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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Yes, we are once again a LITTLE behind on updating the blog, so we thought we would start where we left off and try to add a couple more over the next couple of days.  Our last post was Sam’s birthday, so next up was Dad’s vacation.  Considering the pandemic was in full swing the only thing to do was work around the house as traveling was and still is mostly out of the question.  Dad had several smaller projects to work on but of course, Mom also had quite a few landscaping projects for us.  We cleaned up the front bed, created a nice shade garden by the firewood shed and cut down several large limbs…. the last and biggest of which was the video below.  All in all we got a lot done that week.  Of course it was no European vacation, but considering the circumstances we still had fun.

 

 

 

Sam’s 18th birthday was June 3rd and we celebrated it the way we have all the other holidays/celebrations so far this year… just the 4 of us at home with a nice dinner and a few presents.   Since it was a big milestone for Sam and we couldn’t have a party with his friends over, we decided to splurge a little on the gifts.  Sam got a new gaming desktop computer, keyboard and mouse and a new gaming chair from Nana and Gung Gung, who joined us for a Skype visit for the unveiling of the presents.  Sam was super excited about all the gifts as he had been asking for a new computer for a while and his current desk chair was pretty uncomfortable.  Alex helped him get it all set up and the two of them worked most of the night making sure everything was running OK and his games were loaded.  Of course we haven’t talked to him much since then as he has been on the computer playing games, but since he has been the most effected by the pandemic we figured he needed something new to keep him busy (Sam has probably only left the house a few times since this all began back in March).  We did get Microsoft Office loaded on his computer the other day so he doesn’t have to use Mom’s computer anymore to do his homework – he is taking an online English class at the community college this summer.

Hopefully we will be able to get somewhat back to normal before the next round of birthday/celeberations in August, but so far it doesn’t look to promising as the Covid cases in NC are moving in the wrong direction after we opened things back up last week. We were thinking about making a trip to the beach next week as Mom and Dad are both off during the middle of the week, but it looks like we might not get in the water as we just found out there is an invasive sea creature off of the North Carolina coast…. see article below.  Can this year get any crazier? 😁😁😁

 

https://www.wnct.com/local-news/officials-warn-swimmers-of-invasive-sea-creature/?fbclid=IwAR2SQqx67Tkr58lfkEq2adgorOtUFZGs8x5yXqUS4sg208TjDnW3wh9DL5k

We posted this on Facebook last week, but apparently the photos were loaded on our little blog, but our post here never went through…. so better late than never. 😉

Meanwhile, in the midst of all the chaos in the world right now, our ‘baby’ turns 18 years old! It’s hard to believe this little guy that we love so much is that old already but we are very proud of the man he has become and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for him.

Well Sam’s Junior year at JPII has almost come to an end as Finals start soon and his junior college (PCC – summer session) English class starts on Monday.   After being inducted into the National Honor Society earlier this year, Sam will finish the year as an Honor Roll student and we can’t be more proud of him, especially after having to transition to online learning halfway through this semester.  The online learning will however turn out to be a bonus though, as all PCC classes in the summer and fall will be online. If you would like to see the full list of recipients and all the categories here is a link to the JPII page with the announcement: https://jp2highschool.com/19-20awards/?fbclid=IwAR0LhJnNM6cHr-4-CxOZTDnnW44jEJc9DS6AVeSh9k2h2iij3NS43pwkwQQ

Although next year is not set in stone with everything going on, we know it will be another great year for him and we can’t wait to have a big graduation party for him.