Today June, Mason, and I went with my friend Sherry and her grandson Will to the Museum of York County, to the traveling summer exhibit – this year it’s Amazing Butterflies.  It really was so good.  June, and the boys, too, loved the bean bag toss game.

June got this picture of one of the butterflies on the Butterfly Porch. So pretty.

Yesterday we were back at the Y water park in Lake Wylie with our BIG group from church.  Clara was with us this time, and had a great time on the water slides – as did all the kids 🙂

Saturday morning Jeff & I headed to Burlington, NC, to watch Charlie compete in the Gold Cup Qualifying race. He had to make it to the main to qualify to race in the Southeast Regional Championships in Evans, GA, and he did that by coming in first in the second moto, so we were VERY excited and proud. Then in the main he got cut off and was in last plate coming around the first turn, but he fought back and caught up to come in third and win a trophy. That’s him right under the flag in this picture. Great racing.

He had quite the cheering section all weekend. Friday evening Zollie, Renee, & Cooper came to watch him race just in the regular races, and then Saturday for the Gold Cup Andy and Amy came down from Richmond, and Nate brought Mia and Daniel and came over from Holly Springs. It was just a great day. Got this picture just before we headed out of our racer with his Great Uncle Andy.

Friday evening Lindee & I headed into Charlotte for the twice-annual Restaurant Week. We have so much fun doing that every time, and love trying out new fancy places to eat – where chances are we would never eat otherwise. This time we visited Fahrenheit, the restaurant on the rooftop of the Hyatt Hotel downtown. It was wonderful! The appetizer I ordered was chorizo stuffed dates – they were wrapped in bacon. It was absolutely amazing. And that was the only dish I thought to take a picture of, but I also had salmon with a soy sauce topping of some kind that was delicious, and was served with a side of wasabi mashed cauliflower. Pretty amazing. And cheesecake for dessert. Yum.

We ate inside, but went to the outside bar to check out the views before we headed home. Gorgeous.

Fun day yesterday.  I had Charlie and Adam, and we, along with my friend Kirkie and four of her grandchildren, headed out to check out the Catawba Cultural Center.  It was just a small museum – a couple of rooms – but their pottery is amazing.  The lady working there said they had gotten their clay from the same pit for 5000 years.  How amazing is that?  This was one of my favorite pieces, a Rebekah jug.

After we finished up at the museum we checked out the walking trail from the center down to the Catawba River. The boys had so much fun playing in the creek along the way. That’s Kirkie’s grandson Paul on top of the log – you have to sort of look for Adam at the bottom of the picture 🙂

Adam loved helping build the fire every time we were ready to start cooking.

Got this picture of our crew just as we were getting ready to pull out and head home. What a great time we had.

This past weekend was the annual cousins campout with Uncle Zollie.  Unfortunately, Adam was the only one who was able to go, but we still had a wonderful time.  In years gone by we had been at Grayson Highlands, where Olivia was working, but this year we went to Hungry Mother, since that’s where she’s working now.  It was another beautiful park, although much different from Grayson Highlands.  One of the big differences was that there was a lake, so of course water activities were what we spent most of the day Saturday doing.  Here is Adam going off the diving board.  They also had a high dive, and he actually went off it – I was so proud! – but only once.  He said it was Absolutely Horrifying.  Anyway, I didn’t get a picture of that jump, but did get this shot of him turning a flip off the regular board.

And then Adam got to spend his first time in a kayak exploring the lake. As soon as I got in the canoe I fell out, so decided to sit this activity out on dry land. And take pictures instead 🙂

Yesterday afternoon I took June, Clara, Adam, & Mason to the library in Rock Hill, where they participated in a program about rocks and minerals.  They were all pretty fired up about it, and it was definitely a refresher course for me.  Here is the lady from York County Museum showing off some of the samples she’d brought with her to Clara and June.

They’d told the kids they could bring an interesting rock, if they had one, and the experts that were there would help them identify them. Here is Adam getting his rock examined by one of the guys who is a geology major at Clemson. His rock was an agate, I think he said.

Wednesday morning after we dropped June and Clara off at arts day camp Mason and I decided to take a couple of turns around the walking track in town before it got any hotter.  Mason is a lot faster than I am 🙂

Then that afternoon after rest time we worked on a science experiment – sort of showing how a lava lamp works. Here is June getting started by pouring oil in the bottle. It was fun.