Korey Atterberry’s Idle Chatter

It’s been quite some time, but we have a bunch of new Evan photos posted in the photo album. Everything in the “By Age” category from 15 months on is new.

Dusty’s parents came up to visit today, so we took Evan out to Tanner’s Orchard. Evan had a great time running around the playground, riding a pony, and helping us pick out a pumpkin.

They have U-pick pumpkins there, and it’s $5 for any pumpkin in the field. You take a wagon ride out into the field and head out from there. We wandered a few hundred yards and found a spot where they must dump their toxic waste. Casting all practicality aside, I focused on how much pumpkin I could get for my money.

My father-in-law and I ended up mostly rolling it back to the wagon and to the van. Upon returning home, we put it in the scale: 105lbs! I don’t know what we’re going to do with it, but this is America, and more is better!

Over the weekend my younger brother got married. Everything went very well and it was a nice occasion. Congratulations Nathan and Erin!

Well, the weather held off yesterday and despite fairly poor turnout we had a decent game of kickball. Nathan, Laura, Brent, Dan, Beth, and Larry showed up and we played for about an hour and a half.

We started by playing a few innings with two batters and five fielders. We played with a 1-strike starting count and counted a third-strike foul as an out (which meant a significant number of foul-outs). We didn’t allow walks (you could pass on any pitch with no penalty) and did allowing “bunting”. For the most part, those rules worked pretty well, but with only five fielders the outfielders did quite a bit of ball-chasing.

Our solution was to play an infield-only game. Any ball kicked in the air onto the outfield grass was an out. Any ball bouncing or rolling into the outfield was a ground-rule double. This made the game work great, even though I personally had a problem with my batting average then! Keeping all the play in the infield made the field easier to cover with our limited fielders and resulted in more people getting pegged by the ball!

Folks at work were expressing interest in playing again, so we’re going to try to put together another game in the near future. We’re also considering playing wiffleball, flag football, and other games from our youth. Any suggestions?

Last weekend, we decided to have a party at our house, since we had no other plans. It was the best time I’d had in quite some time- the weather was fantastic (which never happens for my parties) and despite extending the invitations only five days ahead of time we had 23 people show up. With turnout that high, I don’t think I’m going to bother planning ahead on parties any more!

Eric and April came down for most of the weekend, but Sunday was the main party. It wasn’t for my birthday, but Dusty surprised me with a cake. We had a small cookout, played some yard games, and watched all the kids play together. Afterwards, in an attempt to recapture a piece of our own childhoods, we put together an impromptu dodgeball game, as you can see in the pictures below. I have to apologize to Laura for the second picture! At least it seems I aimed below the waist…

After most folks left, Eric, Dave and I went down to the basement to record an audio commentary track for a DVD of some of our college experiences. We got Brad on the line via Skype and told some of our old stories to get them recorded for posterity. It turned out pretty entertaining, so we’ll have to show it next time the college guys get back together!

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, I’ve scheduled a time with friends and coworkers for reliving one of my favorite childhood activities: kickball!