vacation recap part 2

On Friday we arrived in Birmingham and I had lunch with fellow mumblety-peggers Matt and Alex. It was a great pleasure spending time with them. On the down side, I will probably never eat at Jim & Nick's again. Their prices have gone way up.

Saturday, at the river, after the morning's dramatic deer moment, we again went outside for a spell. We weren't as prepared as we wanted to be for snow or cold weather (it is Alabama after all) so i had to scavenge for some appropriate footwear for my son. I found some old cowboy boots in the house that fit him pretty well. As we were walking through the snow dusted fields I noticed his heals flopping around a little bit. I hoped his feet weren't getting cold and wet. A few minutes later I noticed one of the soles was lost altogether.
I said, "Hey, Buddy, Are your feet getting wet?"
He stopped, looked down at his feet a moment, and said, "Mmm hmm." And then continued to stump around the fields. A couple minutes later he says in alarm, "Hey, my boot broke off." Apparently when you are four and are enjoying the fields and snow at the river you hardly have time to notice that you've been walking around on just a sock for the last ten minutes.

Later that day, Stephen and I hiked over the grounds for a while. Foster, the deer hunter, scared up a few does. We made an attempt on Big Cypress but Foster proved a poor boat mate so we put that adventure off 'til later. On the hike back to the house Foster discovered a deer leg, fully intact from knee to hoof. We thought it an appropriate reward for being denied the whole thing earlier in the day.

I should mention that it was Amabel who spotted the deer first. She was at the edge of the cliff looking around while we were turning back toward the house. She came running up saying she saw a deer down by the shore. Stephen asked her if it had antlers and she said it had antlers on one side. We were skeptical. I looked but didn't see it and asked her which way she thought it went. I looked for a few seconds more but gave up because it wasn't exactly the warmest day on record. But she hung back and spotted it again shouting out, "There it is, swimming in the river!" So I looked again and sure enough it had jumped in and was swimming away from us (and it did only have antlers on one side). Foster saw it too and did his best Man From Snowy River impression by running straight down the cliff after his prize.