My Pride and Joy

Here is a picture I took last night of Grant sitting on his dresser in front of three antler mounts we had just finished working on. These are all bucks that I shot with a bow in our back woods. You will notice that we experimented with a European Mount on my most recent deer - which I was very happy with for our first attempt. (What I was very unhappy with was learning the hard way not to boil down the skull INSIDE the house - what a stench!)

Grant is proud of these mounts, probably more so than I am. There is something in every young boy that yearns to brag about his father. I remember well the "my Dad can beat up your Dad" arguments of my youth (in my case I was usually right about this one). Hunting has given Grant something to take pride in, and the proof hangs on his wall. Grant doesn't mind that these deer were hardly record setters, to him they are larger than life.

In this picture you see my pride and joy - and he happens to be sitting in front of three deer mounts.

My Big Brother

I was looking through some pictures from last fall and ran across this one of my brother, Marv, and I. The occassion was a trip to Cabelas where I bought a really sweet, albeit too expensive Benelli shotgun. My entire family - Mom, Dad and Marv all made the trip and then we went out for some lunch. The next week my brother and Dad came out and hunted opening day of firearm season. We spent the entire day together (yes, we did have a buck and a doe come by, but didn't do any shooting). My brother has worked as a carpenter for over 20 years, and he is good at it. He lives near my parents with his wife, Rosie.

I love my brother and hope that as we both mellow with age we get to spend more time with one another.

Snowman Fun

Last Sunday we all decided to go out and

build a snowman in our front yard. I had to leave that night for a business trip and we wanted to do something fun as a family before I headed out. So, we decided on a family snowman project.

And what a project it was! The snow didn't pack very well, so we couldn't roll three large snow balls and stack them on top of one another. But, we discovered that if we shoveled snow into a huge pile, we could pack it together and eventually shape it. This was not a job for the faint of heart...So, after Sandi and I threatened to ground all of our kids if they didn't stop complaining about the fun, family activity we chose for that day, we started making some good progress.

In the end, it was a sight to behold. However, if you look at his rear end you can tell that this snowman is big of butt and has been caught with his pants down! (Compliments of our 13 year old.) Our poor snowman has already started to melt, but he looked glorious for a few days.