Guns, Guitars, Knives, and Babies

Today mom allowed us to sleep in until 8:00. Ava only stole the covers off of me about, oh say...three times. But her arm only crossed no-man's land once, so I consider that a record on her part.

We headed out of Alabama and into Mississippi to visit some friends in Tchula (pronounced "choolah"). We arrived around 2:00pm, just in time for a very belated lunch at our friend's house.

Now, a word about these friends: They are a family of 5, two parents, twin toddler girls, and one newborn son. The dad is a pastor of a small church, and has a stash of guns, guitars, and knives.

As soon as we finished lunch the knives were pulled out. Christian got his out of the car, and I pulled out my little penknife. We tested their sharpness on paper. Christian's needed a bit of sharpening, and I won't even begin to tell you how dull mine was, but it did take a very long time to get it decently sharp (I won't be getting a China-made knife again).

After the knives were sufficiently sharp, the topic of guns was brought up. The dad asked mom, of course, before taking Christian, Gabe, and I outside to kill a box with a stockless shotgun. It looked something like this:

Picture from Google

That was the first time I had ever shot a gun. They had me go first...I missed the box completely the first shot. but don't worry, Christian hit the grass a fair amount of times as well. I shot eight times, but after that my hand was red and tingling, that gun can kick, especially since you can't put it against your shoulder. I don't know if I was being wimpy, or if that was pretty good for a first time. It was fun though, I only jumped once when Gabe shot and I wasn't paying attention.

After shooting for a while, we returned to the house and inspected the other guns while Gabe and Mia strummed on a few guitars and the moms visited and doted on the babies.

Now we are settled in our hotel room in Vicksburg, listening to mom finish reading The wizard of Oz. We practically drooled over American Ninja Warrior while unpacking and eating dinner (sandwiches for some, yogurt with granola and peaches for others). 

Tomorrow we hope to see the old Vicksburg battlefield and museum before driving home.

Meanwhile, back at home, Lydia has started her nannying jobs, and dad is having trouble working due to internet failure on the provider's side. They say it will be back on by Wednesday. Dad has been spoiling Lydia rotten, feeding her ice-cream, taking her out to the cheesecake factory, and letting her watch The book thief.

~Chloe