As many of you know, I am an avid genealogist and volunteer in Maricopa County.  Once in a while, I come across a resource from another region related to my family and try my best to get it there for the masses.

In this instance, my father Douglass sent me a photocopy of a Kimball Cemetery plat map.  This map was given to him by his uncle, Zane Lynn Cole, from Valparaiso, Indiana.  I do not know how he obtained it. 

The plat map was compiled from a plat made in 1944 by Guy Stinchfield.  It is incomplete, but may be of interest to many researchers out there.  It includes multiple individuals and families from my tree branches, so it is of particular interest to me.  I have to apologize for the image quality, but I had to piece together 14 seperate scans to create the entire document.  The original copy is 48″x18″ in size.

For an excellent index of individuals buried in Kimball Cemetery, I urge you to visit the Kimball Cemetery Index on Rootsweb.  The site owner, Steven Shook, has done an excellent job maintaining the index. 

Download Kimball Cemetery Plat Map [PDF] [JPG]

My 30th birthday is just around the corner, and to celebrate we adopted a new kitten!  I fell in love with him while out shopping on Sunday.  With a lot of coaxing, Andrew agreed to let us adopt him as an early birthday gift.

He’s approximately 13 weeks old, solid black, and very loveable.  I named him Lucky!  Since we don’t know his birthday for sure, I’m going to say he was born around May 14th.

Thanks, Andrew, for allowing this little guy into our home!

Andrew and I went camping this weekend with our friends Leisa, Cuinn and Delia.  We stayed at the KOA at Circle Pines near Williams, Arizona.  I felt compelled to blog about this particular trip, because we only made it through about 21 hours before leaving the campground.  It was terrible.

Upon arriving, we were greeted with 20 minutes of the staff telling us we didn’t have a reservation.  Leisa had reserved both sites for us, and placed one under my name.  She pre-paid for them, but they made us pay for the second day when we checked in.  They also would not let us enter the campground to get her so she could help straighten the mess out, without an “escort” (read: old guy on golf cart).

Once we finally made it past the guards and to our site, we found it to be extremely small.  Leisa, who has been camping about 100x more than our one time, says the sites were actually quite large.  So, I have to believe her.  After camping at the Grand Canyon Mather Campground, these sites were puny to put it nicely.  We did get a water/electric site, which was nice to have.

The first thing I noticed was the general lack of trees/shade on the campground.  We happened to be lucky with a site that had multiple trees and a good amount of shade, but looking around, most sites did not have that luxury. 

The second thing I noticed was the noise.  Even though we were closest to the very back of the campground, we were still only about 500 yards from I-40.  Being in a valley between large buttes and hills, the freeway noise and semi braking travelled straight to our site without much filtering.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad in an RV, but for a tent site, it’s really hard to sleep. 

Of course, some of the music was drowned out by the masses of campers, including a bunch of boy scout troops singing campsongs and a set of three families on a nearby campsite who thought it was their right to play Radio Disney so that the entire campground could enjoy it along with them.

As if the proximity to the masses and the freeway noise wasn’t enough coupled with the check-in problems, we quickly found that mosquitoes thought we were tasty (even with 23% DEET).

Needless to say, we left early.  KOA gave us a refund (thanks to Leisa) on the second day and we cut our losses on the way back to Gilbert.

Andrew and I went to see KA at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.  We have seen a number of Cirque du Soleil shows – almost all of them, in fact.  The only two we could see that we haven’t yet are Zumanity and Love.

KA was overall kind of boring.  We did get $50 tickets because of the Summer of Cirque campaign, however, making the show worth what we paid for it.  I felt that there were too few strong acts, dotted with some truly amazing stunts.  There is one part of the show that is a sort of human pegboard or plinko board which is executed very well.  It seems to me like they could have done a lot more with it.  Otherwise, the soundtrack wasn’t great and the acts in general lacked in flare.

If you want to see a general Cirque show or want to see all of them, then I’d recommend the cheap seats if you can get them.  Otherwise, stick with Mystere or O instead.

My heart goes out to those of you affected by the bridge collapse yesterday.  The thought of what happened shakes me to the core.  I hope you get some answers soon.  Long after the news crews leave your fine city alone, you will still be dealing with traffic problems and sorrow for those lost. 

The whole nation’s thoughts and prayers are with you.