You know how rock hard a gingerbread house gets by the time Christmas rolls around? Well Mark came up with a great use for that gingerbread house instead of just tossing it in the trash - target practice! Jamie was so sad to miss out on this. She's done it with us for the last couple years, and she is very into her guns, so she has a blast with it.

This year we drove about an hour away into the mountains just east of Phoenix. We set the two gingerbread houses up (Josh, Sarah, and Jace came too with their house) against the mountain. Mark was totally in his element. He LOVES this! It was fun to watch him teaching the kids. He went over gun safety and made sure all the kids knew how important it was to be careful around guns. I'm glad he's teaching them so they know what to do if they ever see a gun.

A note on this...

I'm pretty paranoid about guns. I think they are fun, but I'm not so excited to have them in my home. Thankfully Mark is really big on safety. He has a gun safe that not even I know the combination to (he tried to give it to me, but it wasn't easy to remember, so I told him I didn't need to know). His guns are always unloaded while at the range, before getting in the car to drive home. He doesn't go hunting. Just shooting at a gun range. When he gets home the guns are transported directly from his car to the safe. I'm glad he is so careful. Even so, our kids won't be allowed to own even a BB gun until they are at least 18. The best they can do is an airsoft gun or their Nerf guns.

So here are the houses before the demolition...

I was up first...

I like that little 22-pistol. There isn't any kick.

Next, was Sarah...

If you look closely, in a lot of these pictures you can see the casing being ejected up and to the side of the gun.

Surveying the damage...

This gun had a little more kick...

As if the damage wasn't bad enough, those poor little house got leveled by a rock throwing contest at the end...

Next we moved on to shooting clay pigeons with the kids' new 20 gauge shotgun. Bryan was the "thrower" of a lot of our clay pigeons.

Mark shot first. He had shown Bryan how to throw "junk" by punching out the middle of the clay pigeon, or throwing it upside down so they would fly funny, but Mark still shot most of them. Can't outwit your dad, B-ry!