Ok, is this one of those made up holidays because we have never heard of this one before? We noticed a few days ago that people were posting on social media that is was National Daughters day and we thought what about National Son’s day? So we looked online and depending on who you believe it was September 27th, 28th, 29th or sometime in March?? Sounds like fake news to us but just to be safe here are a few of our favorite photos from the archives.

We had a fairly busy weekend as we drove up to Stony Creek, VA to have a covert, Covid connection with Nana and Gung Gung. Actually is wasn’t really covert but it was definitely Covid. Since we haven’t seen Nana since Christmas and Gung Gung in well over a year we decided to meet up at the half way point between Waynesboro and Greenville for a quick visit. We feasted on Popeye’s and Wendy’s for lunch while we enjoyed it at a picnic bench behind the cars…. obviously maintaining 6′ and wearing masks when not eating. We can just be hopeful that this whole pandemic mess will be over by the holidays, but as of right now it looks like we have a long ways to go.

Dad had a rare day off on Sunday so he decided to fix a family dinner – barbecue brisket, Mac n cheese and new potatoes. It was a late dinner for us because we waited for Alex to get home for work around 6:30pm. The weather was cloudy but very nice so we decided to eat out on the deck.

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One last update and I think we might be caught up from the Pandemic induced drought this year has brought. This one is just an update about Alex’s birthday present. One of Alex’s gift this year was a new custom built gaming desk. Of course the only catch was that it still wan’t anywhere close to be finished on his birthday. Today we finally put on the finishing touches and hooked it up in his room. We still have a couple of minor things to tweak but he is loving it so far. Just as an FYI – there are 2 desktops, 3 monitors and a PS4 installed. There are also multicolored LED lights that operate off a switch on the back side of the right hand tower and the room is set with multi-colored HUE lights that work off an app on his phone. If you ever wanted to induce epilepsy this might just be the place. 😃😃😃

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Well the defending World Champions, Kansas City Chiefs are 2-0 to start the season and we are pretty sure the reason why is that Dad has been sporting this nifty face mask on Game Days. Hopefully this proves to be true again this week, because it will probably be a pretty tough game against the Baltimore Ravens. Dad hasn’t tried this theory out yet with the Jayhawks, but we think it might just be safer to wait until basketball season begins anyway. 😃

Thanks to Aunt Laurie for sending these to us as they have been much better than our current ones we have been using.

So sometime around the 1st of August our trusty 10-15 year old refrigerator stopped cooling and was leaking around the ice maker. So we started looking for a new refrigerator at Best Buy but pretty much everything was 6-8 weeks out due to the pandemic… even Dad couldn’t get one and he works there 😄. We did finally find one that was only 3 weeks out so we went ahead and ordered it. Meanwhile we investigated the issue and thought that the ice build up in the freezer from the leaking water was keeping the door from closing properly, thus heating up the whole unit…. maybe this was a simple fix so we turned off the ice maker as we could always make ice the old fashioned way. After a couple of days of this fix we decided to cancel the order thinking everything was now OK. Well… this is 2020 so everything wasn’t OK. About 2-3 days before the original order would have been delivered, old Bessie gave up her compressor for good. Luckily and just by chance the Fayetville, NC store had one available the following day – don’t know how or why but we ordered it. The only catch was that we had to drive 4-5 hours roundtrip to pick it up… it was either that or wait about 4-6 weeks for a new one to be delivered. We, of course, decided to make the roundtrip. Keep in mind that it was right after the remnants of one of the hurricanes and it was really, really, really windy outside. Just so you know, driving in windy conditions and towing a large refrigerator in a trailer is no fun at all… longest trip ever. We finally got home and found the refrigerator wouldn’t fit in the kitchen without taking off the doors to the in-wall oven 😓 which was no easy task (it should have been but it wasn’t) and we are pretty sure that there were several 4 and some 7 letter words flying that afternoon. After what seemed like hours, we did finally get it in the kitchen and the doors back on the oven (even cleaned them up real nice).

The irony here is that we really thought that the chest freezer would go first – it was a few years older and sits in the garage all year… even when it’s 100° outside. The chest freezer also really needed to be defrosted and since we had quite a bit of food stocked up due to the pandemic we didn’t want to take any chances and ordered an upright freezer. Once again, just got lucky on this one too because Best Buy had been sold out for months when this one popped up on the website one day. It still took about 5 weeks to finally get it delivered (just a few days after we got the new refrigerator, but both the freezer and the refrigerator now have a new home.

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Well it’s official, the deck has turned into a jungle or maybe another way to say it is a Hawaiian paradise?? Mom spent much of one of her days off last week replanting the many Hibiscus plants on the deck. Many of them were developing brown leaves and she was worried that something was wrong. When she took them out of the old pots she found they were a little root bound, which of course may have been the problem. I hope she knows that these aren’t all going to fit in the house this winter?  😁

Sam has had a successful summer of dives this year and is now getting ready to take the advanced class which will allow him to use nitrox and dive to 150′ (Sept 13th). Sam is currently just using ‘air’ and can only dive to 60′. He completed 5 dives this year: 3 ocean dives and 2 dives at the Quarry to get him ready for the course. The dive shop (Rum Runners) teaches the advanced class and 3 dives is included in the price to make sure he is certified. Sam shifted to a larger tank on his last air dive and was able to easily handle the heavier tank and he has improved quite a bit in managing his breathing… he was getting too excited and using too much oxygen before. Usually when Sam goes on one of the ocean dives, Mom and Dad will spend the day at the beach waiting for him so below are some photos of Sam and some photos from the beach too.

This is brief explanation of the class…

https://www.padi.com/courses/enriched-air-diver

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Well August is the month of celebrations… Mom’s birthday on the 6th, Wedding Anniversary on the 12th and Alex’s birthday on the 15th. As the rest of the year has gone, so did August with very subdued celebrations. Everyone gets to pick their own dinner for their birthday so, Mom wanted grilled shrimp and Alex chose salmon. Of course, it is highly unlikely that everyone will like the same thing in this house, so Mom had pasta with vegetables for Alex’s birthday and the boys had steaks for Mom’s birthday. The Wedding Anniversary was a big one in terms of years – 25, but not the one that was planned. Instead of a surprise trip to Hawaii, Mom got a Anniversary cake with red lettering (?) and it was missing the ‘I’ in I Love You…. apparently you have to be very specific with the bakery. Hawaii will have to be postponed until travel is safe again – hopefully in the spring?? Anyway, Sam seemed pretty disappointed that he wasn’t going on the Anniversary trip, so maybe the boys might come with us.

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We didn’t do much for the 4th of July this year, everyone was tired and just wanted to relax. We didn’t even remember to put out the flag, even though we got it out the day before. We did, however, have some time to have a nice cookout. Green beans and tomatoes from the garden, hamburgers, turkey burgers and chicken breasts… a little something for everyone.

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So Father’s Day this year was also the last day of Dad’s vacation and the last thing he wanted to do was cook. Instead we used a gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings and everyone got a hamburger, except of course Mom who ordered a salad. Alex and Sam were nice enough to go get the carryout so Dad didn’t even have to leave the house. Speaking of Alex and Sam, they continue to amaze us with their thoughtfulness when choosing cards for special occasions and writing just the perfect comment on the card… and the handwriting is amazing too. 😄😄😄 See photos below. For Father’s Day, Dad got a new pair of athletic shoes for work, a KU t-shirt and some KU face masks. Unfortunately the masks seem have to shrunk way too much and are now too small for his big head – it kind of looks like he is wearing a very small bikini top over his mouth.

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