Last week, my husband's aunt, Kathy, brought over some pictures she took at the wedding. The pictures are brilliant, but that wasn't the best part of her visit. She also brought me a huge 3-ring binder of their family recipes. As I flip through the pages and read these recipes, I can't help but feel the love and strength of these women who made these recipes. I feel them in every page, especially the pages at the end that have Chris's grandmother's hand written recipes. One of her recipes had a date of 6/22/44, so that makes that recipe 2 years older than my own grandmother. Each and every recipe means so much to me, I feel like a true member of the family with these recipes. I love having the recipes that my husband grew up eating, I love that every time I make one of these meals or side dishes he'll combine his old memories with the ones he and I are creating evey day. It may be my favorite gift I've ever received. Thank you, Aunt Kathy for such a meaningful gift!
Speaking of making memories, last weekend I went hunting for the first time ever. I went with Chris and his cousin Carl, who is 14. That day we didn't see a deer at all. The next morning Chris and I got up and went to try our luck again. As soon as we parked the truck on the land, we saw them! Two does and a buck further back from us. The girls were huge! So we quietly climbed out of the truck and waited. We arrived at 7:35 and at 7:55 pow! Chris shot and down she fell. He shot her from 60 yards, and when he walked up she wasn't completely gone, so he fired off one more shot to take her out of her misery. She was a beautiful deer that will feed us all winter. Her death wasn't for fun or sport, it was to feed us. We're going out this weekend to hopefully take one down for my parents, but that'll be the only ones we kill this year. We don't take more than we need, and we thank the Lord for what we do get; we don't like taking the life of something so innocent and beautiful, so we let the Lord know we don't intend to waste what he gives. It was hard for me to see her die, but chris and my dad explained to me about them being over populated, and breeding with their siblings now. With them being over populated, they're starving because there's more of them then there is food. We're doing them a justice as they are doing one for us. Also, every one of us is alive because our ancestors had to hunt to survive. Every person's ancestors did what we're doing, so we're just carrying on tradition. (and you can bet we'll teach our child how to hunt.) Plus, deer is a wonderfully tasty, healthy meat. (Genesis 27:3 "Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison.") (Genesis 1:29-30, Genesis 9:3, Acts 10:13, Proverbs 12:27, Leviticus 17:13)
Until next time!
XoXo,
Tia
