The Vigilante Strikes Again

It is Thanksgiving 2015. I’m up at 7:30am driving to Provo. I’m not heading out to play in the TurkeyBowl (as if that would ever happen) and I’m not traveling to spend the day with relatives. I stop at the Maverick on Center Street just off the freeway, walk up to the counter, ask the cashier to give me an iPad, and was promptly given an iPad….. But, OK, let me backup here.

This story starts over a year earlier while I was on an extended engineering assignment working at a rural dam in the fall of 2014. One of the nights Julie and the kids met me at a hotel halfway between our home and the worksite to hang out and swim that evening. We had a great time as a family that night.

However, the next day our iPad was left in the bed after we had all departed and gone to our separate destinations. Oops. It didn’t take long for us to determine that the iPad was missing and Julie called the hotel on her way home (this probably wasn’t more than 45 minutes) after leaving. The hotel staff said they would go look for the iPad but that the room had already been cleaned and nothing had been found.

Later that night I drove back to the hotel determined to find the iPad. I talked with the general manager, looked through the room, and the manager even showed me the laundry room (as if that would prove that none of the hotel staff have the iPad). I was pretty upset at the dishonesty of the staff despite having called so quickly after leaving the hotel. But alas it was really our fault for leaving it behind.

That afternoon Julie changed her icloud settings to send a lock code to the iPad, put it into lost mode, and put my phone number on the lock screen. Unfortunately as it was a wifi only ipad we could not track it until the thief connected it to wifi. We watched icloud for months to see if it would show up but alas it did not. :(

A year passed with no news of the iPad. In early November 2015 I checked icloud for an unrelated reason and shockingly noticed that the iPad was listed as online! I immediately checked its location and tracked it to an apartment complex near BYU. The density of the apartments in the area was such that it would be very difficult to direct police to a specific unit as I’d previously done to locate an old stolen phone. That time I was responsible for putting an a wanted criminal behind bars (get that story here).

I set the iPad into lost mode again (didn’t work the first time?) and put the following as the lock screen message, “This iPad is lost, please return it by calling xxx.xxx.xxxx.” I used the words “lost” and “please” to increase my chances of getting the it back. I thought if I were too intense the person would just throw the iPad away. However, I couldn’t let them off too easy and sent repeated chime commands to the iPad over the next few weeks to draw as much attention to it as possible. I imagine it became pretty annoying.

Despite all my efforts there was no call, no text, no news at all. Humph.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I got an obscure text message late at night. I was told that my iPad had just been found “on the ground” and that they would like to return it. I was polite over text and was told they’d make contact again after the Holiday to return it. I remember thinking that this was all very interesting but I was still pretty skeptical that we’d actually get the iPad back in one piece.

However, at about 7:00am on Thanksgiving morning I got another weird text message from another phone number. I have your iPad, (found it on the ground at Maverick). I got a call a few minutes later from some guy. Said it was sitting on the ground near a table at the Maverick. He said he doesn’t have any idea how it got there. He took it into the cashier and left it with them. I remember saying, “thanks for calling,” and hung up the line as it was clear that he didn’t want to discuss it further.

To wrap this up, the iPad was still in working order and the kids still use it to this day. Of course I wiped the iPad to clear it of all data and disinfected that thing like no other. Thanks Apple for making “lost mode” and tracking available in icloud. Thanks to the folks that returned the iPad but NO thanks to the person that stole it.

Joy at the Park

Our kids live for their friends. Playing, pretending, partying, participating, performing, painting faces, planning, panting, perusing, parading, and any other fun "p" word you can think of...

Hmmm...these girls look like they're up to something (they usually are)!

It's the little things...like throwing a rock and running as fast as you can to see who can grab it first!

Fun summer times!

A Cousin's Baby Pics

Rob's cousin had a baby 2 months ago so when they stayed with us overnight a couple of weeks ago we were able to get a couple of cute pics of their new little guy.

Wide awake!

While Nicole was in the hospital waiting to have her baby she was reading Harry Potter so here she is reading it again, this time with babe in arms.

How sweet!

Redman Camping Trip 2016

In early July I took the kids on a quick camping trip. If I don’t go camping at least one or two times per year I’m likely to get pretty grumpy!

It is sometimes difficult to get a reserved campground on a Friday night in a local canyon so I decided to shoot for the Redman Campground in Big Cottonwood Canyon which is first come first serve. The campground is located near the top of the canyon between Solitude and Brighton Ski Resorts (the best campground are always at the top of the mountains).

We arrived at the campground around 11 am to find that only one campground remained available; however, the campsite was still occupied and would be for a couple more hours. We parked our car next to the campground and started wandering around the environs. We had a good time just goofing off in Nature while waiting a little while for our campsite. Here are a few photos we made during that time.

After getting the tent setup we played games and explored the area.

Julie came up that afternoon (she is not much into sleeping on the ground these days) to do an activity with the girls while Nate and I went mountain biking at Solitude. We had a great time.

We cheated a little on this camping trip at went to get pizza at solitude because our dinner plans for cooking over the fire didn’t quite work out. The pizza was really quite good.

That evening and night we had a blast doing all of our traditional camping activities; roaming the woods, cutting wood, roasting marshmallows, star gazing, and telling stories around the campfire until we are too tired to stay awake.

The next morning we lit an awesome fire to warm us up, ate breakfast, played in the woods a little more, and then cleaned up camp.

We headed up to the Brighton store to get a little more food before heading to Doughnut Falls for a good Saturday hike.

We made it too the falls in record time and even conquered the upper rock scrambling portion of the trail. Way to go kids!

We had a great outing and look foreward to the next time.

Park Pics

One Sunday evening we went to the park to enjoy some fresh air at golden hour while I practiced how to use our new camera...hence some blurry shots. Oh, well.

We played

 

We picked flowers

We shot some hoops

And that's all, folks!


**Can you tell that ever since I've been writing more for work my writing on the blog has been sparse? It's hard for me to want to sit here and write all creatively when I already do it for a couple of hours every day. Plus, summer is BUSY. So for now you get short, sweet, and to-the-point posts. Sorry.**