Article

Q – What is the best Black water treatment product?

A – For those of you who don’t know about the finer points of RVwaste disposal let me just summarize: It’s way different than what happens in your house. There, you use the restroom, flush the handle, and never see it again. Not so in the RV world.

What goes down into the toilet, you haul around with you until you find a place to dump it and then…you dump it.

One of the by-products of hauling all that raw sewage around (if you’re getting squeemish then you have no business RVing) is the sometime noxious, foul odor.

I can’t begin to tell you how many emails I receive asking about traveling with family in an RV. The questions go something like this: What kind of RV should I buy? What should I know about RVing? Where should I go? My RV knowledge is not unlimited, but I have traveled with my family through a decent chunk of the good old USA by RV. We’ve traveled with as few as seven people and have now reached the insane number of TEN. We usually stay out on the road for several months a year, sometimes up to 100 nights in a row in our big old Familyman Mobile. My children have been to Gettysburg, Antietem’s “Bloody Lane”, the spot where Washington crossed the Delaware and where he rested his troops at Valley Forge. They saw the place where Lincoln was born, the only house he ever owned, sat in Ford’s Theater, the little room where he died, and the hallowed place they laid his body. They’ve walked the banks of Plum Creek where Laura Ingalls lived as a little girl and and visited the house she lived most of her adult life. They’ve been to Mark Twain’s boyhood home, his mansion, as well as the boyhood homes of Walt Disney, Martin Luther King Jr. George Washington Carver, and Bill Clinton. They’ve been to presidential museums, seen road side oddities, and even had their picture taken in front of the REAL Brady Bunch House in LA. And they saw it all and so much more because we RV. The RV gives us flexibility and spontaneity. The truth is, you might not drive all the way to Gettysburg just to see a battlefield, but if you happen to be in the neighborhood…you do it.

Trying to bring order and harmony to the Wilson home, I decided it was time to consult Ann Landers about the problem. Here is her answer:

If you open it, close it.
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you unlock it, lock it up.
If you break it, admit it.

Let me say up front that I’m not writing this booklet as some parenting expert who has arrived. In fact, this whole discussion came about because of a tingle that creeps up my back every time this topic comes up.

The world we live in is saturated by all kinds of technological gizmos. There are X-boxes, game cubes, Wii, cell phones, iPhones, iPods, INTERNET Blogs, chat rooms, Facebook, My Space, and You Tube, just to name a few. They surround us. They are as present as the air we breathe.

*Hey Dad,*

Thought I’d give you just a quick synopsis of our family trip to Hawaii (and point out a few tricks that worked or didn’t work for us). If you think about it, it really is a terrifying thing to take eight children on a 6000-mile journey to paradise. Not that I was afraid of the paradise part, but I was sure the plane trip would be hellish. But it wasn’t.

In fact, outside of being a long, tiring flight, everyone did great. I’m sure it was in part because so many dads and moms prayed for us and because we scheduled the flight so that we arrived in Hawaii at bedtime and left Hawaii at bedtime, giving us some big chunks of sleeping in flight.

*Hey Dad,*
Thought I’d give you a little run down on what we’ll be doing and where we’ll be doing it for the next couple weeks. First of all, we’ve been asked to speak at the 2009 Hawaii State Homeschool Convention.

At first we talked about making it a husband/wife mini-vacation, but the more we talked, we decided it was an opportunity to take the whole family. I know it sounds crazy to the average sane person to take 10 people (most of them children) on a 6,000 mile trip. But hey, that’s what having kids does to sane people. If we had wanted easy, we wouldn’t have had children to begin with.

So, after some resourceful hunting by my wife, we found “Malaekahana Campgrounds”:http://www.campingfriend.com/FriendsofMalaekahana/ on the beautiful North Shore of Oahu. Not only is it reasonably priced for a family of ten, but it offers rustic island housing (read not-hotel), also known as indoor camping. I mean, who wants to go to Hawaii and stay in a hotel that could just as easily be in Chicago…with palm trees?

Hey Dad,

First of all, let me just tell you how much I appreciate being on the Familyman Team. I’ve always wanted to create a forum where dads could encourage dads. I’d encourage and challenge you and you’d encourage and challenge me. Well, I’ve succeeded.

After last week’s Familyman Weekly, I was swamped by dads and moms who were concerned. Some wanted clarification; some wanted a retraction. Others wanted to skin me alive and feed my heart to the sharks. As I sent out the email, I was just sure someone would comment on my use of the word ‘wedgie’ but never dreamed my comments concerning President Obama would unleash such a firestorm of criticism.

19 JAN 09
Hello Prayer partners….

I just had to share this little blessing with you!!! My oldest son Gary showed an interest in football for the FIRST time a few days ago and said he wanted to watch the Steelers (my favorite team) in the AFC Championship game. I said it was OK with me if mom said it was ok and she did. IT started at 0030 Germany time…0230 my time….(They had no school today for MLK day of courseÅ )

Well Michelle also set up the Mac in the living room so I could see Gary and he could see me while we “watched the game together’ he on the TV there, and me on the TV here. I also was too far away from my TV here to listen to the sound (my roommate was asleep!) so I just had Gary turn up the TV there and listened to it via Skype!!!

Hey Dad,
We’ve got ourselves a winner for the ‘no-more-goofy-t-shirts-for dad” contest. Out of the 50 t-shirt ideas and designs, Brent Welborn’s design embodies the tough, don’t mess with my family attitude that I was looking for. A special mention (and a FREE shirt) goes to Jeremy Hamilton who proposed the initial idea.

Now, you get to benefit from Brent’s design talents and get your very own “Leader of the Pack” very cool dad T. We’re even offering this T in big sizes for Big Dads.