Coffee Break–Volume 171

A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.

1.An Airsoft Event. A few years ago, Morgan discovered Airsoft weapons. For those who don’t know–they are the next level up from Nerf guns. They’re a lot like bb guns –only instead of metal most use what are called airsoft pellets. However, they are not soft. Not at all. Like Nerf–you can battle with others in arenas and designated areas. Unlike Nerf guns they have a lot more sting and it’s a good idea (and necessary) to wear thick protective clothing and especially protective eye wear (or you’ll shoot your eye out). We’ve played a few times at our local airsoft arena–it’s called American Paintball Colosseum. They have paintball, airsoft, and laser tag arenas as well as ax throwing.

We found out that their Denver location has a fantastic outdoor arena AND they host a two-day event each year for battling it out on the field–called The Battle of Chernobyl. It includes a Friday night game, overnight camping, all day play on Saturday and a hotdog lunch. We weren’t able to do the night game and overnight camping this year, but we did get Morgan there for the all-day Saturday play. One of his Civil Air Patrol buddies joined him, and they had a blast.

2.Homecoming 2023. The boys had a good time participating in a lot of their school homecoming activities this year. It started with the football game (I got to go with them) and our team won by a mile. All throughout the next week were various theme dress days. They participated in the “wear jammies” day (of course) and “dress as a twin day” (because they just got matching ‘The Boys’ hoodies). Both watched the homecoming parade at school (it goes through the school parking lot) and got some candy and Grayson helped with one of the games at the school carnival. They decided to go solo (but together) to the dance. I took them out to dinner, and I taught them all the things I wish someone had mentioned to some of my homecoming dates all those years ago. They rolled their eyes a lot, but I’m hoping that their future dates (and wives) will appreciate the efforts I make to wrestle these boys of mine into proper gentlemen.

3.The Eclipse. We got to see a partial halo of the sun during the solar eclipse here in the springs. It was so cool to watch it from the safety of the super dark sunglasses that I spent a small fortune on the day of. The eerie glow when the moon was directly in front of the sun is so weird. I’m just glad we had the glasses, because I know us–and fully believe that if we didn’t know what was going on, we would look directly at the sun and then scorch our eyeballs and be blind.

4. Air Force Football Game. On a very rare weekend where we didn’t have any planned commitments, Super Rockstar suggested going to an Air Force football game. It’s been years since we went and I always love going. What a gorgeous, perfect day. We enjoyed seeing all the pregame parading and parachuting, ate lots of fantastic junk food and had a blast watching the game.