Weekly Wrap Up - Summer Break Week 11

This past weekend gave us a couple of new opportunities.   We went to an outdoor event, hosted by a local church.   There were various displays and workshops.  Everything from fly-fishing to archery and BB guns.    Both girls are quite good at archery, but the BB guns were a new experience.  Interestingly enough, they both took to rifles just as quickly and accurately as they did to archery.

The local K-9 unit came in and did a demonstration with both their blood hound unit and their attack dogs.   Olivia camped out on the front row for this one.  The bloodhounds are used to track lost children and Alzheimer's patients, as their noses are incredibly sensitive and the dogs are not aggressive when they find their missing person.  The first dog below is riding the edges of retirement. He's been known to track a 36 hour old trail with success.   While not active, if an event arises where a child or elderly person is at risk, he'll be brought back in.

This second blood hound is younger and also an expert tracker and a little more quick and nimble that the first dog photoed above.   He is used for both child/elderly and criminal in rural areas.

Olivia's favorite, as always, is the German Shepherd.   This animal was beautiful, strong, intelligent and incredibly obedient all rolled into one.

Just when Olivia thought the day couldn't get any more interesting, it did!  The Virginia Game and Inland Fisheries had captured a bear that very morning and brought it to the event (still in the tubular trap).   Once they estimated the bear's weight, he was tranquilized and then when they were certain he was completely sedated he was brought out.   They had hoped to capture a female bear to tag for a tracking program, however this was a male, approximately 250 pounds.   The program was VERY informative, Olivia sat on the edge of her seat the entire time taking in every bit of information as they explained about the bear, their program and what they were doing.

Later that evening we went to our church picnic.  It paled in comparison to the whole bear thing, but it was a nice evening to sit by the lake and relax with the church family.

Sunday and Monday were pretty typical, without much to report.   Tuesday evening we crazy busy for me.  I had to drop Olivia at volleyball at 4:30, then drive Lindsy and I to our volleyball.   We worked on evaluations for 66 girls starting 5:30.  Tom picked Olivia up at 6:30 and brought her by my volleyball site, helped with the remaining evaluations, then he took both girls home with him around 8:30.  Our coaching staff stayed after everyone left and we worked on dividing everyone up into equal skill level teams.  Not an easy task, at 11pm we called it a night.

 The rest of the week was pretty average.  Still no refrigerator, and now the van is in the shop. 

How was your week?

Linking up with the Weekly Wrap Up.