Fantastic Weekend!!! Seems to be a pattern, we hope.

So Mary and I had been in a bit of a funk over the last week. We had gotten into a very predictable pattern of home to work, work to home, etc. So on Wednesday I confront her about this and say, you're not happy, which makes me unhappy. Lets break our routine and do something different. So on Thursday evening we go out to eat at our favorite chain restaurant, Chili's! We walked around the various shopping establishments, Target, Best Buy, and Petsmart getting a few things and going home for an evening of quality time, no TV, just us. Great times.

Fast forward to Saturday, we get up and hit the road. Mary's dear was ready at the processors so we went to go pick him up. Since we were already in Abilene we went by Mary's grandparents and visited for a little while. It was a good visit and I'm glad we stopped in. We then drove out to the processors and picked up Mary's buck. He'd been reduced to a bag of frozen steak and ground meat. We arrived back at the house around 4pm and decided to run to Fort Worth for a little while. We went to Cheaper Than Dirt and I was able to pick up some new rifle rounds for my 30-30. They are LEVERevolution by Hornady and are supposed to be the great for white tail dear. While we were there Mary checked out some compact and youth model rifles and found they fit her pretty well. She really liked a Ruger Model 77 Compact. She said the weight and length were great and she really wanted it. Funny thing is the rifle cost about 2.5 times what I spent on my Marlin WITH its scope. I guess I'll have to start saving my nickels and dimes so my honey can shoot the best. After that we went to Academy and I used my gift card to get a nice gun cleaning kit. My old one had been abused and was missing some parts so I thought I'd better upgrade while I could. Mary also checked out some rifles while were there. She found a New England Firearms single shot chambered in 7mm-08 that she liked, except it was a single shot.

We went home without making a final decision on the rifle because its only about 300 days to opening weekend. Mary decided we needed to eat some of her buck. So we had some chicken fried venison, mashed potatoes with gravy, and corn on the cob. I don't brag on Mary's cooking abilities near enough. If I were a condemned man I would request that dinner for a final meal, it was fantastic.

Sunday we bummed around the house until 2pm or so and then went to Mary's folks to borrow a couple of guns. We borrowed her dad's 7mm-08 to see if Mary found the recoil too much. She fired it 3 times in a row and said it didn't hurt her shoulder any more than my 30-30. I guess I'd better see if I can't put that Ruger at CTD on Layaway or something. While we were out shooting at her family's ranch in Lipan, Mary shot my 30-30 a few more times (its scary how well she shoots). She also got more familiar with my shotgun for home defense, as well as my .45acp. I'm proud to say she's a fair shot with a handgun as well as rifles. She had good groups on the target, and was consistently shooting left and low, but had good 6" groups at 25ft. Then she got really excited because it was time to shoot our .22lr's. She and I shot at some soda cans, and some paper targets, but she really liked our spinning targets. She hit the thing so many times it fell over.

We left at sundown after cleaning up our spent casings and targets and went over to her parents for a visit (and to return the guns we'd borrowed). We watched Chicago lose in the last minutes to Carolina (not sure who I wanted to win that contest). We got home about 8:30pm and called it a day.

I think these last few days with my wife have been some of the best we've had together, and I'm convinced the best is yet to come.