04/14/12

1.  Today started off with a pretty sad thing.  Joseph and I were on our way to archery, driving down 183 at about 65 mph (I'm trying not to speed these days since my car STILL hasn't passed inspection).  At 8:30 AM on a Saturday morning, there were not many cars on the road and 4 or 5 pigeons had flown down and were on the road ahead of us.  Birds usually have a good instinct as to when to fly away to avoid getting run over.  But these birds were still sleepy or something, because they took off late, and, even though I braked as hard as I dared, we hit one of them.  :-(  It's only the 2nd time I've ever hit a bird (or any animal).  I looked back at my sweet, good-hearted, animal-loving boy, and his face just crumpled.  His chin started quivering and tears spilled down his cheeks.  Oh my goodness, that about broke my heart.  I told him over and over again how sorry I was, how much I didn't want to do that.  But I had no choice.  Going 65 mph, there was simply no way to stop in time, and swerving to avoid a bird is a really bad idea.  People wreck doing that, and then sometimes they pay for avoiding that animal with their life, or the life of their passengers.  I told Joseph that my instinct was to swerve, but I had to make myself drive straight because my son's life (and my own) is more important than that of a pigeon.  Oh, gosh.  I felt so terrible.  When we got to archery, he was still so sad, so we said a prayer for the pigeon and I think that helped.  Still, it wasn't the best beginning for his archery lesson and it took him most of the lesson to start shooting the way he normally does. 
One thing I realized though-- this boy should never go hunting.  :-)

2.  Mosey had TKD testing this morning.  He did really GREAT!  We had a talk about not letting Mr. McGrumbles enter the building, and he sure didn't!  Mosey was happy and enthusiastic and did a super-great job.  And he passed!  He's now a senior green belt.

3.  After testing, we had a family clean-up-the-backyard, and whipped it into shape in about 45 minutes.  Which was an accomplishment since it was a BIG mess.

4.  In the afternoon, a builder came by-- our favorite guy from when we got estimates on putting a homeschool room addition on our house 3 years ago.  I believe we are going to go forward with our plans of adding onto the side of our house.  Of course, we'll have to see what the estimate ends up being.  :-)  I'm really excited, though.  I've spent many hours thinking about it, drawing up plans, revising those plans, and I'm really happy with what we've come up with.

5.  I took the boys to see Hunger Games in the late afternoon.  Ben was tooooo busy to go with us.  He's been so, so busy recently with work, Elders Quorum stuff, and a couple of other really big projects he's got going on.  It was too bad, though, because we loved the movie.  It stayed very close to the book, and I thought the casting was perfect.  I loved Katniss.  Not the typical Hollywood star, but totally perfect for the role.  So sad though!  I couldn't help crying during the Rue death scene.  Brigham and Joseph remembered the book well, even though we read it 2 1/2 years ago, but Mosey didn't remember much of it at all, so I had to whisper to him a little, explaining things.  We'll have to listen to that one again.