Best Meeting Ever

Last Tuesday I had my monthly dog club meeting. Since I'm the president and the secretary was out sick, I really had to be there. Unfortunately that same night Max and Rebecca's grade was putting on a little show during the big end of the year PTA meeting. So we divided the troops, Larry took the dynamic duo back to school and I took the older two with me to the dog meeting.

The dog club meeting is held over at the Goochland Fire Company #1 in Manakin-Sabot, about 35 minutes away from our house. For once I was the first one there. I stationed the boys on the wall opposite were the meeting would be held and let them have at it with their DS Nintendos. The meeting went very well, we covered a lot of ground in about 45 minutes with not too many sidetracks and the boys were fairly well behaved. Once the meeting was over I waited for everybody else to leave before locking up. In order to lock the room you have to throw the dead bolt on the inside and leave through on of the side doors.

As we crossed the room to leave I opened the door to the rescue bay so the boys could take a peek at the ambulances. None of the crew were visible so I did not let them venture inside. Once out of the building I pointed out the big barbecue smoker they have in back and the squished car. Nate asked about the car and I told him I think it is for practice with the rescue equipment. As we walked over to it we found the crew. They waved us over and asked if we wanted a tour. The boys seemed up for it so we headed on over to the open truck bay.

There were three EMTs (one just got his certification) and two firefighters. They were very happy to have visitors and gave us the absolute best fire station tour ever. For 45 minutes we got an exhaustive rundown on all the vehicles, a tour of the facility, and we got to try on helmets and headsets. We also got to go inside two of the trucks (That's we when the boys got to wear the headsets, Jake got a laugh when he said "Red leader standing by.") and check out the interior of an ambulance. We learned all about the new foam technology they use, the tanker trucks and the thermal imaging device. The jaws of life (big and little) were hauled out along with the cutter (with the admonition to never put your fingers near the business end of the cutter).

It was a blast. We even found out that you can have a birthday party at the picnic table out back.

I think the station crew would have been happy for us to stay longer, but it was late and a school night. The boys were very happy that they went to my dog club meeting.