One Week Later, This & That

Seeing the response to News makes me wonder if 6.5 [ed. - 7.5] responses per word in the original post is a blogging record. Regardless, thanks everyone for the outpouring of love and support -- the idea that we might be parents in less than eight months still hasn't fully sunk in. For the first year of our marriage, every once in a while one of us would turn to the other and say, "We're married," because it didn't seem wholly real; now we're telling each other, "We're pregnant," with the same unreal feeling attached.

I just remembered this morning that my early rising at the Outer Banks (as opposed to here) is quite normal -- for some reason I've always gotten up earlier than usual when I'm down there. I don't remember getting up quite as early as I did this past week, but doing so did allow me to take plenty of sunrise photos, like so:


It was good seeing my family again, despite the occasional attendent stresses. As I explained to my brother-in-law, we often have a tendency to regress into how we interacted growing up, no matter how much we've grown/changed in the intervening years. One of the highlights of the trip was seeing my nieces and nephew -- I haven't seen one niece since Thanksgiving, and the others since last summer. That's a lot of growing up for the two youngest ones, who are 20 and 32 months (the oldest just turned 8). Here they are:

Leynie

Lauren

Hunter (& John)

My brother-in-law left Leynie's stroller behind, and didn't discover his error until he was too far away, so we now have our first hand-me-down baby item.

While Kathy and I had been to the Outer Banks many times, most everyone else was a first timer (my sister and brother-in-law had joined us out there once before). The house this year was way more decadent than any I'd ever stayed in before -- master suites for everyone, oceanfront with its own walk to the beach, a pool, hot tub, pool table, etc. ad infinitum (or so it seemed). Thanks Mom & Dad!

While I was gone, the Red Sox have taken over first place, but my limited access to internet hurt me in fantasy baseball. I didn't stay up to watch Game 7 of the Spurs and Pistons, but my one night of waking up at o-dark-hundred enabled me to watch the end of the replay. DC United won its game last weekend over the division leaders, but was off yesterday.

Perhaps the best part of the vacation was that I didn't think about work at all.