Paintball

Matt's Birthday weekend was super busy - and a lot of fun!

Much of our the celebrations revolved around food, of course.

For dinner on Thursday (his actual Birthday) he requested Halibut.  So I made it in this super yummy white wine-butter-caper sauce...it was great.  I also made roasted mushroom rice pilaf and asparagus.  For dessert we had our favorite ice cream - Hagan Daaz Pineapple Coconut. mmmm.

After dinner I gave him his big Birthday gift - a Remington 12 gauge shotgun.  He was very

 excited about it - it's a beautiful gun.

Friday night we had the Moody family over for dinner.  Mike and Lisa and the kids were in town for L'Jeans graduation, so we had everyone here.  It was nice - Mike and Lisa haven't been back for ages and Tessa REALLY missed her cousins.

I made Lasagna, and with some tips from Andrea (it's nice to have an Italian friend!) it turned out better than I've ever made it before.  Very good.  I also made bleu cheese dressing, Matt's favorite, from scratch.  He loved it.  We had coconut cake for dessert - though I just realized, we forgot to sing and/or have him blow his candles out!  We'll have to make up for that.

Saturday we went paintballing with friends.  It was my first time, and we had SO much fun.  We had enough people that we qualified as a private party, which meant we didn't have to play with the public.  We were glad not to - the public is scary! Especially when the public includes 3 teenage boys dressed in camouflage coveralls.  Scary.

I did well, taking lots of people out and only getting hit a few times.  We all ended up with some welts and bruises...some more severe than others.  At least one of our male friends has vowed never to play paintball without a cup again, lol.

Matt had several welts on his torso and a few on his legs, but he heals like Wolverine and they had basically disappeared within 3 or 4 days.  

I took a nasty hit to the back of my hand in one of the last rounds.  It began to swell immediately and was super painful to touch, but has turned out not to be the worst of my injuries.  I had a hit on my left inner thigh that bounced off instead of breaking - and for some reason those are the worst hits.  I tend to bruise beautifully - they run through a whole spectrum of colors, beginning with a faint purple and ending up black and yellow.  It's fun to wear shorts in the Summer, my legs always have 2 or 3 large bruises of varying colors.  I tell people I've fallen down the stairs or walked into a door...typical abused woman excuses, lol.

Here are some pictures from paintballing.

From left to right: Colby, Barry, Julie, Killian, Matt, Me, L'Jean, Jeff and Ryan.  Andrea is taking the picture - she witnessed the whole thing, but refused to pick up a paintgun.

Ryan - sad that he ruined his white t-shirt?

Barry and Matt sporting matching welts (and matching sweat stains, too. sexy.)

Barry and I sporting matching paint splatters on our masks. We shot each other at the same time.  Thank God for protective head gear, or we'd both be blind.

And here's my leg bruise on day two and on day four.  Pretty, huh?

I think we'll definitely go paintballing again - maybe annually for Matt's Birthday!  It was lots of fun, though I may consider wearing another layer or two of clothing next time...