That's right.. you can call me Annie.. Annie Oakley that is :)

Holy crap I need to buy me a shotgun, ASAP. Oh yes my friends.. I had a blast! I am the master of skeet shooting!! WOOOOOOO!! Okay so the day started off as per usual.. bust me arse to get to Kim's on time - where I did a lot of standing around and helped set up for their garage sale, while waiting on the rest of the girls to get there. Then the babies woke up.. so Auntie Lisa had to go in and say good morning and get hugs.. unfortunately, I didn't get any hugs as the boys are quite shy when they wake up. But I did get projectile vomited on! YEAH! Way to start the day :D We ended up being 20 minutes late (no shocker there, quite frankly) and missed out on breakfast but just in time to register while they were taking the group photo so I got outta that.. teeee! First class was handguns. I wasn't really psyched about it.. especially since I was so nervous and really wished I could have eased into the day with Pet First Aid or Outdoor Cooking.. but whatcha gonna do? So there are 2 of us from our group and 3 other ladies. One in particular.. she was just about crying because she was so deathly afraid of guns. They asked her to hold one to get the feel of it and she SQUEALED like a friggin stuck pig. She took hold of it and the instructor was trying to get her to understand how IMPORTANT it was to always point to gun straight up in the air or down the target site. Oh hell no.. she's nodding her head in agreement and swinging that fakkin thing around like nobody's business. All I could do was watch and silently pray that I'd live through this ordeal. Then they wanted me to stand next to her at the target line. Fakkkkk no. I refused. I lied and said something about the sun in my eyes and moved to the opposite end of the line. After about 5 minutes of "safety" talk we began shooting. We shot .22 gauge handguns, mine was Ruger if that makes any difference.. it was heavier than hell and it didn't feel comfortable in my hand at all. Our targets were bulleye's on a piece of flimsy 8 x 11 paper stapled to a split wood fence. It took me several tries to even hit the paper, I kept shooting down.. apparently I was trying to force the recoil, whatever the hell that means. So after, maybe, the 4th round of shooting, I finally found my spot and hit the target consecutively. I even managed to get a few holes in the black center. Party on. Didn't thrill me at all, and pretty much the only thing I could think about was how bad my arms were shaking with the weight of the gun and how on God's green earth my instructor could have eaten onions and dog feces for breakfast. Gawd. The best part (NOT) of handguns was when I was standing there aiming my gun at the target, concentrating on getting the lil site on the end of the gun to line up with the bottom band of the bullseye and all of a sudden something flew my way and hit me in the cheek. I just about dropped a load in my pants. Thought for sure I had been hit by the psycho women down the line and was ready to hit the deck and start crying for my mommie. And my lawyer. Well come to find out after one fire's the gun, the lil shell thingie plinks out the side of the gun. Do you think they could of informed us of this lil detail?? Especially those of us who had never shot a damn gun before?? I thought I was getting ready to meet my maker for crissakes! Next up was Pet First-Aid. Our instructor was a vet's tech who had been taking care of animals for over 20 years. She was so nice and so very informative. I really enjoyed this class because I asked her a couple questions that I had asked my vet in the past and didn't get good answers to. She was different and really took the time to explain to me what I wanted to know. Which was great, because I tend to freak out at the smallest of things gone wrong when it comes to my dogs, especially Nigel. I learned how to give pet CPR, what to do in case of heat stroke, what to do if one of my animals swallows medication they shouldn't be swallowing, what to do when Chloe turns completely evil and not like herself and decides to jump up on the counter and help herself to a chicken wing (ugh), what common plants are poisonous and the correct rates of breathing, heart beat and temperature for both my dogs and my cat. I really, really enjoyed that class. Third class was my favorite.. FAV.OR.ITE! Skeet shooting. Oh yeah baby.. what a rush! Our instructors were a couple of park rangers and some old timer shot gun enthusiasts. They were so great, so nice and so easy to learn from. AND they were totally impressed with my shotgunning abilites. Called me a natural, yes they did. At first, I was a bit intimidated and more than slightly embarrassed. Intimidated because I was thinking how badly my arms shook holding the little handgun and how would I react to this huge shotgun thing? Embarrassed because the instructor took one look at my uhmm.. rather ample.. chest area and asked the whole class if anyone felt they might need a shotgun for "shorter" arms. Yes, my dear, dear friends all looked over at me and pointed. *sigh* Stop laughing. I'll have you know he gave me the "normal" armed shotgun and the only thing that wouldn't reach was my finger from the hold to the trigger, so my arms are of normal length dammit. I've just got a slightly shorter index finger. :P So I was made fun of for the rest of the day.. here, you can join in on the fun.. extend your arms, now fold them back in towards your shoulders, so they are at chest level. Now shake your upper torso so just your hands flap. There feel better? You can walk around all day like that asking me if I want to fight. Women are so cruel. But enough of that! Our whole group made up this class, which was perfect - no strangers. They split us up into 2 groups of 4, my group went first. I was second in line to shoot. Jenn was first - Jenn's been shooting since she was 8.. so her first shot was dead on and the lil clay pigeon died a quick and painless death. I'm up.. I was showed how to hold the gun and how to stand to ease the brunt of the recoil. I kinda felt like a tard, but I was determined not to crap my pants during this class. I was told that I should yell "Pull!" when I was comfortable. I stood there for a minute trying to figure out where the hell the target was going to fly and realized I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to figure this out beforehand, so I just yelled "Pull!" but it came out more like a whisper and nothing happened. Dear instructor leaned closer to my ear and said I'd have to use my "outdoors" voice. Smartass. I yelled it again, this time louder and the damn thing came flying out of this huge green box at like 90 gazillion m.p.h. The thing had already landed somewhere in Canada before I pulled the trigger. Yep that first shot was something to behold. The recoil wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be thankfully. Line moved on and I waited for my next turn.. again, not such great results although the instructors were just gushing over my stance.. how perfect it was and how great I was following that target! It must be the wind that's preventing me from breaking that thing into a million pieces! I really loved how they were such great bullshitters. :D Anyhoo.. third try was the charm.. I found my groove and hit the target each time thereafter. We probably did about 20 rounds. I was so impressed with the whole thing and myself. Who woulda thunk it? heheeee! Today I have a huge bruise on my shoulder and I can't quite get my arm up over my head, but those small inconveniences are well worth the rush I got every time that thing exploded in my arms. I definitely want to skeet shoot again one day! Finally the last class was Outdoor Cooking and it was so incredibly lame that I'm not gonna waste much time on it.. they had us make "pizzas" in pie irons (because that's what the settlers prolly ate, right? Stoopid. They showed us a cast iron dutch oven and an aluminum cooking set that folded up into itself for easy carrying. woo. Our instructor was a 19ish year old, quivering boyscout. He spent most of his lecture arguing with a women (we thought it might be his mother) about what troop number he belonged to. Pie irons are cool.. but not what I was thinking would be a course in "primitive cooking", yanno? Bleh. All in all though, the classes were informative, well organized and quite fun. I enjoyed being outside all day and got my first sunburn of the season (first of many, I'm sure!). The gals I went with are total sweeties and I always have fun with them, so I knew even if the classes sucked, I'd probably still end up having a good time. I won a door prize, which was a bonus.. a Ruger travel mug and bandanna, no less! I'll be sporting that soon! There were awesome raffles at the end of the day. You could buy tickets during the day and then walk around and put your tickets in the jug for whichever package you wanted to win.. you could put all of your tickets in one jug or spread them out.. the packages weren't chintzy either. I put my tickets in a few things but concentrated the bulk on the dog package.. which I estimated to be well worth at least $200.00. They had a package for each class offered so everyone found something they wanted to try to win. They also had a silent auction, which I didn't partake in - but even those items where high end and not something you'd find at the local flea mart. Really, it was a great event and the organizers did a fabulous job. I'll be going again.. that's for sure :D Hubbs is calling from the living room.. "I'm hungry!" so it's time to slap the steaks on the grill.. I'll post the flower pictures tomorrow morning. Also, there might be pictures from yesterday's event.. I forgot my camera (so pissed myself off) but a couple of the gals brought disposables and they said they'd scan 'em after they got them developed. 'kay, off to do my wifely duties! :D