 and 550 bits of information.

How long does indexing take?  The short answer is it depends, but the real answer is as little as 20 minutes.  A batch of “beginning” records goes quickly.  The page is some kind of form (a census record primarily) that has a little color prompt that migrates across the page prompting you what should be entered.

I opened my indexing account on August 23, 2009.  Since then I have indexed 6,153 records.  Yes, it keeps track of every record I have indexed!  I do it when I have time.  You download a “batch” and have a week to return it.  I find once I start I keep going.  And when I go several months without doing anything no one is bugging me about it.

So what does this mean for you?  Well, there are billions of records that need indexing.  There is a goal to index 220 million records this year!  That is right in a year’s time.  I am getting updated on the progress through the website and so far that goal can’t be reached without more people like me giving up a little time to volunteer.

Sign up and find out how fun entering information from a census record from 1930 can be.  You may find yourself wandering the halls of a tenement building New York entering the last names of people starting with O’ or Mc.  You might find yourself wandering a dusty road in Georgia entering the names of cotton and tobacco farmers whose only contact with a non-family member may have been the census worker who walked up to their doorstep on that hot, muggy day.  

You might be entering the marriage record of a veteran returning from war wedding the sweetheart he hoped he would make it home to see.  You might be entering the birth certificate of the baby child that someday ended up being your grandmother’s best friend.  Anything is possible.

Indexing isn’t just a jumble of names on a sheet of paper.  Indexing is a window into the past.  If you step outside of yourself as you type, you can almost envision the person.  Everyone of us needs that perspective.  Too often this life and this culture is centered on ME.  This is a world with 4 billion current inhabitants and billions that have come before us.  Indexing reminds me that it is WE and US.  So join me and the thousands of others worldwide making this world a little bit smaller one name at a time.  I know it will be worth the time.

ROAD TRIP

Well we returned from our vacation on Saturday after being on the road for quite awhile. In nine days our trip calculator tells me that we covered 2,037 miles and were in the van for nearly 36 hours. The average speed was 57 mph, which I will attribute to a large portion of our trip taking place in Oregon where driving more than 60 mph is a worse sin than not bathing! I would also tell you how many miles per gallon I averaged, but I will spare you that tidbit of useless trivia since no one cares except perhaps my grandfather.
With a sister near Boise, ID, a brother in Vancouver, WA, and another brother in Corvallis, OR and not having been to see either of my brothers’ new homes it was time to take the plunge. They have all been to my house on multiple occasions – I do live in Provo which is for all intents and purposes the Mecca of Mormon-dom.
Our trip started Friday July 2nd with a 6 hour drive to Boise where we spent the night. Thanks to my sister Ilene who is a gracious host at what is becoming a B&B on Booth Avenue.
Saturday we drove to Corvallis an eight-hour drive that would have been an hour less had the environmentally-minded in Oregon decided that eastern Oregon speed limits should mirror those in other arid western states (heck Utah even has a stretch along I-15 where the speed limit is 80). There is nothing picturesque in eastern Oregon unless you like tumbleweeds and scrub oak and any air pollution emitted travels east not west to the Oregon coast and population centers. Of course, these are the same ‘rational’ beings who won’t let you pump your own gasoline.
Corvallis is a small, pretty town. For a college town -Oregon State (**hiss** for Ilene and Dan’s sake)- it has its share of Oregon liberals. The river walk on the 4^th of July was coated with tattoo-adorned, midriff-baring, unwashed bodies with many sporting a cigarette between two fingers. Something about driving a vegetable oil-powered VW bus to save the world while inhaling toxic chemicals from a filtered cigarette seems to be the ultimate in oxymoronic.
We used my brother’s newly remodeled home as our day trip hub. We went to a local farm and with 6 kids and 5 adults managed to pick 23 pounds of strawberries in 45 minutes. These strawberries weren’t the big fire engine red plump ones you buy at Costco. These strawberries were smaller, more purple in color, and so much more delicious. Picking your own strawberries for 75 cents a pound really can’t be beat. All 23 pounds were devoured in the space of 3 days and that doesn’t include the amount already on hand upon our arrival or the bucket of blueberries that was also available for snacking. I haven’t picked strawberries since I was a very little boy back in the days when Chino, CA was mostly farmland and dairies rather than the suburban sprawl that most of the surrounding LA area is today. I now know I like a warm berry picked right off of the plant better than a chilled one.
We also came to meet our newest niece – Kami. She is a sweetheart and we all had plenty of chances to hold her.
This is Oregon so of course there is bound to be water. With water comes trees and bushes. We water our trees and bushes everyday to keep them from withering in the Utah sun. Here they grow wild. I saw spirea taller than me – ours are still only three feet high after 4 years in my front yard! There were several deer sightings in my brother’s back yard snacking on his shrubs as if they taste better than the ones growing wildly in the hills they came from. We drove to Silver Falls State Park and hiked to two of the nine major falls in the park.

And because the desert-dwellers had arrived in Oregon the temperatures rose into the mid-90s. Just fine if it is dry heat, but that kind of heat just pulls the moisture from the soggy ground and makes it humid. We did go to the city pool and let the kids spend some of their pent up energy.
We also stopped at Cynthia’s tia Olivia’s home in Lebanon. Lo and behold, her mom and dad were there at the same time. So we feasted on enchiladas and tacos with all of the accessories that two wonderful Mexican-American women could concoct. I hadn’t had enchiladas that good since Tina and Olivia made them for our wedding reception 15+ years ago.
After four days with John we drove the two hours to Vancouver, WA making a stop at my aunt Lori’s house in Keizer for strawberry/banana milkshakes. Mark’s house is just a few miles over the Columbia River and while Mark prides himself on his sense of style I know that most of the design decisions had to have been made by his wife, Alison. I readily admit that most things cool that I wear or am surrounded by are a result of my wife, Cynthia. Alison your “avocado” paint may require a new paint job somewhere in our home!
From Vancouver we crossed the Columbia and went to Multnomah Falls. Four of us (John, Michael, Nathan, and I) climbed all the way to the top and looked down the 600 feet that makes the falls. Luckily the entire trail was shaded otherwise the four of us who did make the trip would have stayed behind like the majority of the family to eat snow cones and enjoy the mist from the falls.
 
We grabbed a pink box of Voodoo Donuts which were delicious – why they even have a vegan section of doughnuts is beyond me.
Then it was the return trip to Boise – only 6 hours this way since we were in Vancouver rather than in Corvallis and then back to Provo.
So there you have it a whirlwind trip full of activities both large and small interspersed with hours of driving. My cousin Robbie put is best when he said he would visit his parents more often as soon as they invented teleporters. But then we would miss out on all the fun travel games of ‘yellow car!’ and ‘buggy what color?’ played by my three children. And who would want to eliminate the inevitable rest stop detours and the sound of crayons or goldfish spilling all over the floor!
Thanks to by brothers and sister and their spouses for putting us up and putting up with us. It was a fun trip and one we will have to do again some time – just not any time soon.

Harvest A Plenty

Guess what I spent almost 2 hours doing today....picking tomatoes. I can't believe how many tomatoes can grow in two little garden planters. Can you believe that not picking for two weeks would yield this much in that time?

Fruits of our Labor (Day)

Obviously I don’t blog very often. My last entry was Memorial Day when we planted tomato plants and hung a flag (see below).

Well the summer is coming to a close and much has happened in between.

Our backyard underwent a huge transformation that has resulted in much more useable space for the kids’ pool and other outdoor fun. An added benefit of this project was that my mowing time has been reduced by at least one half hour and I no longer have to try and fit all the grass trimmings in the green waste bin. For more details you can visit Cynthia’s blog entry on the subject.

I thought I would post a little update on those Memorial Day tomato plants. We seem to grow tomatoes OK, but this year we have a bumper crop. This is likely due to fact that the garden boxes are now regularly watered thanks to the drip irrigation system that now waters all trees, bushes, and flowers.

See life with three kids tends to offer plenty of distractions from watering the garden. There are soccer games, weekend camping trips, holidays and vacations, summer dinner parties, church activities, Scouts, and the list goes on and on to keep us preoccupied. As a result, our backyard has survived mainly due to sprinkler overspray and the draining of the kids’ pool.

So with a regular watering our tomato plants have exploded. Last night we needed a couple extra tomatoes for dinner. Well 10 minutes later Nathan, Ilene, and Hallie returned with TWO BOWLS full of ripe tomatoes.

I have spent many Saturdays pruning back these beasts and still they have managed to overrun the planter boxes and threaten the lawn beyond the mulch barrier. My attempts at propping them up with twine and steel rods seems to have been to no avail. At this rate we will be making spaghetti sauce soon to stick in the freezer to enjoy later this winter.













On another front, it must be time for school pictures. Living in Southern California meant beach camping nearly every Labor Day weekend. The result of so much sun for me was often a huge cold sore just in time for school pictures. So in honor of all of those make-up pictures days several weeks from now I have one of the largest cold sores in recent memory. Of the joy!

In Memory Of...

Today is Memorial Day; the day we Americans remember those who have gone before us.








In memory of those that established this free country, I bought a flag (and with the help of my daughters) posted it on the house.














In memory of my agrarian ancestors we tilled the garden beds, got dirt in our fingernails, and planted a dozen tomato plants. We hope to enjoy many salads, salsa, and sauces from these plants later this summer.











In memory of so many fallen soldiers scattered in cemeteries of this country and abroad, I pay tribute to their sacrifice. Their lives were extinguised in an effort to preserve the better lives me and my family enjoy today.













In memory of my paternal grandparents, all of whom have left this earth, I honor their examples of faith, hard work, and service. I also honor my maternal grandparents, still living, who endured the antics of an 18-year old college freshman living in their basemen when retirement should have been providing them with peace and quiet.

Facebook Flashback

While using up all of my remaining vacation time between Christmas and the New Year, I was convinced to open an account on facebook. Ironic, since just a few days prior I had completed a trade association survey asking if I used any networking websites where the answer was “No”.

So after providing the obligatory personal information—my name, email address, and preferred password—I was now a member of facebook. What to do next? Well look up your brothers and sisters who think you are lame for not being on facebook ages ago. That meant sending ‘friend requests’ to them so they can acknowledge they know me. Thankfully we are on speaking terms and they didn’t press the “Ignore” button. Voila, I had my first few “friends”.

Then I checked out their pages and added some fun applications – Fan of Lakers and TV’s The Office I found on their pages. I then had to waste an hour answering enough trivia questions correctly to not be labeled a novice (I do have some pride you know).

Then it was off to the search feature to see who else I might find. My first thought was to see if any of my coworkers were listed. I typed in a few but there are a lot of people on facebook and I wasn’t going to keep flipping through them to find the John Doe I was looking for.

Then I entered the names of some old LDS mission companions and, lo and behold, there they were. OK now I have some more friends. What about some of the people I met while serving in Belgium? Yep, I found some of them too.

I found some cousins and others from my neighborhood. Soon my friends list was multiplying daily. But who has time to mess with facebook all the time? I don’t as you can tell by the date of the last entry on this blog of mine!!

Then I started getting friend requests from people I kinda know and thought how odd that so and so would want to have an insight into my life. To date I have accepted every one of these requests, but I wonder what is it about me that makes them want to be my friend?

Maybe I am more interesting than I think…I mean being an accountant and all is not that cool. I am not the person people gravitate to at a social gathering unless they are like me and we tend to stick together. The guy in the corner listening to everyone else’s conversations, that’s me. I am content to sit on the sidelines and make everyone else happy. I’ll let my better half take care of the guests while I clean up the dishes or whatever.

So I appreciate all those people out there who have asked to be my friend. I feel like I am back in high school and the cute cheerleader who was my Chemistry partner or the jock in my Spanish class who always looked to me to help him conjugate his verbs has asked me to sign a yearbook. I am cool enough that someone wants my name inked on the pages of a yearbook that will sit in a box in the garage until the day they die. I’ll take it and I will gladly add you to my friends list and file you away in my subgroups of facebook friends...friends from growing up, friends from mission, etc.

"Thanks for noticing me" (as Eeyore says) staying in the background trying to blend into the wall.

Why the Y?

We hiked the Y this morning. This has been a long requested adventure by the kids. So we finally got around to it with fall colors beginning to turn the leaves.



It was a beautiful day for a hike. The trail has not changed since the last time I did this--steeper than necessary.

Anyway, it was a good time and even Hallie made it without too much complaining!

Here are some of the pictures from this adventure.


This on is for you Mike - not a bad zoom of our neighborhood from several miles away and up the mountain!

A Nearly Practical Birthday

We have a ton of Hilton Honors points from our American Express card. Well Cynthia decided to cash them in for Best Buy gift cards.

Without much coaxing we were able to have my tech-savvy father-in-law identify the best LCD flat screen TVs available within my narrow price range and several beyond (Yes, I acknowledge my frugality).

On my birthday last week, I ventured over to Best Buy with Nathan to check out the options. For 30 minutes I stood looking at these 42" TVs thinking "what on earth do you need something this big for?". So I moved to the next aisle where they had the 37" TVs. Nathan's only input was "dad get the bigger one cuz its cooler." Sorry son, but your dad doesn't make purchasing decisions based on size but rather the price tag!! He is far too practical.

For the life of me, I couldn't get someone to help me because there were two groups of twenty-somethings (I don't know where they get their funds) who were interested in the 50" and bigger TVs so they could play there XBox 360 in full 1080p glory.

So we left empty-handed because these TVs seemed too extravagant. Cynthia was surprised to find me without a big box in tow upon my return.

The best parts of this birthday were the gifts. I was presented with hand-wrapped cards and gifts from all three kids. I received a box of Nilla Wafers, a box of Rice Chex, and some chocolates. All three are some of dad's favorites things to eat. Each gift was purchased with their own allowance money. So I was very proud that all three (encouraged by their mom I am sure) purchased their practical dad very practical gifts.

A couple days later the whole family made the trip to Best Buy to purchase a TV. We ended up with a 32" set, which seems far more practical. It is only 720p, but no one is broadcasting HD in 1080p yet and since I don't intend on purchasing an XBox 360, PlayStation 3, or HD DVD player I will never have a complaint about not being able to truly experience HD television in 1080p.

When we returned from our shopping excursion I was greeted by my sister, Winnie. She was ill on my birthday and had come to wish me a belated happy birthday. Well she presented me with two more very practical gifts--a collapsable shovel for roadside emergencies (or digging a trench around a tent to avoid flooding--see previous post) and a very bright LED flashlight.

So without further ado I present the practical side of my birthday and the frivolous. You know which I believe is which, but you may disagree.

Soggy Camper

As a follow up to my prior post “Happy Camper”, we finally took our new tent out in the woods for its inaugural use. We went camping for Labor Day weekend in Big Cottonwood Canyon. The weather was scheduled to be rainy Sunday and Monday, but we braved it anyway.


The tent went up just like I remembered our smaller version. It looked great in all of its glory as the kids marveled at all of the room inside and Cynthia relished in the ability to stand up without any worries. She even said she was glad I had held out for the “best”.

I am a little rusty and while I chose the most level spot in the campsite I disregarded the general slope of the campsite and thus the likelihood of runoff to come the tent’s way. Something that would prove to be a real pain Sunday night.


We had a great time playing games, eating good food, playing along the stream, sitting in the hammock, and just relaxing. Dad's old camping hat got worn!



Nathan learned how to tie half hitches and a taut line hitch. Nathan wanted to put it in the refrigerator of Patty’s trailer, but that wasn’t going to work see the watermelon is half the size of the fridge. Instead we cooled the watermelon the old-fashioned way—by sticking it in the stream.



Then came the rain, the hail, the sleet, and finally snow and this became our refuge. Thanks Patty for supplying a real shelter for the storm.

Who Gives a Hoot?

A coworker has season tickets to the Orem Owlz minor league baseball team (affiliated with the LA Angels of Anaheim—don’t get me started on how stupid it is that they are the LA Angels).

Anyway, he had a bunch of season tickets he hadn’t used that he exchanged for more tickets for the last home game of the season. Since he couldn’t use them all he offered them to all fellow Squire-ites. I called Cynthia to ask if she was interested in going to the game with the kids. I knew the answer (NO—definitely capitalized), but felt I needed to give her the opportunity of spending some time with me and the kids. She happily found a friend to go to dinner with and then sat at home and watched a movie by herself while I took the kids to the baseball game.

The Owlz play at the baseball field of UVU (formerly known as UVSC). UVU has even worse parking than BYU if that is possible. So while we left about 25 minutes before the game was to start we still missed the first inning trying to get parked. So in the 30+ minutes I was stuck in a long line of cars all wanting to park I was peppered with questions and comments like “Can’t you just go around all this traffic?” and “If mom were with us we could get out and go to the game while you parked the car.” No I couldn’t go around the traffic unless we wanted to walk a quarter mile back to the stadium and yes apparently I am of no more value than the chauffeur in my children’s eyes.

I can’t wait for the day when they are old enough to open the car door and demand their dear old dad hand over their tickets and they will meet me inside. My only hope is that they won’t have visible tattoos or piercings in unnatural places or be dressed entirely in black when this event does inevitably happen.





Our tickets were along the third base line and since it isn’t a large stadium quite adequate. We were seated for less than 5 minutes when Nathan informs me that he wants to go sit on the grass. You can buy cheaper tickets if you only sit on the grass. I told him we could go sit on the grass later. We didn’t last more than another couple of minutes in the seats before we had to make our way to the concessions stand. $20 got us 3 hot dogs, some chicken tenders, and 2 churros. I am not sure how long ago this sustenance (I will not call it food because that would be giving it too much credit) had been prepared.

The Owlz got off to a great start against the Ogden Raptors of the Pioneer League by scoring one run in each of the first four innings. My ever-charming daughter Ilene began to declare that the Raptors were winning. Her justification was the that “score” was Raptors 6 Owlz 4 using the H column (hits) as basis for this opinion. Then ensued a lengthy discussion on the vocabulary and record keeping of baseball. Colums 1 to 10 for the score of each inning, R for runs (the score), H for hits, and E for errors. Having to explain it all to a seven-year old made me realize what a difficult game baseball is for the uninitiated. Oh yeah, everyone knows three strikes and you’re out, but 4 balls for a walk. And how many fouls before you are out??

After that discussion was over, Nathan wanted to know what was the difference between a ball and a strike and why the umpire kept leaning over the catcher!!

The ballpark has a kids play area. It is a monstrous contraption full of suspended bridges and slides. It is fenced off and two poles suspend a large netting over the entire area to keep foul balls from killing some unsuspecting child. As it was now dusk, it was quite a challenge to keep track of my three kids when the entire play area looked as if it were overrun by a swarm of children.

The sixth inning lasted well over an hour in which the Raptors scored 8 runs and the Owlz two on the night’s only home run.

Well we stayed until the bitter cold end. It is definitely September with cooler temperatures at night. I was glad I took a blanket to sit on the grass (yes we did that for a while in the 7th inning).

In the bottom of the eight inning a man just behind the dugout collapsed. So I was then questioned further as the medical staff administered to him. An ambulance came out on the field and suspended play for over a half hour.

Luckily the 9th inning went quickly and we were able to watch the fireworks and then get home by 11 pm. The only good thing is that I didn’t spend a lot of time in the bathroom with three little bladders following me around!

HAPPY CAMPER

I love to camp. I grew up camping. My mom and dad backpacked and camped in a little pup tent when I was just a baby. Then they bought a used Springbar® tent made by Kirkham’s in Salt Lake City. The tent was a rental that was being surplused but was still in great shape. Ever since that day many of my memories of camping included our blue Springbar tent.

One of the memories burned into my brain is the ability of my dad and I to put up our Springbar tent in the time that it took most families to just sort out the poles and start stringing them through the nylon tent shell. I loved that tent and the ease by which it was pitched. It was simplicity in physical form.

Well I grew up, got married, and have been camping in other tents ever since. I always have longed for a Springbar tent to call my own. Every once in a while I would look on Ebay, craigslist, or in the classifieds for someone selling a Springbar. Funny thing was they were nowhere to be had. I could find any other tent available, but never the desired Springbar.

A couple months back I really began to get curious and went to the Kirkham’s website. I knew these tents were expensive and since we don’t camp a ton I could never seem to justify such an extravagant purchase. The website directed me to another website full of satisfied Springbar tent owners who had posted pictures (both recent and decades old) of their tents. Some of these tents were 30 years old and still performing as if they were brand new.

It was then that I considered asking my dad to turn over the old Springbar that is undoubtedly gathering dust in a storage room in Chicago. I knew there weren’t any camping outings happening in the flat plains that make up the middle of this nation; especially since my dad’s back isn’t what it used to be. But I just couldn’t justify me getting the tent when all five of us children have equally satisfying memories of that tent.

Then along came the biggest “cash advance” in history. I am talking about the “Economic Stimulus Payment” awarded to nearly every taxpayer. So I received a direct deposit into my checking account for which I will undoubtedly have to pay for some day in the future. Suddenly there was money in the bank that wasn’t spoken for.

We then went camping in a dome tent over Memorial Day with my sister- and brother-in-law. That night we got rained on and the tent flooded. The rain didn’t stop that morning and so we shoved the tent in the back of the van and headed home. That was the final straw. I wanted a tent that was simply to pitch, water tight not “waterproof”, and tough enough to withstand the three kids’ antics.

So the purchase request was submitted to the President of Family and Home Operations (aka my wife Cynthia) for the purchase of my long pined-for tent. There was a brief protest followed by submission as she realized that I rarely ask to buy anything. So I purchased my Springbar ‘Family Camper 7’ tent online in 5 minutes’ time. This tent is bigger than the one I grew up using. It sleeps 8 in its roomy 10’ by 14’ footprint. Upon checkout I realized there was no need for me to be stimulating the economy of Kirkham’s. I was informed that my order placed on June 1st would not be available until July 20th.

Well I was notified on July 15th that my tent was ready. I was in Salt Lake for work that day and made a detour to pick up my tent because I couldn't wait any longer. The next night found me unpacking the tent and pitching it in my front yard for the first time. I put this tent up by myself in about 15 minutes. Well I guess Ilene and Hallie helped hammer some of the stakes under my supervision.

What have they done to this tent in the 30+ years since the one my dad purchased was made? Well not much. The canopy that was often rolled up to the top of the tent when not in use now can be zipped off. They had added more windows to the tent, the tent poles have metal tops rather than rubber, and the color of the canvas in now a light green instead of a light blue. I guess you can’t really improve on perfection.

[Drum roll]….Without any further ado, I present my Springbar Family Camper 7 tent in all of its glory!! Yes I took pictures as I pitched my tent…yes I know that does make me a total geek.