I found out later that it was Aunty Heather's birthday and Uncle Les had arranged the flowers for her. Isn't that lovely. I have never seen dad ever buy mum any flowers.Mr W and I have been spending most days at the bang stick shop making sure that Grandma and Grandpa, he hates being called that by us, work properly. Mum and dad usually drop us off then they go off to work, yes mum finally has a day job to go to. Just as well that mum finally found some mad person to give her a job as dad finished his job on the Thursday b4 the shoot.
Anyway I do get side tracked some times. Thursday was the same as most days, we went off to the shop real early them mum and dad left us to guard the shop while they went off to work. They both arrived back to the shop at about the same time, we were ready to go home after a hard day of supervising, but mum and dad had to get all the stuff ready to take up to the shoot as dad had an early start the next day as this was a 3 day shoot. We got all the junk to take and we headed off home for a good night sleep as we had to be up early the next day.
Friday dawned yet again and the 3 of us jumped into the car and headed north while mum went to the shop then to work for the day.
First job at the range was to get dad's air pistol through gun testing. So, intelligent people take only their air pistol for testing, so everybody gets through with plenty of time to spare - unless your alleged name is Frank. Anyway, we got to the air range in time.
The next thing to happen, was to be an omen that carried on for the rest of the weekend. Larso on my left and Frank on my right. At least I did not have to look at Frank. Although I was not to realise it, dad was actually protecting me when he left me in the car the next two days - from Frank.
Dad spent just about every second of the day when he was not shooting, talking to people. How boring. Mr W and I wanted to have some fun and chase cars, but we were not allowed - it just is not fair.
Mum had to collect her brother Uncle Wayne from the great bird in the sky house. When she got there and finally found his flight on the arrival board she found that the plane was going to be 2 hours late. After trying to ring dad on the mobile phone only to find that the prepaid phone she had had run out of money she had to then hunt the airport to find a public phone. After reading the instructions, as it had been a long time since mum had had to use a public phone she managed to get hold of us to tell us what was going on.
Finally the big bird arrived and Uncle Wayne was on board, but he had the dreaded lurgy which of course he had passed onto mum b4 the weekend was out.
Saturday dawned really bright and the sun just flooded into our nice new motel unit even with the curtains closed. We had breaky at the motel today and Uncle Wayne had a car for himself so he just wandered and did whatever he wanted and the rest of us headed to the range as yes you guessed it dad shot early as normal.
This was to be a day I would rather forget. Dad was so busy between events with other dumb humans talking to him and asking questions he kept forgetting to get me when he went off to each of his events. Mum must have been starting to feel not so hot as even she did not notice that we had been locked in the car all day. It did not seem to matter how much barking and jumping up and down we did, we were just ignored by everyone.
Part way through the day when most of the humans were sitting around the clubroom feeding their faces, a man drove in and when he got out of his car he had a really big bunch of lovely red roses. I found out later that it was Aunty Heather's birthday and Uncle Les had arranged the flowers for her. Isn't that lovely. I have never seen dad ever buy mum any flowers.
The day went really quite slow for those of us locked up in the car, I guess we were lucky that we had been allowed the windows down a little, at least we could just breath. Even when mum had to go and shoot in the Ladies air pistol final we were both left in the car. That had never happened b4, so you can guess we were not talking to mum and dad when they finally decided to come back to the car to go home.
On Sunday after giving mum and dad the silence treatment all night we decided to try and be nice again and see if they would remember us today. Even that didn't work. We got forgotten until Aunty Wendy, the chook fan found us and broke into the car, it was then I escaped. Mr Wrinkles has always been much quieter than me so he stayed around the car, but I didn't. I ran all over the place with Aunty Wendy chasing me, it was fun. We were all over looking and dissecting the results when all of a sudden Aunty Wendy changed her name to Aunty Flopsy. She just fell over and luckily was caught by Uncle Rob, the one who has smoke coming from his head everytime he thinks, and Uncle Chappy. If they hadn't caught her she would have landed on me and squashed me so I was really thankful that the 2 of them were around this time.
We managed to eventually direct her over to a seat and I went and got Mr W and we went over to comfit Aunty Flopsy. Eventually she started to feel a bit better, so we all just sat around and talked and hassled Uncle Rob, for no reason really, but it was fun.
By the time the Ladies Sport final was due to start Aunty Flop was up and sort of about again, even though a little wobbly. It meant that everyone could go in and watch the final. Mum was in this one as well and seeing as I was free I went in and sat with her. I could tell though she was starting to sag a bit as although she shot the best final she was not feeling very happy.
After the ladies were finished we all retired to the clubrooms and waited for the prize giving. After the normal at least short speeches all the prizes were given out to those that had bothered to stay, then everyone packed up and went home. We had a very quiet trip home as mum was not feeling well and so she slept nearly all the way, dad as normal just drove and talked to us.
Dad is leaving us soon for a while so I will have the added responsibility of looking after mum next year at the shoots she goes to until dad comes home again, hope it is not for too long.
Thats all for now, have a good Christmas and a happy New Year and we will see most of you at Toowoomba in January 2001.