Spring is in the Air

It hit 64 degrees in Minneapolis yesterday. The sun was shining and it felt glorious. After a week of rain, almost all the snow is gone. Spring in Minnesota is one of the reasons I live here. It feels like a miracle every year. It looks like we'll be able to get the season started sooner that I had hoped. We are going to head up to camp for a day sometime soon to set up the tent and get a feel for how soon we could actually be camping. I'm sure the snow will be on the ground up there a bit longer than here and even after it melts, the ground will be a muddy mess for a while. We've been working on a few projects around here in anticipation of the season. The outhouse is complete and ready to be transported. Ray and the boys are building an archery target. Ray found some instructions for making a target out of a plastic tarp. He doubled the tarp and stitched up the sides. Next, the whole thing gets stuffed with recycled plastic bags and then a bulls-eye is painted on the front. The whole thing is pretty big. We stuffed all the plastic we had laying around in there and now we only need about 4 million more bags. That's where my local readers come in! Do you have a bag of bags under your sink? Next time you're over, drop them off! Once the thing is more finished, I'll include a photo. It should be pretty fun. Ray and I decided to invest some time and energy setting up some fun things for the kids to do rather than spend all our energy on the building plan. If all we do is work up there, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of the place. The kids need to love it and they won't if mom and dad are just working all the time. Once the kids have learned how to entertain themselves there, we will have more freedom to work on our projects. Another thing we're looking into - zipline!!!

Bummed Out

I had a disappointing day today. Earlier in the week I found this neat dock building company in Madison, WI that makes a unique product for use in wetland areas. It is essentially a floating walkway which in our case would allow us the walk through our wetland all the way out to the open water. It is an entirely modular system which we could have installed ourselves. I had a long talk with the "walkway consultant" describing our land and he sent me a bid this morning. $13,000!!!!! That's about what the wetland itself cost! Well, we are back to square one on this project. On the bright side, Ray says he's pretty sure he can build something similar from the discarded pallets behind our garage.

Camp Half-Blood

On Valentine's Day, we took the boys to see the highly anticipated movie, The Lightning Thief. The book of the same title is the first in a series of five books which took the pre-teen world by storm over the last few years. If you have someone aged 8-11 in your life, you are probably already quite familiar with the story. For those of you who don't, a quick synopsis. Our hero is Percy Jackson, son of the Greek god, Poseidon and a mortal mother. His true identity has been hidden from him throughout his childhood in order to protect him from various mythical monsters. After a vicious attack during a high school field trip, Percy discovers his true identity. He is then whisked off to Camp Half-Blood, a camp for teenage demi-gods. Here, they are kept safe from evil doers and learn the skills needed to protect themselves. During the scenes of Camp Half-Blood, the four of us started nudging each other, knowingly. There, on the big screen, was what we hope Camp Freedom will resemble some day. The kids were housed in large canvas tents with comfortable wooden cots draped in mosquito netting. The paths were flanked with torches and colorful banners hung from the trees. There was a huge bonfire and a pig roasting away on a nearby spit. The kids practiced sword fighting and archery. They climbed on large ropes and crossed difficult obstacle courses. Their day was capped off with a delicious fireside feast after a ferocious match of capture the flag. We all enjoyed the movie, but the scenes of the camp left the biggest impression in my mind. It feels good to be heading into the spring with a strong visual of what we all want Camp Freedom to be!

Do You Believe in Miracles?

I know this blog is supposed to be strictly about Camp Freedom, but I am going to make an exception today. We had a very exciting morning. The after school program that Guthrie plays hockey with was featured on the Today Show! The report was done by Tom Brokaw!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Guthrie can be seen around minute 2:37. He is shown from the back wearing a blue coat and a brown hat. It's not everyday that your child is on network tv. In the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit that I love the Today show and watch it almost every morning, so the fact that he was on that particular show is especially thrilling to me. Thank you for humoring me and I promise to get back on message in my next post. I updated the blog this weekend and I hope you enjoy the new look.

Privy Permit

We just sent off the paperwork for our privy permit. It is hard for me to believe that there is an office somewhere that actually grants permission to dig a hole in the ground and poop in it. We had to wait for the results of a soil test that our contractor was responsible for completing. Here's how it works. He digs a hole in the ground and evaluates the soil. I believe he is checking soil composition and whether or not the soil can absorb the contents of the privy. He is supposed to then fill out a report and file with with the county. He finished the job right around Thanksgiving and we paid him promptly. Mid-January, when we were ready to file our paperwork to get the permit, we realized he had not cashed our check or filed the report. Ray called the guy to find out what was up and he explained that he hadn't filed the report because he hadn't been paid. He was surprisingly friendly about it, like he just assumed he was being stiffed and was ok with that. Maybe it happens all the time in his line of work. Ray explained that we had in fact put a check in the mail several months ago. I have a feeling the check had been filed away either under the mats in the guy's truck or maybe in the pocket of some jeans. Anyway, he agreed to file the soil test right away. We stopped payment on the original check and put a new one in the mail, which was cashed a few days later. I was very frustrated by the hold ups but we're back on track now. I consider the $29 stop payment fee we had to pay to be a kind of moron tax. Hopefully, our dealings with this particular character are over.

It's Here!

Surprisingly, the privy toilet came today. After my last conversation with Daryl, I assumed it would be May before we had her. It's snowing hard today and the windchill is -15. My poor UPS driver hauled it right up to the door. (No trip to the bus depot for me!) When I met her outside, she commented that this was the strangest delivery of her day. This is exactly how it arrived, no box. I explained to her what it was and she looked at me like I was crazy. She asked, "why don't you just build a plywood box with a seat on it?" I told her that since I live with all boys, I wanted to be able to wipe it down from time to time. She answered, "You don't clean an outhouse," and trudged back to her truck.

Our outhouse is going to be Zeebest!

I just got off the phone with Daryl at Zeebest Plastics in Edmonton, Alberta. I placed an order for the PTS Privy Toilet that I featured a photo of in an earlier post. We had an amusing conversation. When I told him I wanted to place an order, he first asked me what company I was with. I answered that I wasn't with anyone but just wanted one toilet for family use. I assured me that I was someone and proceeded to take my order. I explained that I was located in the U.S., and asked if there would be any problem shipping it here. His first plan was to put the thing on a Greyhound bus headed for Minneapolis. He explained that I could just pick up the package at the bus depot and pay the customs charges there. I could just imagine myself standing in the downtown bus station looking for the international package pickup window while Ray circles the block outside. I suggested to Daryl that maybe we could just ship it UPS. He replied, "Well, yah, that's another way of doin' her." There's nothing like a phone call to Canada to make life in Minneapolis seem downright cosmopolitan.