After an exhausting week of a vacation for Mom an Dad, which was actually a staycation involving house painting and yard work, Father’s Day arrived on Sunday. Sunday was also Sam’s belated birthday dinner so Nana came down on Saturday to help us celebrate. Dinner on Saturday, which Nana brought down with her from Waynesboro, was barbecue chicken, baked beans, couscous and brownies with ice cream. On Sunday Dad cooked Salmon on the grill while Mom opted for Old Bay steamed shrimp. Dad luckily made it in the house with the food right before the skies opened up and it started pouring as tropical storm Claudette was moving through town. We also had couscous, sliced tomatoes with birthday cake for dessert. The cake was from Harris Teeter and was unusual… something was definitely off with the icing so Mom will be taking that back and getting Sam a new cake on Monday.

For his birthday, Sam got his favorite gift of all – money! Dad meanwhile got a new pair of Nikes and a great Jayhawk – ‘Man Cave’ sign from Alex… believe it or not he actually found it at the beach in South Carolina a few weeks ago when he went down with Matt and Jeremy. The rest of the day on Sunday was mostly relaxing, Mom and Sam worked a little in the yard in the morning – trimming flowers before the rain and Dad and Sam worked a little after dinner on his new bookcases in the workshop. Alex had to work the early shift (7a-1p) so he spent the rest of the day napping and playing video games.

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Sam had an ocean dive on Sunday down in Morehead City. Overall it was a good day for diving but little else as it was cloudy and sprinkling most of the day. Mom and Dad went to the beach while Sam was diving but didn’t take any photos as it was just too cloudy. Mom did however manage to pick up some more shells, even though we have quite a few jars of them scattered around the house. Sam even picked her up a couple on the ocean floor, this time with no critters inside. Sam was, unfortunately, having camera difficulties, but did manage to get off a quick video at the beginning of the dive.

As mentioned in our previous post, Sam had a dive at Fantasy Lake in Raleigh. Unfortunately we forgot to include the photos from the dive…..

Sam had his second dive a few weekends ago and while he was diving at the quarry, Mom and Dad went to the historic Yates Mill park in Raleigh (https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/north-carolina/yates-mill-pond-trail). It was a nice day, but the park would probably be very pretty in the fall when the leaves are changing, so maybe we will make a trip back then. It was however apparently snake breeding season at the lake and we saw quite a few baby snakes slithering through the creek.

Sam did get some good practice time with the underwater camera so hopefully this weekend he can get some good shots on his ocean dive. There wasn’t much to take photos of at the quarry but Sam had been having a hard time working the controls on the camera.