I began rousing the crew right before 9 AM. We are gotten "getting out of the house" to a science. Everyone can be dressed and ready to leave in less than 30 minutes, given everyone has bathed the night before and that only the teens need to shower. Today was no exception. Everyone was ready to head out by 9:30 AM. I tossed in a load of laundry before heading out the door. We needed to make 2 stops before heading to the 11 AM park program. Brett stayed home and worked on his geometry and physics homework from the co-op.

First stop was at the grocery store to grab items for lunch. On today's menu was pepperoni, cheese, crackers, bananas, grapes and cookies. Then we headed out to the 4-H office to order the rest of the books we needed. Good thing we made the stop because we found out that the shooting sports club that we were interested in attending was meeting today and that if you didn't have a representative at tonight's meeting you wouldn't be able to participate. Hannah, Emily and Grant are all interested in learning about gun safety and target shooting.

We got to the park about 10 minutes early. We were excited that Dennis and Sheila were doing the program. They are both very hands on and prefer to engage the kids in activities rather than lecture to them. The program was about animals and their habitats and they played games with kids for over an hour. The kids had a BLAST.

I had to leave 50 minutes into the program to go grab my dad. My friend Deanne had agreed to stay with my kids until I could get back. They would eat lunch once the program was over to kill time. Dad of course was his piddly needy self and insisted that I stop and get him lunch and then started to pout when I said I had to leave. He suckered me into staying with him for almost an hour. I know it is hard for him, that he wants company, but just for once I would like him to understand that I have other commitments. He is so self absorbed right now that he didn't even think about his grandkids being "alone" at a park.

Anyhow, got back to the park around 1:15 PM and talked with Deanne and the naturalists for a bit, then I headed back towards Eastgate to drop Hannah off at the Middle School for talent show practce. Then the rest of the gang and I stopped to pick up stuff for dinner (chicken, bbq sauce, cole slaw and buns...I had the baked beans and mac and cheese at home). Dropped Emily off at the dance studio and then headed home.

Once we got here I made the boys CLEAN OUT the van, it was just trashed....it looks great now, just needs to be vaccuumed. I ran down to the bank to pay the electric bill. Came home and spent a little "quality" time with Jay while the boys played basketball in the driveway and Sophie rode her bike!

Sophie came in and helped me make dinner. She loves pouring the sauce in the pan and dumping the cans into the pots. While dinner cooks she and Will read books. Jacob sits on the living room floor and uses the calcultor to add up the value of his baseball cards. For the game he plays with his brothers, his team can only have a value of 5000, so he arranges and rearranges his cards until this team comes in right at 5000.

After we eat dinner, Grant and I head out to the Shooting Sports meeting. Deanne, Julieanne and I all though that this was an INFORMATIONAL meeting and were quite shocked when the man in charge walked up to the kids and asked it they wanted to do archery, shoot rifles or shoot pistols. They all chose rifles and he sent them over to the range they had set up. Within minutes, no waifer signed, no gun safety riot act preached at them, the kids were FIRING RIFLES (OK they were shooting pellets, but they were SHOOTING!!!!). Grant hit the target 3 times (out of 5) on his first try! He hit the target 4 times the second try. There are 4 more sessions set up, plus we were told they would also have additional opportunities that would come up periodically. Although Grant had a GREAT time, it is frustrating as a parent how hard it is to get ALL the information about anything invovled with 4-H. It is such an "old boys club" that eveyone just assumes you know what is going on. Not the case for this frazzled, busy mom!

Hannah and Emily were dropped off from dance shortly after Grant and I got home. We are fortunate that one of the instructors from the studio lives less than a mile from us and has to drive by our house to get to work. She brings the girls home on Tuesday nights and drives them to the studio on Thursday mornings. I told the girls about the shooting sports and Hannah was THRILLED to learn that there are a BUNCH of boys and only a couple girls in the club. Fortunately she will be able to make all the rest of the scheduled club meetings. I think it is vital that my daughters know how to handle a gun, it isn't just a boy thing!

Cade brought me a book to read him and babbled on about the park program. He is such a bright kid, he remembers just about anything you tell him. He was going on about what animals need to leave and about playing the predator/prey game. The rest of the evening was fairly quiet. Hannah taught Sophie a cute cheer and she "performed" for us! I ended up laying down with Will around 11 PM and he finally fell alseep just as the news went off....

I got up to brush my teeth and sneak some computer time...thus this post.....

Another "normal" day here!