Gunpowder and lead

On a lovely afternoon in Virginia, we left Tasha with a babysitter and embarked on a beautiful drive in the Blue Mountains...

... where we promptly interrupted the peace and quiet with some good old fashioned shooting practice at the range.

I'm not much of a gun person, to say the least. Until this point, my shooting experience was limited to "Can Season" with BB guns and a few shots with bigger guns that I didn't like because their kicks hurt. Needless to say, I was a bit amateur at the whole shooting range thing. And, apparently, the gun safety thing, too:

Matt caught me checking out the loaded gun to try to figure out ... something. I also managed to point said loaded gun at my feet. Oh geeze. It was on safety, but still. Within 10 seconds, the gun was down and April was reminding me that you can only point guns at things you are okay with shooting. Right. Not okay with shooting my face or my feet. So with that piece of advice in the front of my mind, I proceeded to shoot only targets and (mostly) dirt. And toward the end, I even managed to keep my eyes open when I pulled the trigger. Yes, I am fully aware of how pathetic that sounds.

I was much more comfortable with the rifle, which had no kick and a much smaller chance of me accidentally pointing it somewhere I didn't intend to.

Meanwhile, I was surrounded by a bunch of professionals. April and Alex were in their element:

And Matt was having a blast playing with all their different guns:

Although, I think the rapid fire M-16 was his favorite:

At the end of the day, we'd gone through a dozen boxes of bullets, demolished a cart full of cantaloupes, rittled holes in many orange soda cans -- and I managed to not hurt anyone. I'd call that a success.