A Day in My Life

For Memorial Day weekend, Bethany and I made the long trek up to South Dakota to visit her parents. We actually hadn’t made it up there since last August. I took Thursday and Friday off of work so that we could make it an even longer weekend. We left Thursday morning when Bethany got off of work after working for twelve hours. Needless to say, she slept for most of the ride. We made pretty good time on the eight hour drive by making it in only six and a half hours and we arrived mid-afternoon. We just bummed around the house for the rest of the day. It’s amazing how much a long drive can take it out of you.

Bethany has a dog at her parents house whose name is Sam. Sam, you should know, is a farm dog of farm dogs. He loves running around the farm, rolling around in mud, and eating whatever he happens to find. Because he is such a farm loving dog, he gets pretty dirty really fast. Bethany said that the last time she gave him a bath was when she was in high school. On Friday, Bethany decided that Sam needed to have a bath after all of these years. Let’s face it, he smelled. So she broke out the dog shampoo that was left from eight years ago and went to town on him while I just sat back and relaxed in the sun. Sam was such a sport. While I can’t say he really enjoyed the bath, he did put up with it without much of a struggle. After getting hosed off and shaking a bit, he did what any good farm dog would do, he walked right over to the driveway and rolled around in the dirt for a couple minutes. It was pretty much a taunt saying that no matter how clean you make me, you can’t change me.

Saturday we woke up a little earlier than we did the previous day, which really isn’t saying much, to head over to Aberdeen for some horse races. Aberdeen is the closest city to Eureka at about 70 miles away. We arrived at the track right about 1:00 on what was really a beautiful day. To our amazement, the tickets to get in were free and the program was only $3 so we decided to splurge for one. While we’re not gamblers, we did pick out a horse to root for each race. The first race started at 1:30 so we had plenty of time to scoop out the horses and have ours picked for the first race. What we didn’t realize after the first race was that it took 30 minutes before the next race would start. Thankfully, there were good concessions at the track for during the breaks. It was quite a fun day. What I didn’t realize though, was sitting in the same position all day puts the sun on the same side of me for the same amount of time. Unfortunately, this meant that the sun beat on me all day and gave me a nice sunburn on the left side of my neck and part of my face. Not a whole lot of fun let me tell you. Thankfully, the burn is about gone now and it doesn’t sting too much anymore.

We went to Bethany’s home church on Sunday morning at 9:00 which meant the earliest morning of the three. After church, we went back to the house and started to pack up our stuff. Along with all of our things, we also packed up a whole bunch of food. It’s hard to say no to a whole bunch of meat from a cattle farmer! That is some of the best meat you will ever have, hands down. After lunch, we loaded up the car and started the long trek back to Oakdale.

Just so you have an idea of what a good looking place South Dakota can be, here is a picture to mull over until you get your chance to visit. Be sure to check out all of my pictures from the weekend posted on my pictures page.

For those of you who were at Bethany and my wedding, you may have noticed that at that time, Bethany’s sister Rachel was currently pregnant. What you didn’t know, and frankly, neither did we at that time, was that Bethany’s other sister was also pregnant at the time. She ended up telling everyone that she was pregnant the very next day after our gift opening. Talk about adding more happiness onto excitement! She proceeded to tell us that she was due on May 15th, this coming Friday.

Well, Bethany and I were sitting at home last night just about ready to start heading to bed when the phone rang. She looked and me and said, “I bet you it is Erika and she had the baby.” I’m not kidding, she said that! She answered the phone with a “Hello Erika” and we knew there was going to be some good news. She told us that at 6:05, May 11, little Liv Isabel Klawiter was born!

Isn’t she so cute? Erika said that when she starts to cry, she has a little pouty lower lip. If you’re interested in the baby stats, she was 8 lbs 9 oz, 21 inches long. We are planning on heading down to St. Louis to visit everyone this coming June. Now we have one more reason to make it a high priority to get down there this summer. Before I was married, there were no little ones in my family. Now I am an uncle to two nieces and four nephews. Wow, what a change! I do have to say that all those little guys are a lot of fun and they have a lot of energy! Have you ever tried to keep up with a five year-old, you can’t do it. Now there is going to be one more little kid to try to keep up with, and I can’t wait to try.

Since owning my house, I have only had to make one improvement to the house which was replacing the garage door opener. My old one went out one morning before work – not a convenient time to say the least. Thankfully, one of the guys that works for my dad also works on garage doors on the side. He was able to come out rather quickly and replaced it with a used unit. Since I have already been here for two and a half years, I thought I was doing pretty well. That record was broken last weekend.

We had Bethany’s sister Rachel, her husband Paul, and their new baby Abram staying with us for a few days last week. I had noticed that the water heater had a small leak a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think that it was anything to be really worried about. I knew that we would have to start thinking about having it replaced fairly soon, but since it was only a small drip, we had some time. While they were staying with us, I mentioned to Paul that it had started to leak ever so slightly a little while ago and asked his opinion on it. He thought we should go take a look at it that night. It is a good thing we did! That thing had really started to leak. Now instead of a small drip, we had Niagara Falls on our hands! Well, not quite that bad, but it had grown significantly worse. He told me that it would have to be replaced, and soon. I gave a call to my friend Marc hoping he may know a plumber as I had never had to call one before. He pointed me towards Paul the Plumber. I left him a message that night asking if he would be available in the next day or two to replace our water heater. Paul called me the next morning and we set up a time for first thing Saturday morning.

Saturday rolled along and Paul showed up around 8:30 and jumped right to work. He had brought out a new water heater that he compared as being the Buick of water heaters. Since I’m not really a GM fan, I was a little skeptical right off the bat. He assured me that it was a step above anything that you would find at Menards, so he dove right in. He had the old one ripped out in no time at all. While doing the work, he found that the valve that controlled the water flow from the main wasn’t working properly so he put in a new value that would actually do what it was supposed to do. He also had to adjust the pipe length because the new heater was slightly taller than the old one. After some quick pipe cutting and soldering, it was ready to be installed. This also took him no time at all. When it was all said and done, he was here for about two hours. I was extremely grateful to Paul for coming on what is normally his day off. He was very pleasant and very knowledgeable. I now have no doubt who I’ll be calling for all my future plumbing needs.

I didn’t think to take a picture of what the old heater looked like. That would really have made for an interesting pic. However, I do have a picture of what our new “Buick” water heater looks like.