Braden's Work, Kids and Wild Horses

Being a squadron commander had its perks. Usually most squadron commanders leave all their flight-gear in the locker at work, but well, Braden just figured it was just as well that he kept everything at home. So he wore his flight gear to and from work. The problem was that he and Greta ended up getting off an hour and a half apart so it was more rational to each take separate cars to work on the days that he had to fly. After putting in a long day with briefing at 0600hrs and gear-up at 0700hrs...he put in a long hard day at the office. With each hop lasting a couple hours while on patrol over the Pacific Coast searching for Russian Tu-95s and 142s which were constantly testing NORAD's air defenses. He was always wrung out and his bag was pretty much sodden with sweat after those days in the office (the cockpit of his CF-18).

Evidently, Alanna was a stay-at-home mom, because with four kids at home between the ages of 2 and 12, there really was no time for her to find herself an occupation. Raising kids was the full time occupation.

On the days when her kids were at daycare or at school, she sat on the bench outside the local food market and wondered just how she got herself in this position. Yeah...I wonder too... ~smirk~

When the kids came home from military school, they did their homework. Evidently one dressing down from Master Corporal Douglas was enough for one lifetime. Karina swore she saw rafters rattle. Standing at attention in the corner of the classroom for twenty minutes while the rest of the students did lines was not her idea of a fun time. Since there were four corners in a classroom, MCPL Douglas planted each ne'er-do-well (if there were four who didn't do their homework) in each of the four corners. If there was more than four, then they all lined up nose against the chalkboard at attention. The plan was simple: if one person didn't do their homework, everyone suffered and the lack of approval for the ne'er-do-well pretty much assured no repeat of said incident. Usually by the time that two weeks revolved from start of classes, order was maintained. So for Karina and Colin; it was best that they got cracking on their schoolwork as soon as they got home.

...and their father sat right down beside them...to ensure that they finished their homework. After all, Master Corporal Douglas reported to Lieutenant-Colonel Chikamori and Braden didn't put up with any nonsense of trying to slide from doing homework. Better to get their homework done and over with - then they had the rest of the afternoon to do whatever they wanted. Sure beat standing in front of the chalkboard while the rest of the students resented you for the rest of the day if not the whole school-term because you ended up making them write 500 lines worth of "I will make sure that I do all my homework every night before school next day." with proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. In fact there were several other students who had the proclivity to skip their homework or come late to class so Karina and Colin preferred to not be the ones responsible for their classmates doing endless lines of punishment writing. Hey, at least it would stand them in good stead in terms of self-discipline down the road.

Haruo had to drop off a painting or two at the local eatery, so he headed down there to make sure that the delivery went off without a hitch. While there he ran into Allan (his oldest son) who was a medical intern (blue hospital scrubs?) - still low on the totem-pole (what the heck do NPCs do?) while his second child (Braden was now a Lieutenant-Colonel in the RCAF and Greta was on the fast track on the political career-track. It was interesting to say the least, but at least if Allan was happy with his life, that was all that Haruo could ask for.

He came home from delivering the paintings, just as the kids headed off to bed.

The next morning involved a lot of wrassling bees out of their hives while he tried to clean out the box and gather the honey; River had to deal with some paintings over at another restaurant that wanted paintings, Greta, having a day off, had some skills reading to catch up on and Haruo played pool with himself.