Well the holidays have once again come and past and it all seems a blur as it didn’t last nearly long enough.  This Christmas seemed even shorter than normal since Thanksgiving was later in November this year.  Of course, that also meant we didn’t get our tree until about the 7th of December and then it was at least another week until we got it decorated and the rest of the decorations up.  Obviously everyone was quite busy with work, although Mom did get a couple of extra days off at Christmas and Dad managed to get home in time for lunch on Christmas Eve.  New Year’s Eve Dad and Alex had to work and New Year’s Day Mom had to work so it was just like any other night, except for Sam who got invited over to an all night party at a friends house.

Gone are the days when Alex and Sam would wake us up early, in fact, this year they both threatened to sleep until 12pm (their normal waking time 😉).  The boys however, with a little bit of encouragement did manage to pull it together by 9am, which is pretty good since none of the rest of us was up before 8am.  One thing didn’t change and that was we could still get a big smile on their faces when they opened up their presents and found their video games.  Both Alex and Sam received the same game system – a Switch Lite with a different Pokemon game so they can share?  Apparently Pokemon is timeless for this generation.

Picking out the tree

Impromptu Christmas Eve lunch on the deck

Over the last couple of years we have taken on a new family tradition – The Feast of 7 Fishes… an Italian tradition of having seafood on Christmas Eve

Of course we never make it past 3 or 4 fishes: this year our usual Salmon filet (we grill 2 for leftovers). We also had New England Clam Chowder and Lobster Mac N Cheese

For some reason Sam decided he wanted to go see the NC Zoo.  Of course his original idea was that he could drive there by himself or maybe with a friend – keep in mind it’s 3 hours away and you have to drive through Raleigh to get there.  We finally convinced him that wasn’t a good idea and said we would take him.  We had always wanted to take the boys when they were little, but 6 hours in the car seemed like a lot.  So on Saturday the three of us jumped in the car and drove to the zoo (Alex opted to stay at home and yell at the Playstation).  Since it was early on a Saturday morning (before 10am) we let Sam drive through part of Raleigh before Dad took over the rest of the way.  We don’t know if it was the yelling from Mom and Dad because he failed to listen to our instructions to slow down or the realization that it was more difficult than he imagined, but Sam did say later that night that he would not be driving to the zoo by himself in the future.

The NC Zoo is the world’s largest natural habitat zoo which means that there is quite a bit of walking – we put in a little over 5 miles on the day.  There are also quite a few hills and lots of trees for shade.  We are sure the shade would be quite helpful in the summer but unfortunately Saturday was one of the coldest days so far this fall as it only was in the mid-50’s and windy all day.  Overall we did have a great time and we got some good photos.  Sam apparently took over 700 photos, none of which we have yet seen.  Mom probably took at least 500 while Dad probably just a 100 or so.

Glass domed desert – warmest place at the zoo that day.

At this point we were thankful to see this sign, we were all tired, cold and pictured out. Thankful that we only had about 3/4 mile to get back to the parking lot.

Not the kind of sign you really want to see at a zoo.

Mom is still mad she didn’t get credit for this idea.

So what does Dad do on his weekend off.  Cook Dinner, Mow the lawn (just to pick up the leaves) and build a TV cart for the deck.  We had an old TV (probably about 8 years old from what we can remember) that had been sitting out in the garage for at least the last year and we had some left over 4×4 posts from the garden project earlier this year.  Throw in an old set of heavy duty wheels and the last of the roofing material from the firewood shed and you have a TV stand that we can wheel out onto the deck.  Of course there was a few more bits and pieces that had to come together, but today we got to watch the Chiefs play football and part of the NY marathon later on during dinner.

For dinner on Friday, we had breakfast dinner but of course none of the boys managed to make it in time for dinner – they ate later.  Saturday was hamburgers on the grill and then on Sunday Beef Stroganoff… of course the boys don’t really like mushrooms (Sam actually picked them all out) and Alex had to pasta noodles because he didn’t want the egg noodles and then we didn’t add in the sour cream because of Sam’s lactose problem.  You can’t imagine how hard it is to get everyone together for dinner, much less find something that everyone will eat.

Our family pizza dinner finally came about this last weekend.  Dad made the homemade pizzas on the grill and everyone got to build their own.  We haven’t had homemade pizzas in a while because it was always so hard getting them off/on the grill, but we got a Pizza peel off of Amazon and it made it much easier. Choices were bacon, spicy sausage, pepperoni, mozzarella, sharp cheddar, onions, tomatoes, pineapple and mushrooms with their choice of traditional tomato sauce or pesto sauce. Not quite like what we got in Rome, but close.  They were probably a little more rustic as we couldn’t get them quite round, but everyone enjoyed them none the less.  We also had homemade apple pie which looked amazing and tasted Ok, but as Paul Hollywood would explain it had a ‘soggy bottom’ and a little too juicy.   We will have to give the apple pie another attempt, but with the addition of the pizza peel the pizzas are definitely going to be more of a regular thing around the house. 🍕 😊

Lis: pineapple, pesto, mozzarellas, bacon, sausage

Dad: tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, mozzarella, pesto

Alex: tomato sauce, pesto, mozzarella, bacon, sausage and a little pesto

Sam: bacon, sausage, pepperoni, tomato sauce, onions

Before baking and before the top crust

Final Apple Pie

The onset of colder temperatures and winter just a couple of months away, Mom’s worm farm that she started in the spring has a new home in the garage.   She has been on the internet watching fascinating videos on how to start a worm farm and created this beauty pictured below. The original worms have grown a little over the last couple of months, but Lis was not content with just a few worms and has been going around the yard and the creek/brook on the other side of the golf course in search of more worms.  Of course she enlisted Dad come over and help, but he got a little bored and started taking photos. 😁

Sam had his last soccer game of the season on Friday and it was Homecoming weekend as well, so Sam was quite busy.  The soccer game was at 4pm, then there was JV and Varsity football games after his game (they all play on the same field), plus it was Senior Night.  Sam of course didn’t play in the match because he is still under concussion protocol.  He has missed the last 4 games, but it wasn’t like he missed too much as the team hasn’t won a game this season.  The school jumped into a different league this year and they played a lot of bigger schools.  Hopefully next year will be better as it will be Sam’s senior year.  This coming week he has a swim meeting and goes to the Doctor to hopefully get the OK to swim.  Oh, and not to forget the Homecoming Dance was on Saturday night.  Sam wasn’t going to go at first because the girl he usually goes to the dances with wasn’t available, but then he changed his mind and went with a classmate?  As is typical Sam fashion he was very guarded with the details but we did learn that her name was Carolyn… and that’s about all we got.  Just to get the one photo took a whole day of harassment from Dad. 😁 On top of all this, Sam had to work on Saturday and Sunday.. luckily they were just short shifts.

While Sam was busy with Homecoming, Dad had the weekend off he did get some projects completed around the house that he had been working on the last few weeks.  He mowed the lawn on Friday, moved the table/chairs back out on the deck after putting a new coat of oil on them and finished upgrading the trailer (new coat of stain, handles on the side and put varnish on the base).  In addition, we finally got Mom’s birthday present put up.  She got a new floodlight for the front sidewalk and driveway.  We had to hook the new light up to the switch over the garage, which meant we had to go through the attic over the garage.  Obviously it was way too hot to do that in August and it was still pretty hot even Saturday but we managed to get it finished.  The light is one of the Ring Floodlights with the camera built-in.

Sam trying to sneak off before Mom could snap a photo

Sam and Carolyn

Patio Table

Base Deck with exterior varnish

New Handles to help get side rails off

New Ring Floodlight

View from Ring Doorbell

View from Ring Flood light

Today was the first Fall day, but not the first day of Fall.  After 3 record breaking days of heat this week – including one that hit 100° in Raleigh (the hottest day in October on record) we finally broke the heat wave today.  Today is going to be mostly cloudy and only about 75°F – a perfect day to get some small projects completed around the yard.

Kitty took full advantage of the fall weather and plopped herself down on the fuzzy blanket on the sofa for most of the morning.  Meanwhile, Sam was supposed to work from 10am – 2pm today but late last night traded shifts to work 3pm – 9pm instead.  Unfortunately for Dad, as you will see in a minute, the other guy didn’t show up to work this morning and Party City called Sam to come in.  So Sam jumped in the shower and headed out the door and in his haste backed into the Honda… how do you not see the car behind you in the driveway?  Luckily (??) the spare tire hit the hood first and Sam was able to stop.  Of course he does have a backup camera we installed on his car, but it only works if he turns it on.  On top of all this, the other guy finally made it into work after Sam was half way there, so now he is going back to work again at 3pm.  Alex, of course, was in bed watching FIFA throughout all of the chaos.

Of course, all of this threw our family ‘homemade pizza’ dinner night into disarray so it will hopefully now happen next week.  On a brighter note, Mom found her warm pajamas and winter bathrobe today.

Octavius sure does love some crickets…

Lis has had a great summer taking some great dragonfly and flower photos, some of which she posted on Facebook.  Today, however, she found a new friend a Lowe’s while we were there picking up a few things for the yard.  Dad also had our friendly turtle stop by after finishing the lawn today and throughout the summer we have had a humming bird visit us on the deck – it’s been a busy summer.

Hurricane Dorian blew through town and left us with about 6″ of rain, much less than previously forecasted, although it did seem like we got more wind than we were expecting.  All is well though as we only had a few downed limbs in the yard and 6″ of rain is nothing we can’t handle – although it did make the grass grow quite a bit.  After the storm, we spent most of the day cleaning up the yard and since we had moved a lot of the furniture on the deck around, it seemed like a good time to power wash the deck.  After all was done, it was time for some R&R.