Survivor Bro!

I have recently started following a website called Art of Manliness. This is an awesome website dedicated to the lost art of being a man.  It covers everything from outdoors and play, to ethics, family and relationships.   This website holds the opinion (and so do I) that men have been wussified over the last several decades.  There are a few still out there, but what used to be the norm, is now a niche.  That is sad, because of political correctness we have become afraid to say I am a man and proud of it.  So I started thinking that I would start to really teach my son some man things.  The first thing today is making a small game trap.

We didn't want to actually kill anything today so we used a small piece of a tree trunk just so we can see if anything tripped it.  Since James isn't old enough to use a pocket knife, I do most of the work, but I tried to explain what I was doing to him as I went.  I told him that if was responsible enough he would get a pocket knife on his 10th birthday.  
We began scouting the area for limbs that could work.

Once we found it, I started chopping it up, James was taking pictures.  Halfway through he got cold, because it was very windy that day, so we went back to the house and got him some pants, and a jacket.

We put peanut butter on the stick that trips the trap.  These are called deadfall traps, they are the easiest to make, and don't require any cordage.  So we left the trap alone and started off to the next thing. 

After that we went to the house and watched about 10 episodes of Batman the Animated series, we both LOVE that cartoon.
We also went to the Dollar Tree and got some Mike and Ike's, getting a treat from the Dollar Tree seems to be expect by both children now.
One of the things I wanted to do was introduce James to doing manual labor more intentionally, like cutting the grass.  I told him, that while this wasn't ALWAYS the case, but one of the ways men serve their families is cutting the grass.  Like taking out trash, killing bugs and other dirty things, ;-).  We moved into a new house a few weeks ago and the grass was very rough looking, even though it was winter, it needed to be done.  But I had to borrow a lawn mower from a friend, so we went to his house to get it. 

On the way, James found that if you smoosh all the Mike and Ike's together into a ball, it tastes awesome.  Had to get a picture.
Another thing James made me laugh with was that he said, 'ok Dad, from now on, every time we say something, you have to end it with, haHA!'  So we spent the rest of the day end our sentences with that......haHA!

James actually liked cutting the grass, I would get him lined up, and he would push it in a straight line.  After a while though, we realized this WINDY day was the worst time to cut the grass, the wind was blowing it perfectly back in our faces.

Later that night, we made a fire for the family in the fireplace, and started our normal devotional, then movie night.  But before we did that, we went out to the trap to see if anything tripped it.  And something did!  These traps fall on there own sometimes, so the only real evidence we had was that the peanut butter was mostly gone.  Must have scared the crap out of whatever was eating it.

                                                               
                                                                  A Pretty Good Day