The Duck Commander Family Part 12

Phil Robertson's Zesty Cajun Style Seasoning

2 cups flour

1 stick b.u.t.ter

1/4 cup garlic-infused grape-seed oil

2 cups white wine

bulb of garlic, cloves peeled

1 cup fresh mushrooms 1. Soak frog legs in beer for an hour or so. Drain.

2. Season frog legs with Zesty Cajun Style Seasoning.

3. Roll frog legs in flour and set aside.

4. In a large black skillet bring b.u.t.ter and grape-seed oil up to high (don't burn the b.u.t.ter; it will brown when burning). It doesn't take much oil and b.u.t.ter, just about a half inch or so.

5. When oil and b.u.t.ter starts sizzling, put frog legs in and brown on each side. The oil-and-b.u.t.ter mixture should be about halfway up the legs, just enough to brown them.

6. If b.u.t.ter gets low, throw another half stick in. Set browned frog legs aside.

7. With what's left in the pan, add white wine, garlic, and mushrooms, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

8. Add frog legs to white wine mix. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes until meat is falling off bone. (You will know it's done, believe me!)

CHAPTER 11

CHICKEN FEET

PRAISE BE TO THE G.o.d AND FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, WHO HAS BLESSED US IN THE HEAVENLY REALMS WITH EVERY SPIRITUAL BLESSING IN CHRIST. FOR HE CHOSE US IN HIM BEFORE THE CREATION OF THE WORLD TO BE HOLY AND BLAMELESS IN HIS SIGHT. IN LOVE HE PREDESTINED US FOR ADOPTION TO SONs.h.i.+P THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS PLEASURE AND WILL.

-EPHESIANS 1:35 Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In cla.s.s that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: "Religion that G.o.d our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn't know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if G.o.d wanted it to happen, it would happen.

There were several families at White's Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn't do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.

We told the lawyer we were definitely interested, and we started to go through the process of adopting the baby in 2000. We began paying for the mother's living expenses and medical bills, and Willie and I were really getting excited about bringing another child into our home. Our oldest son, John Luke, was almost five, and Sadie, our daughter, was three. We thought it was the perfect time to bring another baby into our home. But then we found out the mother had promised the baby to a few other families, who were also paying her expenses. The woman had nine children, some of which she had kept and others she had given up for adoption. The lawyer told us we needed to step away from the situation. We were absolutely devastated and heartbroken. It was such a roller-coaster ride and so emotional and traumatic. Willie and I decided we still wanted to adopt a child, but we weren't going to force the issue. Maybe it just wasn't in G.o.d's plan for us right then.

WE STARTED TO GO THROUGH THE PROCESS OF ADOPTING THE BABY IN 2000.

After we lost the child, Willie and I decided we would have another baby naturally and then maybe adopt a fourth child a few years later. I had gotten pregnant very easily with John Luke and Sadie. Well, nine months went by and I still wasn't pregnant. I wasn't really worried about it, but it seemed a little strange since I'd gotten pregnant so easily the first two times.

We had a friend who was teaching birthing cla.s.ses at a children's home. The cla.s.s was for pregnant teenagers, some of whom were putting their babies up for adoption. She knew we were still interested in adoption, so she asked us if we were ready. We filled out the paperwork and only a couple of weeks later, the adoption agency called us and told us it had a couple of babies available. There was a boy who was already born and a girl who was about to be born. The director showed us a picture of the boy and we fell in love instantly! He was beautiful, a perfectly healthy eight-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy. We felt like he was ours from the moment we saw him and couldn't wait to get him in our hands. We rushed through the adoption process. The adoption agency came out and did three days of home studies with us, and then we went and picked him up the very next week. It was that fast. Willie and I felt extremely blessed and thankful for this precious baby boy who was now ours and were confident that this was G.o.d's plan for our life and for this little boy's life all along.

WILLIE ALEXANDER ROBERTSON CAME TO OUR HOME WHEN HE WAS FIVE WEEKS OLD IN MID-DECEMBER 2001.

We made a nursery in our house and set up a crib, and our son Willie Alexander Robertson came to our home when he was five weeks old in mid-December 2001. We named him after Willie, of course, and his middle name came from his papaw Phil, whose middle name is Alexander. Little Will didn't even weigh nine pounds when we got him and was just so happy and sweet. He had been living with a foster family who took excellent care of him. We went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and picked him up. Then we returned home to a house full of friends and family, who had made a huge WELCOME HOME WILL sign and showered us with gifts and love. Will was just perfect and precious, and I have enjoyed every minute of mothering him. We are forever grateful to Will's birth mother, who loved him enough to give him the life she knew he deserved.

In the meantime, I still wasn't taking birth control. It all happened so fast, and I was too busy making bottles and changing diapers to think about it. For our tenth wedding anniversary in January 2002, Willie surprised me with a trip to Cancun, Mexico. We drove to Dallas, and I thought we were just going to spend a few days there. Always the romantic, Willie didn't tell me we were going to Mexico until he handed me a note at the airport! It was an awesome surprise, but I was a little reluctant leaving our two-month-old baby at home. Thankfully, my mom was in on the surprise and was fully prepared for and capable of caring for the three little ones we had left with her and my dad. Willie and I had an awesome time in Cancun-it was the first real trip we had had since having kids-and we enjoyed it to its fullest. We came home refreshed and renewed and thankful for our life together.

Needless to say, I was a little shocked about a month later when I found out I was pregnant, but with that news we were even more certain of G.o.d's plan for our life. G.o.d had closed my womb until Will was in our home, and then opened it to give us our fourth child. Our baby girl, Bella Chrysanne, was born in September 2002. So that's how we came to have two babies just ten months apart. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that things were nuts there for a while. And I can promise you, while I helped in the discipline department, it's Korie who gets all the credit for doing the hard work. She is an incredible mom and has always taken the role of motherhood very seriously. I don't know how she did it all, but she did, usually with a baby on each hip. This was also my motivation to start being good at business, so I could provide enough money for all these younguns. Let me tell you something: KIDS AIN'T CHEAP. Doctor bills, food, Pampers, and all that other stuff cost money, and I committed to go and push myself further to bring home more bacon, and a lot more cabbage, as in cash.

I'D BE LYING IF I DIDN'T ADMIT THAT THINGS WERE NUTS THERE FOR A WHILE.

It's amazing how when you have four children, you get four different personalities. You would think that when you raise kids the same way in the same home with the same values, they should all turn out the same, right? Wrong. G.o.d made every child special, with a unique personality and temperament, fears and hopes, likes and dislikes. And aren't we glad He didn't make us all the same? Life is just so much more interesting that way. Not to mention challenging. Korie: John Luke and Sadie had their own unique challenges. John Luke was hospitalized with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus, which causes respiratory tract infections) when he was three months old and it seemed to damage his lungs, so we spent a lot of time at the doctor's office with wheezing, bronchitis, and pneumonia, but other than that, he was an easy, fun kid to raise. He loved to read, just like I do, so we spent hours reading books, and he seemed to love to learn about everything. He was also a climber who loved the outdoors. He loved animals so much so that at one point we weren't sure if he would follow in the family hunting tradition. He had every kind of animal, from goats to rabbits, to snakes, to leopard geckos, to an iguana.

One time, when he was about six years old, he and Willie found a bat down at the camp that for some reason they decided they were going to nurse back to health. We set up a little cage for the bat on our back porch and warned John Luke not to touch him. He begged and begged to touch the bat, and one day decided that he would not really be touching him if he put on gloves first. So he put on some of my yellow rubber kitchen gloves and without my knowing tried to pick up the bat! Of course, the bat bit him on his little finger. He came and told me what he had done and showed me. Sure enough, there were two little bite marks on his finger. I immediately Googled what you do for bat bites and found out that bats are highly likely to carry rabies! We rushed John Luke to the hospital. They gave him the first round of rabies shots just in case and said that they would have to test the bat. If the bat tested positive for rabies, then John Luke would have to go through about five rounds of shots. The doctor asked if we still had the bat and said that we had to turn it in to have it tested for rabies. That's when John Luke started crying. "He doesn't have rabies, I know he doesn't. It's not the bat's fault!" he cried. He was devastated that they had to kill the bat to test him because of something he had done. John Luke said that he would get the shots so that the bat wouldn't have to be tested. This was huge. John Luke hated shots and still does, but he was willing to get more if he could only save the bat.

THAT'S WHEN JOHN LUKE STARTED CRYING. "HE DOESN'T HAVE RABIES, I KNOW HE DOESN'T. IT'S NOT THE BAT'S FAULT!"

As John Luke got older and started hunting with Willie, he took to it naturally. I guess it's in his blood, as they say. The first time John Luke killed a deer, he was so proud to be able to feed our family. We ate on it for weeks. He was becoming a man and fully understood the circle of life. I'm so proud of the young man he has become. He is a leader at his school and at our church and an incredible big brother to his younger siblings.

Our daughter Sadie Carroway was as healthy as she could be. I had her in the summer when Camp Ch-Yo-Ca's sessions were in full swing. Her delivery was easy, and I was at the camp with her when she was only a few days old. The kids pa.s.sed her around and loved on her. I was a young mom and didn't worry a bit about germs. Maybe that's why she never gets sick: she was exposed to everything with all those little hands touching her as a baby, and she developed immunities. Who knows? She was like the little camp mascot. She was a happy baby who reached for her bed when she was tired. But she seemed to have a stronger spirit than John Luke. We could tell from an early age that she was going to be a compet.i.tive little one. She loves sports and had a baseball birthday party at two years old! She's got a lot of her daddy in her. She loves to entertain and make people laugh.

When Sadie was only four years old, she was already doing impersonations of all the family members-just like her dad. She also went through a stage where she would preach. It was the cutest thing we had ever seen. We have a video of her preaching where she says, "It doesn't matter if you are a teacher or a stealer, a policeman or a jail person. G.o.d still loves you, and He wants you to be in heaven with Him. He doesn't want you to go down there with the devil. He loves you and He will forgive all your sins. All you have to do is ask Him... ." It goes on and on. She sings some songs, then she breaks into a cheer. "Let's give it up for G.o.d!" she shouts. She had so much wisdom for such a little one. Willie nicknamed her "the Original" from the time she could talk. It fits her perfectly.

WHEN SADIE WAS ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD, SHE WAS ALREADY DOING IMPERSONATIONS OF ALL THE FAMILY MEMBERS-JUST LIKE HER DAD.

Then came Will and Bella. These two little ones who had come into our life around the same time were quite the handful! Will was a very happy baby. He would literally wake up laughing. We loved to listen to him talking to himself in his bed for a while when he first woke up. He was a very easy baby; then he became a very busy toddler!

Bella wasn't so easy as a baby but is the most fun child one could ever have. She contracted salmonella when she was only three weeks old. It was terrifying! We never found out for sure how she got it. There were some other cases of salmonella from formula that had been reported, but we had also picked up a turtle on the side of the road coming home from church that day. Turtles can sometimes carry salmonella. She, of course, didn't touch the turtle, but one of us could have touched it and then pa.s.sed it to her. We just weren't sure. Anyway, I was holding her that night when all of a sudden she felt warm. A three-week-old baby should never have a fever.

I knew immediately something was wrong. We rushed her to the hospital. They didn't know what was wrong with her, so they did a spinal tap to make sure she didn't have meningitis. It was horrible to see our little baby go through that ordeal. By the next morning she was having severe diarrhea. It took several days before they figured out exactly what was wrong with her and gave her antibiotics she needed to make her better. She was so sick and was in the hospital for about a week. She lost weight and was the tiniest little thing, but eventually made a full recovery and we were very thankful!

Poor thing, though, she had stomach trouble for about a year after this. She just couldn't hold down anything. I had to feed her every three hours, even through the night, until she was about nine months old, just to try to put some meat on her bones. She cried so much she was perpetually hoa.r.s.e. But she was the most beautiful little thing and had the most confident little spirit. She started walking at nine months old. Those little toothpick legs didn't look like they could hold her up, but they did, and once she started walking, she was off.

Like I said, the babies were only ten months apart, so Will wasn't even walking when Bella was born. But once they both started walking, there was no stopping them. We called them Destructo 1 and Destructo 2. I used to tell people that one would raise the window and the other would climb out. This was our life for a while. I couldn't keep my eyes on them enough to keep them out of trouble. Bella seemed to have a perpetual knot on her head and our house was always a wreck. If Will and Bella were left alone for any length of time, I can promise you something was going to be destroyed. They would squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube and smear it all over the bathroom mirror, get into the pantry and dump all the cereal out of the boxes-and this was all before eight A.M.!

ONCE WILL AND BELLA STARTED WALKING, THERE WAS NO STOPPING THEM. WE CALLED THEM DESTRUCTO 1 AND DESTRUCTO 2.

We could not take those two anywhere. They were born with the full confidence that they knew exactly where they were going when their legs. .h.i.t the floor, and they were off. I couldn't keep up with them. I never put them on a leash, but I probably should have. I carried them as much as I could, one on each hip. People would say, "How do you do that?" I told them it was better than the alternative; if I put them down, they would both go in different directions and it was all over. Keeping them on my hip was the only way I could stay in control. Once they got too big for me to carry, I would make them hold my hand. They would try so hard to squirm out of my hand, but I would just squeeze and make them hang on. Korie says that once she could tell all the kids, "Go brush your teeth and put your PJs on," and they could actually do it by themselves, she knew we would survive! For a while there, she was so consumed with babies that I don't know how she did anything else. But she did. We would end up most nights with at least three of the four kids in our bed. Our rule was that none of the kids could start out in the bed with us, but if they woke up in the night, they could come get in our bed. This was very different than when I was growing up. We would have never climbed in bed with our parents. Phil was not the snuggling type. But it was fun waking up to all the love and laughter, even if our backs suffered for it. Our babies were growing along with the Duck Commander business and our website, and I was starting to do some traveling with Dad for his speaking engagements. It was busy, but it was fun! I loved watching the kids change and grow into their own unique little people. Korie: We have one more daughter who came to us from a unique place. Growing up, our family traveled a lot and I always thought it was important for kids to experience different cultures and learn from people who grew up differently than them. Of course, it's tough to travel with four little ones, so I thought I would bring someone to us. We decided to take in an exchange student. I didn't know at the time she would become such an awesome big sister to our kids and we would become her American family forever and always.

Rebecca Ann Lo joined our family when she was sixteen years old. She came as an exchange student from Taiwan and must have wondered what she'd gotten herself into joining a family of bearded men who hunted for a living. She was the youngest of four in her family in Taiwan, but when she joined our home, she became the oldest. Also, she lost her father at a young age and I think having a strong father figure in Willie really helped her growth. Our kids were young when Rebecca joined us in the summer of 2004, and they were so excited to welcome her into our family. We made signs welcoming her to America, and when she stepped off the plane, the kids could barely contain their excitement. Will hid behind a chair because he just didn't know what to do. Bella went up and held her hand, and John Luke and Sadie started talking a hundred miles an hour. They had a new playmate and were eager to tell her everything there was to know about our family. We quickly realized she couldn't understand a word we said!

REBECCA ANN LO JOINED OUR FAMILY WHEN SHE WAS SIXTEEN YEARS OLD. SHE CAME AS AN EXCHANGE STUDENT FROM TAIWAN.

She had learned some English in school in Taiwan, but with our Southern accents, Rebecca just could not understand us. Somehow she and I figured out how to communicate, and we bonded. She stuck to me like glue for a while. If someone asked her a question, she would look to me to answer. I read her children's books at night and taught her English through reading the menus at restaurants! I remember the first day I took her to school; I literally had to pry her fingers off my arm. It was like having another kindergartener. She was scared to death. But by the end of the school year, she was speaking English well, with even a little bit of a Louisianan accent. And we fell in love with her and didn't want her to leave. We told her that if she wanted to come back for her senior year, she was more than welcome. Her mom said no at first. She had, of course, missed her daughter and wanted her to come home. But a few weeks before the next school year started, Rebecca called and said excitedly, "Mom said I can come!" She booked her plane ticket back to Louisiana and has been here ever since. When Rebecca came to live with us, everybody thought I looked like Johnny Damon, an outfielder with the Boston Red Sox, who had a big ol' beard. Korie's dad, Johnny, even gave me a life-size cutout of Damon, which I kept in my office. Well, that entire first year that Rebecca lived with us, I told her I used to be a professional baseball player. She went to a party for foreign exchange students and told everyone that I was an exMajor League Baseball player! She kept telling everyone, "Willie is very famous." She thought it was the coolest thing and even told her mother and sister I was famous. I finally broke the news to Rebecca that I wasn't really a baseball player. Fortunately, she still loved me anyway. I can only imagine her family's surprise when they went on the Internet and found out whom she was really living with!

After Duck Commander signed a licensing deal with Weaver, which makes rifle and shotgun optical scopes, I wanted to tour their manufacturing center in Taiwan. We took Rebecca as our translator and toured Taiwan. I promised Rebecca I would eat something weird while I was there. I took a small bite of fried chicken feet, but there wasn't any meat. I'm not sure how the Taiwanese eat those. It's a chicken's foot. I couldn't stomach eating the century egg, which is another Chinese tradition. They preserve duck, chicken, or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice hulls for several months. The egg yolk turns dark green and smells like ammonia. I've eaten some pretty crazy stuff in my life, but that wasn't one of them!

Rebecca's mom and sister came to visit us for a couple of weeks one time, and her mom cooked delicious Taiwanese food for us. Rebecca has been back to Taiwan a couple of times to visit her family there. But we are her American mom and dad. We are family. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a bachelor's degree in fas.h.i.+on design and merchandising, and we are so proud of everything she has accomplished. More important, we are proud of the beautiful Christian lady she has become and the great big sister she has been to our kids. We love her and are thankful G.o.d saw fit to place her in our home.

ARMADILLO EGGS