Sam completed his last dive yesterday and is now a NAUI Worldwide Advanced and Nitrox certified scuba diver! Sam got in two dives yesterday and they were both only down to 77′ as the weather wasn’t ideal and he picked up a couple more shells for Mom and saw a 3′ mackerel as well. Sam is now able to go on a lot more dives with this new certification and hopefully to be able to see more shipwrecks and that elusive shark he has been wanting to see.

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Sam had another dive on Saturday, so it was another trip to the beach or in this case beaches for Mom and Dad. Sam has had an incredible summer for diving as he didn’t have any cancelled dives for weather this year – almost all the hurricanes went to the Gulf coast instead of up the Atlantic coast. If you include the quarry dives, we think he actually has had 7 total dives this summer with one more scheduled for October 20th. The 20th should be his last dive this year and it will be his Advanced Certification dive where he will be out from 6am until 3pm and going to a depth of at least 100′.

While Sam was diving, Mom and Dad went to Fort Macon State Park – their usual modus operandi. This time though, Dad went to the Fort to take a few photos and Mom went to find some seashells as she apparently doesn’t have enough yet. Unfortunately, tide was too high and there weren’t any seashells to be found… well at least not at this beach. Two beaches later at Pine Knolls beach, Mom was able to find a few so the trip wasn’t a total loss. Luckily for Mom, Sam also picked her up 3 new shells from the bottom of the ocean (about 65′ down). Sam said he would have had a fourth seashell, but it was apparently still inhabited.

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After a long day doing some work from home and then installing a new garbage disposer, Dad decided it would be a great night to watch a movie. Dinner was hamburgers on the grill for Dad and the boys, while Mom had some unusual pesto zucchini with grilled chicken. After dinner we watched the new Enola Holmes movie on Netflix out on the deck. Since it was a little chilly last night, at least by North Carolina standards, we made good use of the fire pit too. Of course not everything went off without a hitch, Dad thought he had all the gear he needed, but in fact he had to make several trips to the basement to find the right cables. So the movie didn’t actually start until around 8:30pm, which is almost our bed time. Then just when everything was almost ready, he spills the nacho cheese all over the deck.

Alex had to work tonight but we told him we would save him some dinner. On the menu, fettuccine Alfredo with grilled chicken. We also got to enjoy the lovely weather and a little surprise for dessert.

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Well it’s not great but it’s not bad either. Sam scored a 75 on his first project in Welding class. Sam did say there were other students in the 80’s and a couple in the 90s, but considering he mostly avoids any tools at home like they are the corona virus this is a pretty good start. 😃 Overall Sam has an A so far in Welding class and he has a B in his math class, with an A in English.

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October 3rd was one of those amazing Saturdays in Fall when everything was just perfect. It was a beautiful sunny day with the temp in the high 70’s and a great day to be lazy and enjoy the weather, relax on the deck or maybe even take a nap. Wait…. what the !#$&?? Apparently Mom didn’t get the memo because we had a few things to do before any of that relaxing could start. First up the deck needed to power washed. We, of course, needed to do this so we could then move the table to the other end of the deck and build the portable greenhouse for the jungle, aka the hibiscus, to survive the winter months. It was definitely not part of the original plan, but since the power washer was already out and the new surface cleaner Dad bought was working so well, we decided to go ahead and power wash the sidewalk and the driveway too. After that the yard still needed to be mowed, the Halloween decorations put up and Sam still wanted to put up his new computer mount and extra monitor. Hmmm…. just a walk in the park that lasted until about 7pm that night. Hopefully there will another perfect Saturday in the forecast over the next few weeks.

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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.