About the toilet.....

Until you move to bare land, you have no idea how much you take for granted.  The toilet, for example.  Something you use often and do not give much thought to until you don't have one that flushes.

My husband brought home the portable toilet soon after we moved to ThunderCreek and although necessary, it's arrival was less than popular.  Like the other components of our new "outdoor bathroom" it offered little privacy and none of the amenities you would expect to find in even the most basic of bathrooms.  The kids have always claimed that our family provided all of Jeff Foxworthy's best material because for many years a trip to our bathroom did involve "slippers and a flashlight".

The indignities of life with an outhouse involve heat, cold and smell.  The temperature in an outhouse is either too hot or too cold and regardless of the temperature it always seems to smell bad.  Further, there are many very ugly creatures that are attracted to an outhouse.  First and foremost are the flies followed by mosquitoes and the bats that eat them.  This was not a place one is encouraged to linger.

Christmas Eve of 1995 was the first time that water ran in the house on ThunderCreek.  It should come as no surprise that after living with the outhouse for over 3 years, our entire family crowded into the tiny bathroom to watch the toilet flush for the first time.  Ahhhhhh the smaller pleasures of life are sometimes the best.