Shootout at the JG Corral

Jack celebrated his 13th birthday with a real bang, except maybe actually it was more a ping.  He’s had an ongoing tradition of water gun battles with the boys as his birthday party for several years now.  Kinda perfect when you have a July birthday.

This year however, he decided to change it up and invite his friends over for a more-grown-up version of gun play called airsoft.  The bummer part is that his birthday is still in July (how many degrees Fahrenheit?) and you have to wear some layers of protection to have an airsoft battle or it hurts when you get shot. 

So we aimed for an evening party. 

Still, we had some sweaty kids.

Jack had spent a week or more getting the battle field ready.  Gary and I had recently cut branches along the pasture borders to make mowing a little less painful, so we mounded some of them up for a start to provide the warriors spots of cover in the wide open field.  He added junk from our neighbors’ house including lawn carts and rusty barrels.  He assembled huge cardboard stands as blinds and used any junk we had lying free, not limited to old patio furniture cushions and chaise lounges--basically anything that he could drag out and someone could use to hide behind.  He had turned my (finally) beautiful view from the kitchen sink into a junk yard.  I had to live with it for at least a week. 

Saturday finally came and kids started coming over around 6.  I fed them pizza and chips and they were in heaven it seemed with the unlimited access to icy cold Mountain Dew and Orange Crush. 

They had ice water out in the field but this represents the drinks consumed inside.  The angle of this picture doesn’t even begin to represent the sheer mass of the tower since you can’t tell the base alone was  16 cans.

After it was said and done, we’d gone through forty eight cans of soda.

 

Boys:  don’t do this can thing in college.

 

Quick quiz:  How many pizzas do you order for active, mostly-13 year olds?

Answer:  Six.  Plus, a whole big ice cream cake. 

 

After eating, they loosened up with a friendly, hold the friendly, game of tetherball and then it was time for war.

   

Yes, that’s an actual ghillie suit you see on Jack’s friend, Caleb, who you’ve met before. 

This, taken from Wiki:

A U.S. Army sniper wearing a ghillie suit

Safety considerations

Although highly effective, ghillie suits are impractical for many situations where camouflage is useful. They tend to be very heavy and hot. Even in moderate climates, the temperature inside of the ghillie suit can reach over 50 °C (120 °F).

 

Um, it was already practically 120 degrees just with the air temp.  See Jack’s shirt from before they even started really playing? 

 

So anywho, Caleb, what a trooper, wore his highly effective but probably impractical ghillie suit despite the heat and the others strapped on all their gear and they got right to the job at hand which was to, Team 1:  protect the President, and Team 2: Assassinate the President. 

I present to you, the President, aka Sauce’s brother, Ethan. 

So they headed out to the five-six? acre (point is…a lot of ground to cover) pasture to play and it appeared they had a good time.  Most importantly, the President survived.

They finally called it a night after midnight and this was the scene the next morning:

Guns and gear were everywhere, from the garage to the driveway to the screened porch,

Tents were at full capacity and yes, very helpful in keeping their stinky bodies out of my house,

If not the heap of shoes by the back door.

You only turn 13 once, right?  Anyway, fun party and Happy Birthday, Jack.