Shoot!!

Guns.  Not my favorite thing in the world, but something that I've had to come to terms with.  Getting pictures of Will in Afghanistan with giant bullets, er, shells...whatever they were, draped over his body and guns hanging off his legs and shoulder...I know they were there for his safety, but I still don't like them.

So what goes good with guns?  Youth!  Will is the Young Men's president in our Ward, so weekly they have activities...some bigger than others...and this activity is something the youth in our Ward do yearly...I think, and most of the youth love it.  Mostly the boys.

Road construction is around every corner around here...literally...so we had to stop and wait a couple of times for our turn to get through, in which I tried to take pictures of Will in his side mirror...mmm, didn't really work.

We caravanned to a shooting range where we had a little target practice...oh, and hamburgers and hotdogs and watermelon...in the FREEzing cold wind!

Emma and Lauren came along, too.  Emma was Will's help with the cooking, and my picture shooting target!

My son, Jay.  Will has told me that he was a good shot, and I got to see for myself that he indeed is!

All 6 foot 1 inch and size 13 shoe size of him!!

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should be proud of something like that.   Then I decided that I was going to give it a try.  I was just going to shoot just once.  ONCE.  I wasn't even planning on touching a gun! I was only going to shoot pictures with my camera!  I ended up shooting the gun a couple dozen times, and it ended up that I'm a pretty good shot too!  Enough so that I surprised Will (and, honestly...myself) - who is always saying that we have nothing in common - I know in his mind he's thinking...what a great activity to do together now...I'm thinking, I had a lot of fun doing it on this day, but as far as making a date and a hobby out of it...and getting my own gun for Christmas or my birthday...not.  

It was cold.  Really cold.  My fingers were frozen in the shape of the gun barrel when I was done.  So frozen that they ached as they unfroze on the way home.  Grabbing the steering wheel was a new experience in pain!  We all smelled like charcoal when we got home.  It was the place to hang around and thaw out and eat dinner.

Madeline and Lauren. They liked shooting the smaller guns. Lauren had fun shooting...Katie Jane had no desire.  Lauren tried to shoot a shot gun and got scared.  It is a big gun.  Again, gun names, terminology, whatever...not my thing.

Now there's the kind of thing I like! He's a good shot too, but he has a lot of practice at work.

Love on the range!