I haven't been posting to this journal as much lately because my focus has been on my Zimbabwe note set the last 2-3 weeks and so I've been posting over on the PMG side - go look if you actually want to see me ramble about that hyperinflation set some more.

I think I mentioned this before but I recently convinced my wife to let me violate the normal limits on my budget and use part of that Stimulus check to buy some of the coins I needed for my queen's beast sets - the last 2 Yales I needed and 4 of the White Lions.

At this point I've gotten all 6 of the first 7 coins for the sets I'm building and / or giving away and I have 8 for 4 sets.

While I have managed to talk Shandy into this, Ben has positively made out like a Bandit. We decided to get him a playset for the backyard so he can get to swing and have a slide as lockdown starts on it's 3rd month for us - we're about 58 days into our self-isolation now. We found out in the course of our shopping that my mother-in-law had been thinking about getting him one too, so we decided to combine the $300 we were considering spending with the $200 she chipped in and got him something nicer. We spent $25 to add a baby swing seat to it in place of the normal 2nd swing so Sam could swing too.

Building this was awful. It took two whole days to building this the other weekend and when it was over I was hurting... just. ouch.

So Ben is living high on the hog now between this and the sandpit (and 650 back breaking pounds of sand) that we bought for his birthday.

Then I decided to go and sweeten the pot this week...

Almost exactly a year ago I bought this four gun set of two single-shot pistols and two single-shot "break barrel" rifles as Ben's first nerf guns. They were $20 for the set so I figured it couldn't go too wrong. We also got some water guns at the time, because it's May in Texas.

These things weren't the best for shooting / fighting with but they were a good starting point. Ben was 3 and he wasn't physically strong enough to prime the rifles or guns yet.

Recently though he's demonstrated the ability to prime the rifles (but not yet the pistols) on his own and he's been showing more interest in playing with them and shooting at cans as target practice (what he calls "can practice."). Based on that I decided it was time to get him new rifles that are able to load more than one dart and fire faster. So I went looking and found these rotating-drum guns that have a 20 dart capacity and which you don't have to break open to load. At $20 each these were as much as the whole set I got before but it's still a great value IMO that we'll get a lot of fun with. I got two of them because you have to have more than one for fighting with. <.< It's necessary, ya'll!

In the course of doing this I found something very cool that I decided I wanted... It was almost as expensive as the other two combined but... who can say no to that!?! It's cool! A clip-loader with a bi-pod and a scope!!

My wife has been teasing me about this and my excitement over it for a week now... By her own admission though she's wanting to take it and play with it too though!

Once we get them in the mail and they wait the required 3 day mail quarantine period - assuming Ben isn't grounded for a lot of bad behaviors he's been exhibiting lately - we'll get these out.

I'm super excited to see how he responds to these and how excited I'm sure he's going to be and I'm excited to play with them with him.

Once I see what he responds to I may be buying a 3rd of the drum-loaders and / or a 2nd one of the sniper / assault rifle.