Fine, Fine Saturday.

I suppose everyone has their ideal of what a Saturday(or any day off) should be.  Some folks actually enjoy working hard, on their stuff.  I'm not a wood working type of guy, or a motor head. I don't mind getting my hands dirty in the garden...but it's not like a zen thing for me...it's almost more of a need to prove something to myself.  Feel free to throw around words like sustainability, or self-sufficiency...I just hate to think that I have ZERO useful real life skills.  If I can go from seeds in a package to tomato and zucchini on the table, I'll feel like I've done something.

Anyway...ideal Saturday...blog train almost jumped the tracks there. 

What I was trying to get at, is I don't mind working on my days off, it's more that I hate getting up Monday and realizing my to-do list is longer than it was on Friday. If I have an excuse to avoid working hard, then I will...as long as I can like productivity is being achieved.

Yesterday, I had those excuses.  First, I had to be out the door by 8:30 to get my daughter to Walla Walla to perform the 'skill based' exercise of her hunters education course.  Things started out a little rough, but got better.  There are two ways to do hunters education in Washington...a 100% classroom way, and a more modern way, where you do reading/videos/quizzes online, then do a monitored 'field exercise'.  The gentleman running the show yesterday was a traditional type guy.  He expressed to me when we first showed up that he felt children my daughters age were ill-served by the online class.  I explained to him that out schedule the last few weeks had been to inconsistent to attend a traditional multiday class, and that as homeschoolers, I didn't just turn her loose on the computer, but rather worked with her to accent the things that I felt were important.

He seemed to accept that answer, and luckily, my daughter did me proud the rest of the day.  Because she was the youngest kid in class, I'm not going to say she was a target...but she was a useful teaching aid.  After a few minutes of nervous getting used to the class format, she did fine, not answering just the questions she was asked, but raising her hands to answer the group questions.  In fact, upon our return from the field work, one of the other dad's told me that the instructor stopped answering questions, because no one other than my daughter would answer them.

Not that they couldn't....I think part of this is tied to the fact that since we DO homeschool, my daughter has never been exposed to the 'only the geeks and suck-ups raise their hands in class to answer questions' attitude.  If she knows the answers, she's going to let you know that she knows the answer.

She, of course,  passed with flying colors...the color orange to be exact(and the vest was a free gift!)

The only thing she really did wrong all day, was on the walkthrough, she didn't know the difference between the male/female turkeys.  I guess that was one of those things non-turkey hunting dad didn't think was important.

After class it, was back home(a trip to Walla Walla with no wine tasting?  It was tough...but I had a birthday dinner to get home to.(teaser!)