Bringing 'em up right

Just a gratuitous shot of Aaron from The Shekel teaching my nephew, the Spud, how to shoot a RugerMkII .22 pistol a couple of weeks ago when Murphy and I went traveling for Christmas. (Aaron's version of the event here.)
We took the boy shooting as a reward for his helping me clean his grandfather's gutters that morning. I was on the roof pulling the wet leaves and dirt and his job was to stand beneath me with a trash can and catch the stuff that I was dropping. Almost predictably, he leaned over to look into the trash can at the wrong time and caught a load of muddy wet leaves with his head. Kids...

But he did good, so we took him to the range. And at the range, he listened to instruction and did as he was told and he wound up shooting remarkably well--he was death on the steel plates once he focused on aiming. As a reward for good shooting and subsequent diligent brass collecting, we took him to lunch at Hooters, an event that he could not wait to relay to his mother. (Tattle-tale...I have to keep reminding him that snitches get stitches.)
Later that evening, we took him and Aaron's oldest daughter Abby to play Lazer Tag, a favorite activity for the Spud and a new favorite past-time of the young Lara Croft-in-training. Actually I think that Spud and Abby just like watching two old fat guys run through the maze, throwing elbows like Chechnyan hockey players and checking anyone smaller to the floor under the guise of "realistic training". (It's CQB...why can't we fix bayonets? And who let all these kids in here?)

And of course, it would not be a holiday without a reunion of Murphy and his pet boy, Spud.
It's him! It's HIM!!! Oh JOY!!!