My Man!

Jeff got his first deer on Sat.! We were all so excited for him and for us to have the "meats" of his labor to eat. I got some hands-on training as I processed the meat into various cuts and then today we got a grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer so that we could grind up the rest. What a dream that thing is! It is time consuming to trim the meat prior to cubing it to be put into the grinder, but what a treat to have fresh venison for dinner tonight. I browned up some of the ground meat, then added it to our fave spaghetti sauce - the kids loved it too. It's so nice knowing that we can eat lean, antibiotic and hormone free meat. We will be forever grateful to his friend J who really walked him through every step and provided so much of the gear for his first outing. Sadly, our friend with whom Jeff drove out to the deer camp got a call early Sat morning that his mom had taken a turn for the worse. She has been hospitalized since the spring but that call is never truly expected. He left and headed out to pick up his family and make the drive down to south AR. Jeff spoke with him last night and he said that she is in pretty bad shape, unresponsive and so they are really just waiting. My heart breaks for him, his dad, and his brother (and all of their family of course.) I wish I couldn't say that I know how that feels.

I just found these pics on my camera. They were taken last weekend on the Bentonville square. One of the many benefits of living in Wal-Martville is the great events they sponsor. This one was a holiday kick off and all of the big toy vendors came out to pitch their goods for the coming Christmas season. Of course it was overwhelming, but it was fun too. It coincided with the mountain bike race that has become quite an event here. The trail is awesome and draws riders from all over the world. Some of the bmx riders showed off their tricks which means that I spent 30 minutes saying, "no you cannot do that at home!" So, the pics from that night are below:

This is what Ryan did, other than sleep of course:)

Will loves to dance! As we were wrapping up our time on the square we saw a great cover band playing across the street. He just can't help himself - when hears music, he's gotta dance!

Jack got to pose with one of the real Bumblebees (from Transformers)- of course he wanted to know if he could drive it!

Jeff and Will in front of some big truck that is supposed to be a brand new toy item this year. Kind of looks like the old Tonka trucks to me? I'm sure there is some new marketing spin on it this year though.

EK got to pose with Barbie, or a reasonable facsimile thereof? She was very nice, totally misspelled EK's name "Ella-Aathryn" as if that were a real name? I thought she was a bit scantily, read sluttily, dressed. She was wearing black fishnet stockings. At a kids event. And she looks all of 17. Come on people. We can do better than that for our girls! More on this topic later...