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Milly Dotsey at the Aquarium

It was drizzly this morning, but that didn’t much matter because we were taking Milly to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher.  We were a few minutes late meeting the Frazelles at Starbucks, but we got there, got something to drink and eat, let Milly eat the majority of a muffin then headed off to Fort Fisher.  Kirsten rode with us and we followed Anna, Barry and Kirsten.  On the way there, Milly had her first trips to (or through) Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Fort Fisher.  This was my first trip to Fort Fisher too, and I’ve wanted to go there for a while.

When you first walk in there’s a large (stuffed?) alligator to greet you.  Milly wasn’t a fan of that, even when Barry pet it and knocked on it.  She got over any misgivings she had as soon as she saw the first tank with a bunch of fish in it, although she wouldn’t step on or over the drainage grate in front of it.

Milly liked looking at the fish, but she was even more excited about the birds (wrens?) that were walking around that area.  She chased a few around, but never did try to pet them.

When we got to the petting tank, which had horseshoe crabs, hermit crabs, regular crabs and starfish, I tried to get her to pet them.  I pet them myself then tried to put her hand on a horseshoe crab, but she just looked at me all serious-like and shook her head.

We saw a bunch of other stuff: seahorses, sharks, rays, giant lobsters.  Milly enjoyed most of it, and I think the Frazelles really like watching her reactions.  Anna and Barry paid for our tickets, though we told them we didn’t have them along just so they could pay for us.

Back at home, Milly ate and watched a little bit of Duke vs. Saint Louis with me before heading off to a nap.

The Duke game started at noon, but we didn’t get home until around 1:00.  Fortunately, I was recording it and got to watch the whole thing.  Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith had their normal great games and Miles Plumlee looked pretty good.  Andre Dawkins didn’t get much going, but apparently the Billikins are a good three point defending team, and with the game he was coming off of, the thought is that they keyed in on him.

The bench contributed a lot though.  Seth Curry and Josh Hairston had particularly good showings.

After the game, Amanda worked on presents while I played some Assassin’s Creed 2.  Once Milly got up, and she had a nice, long nap, we headed off to Target to pick up some more outside lights then went to the Frazelles’ for dinner and to see how Milly would do at making ginger bread cookies.

The plan with the ginger bread cookies is that Milly would help cut out some shapes with cookie cutters and then garnish them once they’ve been baked, using chocolate chips, M&Ms, etc.  Instead, Milly did help press out the dough and cut some shapes, but as soon as she tried an M&M, eating them was pretty much all she wanted to do.  It was pretty entertaining, and she probably had more chocolate tonight than she ever has before.

We didn’t get home and have Milly in bed until about 9:00, and she’ll be up early tomorrow for church, so it might be an interesting day.

Amanda and I spent a good bit of time figuring out Christmas plans.  As usual, we made our own plans and told people what those plans were, but in order for us to be able to spend time with both our families, those plans have changed.  That’s always fun.  What it boils down to is that we need to come up with a set tradition for every year that we can plan for, and make sure everyone sticks with it.  The main thing for us is that we want Milly to have Christmas morning in our own house, and we want to have time with both sets of grandparents.

Zach Dotsey