This post is just for me to process, since I don't have a journal right now

We are officially Stephens. The Stephens family that I know and love, have always had the most interesting stories that have happened to them dealing with life or death. On top of it all, these stories usually involve all or part of the family witnessing it together.

Today we have had our first Stephens family moment that is ok to talk about lightly even though it messed my head up a little. This morning the family was getting ready to load up the car to take dad on our daily trip to the train station and we caught our neighbors cat in the act of doing something horrible. He had a bunny in his mouth (a very close resemblance to the Cadbury bunny) and he dropped it. But, it was not dead, so we all got front row seats of watching it in its last moments of life, while my daughter is saying "Mom, help the bunny." Why was I the one who was called to action? I have no idea. But I felt like crying and hurried the kids into their car seats. The whole drive there and back was filled with how we can save the bunny. Kate even had a sign writing campaign she wanted to put into action.

Listen, I have seen sad animal death before but just the end result. We had a cat named Madonna (yes, Madonna) and she would always present us with her catch of the day on our back door door mat. But this really rocked my world and it didn't help that my daughter was asking me to save it. I keep replaying it thinking how I could have swooped in and been the hero but I don't think I could have.

Long story short, we are going to have to have a family meeting to discuss life and death in the wild. It also doesn't help that Ryan said that the cat was trying to save the bunny.

This was mostly to get it out of my head. Sorry about this post. Tomorrow or the next day I will post a very happy birthday post to make up for this gloomy one. But I am not kidding about the stories that the Stephens have, there were major life lessons that were accidentally taught and I think that was passed down to us.

Post edit: I read this again and it sounded very morbid but it was meant to sound moded and a little sad. Ryan has some great stories that were probably really weird at the time, but can be joked about later. Character building stories. And if there is anything this family needs, it's more character.