We had a fun activity for Young Womens this week. We all met at the church, then took dinner to Emily. She has a beautiful new baby girl...sooooo tiny! She looks like Emily...pretty darker skin and lots of hair. Emily seemed good after having a c-section and was up and walking around. I guess they have a new band thing that you can wear around your middle that holds everything in nice and tight. I remember thinking after I had a c- section with Candice, that when they took the bandages and strips holding my incision together off, my stomach would would fall right out....strange feeling to have your stomach muscles cut through.

Anyway, after that we drove out to bluffdale ...way out in the boonies, to shoot clay pigeons.

This was an activity we have been wanting to do (especially Faith) for about two years, but never could work things out to make it happen. We had conflicts come up this time too...we were going to go shooting at a shooting range in Magna, but they close at 7, so we wouldn't have had any time at all..So we decided to take Jenny and Reed's clay pigeon launcher and go out where there isn't any civilization around.

Jenny and Reed are way into shooting (bow and arrow and guns) and are really good at it! Reed came and taught us how to shoot the guns. They have taught their girls well ... Abby was a pro!

I like it when Alisha comes to activities too...she is only 10, but seems older. Her and Abby remind me so much of Kaite and Camille. Abby is the perfectionist...over-achiever...more serious. Alisha is funny, easy going, happy girl. Anyway, her and Sierra have gotten to be good friends and get along really well together.
Faith has her own gun too... She has gone bird hunting with her dad and grampa for years and was a good shot too.


Sierra was a little bit timid and at first said she didn't want to do it. Then Reed got out this gun that was quite a bit smaller and wouldn't kick as much. She tried it and thought it was pretty fun. She told me she had shot guns with her dad before but had ended up with a bruised shoulder!
I don't blame her for being nervous...I'm pretty freaked out by guns in general. They just scare me...I have always been weird about Kelley having a gun in the house...but he is just like...what if I have to protect our family?...we need to have a gun!
(He has long since given up hunting with it...I think that first year we were married was his last time...He brought home a big deer steak and was cooking it up in our tiny apartment...I was probably about 10 weeks pregnant and really nauseous pretty much all of the time. The smell of that meat cooking sent me right over the edge...I remember laying there on the bathroom floor crying and vomiting...Kelley took the meat out to the garbage, aired out the house and that was the end of his hunting days. I don't think he really liked shooting animals...just something he had always done with his brothers and dad. I'm grateful for his tender heart.
Anyway, he keeps a gun in the closet and I try not to look at it when I open the door.
After everyone had had a turn at shooting, Reed looks over at me and says "You're turn Paula"
hmmmmmm, thats ok, I'll just be over here watching.
...oh come on...just try it! Then all the girls were coaxing me to give it a try. So I said ok. Reed showed me how to hold the gun and where to aim. Then I said "pull" and Jenny pulled the lever that shot the clay pigeon up into the air. I shot too fast and was way off, but it was kind of fun. I can see how you could have a lot of fun with it if you get to be good at it and actually hit the target!

Caitlin was really a good shot. She was hitting them just about every time. She is in the ROTC and they do target practice quite a bit.

Jenny launching the clay pigeons

Before we went home, Reed wanted us to all be able to hit the clay pigeon at least once, so he came up behind us and helped us aim and told us when to shoot. With his help, we were all able to bust one of those discs to bits! Fun!

We only had about an hour before the sun went down and we had to call it quits. The girls loved it and didn't want to stop.

I had a good visit with Faith on the way home and am just so impressed with what a special girl she is. The health problems she has been through in the past year have really had a big influence on her attitude and on her life... She has had some pretty scary moments where she didn't know if she would live or die (blood clots in her brain) and had the pain be so bad that she wished she would die. She told me about some of the special blessings she had received and how she had felt Heavenly Fathers' love ease the pain and get her through some really dark times.

She told me about how great her family is and how much she loves them....that their support and love during this hard time really brought them all closer.

She said she knows that she had to go through this for a reason and that was to make her strong enough to get through what was ahead of her in life.
She is really an amazing young women and a great example to me of what "Faith" is.