Wednesday evening we headed to Rock Hill High School to watch Charlie in the final race of his cross country season. It was hot, which made for some hard running on the hardest course they race on, but he did a good job.

As soon as Char finished running we headed to Sullivan Middle School to see Adam and the rest of the football team in action. I did manage to get this one sort of good photo of him on the sidelines.

Monday we spent the day at Chester Golf Club for the Girls Golf 5A Region 3 championships. When all was said and done, Mallory had finished third in the region with a schore of 78 (her lowest ever was 77, so we were vry proud) and made the All-Region team. Mal has played with several of these girls since she started playing in 7th grade, and it is just great fun to watch them improve every year. They’ll all be at the Upper State Championships next week.

It was Clara’s first year ever to play in the regional championships. The Clover team didn’t advance to the Upper State, so her season is over, but we were hugely proud of her improvement over the course of the year, too. Here they are with the scorecards after the match.

This week is National Wildlife Refuge Week, and the National Park Service asked people to go to their nearest national wildlife refuge and take a 5K hike. So Sunday after church Meg and I headed to Wadesboro. We stopped for a killer bbq lunch in Monroe, and then went on. Pee Dee is a beautiful place. It’s towards the coast from here, so flatter – I’d seen online that the hikes were described as “gentle.” And they really weren’t bad at all. Most of the refuge is for hunting and fishing, but there is a small corner that is strictly for hiking, so that’s where we stayed, needless to say. There was a tree down across the main road through the hiking area, so we couldn’t do all of the trails, but found enough short ones to add up to our 3.1 miles. Pretty cool water views – some lakes, some swamps.

There was a really nice nature trail with all kinds of signs explaining different things you might see, and we enjoyed seeing those. We found several of these small acorns on the trail that we learned about from this sign. Great afternoon.

Char missed most of the cross country season this year, due to quarantine, but we did get down to Newberry College to see him run on Saturday. Here is one of him in action.

And one afterwards with his proud mom & dad. Can you tell that the course was a little muddy that day? 🙂

Last week Meg & I went out to eat breakfast at a little coffee shop we like In Lowell – just across the state line in NC – and then on to George Poston Park to check out a couple of more of their beautiful trails. It was such a great day to be in the woods & check out some of the details of the forest floor.

Our house is kind of in between the high school, the golf course, and the soccer field, so Lindee & the girls stop by sometimes to change clothes for their different activities. Last week when they were here, Mallory had finished golf practice, and was then on her way back to the high school to take pictures of the volleyball game for the yearbook. They had just gotten their new yearbook staff sweatshirts (something I don’t ever remember getting when I was on the annual staff), so I got to see her in it before she headed out. It was the softest thing, and so pretty.

Last week the Clover High School girls’ golf team wound down, with the final regular season match at Tega Cay. And for the first time ever in a high school match, Mallory and Clara played in a foursome together. Lindee said they were not thrilled with that news at first, but it surely was fun for their grandparents to watch. That’s Mallory watching as Clara teed off on the first hole.

It was a fun day at the golf course when we played Rock Hill High. When we were getting a cart Henry Owen, who was Addie’s age and had grown up in our church, came in to get one also – his daughter is in middle school, but was playing for Rock Hill High just like Clara is doing. Also the girl that was playing #1 for Rock Hill against Mallory said she knew Charlie very well. Love that. I got this one picture of both of the teams before play started.

With all of the sports and activities that our grandchildren have been involved in, we have never had a football player before. We have never had one on any sort of junior pro or little league football team, but when the coach asked Adam to try out this year, he decided to give it a whirl. And he is absolutely loving it. Unfortunately, due to all of the quarantining with covid, this year they had to combine the 7th and 8th grade teams, and the 7th graders are getting virtually no playing time. He doesn’t seem too upset about that, though, and keeps hanging in there. He’s # 28.