We have a bird story

Over the hills and through the woods……….to both Grandparent’s, Aunts and Uncles houses we went. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving with our families.

One of the highlights was going to my sister’s house. There is a fabulous little creek in the back and the kids love swinging on the rope swing and playing in the creek. Thankfully nobody fell in the creek Thanksgiving day. Mitchell did a body slam into the tree but other than that no major injuries except for a little bird in a tree. More on that later.

Okay, so about that bird….

You know where I’m going with this don’t you. Yeah, well, Mitchell did some target shooting (BB Gun) with our hot chocolate cups and was nailing them pretty good. Styrofoam cups soon got boring and he saw a bird in a tree. And well……he did some more target shooting. This bird was high up in the trees and Mitchell started shooting at it. Until it fell to the ground.

Mitchell picked it up not sure what he would find. Part of him knew it was dead but the other part was hoping he might still be alive. You could see these range of emotions come over him over the next few minutes. Elated at his first kill but really sad that he had killed an animal. Not wanting initially to take full blame (or should it be credit) for the kill he starts talking about how the bird probably  hit a rock when it fell and probably died from that.

Uh, nope, buddy. Call like it like it is. You polished off a woodpecker with some pretty dang good shootin’. I know I’m your Mother but it’s true, you’re a good shot.

He was proud of himself but felt guilty for killing a bird. I also had mixed feelings and one moment I was giving a lecture about endangered species and then the next minute I was saying with sheer excitement, “Mitchell, that makes for a pretty awesome Thanksgiving!” His response was classic. He said, “Yeah, if you’re not a bird.”  Oh, bless his p-pickin’ heart.

My Mom was at home cooking the Turkey – another bird someone had to kill. Ahem. Mitchell couldn’t wait to show her his bird. Yeah, we bagged it up and took it to her house.

Here’s how she felt about it…….

She was bothered.

Okay, clearly she wasn’t bothered. She wanted to mount it for him. HA!

My sister cracked me up about the whole thing. After some tongue in cheek discussion about how she watched these beautifully graceful woodpeckers at her window every morning during devotions and how it’s illegal in some states to kill woodpeckers, blah blah…..she looks at me sheepishly and says, “I hate to ask this but those feathers sure are beautiful….think I could pluck a few for an arrangement?” We both died laughing but were too grossed out to go through with it.

But seriously, we don’t exactly encourage woodpecker hunting or anything. It all just happened so fast. So please don’t hate us if you collect live woodpeckers or anything. We know God created them and we didn’t feel like we were “being God” by taking it’s life. But I did want to cry when I started thinking about how the other birds were trying to come to it’s rescue and intervene. It really was sad ya’ll. Mitchell even cried later on while he was by himself in the den sitting under my Dad’s six point deer head. Randy talked it through with him/us and we decided it was a good thing to have mixed emotions about it.

Enough about that bird.

Here’s my sweet Mama who cooked a spread for all of us.

The little girl on the right is one of my mom’s great granddaughter’s.

Sophie wore that red coke sweatshirt about four days in a row. We bought it for her the first day we were there and she never took it off pretty much. No really. She slept in it, played in the creek in it, ate turkey in it and did it all over again each day. Now that’s vacation! … And a little redneck scary. 

And this is Randy’s sweet family that we got to see on Friday. Love this family as much as my own.

Cousins…….are the best. You just pick right up even if years have passed. These cousins live in Palau and are doing an amazing mission work there but this means we don’t get to see them but once every three years. It’s extra special when we do get together. We exchanged Christmas presents since we won’t be back down for Christmas.

 

Oh, and they can all play the guitar and sing really well….and all kinds of talent going on there. I offered for Mitchell to play his ankle bones with spoons but he opted out. That was his “musical talent” the last time we did a family talent show. Ha! It really was fun to sit around and sing Christmas carols and hear them sing. The guy in the white shirt is a Palaun guy that got saved several years ago. His father has since gotten saved and now the boy is a Freshman in Bible college. Is that the coolest or what?!