For the third and final End of Summer Adventure of the week, today Mallory, Clara, and I, along with Meg and Little Hope, headed over to check out Goat Island Park in Cramerton. I’d seen the signs, but never been there before. It’s an island that has been turned into a small town park. We had a great day. Here are the girls walking over the old bridge to get to the park.
And checking out the canoe launch area.
Yesterday morning I took Mallory, June, and Clara to the church for their training, so they can start serving as acolytes on Sunday mornings. Here is June, on the right, practicing with her buddy Emma.
Mallory had golf practice and June had Meet the Teacher day, so it was just Clara and me who headed to Charlotte’s house for our final swim of the summer. Char’s granddaughter is here for a few days, and she & Clara always have so much fun together.
This kid does love a goofy face 😀
The last thing we did yesterday before we left the park was to spend some time on the playground – of course. The boys had brought some of their dinosaurs from home & had great fun playing with them when they got tired of climbing. June took my camera and kept herself entertained while the boys played by taking pictures of them. She did a good job!
Jeff has been saying all summer that he wanted to get the kids out playing some tennis. Yesterday, now that it’s the last week before school starts back, it finally happened with Charlie, Adam, & Mason. Charlie had to play left handed, of course, with his arm in a cast, but he still seemed to really enjoy it. Here e is doing a little hitting with Jeff.
By the time we got to the upstairs exhibits the boys were about done, but there was a great one of the meaningful and funny church signs that have appeared over the years in the area. I loved it!
We didn’t even notice it when we got there, but on the ground floor of the parking deck was this purple piano. The sign said whoever wanted to was welcome to play it, and so the boys certainly took advantage of that 🙂
Charlie and Adam were here today, and we celebrated with our End of the Summer Adventure. We ended up going into Charlotte to check out a museum we’d never been to before. I felt kind of bad, because we’d been planning on going hiking. With Charlie’s broken arm, though, I didn’t want to be doing anything where there was any possibility that he would fall – and the heat makes his arm itch like crazy, so we wanted to stay inside. So I picked this new place to check out sort of on the fly. I’m sure it wasn’t that great for them, but I absolutely loved it. It told the story of Charlotte and this area since the Civil War, and it really was SO well done. I really want to go back when I can spend more time checking it out. Lots of history of the textile mills in the area, which, since they are part of my family history, I always enjoy hearing about. 
There was sort of a mockup of downtown Charlotte during maybe the 1930’s, and a replica of a church. Big display about Billy Graham inside there, of course, but one of my favorite displays was this one of church funeral home fans. Talk about something out of my childhood. Loved it.
This was crazy! Saturday morning Jeff & I decided to drive over to Cramerton to try & find a yard sale where they were selling porch swings, which we are wanting to put on our back deck. No such luck finding that, but we did drive past this house that had zebras in the front yard! Just standing there munching grass. How wild is that?
Last night we were back on our Friday nights at BMX schedule, but this time instead of Charlie – the whole broken arm thing – we were watching Adam. He raced back when Charlie first started, but only for a little while, and then took some time off. He started back a couple of weeks ago, though, and has won every race he’s been in since. Last night was no exception. Here he is on the gate – far left, in the blue
And afterwards, with his first place trophy 🙂