I woke up this morning around 6:30 (that’s a guess) to let the dogs out. I wasn’t able to fully get back to a good, restful sleep after that, but I didn’t get up until about 8:30.
Mom went riding with Erin and Renee, telling me that she didn’t want Amanda to feel left out but that she never thought Amanda would be interested. Amanda made breakfast for those of us who were left behind, although the horse riders came in and ate some of the breakfast. Dad made a little extra.
When they left Dad, Adam and I shoveled horseshit for a bit, which didn’t take too long with the three of us working together on it. After that we helped Dad load a large round of hay onto the tractor so he could put it out in the field. The yard looks much different now, as my parents expanded the fenced-in area in the back and removed the fence (for now) in the side yard.
Amanda and I took a shower then headed to Roxboro to take care of a couple things. First off we went to an Advance Auto parts to pick up a tail light, as one of ours had burnt out. In the process we learned how to actually change the light as well. It wasn’t tough once we figured it out. After that we went to Wal-Mart. We were mainly going because Amanda hasn’t been able to find mates for any socks lately and she needed some socks this weekend. We also ended up picking up some (Duke) pajama pants since I’d forgotten to pack any of mine. Amanda had been cold in the house so she picked up a (Duke) sweatshirt. We also got a couple final stocking stuffers for her parents and some egg nog.
We came back and watched a little TV. I wanted to watch the Memphis-Georgetown game, but since we were out I only caught the last few minutes of it, and Memphis had gotten a nice little lead by then. We flipped around the TV and found the last half hour or so of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Then we put Elf on until Andra’s crew got here.
Obviously we were all excited to see Jackson.
We had spaghetti for dinner. Amanda had put a turkey in the oven but didn’t know there was a start button to make it start cooking. We found out later that it’s just not as simple as all that, because when whoever it was that found out that the turkey wasn’t being cooked turned it on (I think it was my mom) they didn’t do it right either and it wasn’t done until everyone was wingding down for the night.
Dad wanted us all to go to church together, so we did that at 5:00. Amanda and I rode with Andra, Josh and Jackson on the way there, but as I went to visit our grandparents’ graves, Adam was the flavor of the minute when we were all leaving so he and Renee rode back home with them.
Jackson was pretty funny during the service. During some of the parts where the priest, Father Bob, was singing, Jackson would sing out with “Da dee do,” or something to that effect.
Back home we waited for David and Axana to get here then we did some white elephant gifts. The main trading highlights were that Axana got a body pillow, Josh got a massage tool and made a trade with her, I got the same massage tool and made the trade with him, and since she was the first person to go she traded Josh’s massage thing to get her pillow back. It was pretty funny. After that we had our Dotsey Early Christmas and opened presents. Everyone got a shirt from Old Navy from me and Amanda, except for Dad, who got a hat as well (like my blue one, and it looked and fit him well) and mom, who got a purse. We got a chip and dip bowl from Adam and Renee; a framed John Quinn painting, Phase 10, and a few other things from my parents (sorry, I’m tired); and Andra got us a little tree-looking stand with picture frames hanging all off of it. Everyone was very thoughtful with their gift-giving. I gave Amanda the shirt she wanted so badly from Express and she gave me a sweater I’d seen at Express for Men with a big lion print on it. I’d seen it before and really liked it. She knows my taste well.
After that there was a general hanging-about and a little Guitar Hero III playing on Adam’s PlayStation 2. David and Axana left after a while, I played a bunch with Jackson and everyone started getting tired. Josh and I stayed up and messed around looking at things on the computer until he took Jackson to bed. Erin has been checking her MySpace and Facebook while I was typing all this.
Zach Dotsey
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