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What an awesome day!

Paintball started in the morning at 10am at Splat! behind the Boise airport. I had never done paintball before, but I definitely need to do it again. We stayed mainly on their indoor course and got to play a ton of games with just the 8 of us for nearly two hours before any other people came.

As a lot of us were new to paintball, we learned lots of the fine details really quickly.

1) A facemask doesn't prevent a paintball from breaking and splattering paint all over the inside of your mask through the vents. Turns out that the paint doesn't really taste that good. I felt like I was washing off my face after every match, I think that means I suck at paintball.

2) Its not fun to get hit from 3 feet away. Seth knows. Matt knows. Phil really knows, good thing he was covering the family jewelry with his free hand. I'm pretty sure I was directly or indirectly responsible for all close range injuries, sorry about that guys!

3) Wear gloves! Enough said. I think at least three of us were hit on our knuckles. I got hit on my middle finger, so I should still be able to get the ring on my finger on Saturday.

4) Do NOT let anyone talk you into being the terminator. Painting a target on your back and being 1 vs. 7 is not fun in any way whatsoever. Humans are NOT made of liquid metal.

But really, paintball was a blast, the welts and bruises are already starting to fade away. And NO I won't wear makeup for the wedding if my chin shot doesn't disappear, mega lame!

Later that evening we had a big crew to eat Goodwood BBQ, play poker, shoot nerf basketball, make fun of my Kirby Puckett shrine, play foosball on the deck, and make gross jokes about the playing cards that Seth brought. Adam ended up taking the whole pot in our winner takes all Texas Hold 'em tourney with 12 people.

We ended up devouring about 3/4 gallon each of beans and smashed potatoes along with stuffing in 4 pounds of chicken, pork, beef. I made sure to keep fan going and the doors open just in case any aftershocks took place.

And apparently we must not have partied hard enough, because Mom and Katie both came over and couldn't tell there had been a party because the place was all cleaned up. I'm disappointed in us all! I will remember that in planning the next party though.

So the wedding day will be here before we all know it. Katie and I have been running around taking care of the little things.

We got the marriage license last week at the Ada County Courthouse. Kinda need that!

We finally decided to go to San Diego for the honeymoon, got the plane tickets all purchased and already starting to look around at things to do while we're there. I can't believe how expensive hotel rooms can be. Since Mom stayed at Hotel del Coronado, we looked into that, but it is really expensive. I think maybe we can look at some nice padded park benches or some really grassy areas in the park to sleep (haven't exactly run this by Katie yet... but I'm in charge of planning the honeymoon so she should be fine with it).

I had a Saturday morning battle with a wood chipper, trying to clean out the two and a half years of tree and bush growth that I had been collecting (don't ask me why, maybe I was trying to build a natural raccoon sanctuary). Let's just say that we both got a few punches in on each other. Hopefully everything will be healed up by the wedding.

We have been working really hard to get the house cleaned up for the Bachelor Party (I know, what's the point, right), and having other company over. But mainly its to make sure we will have room for Katie's stuff when she moves in. Its amazing how much junk I can accumulate.

I still have all my troll dolls and spelling bee certificates of participation, how can I throw that stuff away! Also found my old high school science fair project about finding the ideal angle of trajectory of a thrown baseball to maximize the distance thrown. What would a science fair project be if you couldn't relate it to sports? And if someone could talk to Katie and tell her that having my Wii box up on the plant shelves is a perfectly cool decoration, I would appreciate it. When you spend a month trying to find that box in a store, you ought to be able to show it off. At least my nerf basketball hoop is still up, its the only thing I have that Katie can't reach standing on a chair, so there is a pretty good chance it might stay up for a while.

Katie and I were both able to fly back to Minneapolis and celebrate Mark and Jen's wedding with them on June 7, 2008. I was honored to be the best man in the wedding, and we really had a great time. We started off the weekend by seeing a Twins game with Tim and Brenda and the family and Chad as soon as I got off the plane and took the light rail to the Metrodome.

It was a weekend full of rain of the torrential type that I remember fondly, but it cleared up for the wedding on Saturday.

Mark and Jen up at altar during wedding

So after a day of wedding and rocking out at the reception, we got to spend our last day in town with Tahnee, Mom, and Greg. We visited Tahnee's new apartment where I was able to take a picture with a Math trophy that somehow made its way into my hands from the super secure math trophy vault at the high school. I couldn't help but to pose with the trophy in my ultra serious math geek pose with trophy in perfect Renville County Farmer newspaper front page formation. And yeah, there is a magical rabbit on top of that trophy, we don't mess around with our Mathletics at Mohall.

Crazy Rabbit mathletics trophy

Tahnee's apartment is close to Lake Harriet so we all took a walk to the lake and also took a ride on the Linden Hills Station cable car.
Linden Hills Station trolley

All of us inside the Trolley

Lake Harriet

Then Katie, Tahnee, and I made a trip to check out the outdoor sculptures at the museum after Mom and Greg headed back to North Dakota. Somebody's giant hand made it into the picture, don't really know how that happened.

Giant hand holding a cherry