Why fight it?

It's been too long to try to catch up, so I'll just start back on random posts about random things and you can fill in the large gap that yes, we are doing well.

We were given a bird feeder during the summer but never actually filled it with birdseed until this past week, when Joe bought birdseed for an acticity with his sunday school kids at church. We were very excited to see the birds flock the the feeder, and the boys loved to watch, since it's right outside our patio doors. A few days later I set out our pumpkins, which we never carved, since it was time to get rid of fall decorations and put up Christmas stuff. I suppose I could have painted Santa faces on them instead of jack-o-lanters, but I decided to feed the birds/squirrels with them. I cut them in half and sure enough, birds and squirrels alike were attracked to such yummy fare. Now this probably would have happened eventually, but my pumpkin enticements may have expedited the process, and the squirrels found the birdfeeder and have turned themselves from "cute li'l backyard critters" into "annoying backyard pests that scare off the birds and climb all over our porch and DO NOT scare away when you go outside - CREEPY!" So Joe took matters into his own hands, literally, and brought out his air rifle. I thought FOR SURE we were going to get the cops called on us by our neighbors, guns ARE loud, ya know! But it turns out that air rifles are not quite guns and are NOT loud so Joe had ots of fun popping off a few rounds at the bold squirrels. He claims his rifle needs to be sighted in, since he never got a kill shot, but I think maybe he just didn't want to kill them in front of Patrick (I do NOT think he's a bad shot, he's shown me up plenty of times before!). It probably wouldn't have mattered, Patrick was loving the action - when one squirrel darted away before Joe had a shot Patrick ran outside and yelled "come back, squirrel! My daddy wants to shoot you!" Ahhhhh, CLASSIC.

Now just le me know if you want to stop being friends because we are too hillbilly, I'll totally understand :)