I actually got both my days off this weekend, which was kind of a strange feeling in August. Our friend Ken came up from Portland on his way to Canada and spent a day hanging out. We went and panned for gold then went and shot some guns. Here's Simon shooting a real gun for his first time. Well, this video is the third or fourth time he shot the .22 that day. It was pretty funny, towards the end of the day he had a really hard time working the action on the gun and holding it up. He had a huge ear to ear grin on his face the whole time. He also shot my .45 with me holding it, but I think it kicked so much it kind of freaked him out, he only did one shot with that, so there's no video. Dylan had been sick, so he didn't get to come with us. Sunday was the first day he didn't have a fever, and Faith wanted him to stay home and rest instead of playing in the creek. Sissy. Nevermind, the video wouldn't load. I'll try to load it later.

On my next day off Ken left early in the morning to head to Canada, Simon and I went and played some golf. We played nine holes and walked, which Simon did not want to do, he wanted to get a cart again, but Faith found me a pushcart at a garage sale that I wanted to try out. I only had to give him two shoulder rides, he walked the rest of it. I can remember when I was a kid Dad always telling me to hurry up, or to keep up, or to quit looking at stuff and walk, and I think Simon must be God's way of showing me how patient Dad was, because holy crap, that boy walks slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter. He stops and looks at everything, and I swear that he is incapable of walking and talking at the same time, and he talks constantly. After golf we went home and grabbed Dylan and went up to another creek so I could try panning for gold again, which I apparently do not know how to do. I found a few flakes, but I looked on the internet for some videos on how to do it and I was doing it all wrong. I guess doing things like how I see it in movies isn't always the best. I gave the boys each a knife to carve on sticks and Simon stabbed himself in the arm once, then Dylan stabbed Simon once. Simon stabbed himself by holding onto a log and trying to stab it and missed. Dylan stabbed Simon cause Simon splashed him with water. Just kidding, they were "fighting leaves", which I heard them say they were going to do, and didn't click right away what that might entail, so I didn't stop it until I looked up and saw them wildly stabbing plant leaves with the knives, and before I could stop them one wild swing got Simon in the arm. Luckily neither of them are strong enough to put a lot of force into it, and the knives were just old leatherman tools I had, which don't have the sharpest points on them, so both wounds were pretty minor. Faith opted to spend some time by herself, so she missed all the fun. That's about it. Hope everybody's doing well.