After getting back from Virginia on Tuesday, we had the day off on Wednesday (sort of…), but Thursday we hit the road again for Sam’s Megalodon tooth dive off the coast of Southport, NC. Sam went on this dive in August of 2021 and he had a great time. He even came back with about a 6″ Megalodon tooth and some other bones, see post: https://the-payne-chronicles.com/2021/09/18/megladon-hunting/. Since then, he has been trying to go again, but due to weather issues and a mix-up on scheduling he hasn’t been able to make the trip. So when we looked at the weather forecast on Wednesday, we were excited because there was no rain in sight and sunny weather for both Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately, Thursday proved to be quite windy with 15-20 mph sustained wind that made for some big waves on the beach and the feeling of being sand blasted if you were sitting on the beach. Then around 5pm, we got the text saying that the dive on Friday morning was cancelled – turns out there was a pretty big Low pressure system off the coast and a small craft advisory was issued. So we will try to reschedule this dive for the 4th time, sometime in late August or early September. More than likely, we may have to put this off until next year because they are usually booked out pretty far and August/September have the most weather issues. We did end up staying Thursday night as we had already checked into the hotel. Friday morning, we went back to the beach for a few hours and it was a beautiful day with a low tide, which also meant a lot of shells on the beach. Mom and Sam must have decided that we were running low on seashells in the house because they brought back several more bags of shells. 😂

Saturday and Sunday, we finished placing the stepping stones to the shed and planting some grass seed around the yard. Our first round of planting grass seed didn’t go well, so we tried a different brand and hopefully we will get a much better result. Meanwhile, Sam has been nurturing his elephant ear/hosta bed all spring and his hard work has paid off as he found his largest elephant ear leaf so far – measuring 29″ in length! The hostas are coming along well too, but they are hard to see underneath all the elephant ears.

Since it’s Father’s Day, we thought we would leave you with a couple of Dad jokes… What’s Blue and not very heavy? Light blue. Why was the Hulk so good at gardening? He has a green thumb. Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom? The ‘P’ is silent. 😊

Since Dad has the week off, Mom and Dad decided to take a short trip up to DC as part of his Father’s Day present, so he could visit some of the museums. The National Air & Space museum and the National Gallery of Art are 2 of his favorite museums and he wanted to spend some time there and also visit the American Indian museum (the British Museum is still his favorite but that seemed a bit much 😊). Anyway, the trip started off fine as we had good luck with traffic as it was fairly light most of the way up to DC and we arrived pretty much right on time (4 hours from Clayton, NC). Unfortunately, the good luck stopped there… Unbeknownst to us, the Air & Space museum is under going a multi-year renovation and was limited to only guests with timed tickets. Of course, the tickets are free, but all were already given out for the day so we couldn’t even get into the museum. Part of the problem was that the front entryway is getting completely remodeled, so all the doors were closed, forcing everyone to use the back entrance. We are assuming this is probably a safety issue so they have to limit the number of people that visit. (https://airandspace.si.edu/newsroom/press-releases/national-air-and-space-museum-provides-update-renovation-project, https://airandspace.si.edu/about-transformation).

The next stop was the National Gallery of Art, specifically the Impressionist wing with some amazing Monet paintings. Unfortunately we ran into problems here too, as the museum found some mold in this wing of the building and had to shut down the entire section. They temporarily moved a couple of Monet’s smaller pieces downstairs but it was very limited and a little disappointing to say the least. There was a nice portrait on display from Da Vinci that was new and pretty interesting, but portraits aren’t really the most exciting works of art (https://www.nga.gov/visit/renovation-information.html). The last stop on the itinerary was the American Indian museum, but alas it too had most of the main exhibits closed. So overall the trip was a bust, but if nothing else, we did get our exercise for the day as we walked about 11 miles by the time we were done.

The good news was that since we were leaving much earlier than anticipated, we didn’t hit very much rush hour traffic and got back to the hotel by 5pm. We had a nice dinner at Olive Garden and made it over to Ikea and the outlet mall (which hasn’t been updated since we lived there!). The next day we took a slight detour and made it over to Harrisonburg, VA to visit a Lavender Farm that was very nice and had some friendly farm animals. We then drove over to Waynesboro to visit with Aunt Becky and Aunt Courtney (Nana was there too!) as they are making the final preparations for the move to Maryland in a couple of weeks.

Well the time has finally come to close the doors on Camp Waynesboro as Aunt Becky and Aunt Courtney will be moving to Maryland in a couple of weeks to be closer to Uncle Deke and the grandkids/cousins. It was nice that we had a chance to stop by this week for a quick lunch and a short visit during all the chaos of packing and to see everyone and take one last spin around Waynesboro. Mom even managed to sneak one last visit into Sharp Shopper and managed to do quite some damage ($83 worth 😂, perhaps the highlight of the trip). Anyway, we thought we would take a look back at some of the fun times we had over the years.

Have you ever had one of those projects that never seem to get finished or perhaps never even started? You know the one… something on your To Do list that always seems to be at the bottom of the list and is not really that important but something that you just want to finish. Well, Dad had two of them and they started about 10 years ago when Nana and Gung Gung moved back to Virginia from Greenville, NC. During the move, the decision was made that a couple of items weren’t going to make the cut and they entrusted those items to Dad.

The first one was a very large and heavy tool trunk that was David’s grandfathers’. His Grandfather built the trunk when he was an apprentice carpenter for the railroad (building/repairing passenger coaches) and this was his final project before he graduated to a full-fledged carpenter. The trunk even came with quite a few antique planes that he had used on the job (Dad used one of the planes to help build the kitchen table). The inside of the trunk was very intricate with a bunch of compartments for various tools. Since it was so big and heavy, it didn’t get moved much and it wasn’t very practical for every day tools. So after thinking about it for a while, Dad decided that maybe it should hold a different set of tools… something that he had a lot of and no place to store safely – his camera collection. The inside of the trunk was in good shape, although a little dirty, but the outside had a heavy duty black paint on the outside to protect it from all the elements… presumably something that was required back then when moving from one job site to another. Dad knew that Mom was not going to let that sit in the house, so he decided to refinish it and put some wheels on the bottom to easily maneuver. The refinishing took much longer than anticipated but was definitely worth it and it became a nice table for the Den. Although he stored all of his old camera gear in there, Dad never finished the inside, that is until a couple of weeks ago. It still needed a good cleaning and he also inserted some foam boards with grey felt into the compartments to help protect the cameras. He also re-organized all the cameras and lenses to make sense with the most used ones in the top compartments.

The second item was an antique silverware tray/box that Nana purchased while living in Scotland. Unfortunately, the way it was designed to hold silverware wasn’t very conducive to holding tools so it wasn’t used much and stayed in the basement until we moved to Clayton. Dad finally got around to removing the dividers and flocking (spray on felt material) a couple of weeks ago and it has now become a very functional place to store tablets and laptops. Dad lined the interior with some chipboard covered in a cotton ‘Tartan’ style fabric in deference to it’s heritage. The silverware box has an engraved label on the top dated June 15th 1912 as it was apparently a gift of some importance. After doing a little online research, Dad found out that the gentleman that received the silverware box was a Spirit Merchant and a Consul for Greece who lived and died in Glasow, Scotland and is actually listed in the Glascow Necropolis (cemetery) walking tour (https://www.glasgownecropolis.org/).

For Mother’s Day this year we had a lovely dinner for everyone, including shrimp and salmon with all the sides. We also had some humorous Mother’s Day cards – the dollar store never lets us down for these cards. 😊

Nana got a new computer as her old one was on it’s last legs, so we all chipped in to help with the cost. The new laptop is 17″ (old one was only 14″) and much faster and after a little bit of setup we got everything running for her. Alex and Sam chipped in and bought Mom the new rain barrel and all four us went down to Pawley Island, SC for a couple of days. We chose Pawley Island because it was suppose to have some good shelling, but alas there was almost none to be found. We did still have a great time as we spent most of the day at Huntington Beach State Park (https://southcarolinaparks.com/huntington-beach) which had a very nice beach and large salt marsh with turtles, alligators and lots of birds. Mom and Sam took a lot of photos! The next day we stopped at Home Depot in Mrytle Beach, SC (Mom found another tropical plant!) and then took off for Holden Beach, NC. Holden Beach has been our best location so far for shells and fossils and this trip we got some of our best fossils and Mom and Sam got to try out the new shell scooper she got for Christmas.

Since the rain barrel didn’t arrive until after Mother’s Day we didn’t get it installed until this last weekend. There was only a 40% chance of rain on Saturday with some possible scattered thunderstorms after 4pm, so Mom was anxious to get it installed. Well, as has been the case a lot lately, the weathermen blew that forecast as it poured for about 3 hours straight and dumped 2″ of rain on us in that time. The rain barrel is 60 gallons and was full within the first hour. Unfortunately we didn’t get a hose attached to the overflow valve so all the remaining water just dumped out the side. We dodged the bullet the rest of Memorial Weekend as most of the rain missed us. This week we hope to dry out and get that overflow hose attached.

May 5th was Gung Gung’s birthday, but do to everyone’s work schedule we celebrated it on Saturday the 4th. This was one of the rare year’s that Gung Gong was actually in town, so we brought out the big guns for dinner. Grilled Trout, Grilled Salmon and slider hamburgers. Of course, we had quite a few sides and 2 different kind of cakes for dessert with some homemade strawberry ice cream (strawberries were fresh from the Farmer’s Market). Everyone had a good time and we were all quite full. David received quite a few cards and a new backpack for traveling. Contrary to what one of the cards says – it’s not his 100th birthday! 😊

Well, we have been pretty busy the last few months, as we have been working on finishing up some projects around the house. As of right now, we only have about five things left on the To-Do list, three for later this year (wall molding in master bedroom, outdoor grill station and a antique door for shed – replacing the new one that was originally installed) and the other two projects will be next year (water cupboard for the outside hose and small wall to hide trash cans). Of course, all of our outside projects will have to get HOA approval, so we will need to make sure we have all the drawings completed and submitted before we start any of those. We also have a couple minor painting projects: the front door and the bathroom vanity in the master ensuite, as well as one small wall left in the main bedroom, but Mom will probably finish that in the next couple of weeks.

Mom and Sam have been working quite hard on the landscaping and gardens, but we won’t have an update/photos on those for at least a couple of more weeks, as we are waiting on some of the flowers to get bigger and bloom.

The downstairs living area also saw some improvements – new curtains in the living and dining areas and a new light to highlight the paintings in the living area which we will also show in a future post. Below are the photos from some of the recent projects we have completed.

Project 1: The last of the boob lights were finally replaced! The downstairs hallway and the stairway landing all got the same light fixture.

Project 2: Laundry room cabinets are finally finished. When we first moved in this was an empty room, with 2 sets of the wire shelves above the laundry units. We added the cabinets and the counter tops. The last piece was the ‘glass’ door that holds all the drinks (above the small fridge).

Project 3: Kitchen sink – this was a big project and we needed all hands on deck to finish this one. Because of the design of the island, the sink is a little smaller than normal. In addition, the old sink had a divider in the middle, which made it impossible to get large pots in the sink to clean. We replaced it with a new one which was quite a bit heavier and a huge upgrade to the old unit (also much more quiet!). We added and new faucet and an additional water filter w/spigot while we had everything disassembled.

Project 4: Window seat/bookcase in Master bedroom. We had a large area of the bedroom that wasn’t really being utilized, so we added a large window seat with a bookcase and a hidden 43″ TV. The window seat has 2 large compartments for storing extra blankets/junk, with the another large compartment that houses the TV. Since it’s under a set of double windows, it’s actually large enough to completely stretch out and take a nap. Nana, helped on this project as she made the very large cushion for top of the window seat and she altered all the curtains in the room. Finally, we will add some trim molding to the front of the window seat box, but we won’t do that until we work on the wall molding. FYI, the 6th photo is what the room looked like when we originally toured the house.

Project 5: Flashing for the side of the shed and gutters for the front/back of the shed. Mom will also be getting a rain barrel for Mother’s Day that we are going to put on the back side of the shed (side shown in photo).

Back in February, we took a trip to Hamptonville, NC to visit the Crooked Creek Highlands Farm. The farm is about 3 hours away, east towards Charlotte. We made a day trip out of it and stopped at the Ikea in Charlotte and grabbed a bite to eat on the way home. It turned out to be quite cold and windy, but we still had a good time. Sam and Mom took quite a few photos, while Dad and Alex spent time talking to the owner, who was quite a nice chap. The farm has been in the family for generations and now has cattle, ponies, chickens and goats. The cattle are quite friendly and they encourage you to go up and pet and comb them. They have 7 baby “coos” on the way this spring, so we may make another trip out in the fall to see all the new arrivals. Below are some of Mom’s photos from the trip.

https://www.crookedcreekhighlands.com

We had a very relaxing Easter Sunday this year 🐰, aside from the cooking and cleaning up 😊. The weather cooperated as well, as it was Sunny and 80° – a little warmer than usual. Even though the boys are much older, they still managed a visit from the Easter Bunny. Sam got a new Shark t-shirt and Alex received a huge tub of Starburst jellybeans (which he will be sharing). Mom also got into the act with a new hose wand. Dinner was roasted leg of lamb w/mint jelly, roasted potatoes, Mac & cheese, asparagus, peas and rolls. Nana also made a very nice easter cake for dessert. We hope everyone else had a lovely Easter and we should have some updated house photos in a few weeks as we are finishing up a few projects.