It was supposed to rain all day, but it was really very nice out.
Amanda woke up early this morning, sometime before 7:00, and couldn’t go back to sleep. Ironically, Milly slept in and didn’t wake up until I got her up at almost 8:30. Before that I went around the yard and took pictures of the banana spiders in our yard.
After everyone was up and moving around, Karen and Phil treated us to breakfast at Cracker Barrel. A number of people commented on how pretty Milly is.
After breakfast the girls went shopping for Kirsten Frazelle’s birthday (which is Tuesday) then went to visit the Frazelles while Phil and I stopped by Home Depot to get a couple extra sections of railing for the front porch. After that we spent most of the next few hours cutting and assembling the front porch. Our front porch revitalization is well underway.
I’ll admit, Phil did most of the work. We’ve got one side mostly up and I’ll work on putting the rest up, probably tomorrow. It’s frustrating though because the screws that hold the brackets into the posts have to go through metal in the post, but they don’t seem to go through it very well. Should be interesting. At any rate, it will be a vast improvement. The railing was pretty rotted and it generally took no more than two swings of a hammer to knock out any part of the railing. In fact, every time we hit something it seems one or two carpenter bees would fall out of the railings. They buzzed around looking for their homes, which Amanda said was kind of sad. It was, I suppose.
While we were doing all that I kept tabs on the Duke game. They were playing at Kansas, who is ranked 22. Kansas beat the Blue Devils pretty soundly. On top of that, Carolina beat ECU. Ah well.
Karen and Phil took off to Ginger Cox’s wedding and Amanda and I took off a little later to go to the Frazelles’ for Kirsten’s birthday and dinner. It was all of the Frazelles, us, Peggy and Earl Lemons and Barry’s parents, so a family thing. Oh yeah, and Michael joined us right before it was time to eat. Kirsten’s big present was tickets for her and Barry to see the Arctic Monkeys at The House of Blues. In Houston, Texas. Pretty cool.
Kirsten will also be officially done with school on Tuesday. She’s decided to drop out of high school and will start taking classes at Cape Fear Community College.
Anyway, dinner, as it always is at la Casa Frazelle, was fun. Milly behaved great, hardly crying at all. We even put her down to sleep there at her regular time so we could hang out a little longer and watch YouTube videos of popping zits and she did great. She even did fine when we brought her home and laid her back down in her crib. I mean, seriously, we are blessed to have such an easy-going baby.
I finally got my Rainbows back today. I’d left them at Anna and Barry’s last weekend. Amanda was supposed to pick them up for me the first time she went over there with Karen, and while she did get them out of the beach stroller she forgot them in the living room. I drove over there this evening without shoes because I was so looking forward to getting them back. In the meantime, I’ve either worn jeans with boots or some cheapo floppers that I got for Costa Rica. Definitely nice to get the real things back.
Zach Dotsey