NWTF

I'm sure you are thinking, "What in the world does NWTF stand for?" I was not really that sure until this weekend. Sometime last week Tommy asked me if I wanted to go to the turkey banquet on Saturday. My gut response was, "no" but I said I would think about it. I called and talked to my sister in law Mindi. She is on the committee and had all the details. My parents were going and taking my niece with them. I finally decided that it might be good to get out of the house and do something different. It was an all evening event that included raffles, a silent auction, door prizes, a live auction and of course food. I was actually shocked by the number of people there. I would guess there were close to 200 in attendance. It cost $60 to get in the door. That covered food, drinks (soda for me thanks), a few door prizes, membership, and I think a magazine. Right away we "had" to spend another $120 on an envelope of tickets for the raffles. This was the first time either of us had been there so we followed my dad's lead. I later realized that my mom didn't know that my dad had also spent money on the extra envelope. I got a good laugh out of that one.

There were lots of kids there as well. The NWTF is a big supporter of youth. They have a membership for kids called "Jakes". There were drawings for the kids. My niece Clara, who just turned 1 last week, won the drawing for a gun. I know she will learn how to hunt as soon as she is old enough. After we ate, they did the live auction. There was something like 35 items. There were a lot of paintings. Once the live auction was over they did the raffle items. They start off with the "bonus" items or the larger ticket items. The second number they drew was ours. I couldn't believe it. That meant that Tommy had second choice out of something like 6 guns. Woohoo. He knew exactly which gun he wanted. I was glad because that meant that we won a gun worth over $400 for the $180 we had spent on tickets. Totally worth the evening out. Also, this means that hopefully he will be happy for a while now that he has 3 guns. It is worse than women with shoes. Hunters can never have enough guns. I will never understand. The drawings continued and we won a cooler on wheels and a NWTF knife/multi tool knife set. It is actually pretty cool looking because it is a metallic orange. My parents came away with a tackle box and a folding table thing. All in all, it was a good evening. We didn't get out of there until after 10. Will I go again next year? Maybe. Now we get to look forward to Thursday when we can go pick up the gun at the local gun shop. Darn wait period...

Why did I write about this? I guess I have always kind of turned my nose up at these kinds of things. I grew up in a house of hunters but never got into it myself. I married a hunter and I still do not like it. I'm not against it or anything. Matter of fact I fixed a deer roast for dinner tonight. I just can't stand to watch hunting shows and I get really bored when we are shopping for sporting goods. I'm glad though that I stepped out of my comfort zone for an evening and shared something with my family that they really enjoy. I guess I need to be more open minded about things at times and this was a good lesson in that.