Passing Of The Cup

Today was a big day at our house. Last night I purchased our son's first athletic supporter. If you aren't politically correct, you may not understand me unless I refer to it as a jock strap, boulder holder or a family jewel case.

For all you mothers out there, I did not pass down my old cup to him as the title of this post might imply. I did the right thing and purchased him his own. That would not really be feasable since mine would be way to big.

Anyway, I knew that he would be excited and I knew that he would put it on right then and beat on it all day. That is exactly what happened. He loved it. We could not have bought him another toy that would have made him any happier.

He actually took it a step further and started finding alternative uses for it.

A hat in case it starts raining.

A fireman's breathing apperatus - a timeless classic for sure

And football shoulder pads

He even wanted to put a stick on it and make a lacrosse stick with it. I was pretty proud. It's great to be a guy, girls don't get to have fun like this.

Cat-astrophe At The Dodd House

Well, do you remember back around May 1st of this year, we were the proud grandparents of 3 kittens. We had taken in a skinny little stray that was apparently pregnant. (Just our Luck). The wonders of Craig's List found a wonder full home for them and I thought that we were done with all that. If you do the math and extrapolate that the average gestation period for the common household feline is 63 days, our social little kitty got knocked up again around 4 to 5 weeks after giving birth. To make a long story short, we are now the proud grandparents of 7 kittens.

(6 of which we will be finding homes for if you are interested. If you are cool enough to read my man blog, I know that you will be great parents.)

Last Saturday night, she started following us around and acting kind of funny. Jackson let her outside and soon she was nowhere to be found. We looked for her quite a bit for the rest of the night, but could not. When we came home from church it was starting to rain and Tonya spotted her in our back yard. She then led her under our deck steps where she had the nestled in a little nest in our ivy. We both crawled under our deck steps in the rain reaching in pulling out kitten after kitten until finally we had seven. It was like a magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his hand. After each kitten, we thought we had the last one and then there was another, and then another. I hope that our great cat houdini has performed her last trick.

Wordless Wednesday...

Frog Scare

Here is another one of my greatest moments as a dad. We found this frog puppet and the twins loved it. That is until I thought it would be funny to make him bite them.....It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as you can see, I was wrong.

Wordless Wednesday...

My Brother:

Slide Slip-Up

Today we had our family birthday party for Ashton. If you are going to have a party at the end of July, you have got to break out the water slide. I was embarassed that we bought this thing a couple of years ago, but we figured it was cheaper than renting something like this every year. The best part about it is that big kids can get on it too. Here is a video of our little mishap today. I did learn an important lesson. There is a reason why they insist that you stake it down.



Obviously, it did not stop the fun.

Knoxville Zoo

Ashton had her 5th birthday this week. I was supposed to go to Knoxville for work, so I took everybody. I was working a pretty early shift, so what the heck. Family Trip. I did not want to miss her birthday. I think that it worked out pretty well. My work paid for our hotel and gas and my meals. Then we had zoo passes to Nashville's Zoo, so we were able to get into Knoxville's Zoo for free. Why not bring everybody. I was a little nervous about traveling with the twins again, but they were very good.

The first evening we were there, I called ahead to my office in Knoxville and was told by two people that we were staying in the hood and they would not take their family there, so I cancelled our reservations on the way there. Who would've thought that you can't believe what you see on the internet. It looked nice on their site.

When we got into town, we called some friends from high school, Matt and Brandy Rappe. We were actually trying to check into a hotel when we first spoke, but he told us that we could find something closer to my office and we would take care of it after dinner. So then we went to their house where he grilled a wonderfull dinner. As you can probably predict, there was not another room to be found that was not in the hood. So they invited us to stay. They were obviously crazy and did not know what they were getting into. We had a great time there and the accomodations were much better than we had planned on having. We taught them a big lesson, don't invite friends over from out of town without making sure they will leave.

Later the second day, we went to the zoo after I got off of work. Here are a couple of video clips of our encounters there. First is our experience with the camels. You just have to watch.

Then Jackson decided to throw poop. I promise that I did not teach him this.

Wordless Wednesday...

Momma's Day Off

Tonya is always complaining that she never gets a day off, well she finally got it. At the last second, she got invited to go to Atlanta to hear Beth Moore speak with some church friends of hers. She left Friday morning and is hopefully coming back late Saturday night. She will not be gone for very long, but it feels like forever. Mom's have it rough. I have to work alot of hours and fight computers all day, but you can at least smack them and turn them off if you get to upset with them.

We had a really good couple of days. I was really trying to do things right. We had just eaten our lunch and I looked down and Will had eaten some lunch of his own. He was sitting in the floor chewing on a tube of desitin. Hey, look on the bright side, he should have a clear face for a while.

Here is a picture of one of our lunches. I promise that is a green been on his head.

Wesley was good except for Friday night. I went to the bathroom for a quick trip (I promise that it was only #1) and when I came back to the living room, he was shoveling fireplace gravel into his mouth. He saw me coming and started doing it even faster. I got several out of his mouth, but I couldn't have gotten them all. I am hoping that they are like doves or pigeons. They eat gravel every day to help digest their food. Maybe babies are the same way.



Saturday evening, the Carpenters came over to visit and play for a little while. Chloe and Ashton had alot of fun dressing our new kitten. I am afraid to go up to her bedroom to see what else they have gotten into.

Happy Anniversary

Well, almost a month has gone by. I guess that it is time to blog again. Alot has happened lately and I will try to get to them at some point, but I have got to tell you about my wonderfull aniversary. Well truthfully, it stunk, but hopefully we will have many more to make up for this one. Our story begins in 1993. Here is a picture for proof. Look how skinny we are. If you look close, you can see my "butt" chin as Tonya so lovingly calls it. No wonder I have a gotee.(I've never tried to spell that before) Tonya looks like she is 12, but I promise that she wasn't.

Who knew that we would later get married, have about twenty kids and always have wonderfull aniversaries. Well it really wasn't that bad. Ya'll settle in close ya here and I will tell you all about it. (That is my Uncle Remus imitation).

Tonya had strep throat and as you can probably imagine, when momma is sick, it is no fun around here. Daddy is just no replacement for Momma. I try, but I'm outnumbered. I made it all better by getting her the perfect .............card. Isn't that what every woman wants on her 12th anniversary? For the record, I had already gotten her two truck loads of mulch the week before. You know 5th anniversary you are supposed to get something silver, the 8th is a birth stone or something and the 12th is definitely mulch. Here is a picture.

And the inside...

I know you ladies are jealous....But then, that evening my wonderful wife gave me a gift.

That's why I love her. She loves monkey cards! Or she has given up hope of me being romantic.

What A Day!!

Poor Tonya has had a heck of a day. I can usually tell how her day is going by the phone calls that I recieve at work. This morning I could tell that it had not started too well. She then asked me to go to lunch and I was glad to accept the invitation. Then she told me they did not get out of ballet until 1pm. I could tell she was having a bad day, so I still went. We enjoyed our lunch and I am sure being with her wonderful husband really helped. Later, the phone calls started again. Every one with a baby crying in the background. If I hadn't mentioned it before, she does a great job. One that the state would not let me do for long.

Then on my way home from work, I went to the grocery to get a healthy dinner. (I will discuss our new diet another day, if it lasts that long.) When I got home, the babies were not happy and neither was momma. The babies are going through their seperation anxiety stage and are jealous of each other when you pick the other up. (Did that make sense?) Anyway, we had decided to cook a pizza for supper and try to deal with all of the crying babies around here. Tonya went upstairs for a little bit and I was left consoling Will while we were preheating the oven for our pizza.

I was starting to get a handle on things until I smelled something that was not pizza. Last night we had an ultra healthy dinner. We even handed out those cool plates that seperate all of your food.

After dinner we went for a walk and hid the kids plates in the oven so that our new cat would not eat any. You have probably guessed the smell by now. I then ran to the kitchen and saw our oven billowing with smoke. So we evacuated and ran to Sonic for dinner. Here is a picture of the two plates that we left in the oven. If anyone knows how to clean this up, let us know. The plastic should be easy enough to pick off, but we are not sure how comfortable we are about cooking in it for a while. This place stinks.
Then when we got home, Tonya got peed on I got pooped on and we are ready for this day to be over!

Happy Mother's Day!!!

Well another Mother's day has come and gone. I did not do very well this year as far as gifts go. Tonya had been hinting that she wanted a bike and maybe a stroller to attach to the back of it. This is probably a part of our healthier habits that we have been trying lately. I'll save that for another blog. I had been checking Craig's List regularly and had seen that if you watch, you could get these pretty cheap. As a backup plan I found them at Academy Sports as well. Long story short Craig's list did not come through and I was too afraid to go buy it without her seeing it first. It's a good thing I did, because she decided that she wasn't sure that she could still ride a bike or would trust herself with putting the babies in the stroller behind it. Sooooo, this means yet again I am left without a gift to present on Mother's Day.

She was great though. I expected to get a little bit of lip for not having her anything. I didn't even get her a card. I did however have the kids make her a card, but I lost it. I found out later that they had given it to her last Friday. I am very lucky that Tonya would much rather have something done for her than to recieve anything.

I was given just that opportunity lastnight. Mr. Wesley decided that he wanted to pee everywhere lastnight and then stay up and watch some tv. Then the kids were really good getting ready for church. (That is more of a miracle than a gift.) Then I tried to clean the house as much as I could when we got home. Somehow, this was enough.

I have to hand it to her. She does alot. I could never stay at home and do what she does. I am so tired of changing diapers and gettting everyone ready, but it I have not even scratched the surface of what she has to do everyday.

The best thing that I got her was to FINALLY kill a turkey. Season ends today and I killed me one yesterday. I have never went a year without killing at least one and I was probably getting a little hard to be around. I really get obsessive in turkey season, if you did not already know. For you fellow rednecks out there, it had almost an 11 inch beard and 1 inch spurs. If that doesn't mean anything to you, that's a dandy.

Just Our Luck!

About a month and a half ago, we took in this nice malnourished little kitty cat. She was nearly grown and was very good natured. Best of all, she was already an outside cat.

You may or may not know that when we told Jackson and Ashton that the twins were both boys, Ashton started crying. My rock solid wife then paniced and told Ashton that we would get her a kitten. That is the only time that I have ever seen her crack like that. Now that it has been a while, I figured that I was getting out easy by taking in an almost grown outside cat.

Recently she has been looking really healthy. As a matter of fact, she has been putting on a little too much weight. I have been joking about her being pregnant, but now it is for sure. We have yet to follow her and ask her to pee on a stick, but now that you can feel them kick, there is probably no need to. If anyone wants a kitten in a couple of months, PLEASE let me know.

High Crawler

Here is a video of Mr. Will crawling. He has started crawling instead of rolling or scooting everywhere. The funny thing is that he has a hitch in his crawl. For some reason he moves his right arm high in the air and moves the left one normally. At times it is really funny to watch. Enjoy.

I've Still Got It.

Jackson had his first baseball game of the year the other night. Brent Jones and I are coaching his team again. The best part of being the coach is that I get to pitch to the kids. I have to admit that this is pretty stressfull. The kids get 6 pitches no matter what, if they do not strike out first. I have the team that loves to crowd the plate. It is all that I can do not to go back to the old days when I would throw one at their chin to back them off and give me room to work the outside corner to strike them out.

To make a long story short, I ended the night with 11 strike outs. I was really on my game. They didn't even come close. Too bad that I wanted them to hit. The truth is that I never had a problem letting batters hit the ball. I always had a talent for that. Even worse was that we only played for 12 outs since we were getting losing so bad. I think that the final score was 17-6 or something. Who's counting? We are out there for the fun of the game ya know. Who am I kidding? That loss hurt Coach Brent and I pretty bad. We do have a good team. We just did not want to go undefeated and give the kids a big head. It's all about the kids........ I think.

I'm Back.

Well, apperently I am not much of a blogger. If anyone is still even checking my blog, you may notice that I have not blogged in over a month. I could give you alot of excuses, but it all boils down to the fact that I have not really had anything interesting to talk about. I will try to do better.

Birthday Party

Friday night we hosted a party for Jackson's 7th birthday. We had 5 kids over to spend the night. I have to say that Tonya was a little nervous for some reason. I'm the one that is usually scared of kids and she is the one hiding. This scared me because she is the one that is comfortable around 25 4th graders and ultimately has our game plan on surviving the night.

She did have everything planned, but this was the problem. When they arrived and started tackling each other, she realized that they probably would not be interested in the multitude of science experiments that we had planned for our evening entertainment. We had to go to plan B. I started acting like a drill sargeant and then I would not acknowledge them unless they called me Big Jon. Then Big Jon talked as much trash and kicked their butt in every challenge that I could come up with. (Mainly Guitar Hero, I rocked!)

Then it was time for the eruption. Jackson had asked for a volcano birthday cake, so I found some ideas on the internet to make one that was supposed to erupt. I had to try this out. We had had a mock eruption on thursday, but it did not go so well, so I was a little nervous. I had made a cake that was four layers thick and full of toothpicks to keep it from destroying itself. Then in the top, you put aluminum foil and fill it full of egg whites, sugar, food coloring and dry ice. Then when you add hot water it was supposed to erupt and run lava down the sides.

Then we stayed up late and later played in the snow. I would write more about all that, but it's dinner time around here and Wes and Will are not happy. Big Jon has got to go.

Let's Talk Turkey

As many of you know, my most favorite time of year is coming up....Turkey Season. There is nothing like Hooting like an owl to locate them on the roost and then strategizing a way to get close to them. Every once in while it works out and we are blessed with a chance to bring one home. Last year Jackson killed a really nice one on his first turkey hunt. In a couple of weeks we will go again. Maybe this year he will not come home saying that daddy kept saying bad words. When he shot it, I dragged him out of the blind to tackle it and I was jumping around like a baboon screaming that holy crap you just shot a turkey over and over. I am not particularly proud of my choice of words at time, but I was excited. The other thing that I kind of regret was while I was jumping around was that when I got to the turkey, Jackson was not behind me anymore. He had stepped knee deep into a hole and could not get his leg out. Well anyway despite all that, it was a beautiful hunt that neither of us will never forget. Notice in the picture below that the turkey is almost as tall as he is.

I recently had another proud moment. Mr. Will has started to try to talk lately. He has started to say Da Da and he will yelp like a turkey. Tonya is very pleased about this. She is trying to get him to say words, but all he wants to do is call turkeys. I am so proud. (tear)

Here is a video of dinner time at our house. Will it's a little long, but you will see will calling them in.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7022922582967427546

Crop Day

Last Saturday was an exciting day. Tonya left at 10am to go scrapbooking and left me with the kids all day. We had a big time and I am proud to say that all four kids survived the day. I did not need it, but I recieved another dose of how much I appreciate what my wife does everyday. No wonder she is crazy. (Just Kidding). She left me a schedule of everything that I should expect during the day. She even included expected poop times. Our first feeding went very well. I hate spoon food. Mr. Wesley eats very well, but Mr. Will only sucks it off of your spoon and will not open his mouth to eat. This makes things difficult and messy. Tonya claims that I have taught him this. Maybe I did, I try to get it down the hatch any way it will go in. Here is a picture of our first feeding. Notice everyone is happy. I am not including suppertime, because it was not one of my best moments. I took pictures, but I did not think you would like seeing Wesley yak. I do have standards you know.

We then had to bake cupcakes for Jackson's birthday. Ashton loved this part as you can tell.

Then we rocked the house with some guitar hero. We had quite an audience. I never thought that I would have almost enough kids to have our very own mosh pit. Ashton was teaching the boys some new moves.

Tonya finally rolled in around midnight. I then explained to her how easy the kids were and that I did not understand what was so hard about what she does everyday. I know that she knew that I was kidding, because she did not punch me in the mouth.

On another note, thank you Shawn for your binary joke in your comments. That is a classic. I will have to annoy someone with that one soon.

Not much going on

Well, I have to apologize. There hasn't been alot going on with me lately. Will has been pretty nice to his dad lately, so I do not have any poopie pictures to share. It's not hunting season, so I do not have any dead animals to post and I have not played Webkinz lately, so I don't even have any jokes to share. Please come back. I promise to have something spicy for my next post.
I need to make this short, because I have really been studying hard and attending a Linux class, which means that I have nothing interesting rattling around my head. If any of you want to talk about kernels, bash scripts or grep commands, please let me know. Tonya is begging me to not be too geeky and embarrass her, so I had better change the subject.
On a better note, it is almost turkey season so Jackson and I are starting to get excited. I am also proud to say that the babies love to hear gobbles and turkey calls. Maybe they are just smiling because Jackson and I have been strutting around them and making funny noises. Nah, that couldn't be it.

Time To Explain

Let's get something straight. If you are going to read my man blog, you've got to remember the rules this blog was founded on. Nowhere in the blog bylaws are there promises of correct speelling, political correctness, or funny jokes. A couple of posts ago, I enlightened everyone with my newfound Webkinz jokes. I have had several people ask, what I was thinking. My mom even asked me if I had been drinking when I called and told them to her. (I must note that she has never asked me that before!)
Please refer to the post below if you have not read it yet. It seems that every female that reads my blog does not get my joke about the salad dressing. I think the men get it because they expect less from me. Although Tonya doesn't expect much either. Anyway you have to admit that it is a little funny that in the joke, I was embarrassed by seeing the salad dressing. (For you girls that still do not get it, I saw the salad putting clothes on.) See there, now you've done it. There is another great joke ruined by having to explain it. In this case, I don't think that there is much lost.
OK, let's make a deal. If you keep reading this sorry excuse for a blog, I promise to not get any more jokes from Webkinz.

Does Anyone Know How To Clean Carpets?

It's Friday night and Tonya has left me with the kids. She's off scrapbooking with the girls. I usually pride myself on being able to handle all of our kids without Momma's help.

Tonight started out pretty well. I fed the babies their sweet potatoes and the Ashton was begging me to watch hunting shows. After a while, I was actually thinking that the night was going pretty well. Then Will started crying. I figured that I would change both the boys, pour a little milk in 'em and put them to bed.

I could smell that Will had made a present for me, so I laid him in the floor and started changing him. He was wearing a onesy (I have never tried to spell that before.) and some pants. When I took off his pants nothing was out of the ordinary. Then I unbuttoned his onesy and pulled it up his back to give me room to change his diaper. It was then that I noticed that this was no ordinary diaper. When I lifted him back up, I could see poop all over the carpet. He had pooped up his back and I had unleashed its wrath.

Since this is a man blog I am attaching pictures. It was really something to behold. I did not know what to do. During his last blowout, Tonya had tried to teach me how to roll his shirt off so that I would not get doodie all over him. I promise that I tried, but I only got a hand full of crap that was stuck to the inside of his shirt. So now, I have poop on the floor, in my hand and all over the baby and I cannot get his shirt off without smearing it all over him more. All that I could think to do was to drag him onto the kitchen floor to gather myself. The picture below was after about 10 wipes.

At this point I think that I am getting things under control and then the older kids start to gaze at the situation Dad was in. This picture shows Ashton after she had stepped in the evidence. Jackson is on the counter getting his own milk. I can't wait till the twins can do that. Tonya would disagree. Ya' know, forget the milk thing. I can't wait till they can go to the bathroom and I am not cleaning baby mud out of my carpet.

Maybe next time, I will write about something cleaner.

Embarrassment

I guess since we are all friends, I can tell you about an embarrassing moment that I had the other day. At work I went to the kitchen to get my lunch out of the refridgerator. To make the situation worse, there happened to be alot of poeple making thier lunch at that time. When I opened the fridge, I was totally embarassed. You would never believe what I saw in the refridgerator.......

I saw the Salad Dressing!!

:) You may have forgotten that this is a man blog where stupid jokes are fair game.

Much like:

There are three kinds of people in this world. There are the kind of people that can count and the kind that cannot.

Maybe my next post will have a little substance to it. But don't count on it.

Permanent Marker

I had to work last night, so I was off today. It stinks, but I enjoy having the extra time at home the next day to play dollhouse and other girly stuff that I am sure you would like to see pictures of. I let Tonya take a nap, so that means I had all four kids to watch. Jackson had his 100th day of school today, and there they were burdened with the task of getting 100 people to sign a T-shirt that he was wearing. They dug out a handfull of permanent markers that Ashton just had to have. Of course, they fought over them, and I finally diverted Jackson's attention with a hunting show, but I forgot about Ashton. She was quietly doing something in the other room so there was no problem that I could see. Then she comes to show me her masterpiece. She had drawn a face on her stomach with Jackson's permanent markers. I actually thought that it was funny, but I tried not to show it. I then explained to her that it could not be washed off. Then she erupted with an impressive display of screams and tears. (I know that Tonya heard her screaming and crying, but she acted like she slept through it. I recognize this technique because I use it all of the time myself.) Tonya later "awoke" from her slumber, and then I asked Ashton to show her mother her masterpiece. She then explained that it was an accident and that "Daddy let me play with permanent markers." I was totally ratted out. I did not officially let her play with them, but I guess that I could have asked a few questions to find out what was going on. Maybe next time I will do that. Naa...

Jacque Dodd Day

I would like to dedicate this blog to one of the great women in history. It was on January 16th, 1974 that this lady joined the ranks of Betty Washington (George Washington's Mom) and Lucy Maddux (Distinguished Mother of Future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux).....If you do not know who these people are,....."No Blog For You." You are banned from my man blog......Anyway, you may have guessed, I am dedicating this entry to Jacque Dodd. She endured many perils to bring me into this world and yet she still persevered. It's a touching story that includes good guys, bad guys and cowboys and indians. Maybe I will tell you about it sometime.

I did want to share with you what I found in my truck the morning of my birthday.

Yes it is Anti-Monkey Butt Powder. The gift that keeps on giving. It was in the seat of my truck with no name. If you read the label, it really seems useful. They say it will cure any chafing that you may experience. I will let you know how it works. At my age, I might need this kind of stuff pretty soon, so I may just keep it. I am already going bald, chafing may be next. It looked like it had been used a little, but hey, it was free.

I was showered with gifts when I got home from work. I was presented with a drawing from Ashton. It had a rectangle on it that was colored blue. That was all. She said that I needed some shapes. I am not sure what you do with a rectangle, but somehow I still loved it. Then Jackson gave me a Xbox Star Wars game that he just got. I thought that he just wanted me to play with him, but later I found out that he was concerned that he did not have me a gift and he was giving me his new favorite game. That almost brings me to tears in a manly sort of way. Then the twins. This picture says it all.

Wow!! I can't believe that someone actually read my blog. Now I am a little nervous. I have to be honest. I figured about five or six people would even know about my silly little blog, but I never thought that it would ever get over 70 hits the first week. I bet Tonya didn't get that many!! I win!!! Now she will make me put a counter on hers, because she is way to competitive to lose. I will try to be nice to her because she is the best wife in the world. Why, you may ask? I just got back from a 3 day deer hunt in southern Mississippi that my wonderful wife let me go on. (I can't believe she let me go, she's crazy!!) Tonya manned the ship alone so that I could go hunting wiht Brent Jones. I get frustrated when she goes scrapbooking for one evening and she let me go for 4 days. (Man, I am going to pay for that.) She was wonderful, but it was pretty funny calling home. First of all, she made sure that I was packed and out the door last thursday like the perfect wife. Friday, she was still strong and telling me not to worry about them and to relax and have a good time. Saturday, she was noticeably tired and wondering what my plans were to come back home on Sunday. She politely asked that we not take too long. And then Sunday, I did not have to call. She was done. The babies and Ashton were not cooperating at all. She tracked our 7 hour trip back counting down the minutes that her wonderful husband would be home. Not long after I was back home she was nowhere to be found. Where could she be. Both babies are crying and the big kids need a bath. Then, I finally found her. The picture below says it all. Truthfully, she deserves it. I just enjoy giving her a hard time.

Bath Time: Now that Mommy is asleep and I was feeding a baby, the kids decided to get out the bubbles when I sent them to the bathtub. I am all for bubbles. The way I see it is that bubble are pretty much made of soap. The the kids put it all over themselves, and then you don't have to wash them, because they just did it. It's genius. Ok, Moms. I did rewash their hair because I figure that Tonya would wake up and do the squeak test to see if their hair was clean. She runs a tight ship. She makes me make our bed and then she flips a nickel on it to make sure that it is tight, just like the army. Here are some pictures to show how I found the kids after feeding Mr. Wesley.

In this one, Jackson looks like Colonel Sanders. It kind of makes you want some chicken, huh?

This one is kind of gross. I promise that those are just bubble coming out of her nose. I miss being in the tub and snorting bubbles.

For those of you who care about hunting, here is where I went hunting this week. We were hunting on over1400 acres about 2 hours north of New Orleans. It was beautiful. Brent and I were hunting for wild hogs and deer. We were hunting around swamps and pine thickets. After we had already been hunting for a day and walking all in and around swamps, they told us that they had alligators. That's always what you want to hear. I decided not to attach the picture of Brent Jones cryingin the floor in the fetal position with his thumb in his mouth after hearing that. You know that I am kidding, because if I did have that picture, it would be at the top of my blog.

Below are some pictures of our cabin that was 1.8 miles off the road. It wasn't fancy, but it had good food and a satellite dish. What more do you need. We actually did see some deer after it took us 2 days to figure them out. Once we found out what they were doing, I passed up a nice 7 pointer and Brent had a couple of 8 pointers that were not quite big enough. Maybe we will get them next year.

Well, you may notice that I like my blogs like I like my books. They should have lots of pictures. Thanks for stopping by.

Well, here is my first blog. I have been a little skepticle about writing a blog, but I feel that it is something I must do to defend myself. I needed a way to let others hear the other side of the story. I have to warn you about what you may read on my version of Dodd's Daily Doses. I will never win a pulizer for blogging or spelling (I am sure that exists). I promise to misuse commas and use run-on sentences whenever possible. My blogs will be gifts for your reading pleasure. That means some people around here actually have a job and do not have time to sit around and blog all day, so I probably will not write everyday. (She loves it when I say that kind of stuff.)
OK, I will actually talk about something now.
Today, I took Jackson deer hunting. I called Uncle Daren Williamson and he let us come out to his land in Leiper's Fork. Earlier this year, Jackson has already killed a really nice turkey and a big doe. Both of these hunts lasted about an hour, so this morning he got a taste of what real hunting is about. Needless to say, we did not see a thing. Although, he did shoot a really nice tree. I was reminded what it was like to be a kid again.

Take this picture for example, as we were sitting in our blind, everything Jackson looked at was some type of animal. There was a stump that looked like a bear, a tree with a laughing face on it, a limb that looked like a frog leg, an even anairplane. Here is a picture of a tree that had a leapord face on it. And you know, it does look like a leopard. I guess these things were kind of like the bells on "The Polar Express". If you believe in Santa, you can hear the bell ring. In this case, if you have any kid left in you, these images should appear. He would ask me, If a bear come by, can we shoot it? After thinking about it, it is neat because he really thinks a bear could come by. I miss being a kid.

On our walk back I was pretty proud of Jackson. We walked really far and most of it was uphill, but he never complained. He was loving it. I let him carry the gun back and he seemed to be really proud of himself (Mom, I promise that it was unloaded). I realized that I have to work on my obsessive compulsive hunting habits when I take him though. I tried not to freak out about the fact that he had not washed his clothes or taken a bath in scent free soap or the fact that he sounded like an elephant walking through the woods.

Well, there it is. My first blog. I hope that I did it right and maybe you would consider coming back. I guess this is where I say "Ya'll Come Back Now, Ya Hear!"