Paintballing, Pregnancy, and Picking Kids Off

On Saturday we had the middle schoolers out at our house for a rousing day of paintball, food, and festive fun. We had a ton of people out there and luckily not one got too hurt. There was definitely a few highlights of which I will now share.

Highlight 1: The kids played down in the creek in groups of 10 (5 on 5). Rob Calame and I set up various barricades in the water. The teams would start on opposite ends of the creek and make their ways toward one another, firing as they progressed, hoping to apply welts on the enemy combatants. I stood on the bank of the creek, up the hill a bit, and fired random shots at the kids down below. I hit one hit in the groin region, which made him a bit unhappy. When the round was over, he made his way to the exit point and began walking up the short hill out of the creek bed. As he made his way up he whined and complained about being shot and asked why I did it. Josh Perry was behind me and he told the kid (more like yelled at him) to shoot me. The kid was less than 3 feet away from me. He did. He shot me. Point blank. Straight up shot me. I was shocked. I told Josh to leave the area and asked the kid (in my angry voice) what he was thinking and told him that if he wanted to live, he would never ever ever do that again. He agreed and thus he is alive today.

Highlight #2: Nate Darnell showed up to helped barbecue. He also helped the teams with various combat strategies. Nate, an ex-Army Ranger, used rocks to diagram the course and showed the kids where they should hide, and the best attack points, in addition to each base's weaknesses. It was classic. He was getting in to it. The kids didn't exactly absorb his military insight. Most of the students ended up getting pretty banged up.

Middle school is going really well and it was cool to see that we had over 30 people (students and leaders) at yesterday's event. God has really blessed the ministry.

Mel is feeling well and she is starting to show a bit. It is weird to think that she is already 15 weeks along (last Friday). She really enjoyed picking kids off from the bank as they played in the creek. Looking all too innocent, she deviously shot the kids down below as they attempted to play. They had no idea where the shots were coming from. She was loving every minute of it. It was our baby's first paintball experience and I sure that he or she thought that it was magical.

On Saturday my dad graduated from college. After almost 20 years of diligent study, he completed his four degree. Not only that, he was the valedictorian and the keynote student speaker at the commencement ceremony. This guy spoke as well. It was fun to see my dad up there speaking in his cap and gown. His speech was really good, however, he made one mistake that stuck out. Not that I am one to point out errors in speech, but I will make an exception here. When talking about meeting my mother, my dad said that they married shortly after and now have 2 sons, ages 20 and 21. He got one of the ages right. Justin is in fact 21. However, I am not 20. Haven't been for 4 years. He caught his error and stated that what he meant was, he and my mom were 20 and 21 when they got married. Melissa and I laughed quite hard. My grandparents (both sides) and my dad's sister came as well. It was a festive gathering of kin. My dad, who from the stage looked a bit like Borat, has potentially agreed to maybe shave his mustache for his 50th birthday, July 11th. He has had said facial hair for my entire life and most experts agree (Me, Mel, Justin, Mandie, etc.), that he is due for a change. Please make your opinions known in the comment section.

Yesterday Melissa had her first bout with morning sickness. It could also be some sort of flu, but at this point the experts (mainly me) seem to think that it is a pregnancy related illness. It also could be some sort of disgusted reaction to the Warriors' loss. She is feeling a bit better today and she went to school.

In other news, we won our first softball game on Friday night in dramatic fashion, beating Big O Tires II, 26-6. Their manager even got ejected. It was quite the game.