Harbrecht Reunion

I love having my sisters and their families in town. This is the last time for a long time that we will all be together in one place. My niece, Camille, will be leaving on her mission to Brazil in early September and she will be gone for eighteen months. In a year Owen will be either on or about to leave for his mission for two years. It will be three years minimum before we can all be together again.

I don't know too many other families that get together to go shooting for fun. My parents starting taking us when we were quite young. One neighbor was a gun dealer/trader who often attended gun shows and brought new, interesting firearms for us to try. We learned gun safety and how to use a firearm appropriately. We loved it.  Now that we have children of our own we have resurrected the family activity. It's harder to find someplace to safely go shooting that doesn't require an admission fee thanks to the two-year drought we are in. Many wildfires have been started by recreational shooters using incendiary and tracer types of ammo, so many areas that were open last year have been posted as closed for this year. We finally found a spot on BLM land and made sure we were using ammo that wouldn't start wildfires.

Sunflowers with Utah Lake in the background

Our shooting kid crew

Liam tries out the 22, while Heather sights in her new shotgun and Alisa helps her youngest figure out to aim

The maiden firing of Heather's birthday rifle. She didn't get to take it out last year when she got it thanks to all of the wildfires started by people using the wrong ammo.

Now I get to try Heather's rifle. It's got an awesome kick!

Passing on the skills!

The family that shoots together...Hillary, her husband, and her two daughters.

Bronwyn tries out Uncle Dave's 9 mm

Liam loved the 9 mm as well, but kept closing his eyes just as he fired. Here he is determined to keep them open.

Owen and Evan didn't get to come because they were at youth conference -- not that I felt sorry for them with all of the fun they were having (although I did not envy them the cliff jumping!).