In response to "No, Higher!"

Actually this is another post I've been wanting to share, but it seemed a good spot to put in a little response to comments from the post "No, Higher!" (where Avery went up on a boom lift).

Honestly, it never occurred to me to be worried or anxious. After reading the comments my first thought was "Oh, should I have been? Bad Mom moment?" But I decided I was okay after some thought.
Avery is a very safety conscientious kid. From seat belts and holding hands in parking lots, to strangers and so on. He's also had lots of opportunities (horses, tractors, 4 wheelers, etc.) where safety explanations are needed and perhaps that's why he's so concerned about it.
When we went to neighbor Rick's and he saw the chain saw sitting there he's the one who started explaining to me about how "it's very sharp and we don't touch it and when I'm big like Daddy I'll be very careful." So he knows he's way too little and even when he gets big he will still have to be very careful.
I then remembered that he started in on the boom lift too before going up. I can't remember if he rattled on about lift safety before or after Rick offered to take him up, but either way there was no need to worry, he explained it all for me.
I know I would have been nervous (I'm assuming I'm a good enough Mom here...) if Avery wasn't such a cautious kid, but I realized he never gave me the chance. :)

Now, on to something I've been wanting to post - definitely one of those occasions where lots of safety talks were had.
Over this last Christmas break when we were home in Oregon we went shooting. (You can just go up in the coast range and shoot into the side of a hill as long as you're on gov't land and not logging land - if you're familiar, think AxMen from the History channel, except we're further south than the bunch they film on that show)
Anyway, this was Avery's first experience. He absorbed all the safety stuff, was great, and loved shooting the .22 (with lots of help from Daddy of course).
It was misting horribly on us up there that day, so I was eventually fighting that with the camera lens, hence the fuzziness by the time Avery wanted to try and I took his pic:
You can see here the trees just below the slope are very hazy through the mist. Top to bottom shooting: Travis' sis-in-law Katrina, Travis, T's sis Angela and sis Megan. L to R trading guns are T's dad Ben and Angela's husband Shane.Now, going shooting is always fun, but it was a necessary trip this Christmas due to gifts received. Travis' Dad bought himself an AK-47 and then got one for his boys Travis and Kevin. Therefore, shooting trip scheduled. :)
----edit: Why the need for such guns, you ask? For ones like that, it's a entirely a fun thing, like for exactly this trip. Travis says there's no such thing as too many guns, and believe you me, between all those guys there are plenty! They've all taken gun safety courses, have gun safes, etc.
Oh, and the AKs are not full automatic, that's very illegal (Travis wants me to explain the difference:
full auto: you pull the trigger and rounds just keep coming out;
semi auto: one round per pull of the trigger with no cocking required, you can just keep hitting the trigger;
after that there's the different kind of actions where after each trigger you have to do something before you can trigger it again.)
The AKs can only be semi auto in the US so in the video below they're just shooting as fast as they can. So you actually could go hunting with them. A .22 wouldn't do a very good job of taking out a deer anyway, hunters use a larger caliber rifle. Travis informs me that the AK round would actually be a really good one for deer hunting, you just have to use a 5 round clip if you want to do that. Glad I asked him, I didn't know that part about using guns like that for hunting.
The guy on the couch not hoisting a gun is Shane, Travis' bro-in-law, and he already had an AK-47, so when we were done shooting Ben decided I needed to video the 4 AKs in a final shoot out, so here's that: Top to bottom: Kevin, Travis, Ben, Shane


Now, after all that, how about something sweet on a much softer side. :)
This was a bit of some plant poking it's way through the snow on the mountainside up there that day: