Lusk Life: The Christmas Knife.

I have a story to tell you. Ready?

So a a few weeks before Christmas Adney and I were talking about Christmas presents and who we needed to still figure out presents for. And Adney says "Mom, can I get Daddy a Christmas present?" Even though things were kinda tight this year, how could I refuse that request? So I put a $5 budget on it and asked him where he wanted to go to find Daddy a present. He told me "The Mall". yay. We didn't have much going on that day... so off to the mall we went. I asked him what kind of store he wanted to go to and he said he didn't know, he just wanted to go to the mall. So we started at a sporting goods store. We walked around the entire (busy) store and looked at a lot of things... baseball mitts, hunting gear, and the likes. Every time I would try to lead him in a certain direction he would tell me to just follow him. "You and Cammon follow me". OK, you take the lead on this one, bud. We didn't find anything at the sporting goods store or the next few we went to. We would walk down the center of the mall and he would stop in front of a store and he would peak at the general contents and decide whether or not we were going in there. Most of the time... we were not. But Cammon and I followed him around the mall while he searched diligently for that $5 gift for Daddy. Nothing really seemed to fit the bill. I had to talk him down off of a golf cart and a surf board that was actually a store decoration and not for sale... neither of which were $5. I was starting to get worried that he wasn't going to find anything or that he was going to lose interest. But he prevailed.... contrary to what a normal 4 year old does in a mall. That kid was determined. Finally we stumbled across a kiosk. It was full of Native American... stuff. It immediately caught his eye and he went straight for the head dressed and such. Then... he noticed a glass case full of pocket knives. And his eyes lit up. He pointed to the giant dagger looking... weapon... so I recommended maybe something a little smaller that Daddy could keep in his pocket at the farm. He asked the guy to see a small, but handsome pocket knife. He inspected it and opened it up and gave the man his $5 bill out of his tiny little pocket, grinning ear to ear. It actually cost $11... more than double his budget... but I never told him that. I just slipped the man some cash. How could I say no? And also by this point Cammon was getting more than antsy in his stroller.

So we took the knife home and I helped him wrap it. We hid it and I told him not to tell Daddy about it... and he didn't (to my surprise). When Christmas morning came Adney ran over to the tree and got that present and gave it to his Dad before he even opened any of his own. Kyle opened it and thanked him and then I told Kyle the whole story. Kyle affirms that he will never actually be able to use that knife because he plans on keeping it forever.