Is it bad to get a double piercing?

McKenzie.  She was my toddler that when I said eat in the kitchen, she would insist on doing so at the very edge with half of her feet NOT in the kitchen.   Often she does wicked things like eat with her toes on the carpet just to see where I would stop her.  She is my child that no matter how much I fight her, wears what she wants and I get pictures like this from her brothers:

Asking if I know what she is wearing.  By the way this is a see through mesh shirt that she swore was for a costume in the play and I made clear she was in no way allowed to wear this to school.  Notice she is trying to cover the shirt with the backpack in the picture but Ben caught her first.

She is constantly asking, pushing, wanting to know her boundaries.

I sigh when she asks me.  I sigh when I see the pictures.  The truth is, there is only so much control you have over your children's choices and sometimes there are big consequences to the choices they make and sometimes...not so big.

So when she asked me if she could get a second ear piercing I explained to her why I wouldn't.  I explained to her where the line gets crossed of a second piercing for fun and piercings everywhere that don't look professional for someone who wants to be a professional.  And then I said, "you are 17 and ultimately it is not my choice, it is your choice."  She asked Brad the same questions the next day and Brad hit the topic out of the ballpark on why she should get a tramp stamp instead.  I never expected so hear such a thoughtful argument from her father as to why she should get a tatoo.  Of course, even with these conversations she decided to get the double piercing.

I watched an episode on This is Us that addressed the issues of small decisions that we make that affect our life for good.  I loved the episode.  It ended with Kevin saying, “It’s overwhelming if you think about it, the power of these little decisions.” 

Anyway, the rest of our week.

A lot of fighting between Riley and Jake so guess who is sharing a room again?  I know I am always right in my discipline methods if said discipline is something that really bothers them.  Riley is really upset about having to share a room with Jake because he is disgusting and jake the same because Riley is such a condescending jerk.  And so, they share a room until they become best freinds or kill each other.

We went on a hike to Lemon last week looking for hidden rock walls for climbing.  Found this beautiful lookout instead.

We are privilaged to live in such a beautiful place.  

And the boys went dirtbiking this past weekend.  At some point dad apparently jumped over a rattler at high speed without even noticing it.  This triggered the snake into a frenzy that got it rattling so loud that is scared riley who heard it over to screaming motorcycle and despite his efforts to avoid it, ran it over.  The group recouped down the trail a ways and Riley redirected everyone back to see if the snake was still in the trail.  Dad wasn;t sure if he had hit or or Riles but between the two of them someone had mortally wounded it.  Dad decided the best thing to do was teach the boys how play with a rattler.  Jake got very upset at ben because his stick was not long enough and one long lunging strick from the snake stuck its fangs in the stick and had ben flipping the stick and snake all over to get it off.  At this point dad decided to put the poor thing out of its misery so it could be skinned and live for ever on the band of one of his adventure hats.  This led to father giving the snake a good stomp on the head only to get dodged by the snake and immediatly struck on the boot which elicited screams and jumping around by the father.  Second time around though dad got the job done and so Riley got to learn how to skin a rattle snake.