Amanda woke up and got up earlier than I did today, which is a Saturday rarity (though it happens every day throughout the week). I was originally slated to shoot some more soccer pictures for Taylor and Esther Hutchens, but Esther e-mailed me yesterday that it was being pushed back a week due to expected rain. I won’t be able to do that though, because we’ll be heading to Richlands for our first baby shower.
Anyhoo, Amanda set about updating the baby registry. She came upstairs, I guess to wake me up, and I convinced her to spend some quality time with me by pointing out that we had nothing particularly planned and she could work on the registry whenever she wanted. After that and showers I set about doing our taxes. Finally. I’ve been meaning to do them for the past couple months.
I used TaxACT to electronically file. They do a really good job in asking questions to help you optimize your return as well as explaining things you might not understand too well. Amanda and I will be getting a pretty decent bit back.
After I finished that we were going to go over to Anna and Barry Frazelle’s. Michael and I (and Lars, who I got in touch with on the way there) were going to go surfing and Amanda was going to maybe go walking with Anna or something, but when I talked to Barry he said Anna would probably be helping Kirsten study for most of the afternoon, so Amanda instead went to Lowe’s to pick up a new shower head.
The story on that is that when I was in Costa Rica Nick and Amy Warkentien’s water heater broke so they were taking showers over here in our downstairs shower. One time when Nick went to put the shower head back in place he broke it. He thought it snapped in, when in fact he was supposed to slide it into its holder. Not a big deal- it was old and not particularly nice. Plus, Amanda decided that she wanted to put a detachable shower head upstairs, so she got a new detachable one to go upstairs and we’re going to move the fixed one that is currently upstairs, downstairs.
At any rate, Michael, Lars and I, as I said, surfed today. It was the first time I’ve gone out since coming back from Costa. The two of them went out last week or so, but it was when my toe was injured. The toe is still a little tender, and, go figure, I hurt it a little putting on my bootie. There’s a divider between the big toe and the rest of the toes (like a ninja boot) and I stubbed it against that. Normally it wouldn’t have been anything, but like I said, it’s tender.
We all caught some pretty good waves and the water was (relatively) warm. I was comfortable out there the whole time and wasn’t bothered too much when I had to duck under the water. My hands were actually a little too warm in the gloves I think.
Lars got a chunk taken out of his board. He had ridden a very nice wave to shore and was coming back out. I think I’d taken one shortly after his, but I was in front of him as we were heading back out when a largish wave crashed in front of us. I tried to hold onto my board but it slipped out of my grasp and, I later found out, hit his board and put a bit of a hole in it. Michael and I saw him getting out of the water, but we figured he was just ready to get out. My board’s fine (the result of epoxy vs. fiberglass), and there’s really no blame in the whole deal and he’s wasn’t mad, but I told him I’d at least pay for a repair kit or help with a repair if it was something he couldn’t do himself.
There were only two points of surfing today that were negative (aside from damaging Lars’ board). The first is that the waves took a little getting used to. Usually when you drop in on a wave and go it’s a pretty smooth ride, but today when you got going it was a little riding over speed bumps. It threw me a few times, since it took some balance adjustment, but I got used to it after a few times. It was just odd, was all, since I’d never run into that and it’s not like the water was particularly choppy.
The other issue with today was crowding. The number of people wasn’t so bad in and of itself, but there were these two guys that we would keep paddling away from and they seemed to keep paddling right back over, usually right behind or in front of us. It was just annoying.
It was raining as Michael and I came in and de-wetsuited (which is when I learned about the major ding my board inflicted upon my friend’s board). I let Michael and Lars have the shower first and went to stand in the rain with my wetsuit half off, which was kind of a nice feeling. I would have just used that to rinse off, but it wasn’t raining hard enough for that. Lars then left and Michael and I talked to Anna a bit. Barry showed up for a brief second. Michael took off once Anna started talking about breast feeding.
Say a prayer for Hannah Frazelle. The girls going through about three kinds of unpleasant sick right now.
I got home in time to help Amanda make some white chili, which we were taking over to Nick and Amy’s. We were one of several couples who offered to fix and take dinner to them while they settle into the schedule of early parenthood. I diced onions without crying and then chopped up the chicken while Amanda did the bulk of the work.
We took that to them, ate then baked some cookie while just hanging out. They just finished feeding Eli when we got over there and he was out pretty much the entire time we were there. Marilyn Cuthbert, Amy’s mom, was gone until a few minutes before we left. She’d gone to Wal-Mart to pick up a bunch of stuff then missed the turn off of I-40 to get back home.
Amanda and I brought Bruce with us, and when we first got to the Warkentien house we didn’t notice that they had the back door open. Bruce noticed though, and he slipped out to go check out the neighbor’s yard. It took us a few minutes to find him, and we only did so because he trotted back over to us from a thicket between Nick and Amy’s backyard and their neighbor’s. I told him to go inside and he did so, just trotting along wagging his tail. He really seems to enjoy these little unchaperoned outdoor excursions.
While Eli napped on the couch I couldn’t help but think about how we’d have a little baby so soon ourselves. It’s great that Milly and Eli will be so close in age and that Nick and Amy live so close to us. I was imagining the kids being a few years old and kicking a ball out in their front yard.
Speaking of Mills (I’ve called her that a few times lately), she’s done all kinds of moving lately. I think I talked about that a few days ago, but it’s so cool how active she is and how large she’s getting in little Amanda’s giant belly.
When we got home I watched the end of the Pittsburgh-Villanova game. I was sort of pulling for Nova. The better they do the better Duke’s loss to them looks (though it was a terrible one). It was a really close game and they battled back and forth for the lead, but Nova was able to pull it off in the end.
Amanda and I watched an episode of Supernatural then she headed to bed, which is where I’ll be in just a few minutes.
Zach Dotsey
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