There are certain things in a childs' life that are definitely rites of passage... the first girl/boyfriend (you know.. the one in kindergarten that you were going to marry?), first day of school (or not if you're us!), first kiss, going to high school.  But way back before any of that... is the first fishing trip with grandpa  :D

A week ago or so Frodo saw a tv fishing show and mentioned he'd like to go fishing.  We passed this along to Grandpa who promptly presented both boys with their own real fishing poles the next weekend when they visited. The boys watched the fishing dvd that came with it numerous times and pretend fished off the veranda daily.   And a trip to the jetty to test out their new gear was planned for the following Saturday.  It rained BUCKETLOADS, so alas, the trip had to wait a day. 

Sunday morning dawned a fine day, with a cloud free sky.  The boys, Grandpa and Dad set off for the jetty at the bay (a whole 5minutes from the Grandparents home) for their very first fishing trip.  The boys were SO excited and had a great time.  They got a bit bored (fishing being the excitement filled activity that it is lol) but they hung in there like troopers.

Here are a couple of pics of Sam casting a line.. he does so love to give a big cheesy grin!  It was a perfect day on the bay.

Mr. Frodo looks very dashing here wearing the sunglasses that Nana got them especially for such occasions.. Aussies have a very high rate of corneal damage from the sun.   And don't they look very sweet sitting side by side fishing?  Rather like a modern day Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer, don't you think?

 The only person that caught anything was Grandpa, who landed a decent sized Flathead, which he kept for tea (dinner for the rest of the world ;)  Sam was VERY upset that Grandpa was not going to put the fish back in the water.   Being the little sweetheart he is, he didn't see any good reason to kill and eat the fish.  

He declared that next time HE would catch a fish and look at it, touch it, then let it go back to it's home.  That's quite alright with me little dude.

June 10
What brought you to the pagan path? Do you feel that you were always on it, even before you knew what it was? Were you raised as a pagan? Did you know any pagans growing up? At what age did you finally consider yourself to be a pagan? What religion were you raised?


This prompt was posted by Mrs. B and, well, it prompted me to write this ;)

I was not raised pagan unfortunately. I think I might have been a less depressed, more happy person if I had been . I was raised loosely Southern Baptist. By loosely, I mean that my parents *never* attended church…but the religions values were generally expected to be ours and they took us once or twice a year to church. I think that’s partly because I was raised in the deep southern US where church is a HUGE part of the local landscape. There are OVER 100 churches in the town I grew up in (which had about 130k residents before several large employers left and people started moving away) and the ‘what church do you go to’ was often the first or second thing a new acquaintance would ask.  

When I was a preteen I started going to vacation bible school and the like, mainly because it was what all the other kids were doing, and as a young teen I joined a small local church. It had a nice youth group, and some of the kids I went to school with were members so it seemed like the thing to do. When I got pregnant (out of wedlock no less *gasp*) at 16, the church I had been attending backed away from me as if I had the plague. I walked away and never looked back.

The father of my child & I married and moved away. His mother & I got along great, and she happened to be pagan at that time (she’s now born again Christian, go figure on that ;) .. At some point she passed along to me a copy of a Scott Cunningham book. I never really thought twice about it. We moved numerous times over the next few years thanks to the US military, and I don’t remember seeing that particular book. But I guess it moved with us for some 5yrs or more. One day I was bored and went searching for a good read, and somehow that book fell to hand as I browsed my shelves. I had hundreds of books, how on earth THAT one happened to be on the front row (they were 2 books deep) on an eye level shelf, I’ll never know. It took me a little while to even remember where it CAME from, and then I sat down and devoured the entire thing in a few hours or less. That would be going on 15 years ago now… I’m not quite as Wiccan as Scott Cunningham writes, but it was a start to my journey.

Think I need to drop my former MIL a note and thank her again for that. ;)

Happy belated Litha for you Northern hemisphere folks...and winter solstice for my neighbors down south!  We had a very quiet solstice really,  I'm still getting over being sick so just wasn't up for a great deal of hoopla.   The boys & I did dress up our altar, at least sorta..it's not up to our usual standards really, but better than nothing!   

The boys had to have Father Winter (who's actually Santa from our Christmas decoration collection lol)  and some pretty starry garland and some of the more exciting tree baubles to decorate with.  My sole contribution is the gold painted WINTER mdf letters ;)  The flat round thing in the middle is a palmprint 'pentacle' Mr. Frodo made a couple of years ago.  It's got the chant 'Earth my body, Water my blood,  Air my breath,  Fire my spirit' circling the handprint.    To the left you see Sam's hand 'fixing' something.. he's constantly rearranging it and playing with all the goodies.   He just can't resist lol!  

Last, but not least, there may be some major life changes that would result in a big change on my little blog.  No decisions have been made at this point so stay tuned for updates.