I suppose I could come up with a more creative title for the continuing saga of life in a big family ... Actually, I did have an idea ... my grandmother was a big Louis L'Amour fan, and managed to get my younger brother hooked on his westerns as well. He's got nearly a bookcase full of them now, so maybe I could just borrow from all those titles! Or maybe from Star Trek ... "The Trouble with Tribbles" comes to mind ...

Anyway, we actually have a pretty sophisticated operation going on around here, though it probably is lost on the average visitor, who is, in any case, likely about the same age as son #5, soon to turn 10. This morning I overheard just his half of the following exchange, with his younger brother (see earlier post):

"Why are you crying?!!" ... "It's nearly 12 o'clock, you should know better than to expect hot water this late after everyone else has taken their bath!" ... "Well, one minute of hot water is better than thirty minutes of cold water - you should have gotten out a long time ago!" ... "Why are you staying in there so long if it's just cold water?!"

Now lest you think we haven't done anything about this earth-shattering dilemma, let me assure you that just last year we went and replaced our aging (and dripping leaking) water heater with a nice, new bigger one, about as big as they come. But nothing is quite that simple around here, where folks have been trained not to do laundry or run the dishwasher until about 11 am. By 11:30, though, you're on your own, and the kitchen and washing machine are much closer to that water heater.

There's a lot of things like that, where a hidden but careful coordination goes on behind the scenes. The fact is, we would have hit most capacity constraints years ago without that. When we do invest in a bigger capacity, we try to go for as big as we can get without getting out of bounds. Sometimes this is a judgment call, such as when we bought our Express van a couple of years ago.

For years I had debated 12 vs. 15 passenger, but we finally went with 12, and I'm glad we did, every time I back our van out. Lately I've noticed that almost every 15-passenger has a dent in the driver-side rear door, so I guess 15 is just a little out-of-bounds, and would never fit in our garage, though we managed to (barely) squeeze our 12-passenger into our garage when Hurricane Rita was threatening.

Lately I've been wondering what we're going to do about parking capacity, as more of our teens start driving. Somehow some folks seem to think they "own" the street in front of their house, but I hope we can all get along. The pastor across the street has adult daughters, and a 15-passenger van, which take up most of the space, but we get along great with them.