It was winter break, and three of my siblings and I were home for two weeks. There was nothing to do for my siblings and I. We were bored and looking for something different than what we usually did. We didn’t want to create another water slide, or just bike around. Sleeping outside in homemade tents had already been done. We needed something absolutely epic, that we had never even thought of before.

Nowadays I would be completely fine with sitting on the couch and watching Netflix, but back then I wanted something fun and exciting. My brother had found the answer. During the school year, on a select few weekends we would end up going up to Pinto, Utah. There was a little cabin there that my grandpa built that has been in my family. Now you have to understand that Pinto was completely family. So we were constantly going to different cabins, especially Ron’s. His cabin had bed swings. They were the highlight of our time there. We would spend hours, and always had hopes that they would one day let us sleep on them. So we decided to build our own swings.
I wasn’t one who complained, but I had no idea how this was going to happen. Giving credit to my brothers they were both boy scouts. They took this to heart and decided that this would happen. Not overnight but it did eventually happen.

For some reason we always had lots of big pieces of wood in our backyard. They decided since Mom would most likely not let us bring our mattresses out here we would have to substitute something instead. We used rope that my dad had brought home from work that was the strongest thing they had. Over our back porch was a wooden structure that just had pieces of planks going across each other so my brother sketched out a plan. We would tie the rope to the boards, and then tie it around the boards, and then swing.

So they started to work, while I did pretty much nothing, but I was out there just in case they needed something. The tied the rope around a piece of wood that was as big as a full sized mattress. They used specific knots that I could barely even do with the book right in front of me. There was no way that I could have done it, but finally it was finished.

Now was the fun part testing it to make sure it wouldn’t fall randomly. So we all got on and it held. We were so happy. We didn’t want to break it though so we decided to only have two people on while it actually swung. This was fun for about a week, but none of us liked having to share it between the four of us. So we decided to make at least two others.

By the end of the week they were done. There was one little problem. We had to have a sleepover outside. Now remember it is winter and it’s cold. We didn’t think this over very well and just used the same bedding we would if we were inside.

Our dad trying to be funny and wanted to see if we would actually be able to stand it locked us out of our own house. We had to survive the cold whether we liked it or not. So we tried to stay warm. We would keep our arms moving while trying to just fall asleep. Nothing was working. Dad had taught us to keep your head warm and it will help keeping the rest of you warm. So we curled up under the blankets. Even that didn’t work.

Eventually the only thing we could think off doing is to help each other. Ditching the bed swings we all migrated to the trampoline to sleep as penguins. We huddled together with all of the bedding beneath and on top of us. We drifted off to sleep being able to be as warm as possible.

Now this experience didn’t stop us from ever doing this again. Sooner or later we were outside again sleeping in snow clothes with blankets galore, and sleeping on the bed swings.