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.

Raised vegetable garden

Base of deck before work begins

Top half completed

Bottom Half almost planted

Workshop door before

Workshop door after

Inside workshop

Hose Caddy to match the raised garden design

This year we decided to concentrate on landscaping around the house and our biggest concern was really the backyard.  We had not really done anything to the backyard since we put on the deck a couple of years ago and it was in desperate need of some TLC.  First project was to revamp the raised vegetable garden by giving it some more height with some better dirt. The old garden was only about 4″ high and most of the plants, especially the tomato plants, need at least 6″ of good dirt.  Almost all the dirt in our area is heavily clay and sand and not very conducive for growing anything other than hydrangeas and azaleas and they like the acidic soil.  After finishing the project, along with building a new raised garden in the front yard around the post office box, we started on building a series of raised beds along the base of the deck.

On top of all this and sometime before finishing the beds along the deck we also replaced the door to the workshop.  The trim around the old door was rotten and because of this the door would not close properly – not to mention it was ugly.  The new door is now in place, but we still have to paint it the Torch Red to match the front doo.  Luckily we got everything wrapped up before it got too hot and Lis had all the new hydrangeas planted… the only catch was that we had to water them the rest of the summer to make sure they got a good start.  Hopefully next spring we will see some beautiful new hydrangeas as well as some small roses and climbing flowers she put in place… not to mention a few tulips we will be planting this fall.

Raised vegetable garden

Base of deck before work begins

Top half completed

Bottom Half almost planted

Workshop door before

Workshop door after

Inside workshop

Hose Caddy to match the raised garden design

Even though we had a nice birthday weekend with Nana and Gung Gung, we did still have another dinner for Lis and Alex on their birthdays… or at least close to it.  Lis had a nice Garlic Shrimp Zucchini Pasta as a surprise on her birthday.  Alex on the other hand requested Grilled Salmon and Chicken Alfredo – quite an unusual combination if we do say so, but what are birthdays for if not for indulging.  Alex of course did have a nice Blue Moon to go along with that as he is finally 21 years old.  Thankfully he still has not been out with his friends yet to celebrate but he did play a drinking game with them online the other night and probably regrets that decision.  Online drinking games – yes that is a thing. 🙂  We still would prefer that to having to worry about him getting home.

Simply put, Sam has too many shoes and too many bobble heads.  Sam does not have enough space in a very small closet for all his shoes so Dad had to build him a shoe rack.  The trick was that the only space he had left was the corner of the closet so had to build a vertical rack.  We are quite sure Sam has no idea who Imelda Marcos is but 13 shoes is really too much for a teenage boy.  That’s also not counting his baseball and soccer shoes which are too dirty and smelly to keep in the house.  🙂

The only thing that Sam has more of than shoes is Bobble heads – we have lost count how many at this point, but it’s enough that Dad had to build a second rack for his bookshelf.  Also, if you ask nicely and don’t scream at her, Alexa can turn those blue lights off.  🙂