Daddy's Paintball Boot Camp

So, Marcus was cleaning out one of his cabinets in the basement - the cabinet with all of his paintball gear. 

Here's the thing... Marcus hasn't been able to play for over 8 years.  If you knew Marcus in his mid-20's, you know that a vast majority of his free time was spent playing paintball; prepping his paintball equipment; modifying his paintball equipment; CLEANING his paintball equipment; perusing websites for the best deals on paintball equipment.... It was a bit of an obsession.

One of my most vivid memories of the days following our marriage, is being rudely awoken at (gasp!) 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the sound of my husband, sitting on the floor by the bed, testing out the compressed air tank on his gun by firing repeatedly it without paint...

But I digress - back to my story!  As Marcus was looking longingly at each piece of gear he removed from the cabinet, the boys took notice.  BOY, did they take notice!  Between the colorful (8-year-old) paint balls, and the large assortment of masks, paintball guns and camouflage, the boys became giddy with fascination.  It wasn't long before the boys had talked him into an impromptu paintball lesson in our back yard with a make-shift target.

Can you tell all three enjoyed themselves?!? As each splatter of green paint hit the target, their excitement grew, and the giggles were uncontrollable at times. 

I have a feeling I'm going to have to start budgeting for paint balls again...

My "Baby's" First Day of Kindergarten!

 That's right!  Zachary's first day of Kindergarten was today! My little guy is growing up so fast. This year he has a dress code which includes collared shirts and no jeans except on Fridays, so he's looking even more grown up! **sniff**

Ready to leave!

Little brother will start Pre-K next week

Zachary is happy to see his buddies! 
This friend from daycare last year will be in Pre-K,
so they wanted a picture together before Z left for class. 
Too cute!

As soon as we got to the room, he started playing,
but was obviously nervous.  By the time we picked him up

this afternoon, however, he was all smiles!

Golfing for the Birthday Boy

Just a bit of a birthday-backtrack as I catch up on my blog.  We are now to Zachary's birthday...  He chose a little Putt-Putt for his special outing.  HILARIOUS to watch those two boys putting!!  Because Zach is a lefty (most of the time), Evan decided to emulate his brother and putt lefty as well.  It made for some interesting shots!

My sister, Dan and my dad came over for dinner and cake that night.  I started to get ill about the time we left Putt-Putt (a virus that knocked me out for about three days), so unfortunately, I don't feel like I did Zachary's actual birthday justice, but everyone else made him feel awesome!

Before I got sick, I WAS able to make the birthday cake Zachary requested, however!  After Evan's Angry Bird cake, Zachary asked for the blue bird.  In the game, this is the bird that shatters glass... so I learned how to make sugar "glass" to make his cake a little different.  Pretty fun and easy!

Happy birthday to my big boy!  I can't believe you're SIX!!

Another Fun Trip

We don't really do birthday parties, so we let the boys each take one friend on a trip to the Children's Museum.  We had great timing as well... There is a new Hot Wheels exhibit. Needless to say, we had four very ecstatic little boys on our hands!

More Home Improvement

Thanks to Marcus' recent promotion to Senior Director of Planned Giving, we've not only started to take chunks out of our student loans and other debts, but we have been saving up to start making some of those home-improvements that we've had on our to-do list for years.  There was a sale on laminate flooring two weeks ago, so a new floor in the living room jumped to the top of the list.

It took Marcus and me about 15 hours total one weekend, and about two days of sore muscles following the completion, but I think it was well-worth the effort.

Before

Starting to come together

Loki supervises

After