…has been completed – a fence behind the basketball goal, to keep the ball from rolling down the hill in our front yard.

Wednesday Jeff was busy building a fence to keep the basketballs from rolling down the hill in the front yard, so he kept working on that instead of going to Clara’s golf match, but I got over there to see her in action. It wasn’t her best match, but she kept on plugging along.

Lindee & I rode in a cart together – it was nice having all of that catching up time together. It was National Rehab Week, so they had just received new caps at work that day. I thought they were so cute.

Tuesday night was opening night for our Performing Arts Series here in town, and I met Evelyn and her friend Teresa there to see Helen Welch and her presentation of The Women of Song. It was just great. She sang songs made famous by women from Ella Fitzgerald on. Very talented and a great way to kick off the season.

Monday when I was out and about I stopped by the Yarbroughs’ house to wish Mason a happy 14th birthday. He celebrated by taking the day off of school. Alas, the present I ordered him didn’t come in, so I stopped at Piggly Wiggly & got him some Dr Pepper ice cream to hold him over til it does :-). He was having a good day playing video games with June and just being lazy. I got this one picture of him. They had been to Duke to take in a football game on Saturday to celebrate.

Although Adam turned 15 last month, just this past Sunday Jeff & I got around to heading to Rock Hill after church to take him, his dad, and brother out to eat lunch to celebrate. His mom was working, & I hate she didn’t get to go, but I didn’t know when we’d have another chance. We got him a new cap for his present. My sister-in-law Renee’s nephew Dusty has started a company making duck calls, and I got Adam one of their hats. He seemed pleased – and it certainly went with the clothes he was already wearing 🙂

We had kind of a hard time finding a place that was open on Sundays, but we ended up at the Fiery Crab. None of us had ever eaten there before, but it was yummy – and when I mentioned to the waitress that we were celebrating Adam’s birthday, they came & sang to him, & brought him a basket of yummy hot sort of like doughnuts. Delicious and fun.

Saturday night was the Choraliers’ Spaghetti Supper fundraiser, and during the meal the Choraliers performed. They are so, so good. I got this picture while they were singing Bridge Over Troubled Water to open their program. That’s Clara on the third row, second from the right. And one of her besties, Emery, is right behind her with the dark hair.

They had one choreographed song, and of course just as I snapped the picture they turned around. Ha. But Clara’s one of the blondes, right in front of Emery with the dark hair.

From the grand finale in the Emerald City…

The characters were so much fun at the Land of Oz. We saw them several times around the park, and they never, ever broke character. So much fun.

When we got to the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West, I loved seeing this sign. When Clara was little after she watched the movie for the first time, she insisted on carrying a glass of water with her everywhere she went, in case she ran into the witch, so she could melt her. Such funny memories.

When we got to the Emerald City, the doorman who was there to keep people out or let them in was so entertaining. It was just such a fun place.

I have wanted to go to this event for years and years, ever since I first learned about it from an insert in an electric bill that came to the office at Baird Engineering for Joe’s cabin in the mountains near there. Yesterday Bennie Yarbrough – Addie’s mother-in-law – and I finally made it happen. We finally found the parking lot & rode the ski lift up to the Land of Oz on top of Beech Mountain. It was very cool – we were riding over mountain bike trails, and there were bikers riding right underneath us, but I never got a picture of those. The guys in front of us, though, had their bikes with them riding up the ski lift – the bikes were on a special holder in a sort of separate car in front of them. That was pretty neat seeing that, too.

Land of Oz was originally a theme park built on top of Beech Mountain, but only operated for a few years before arson destroyed a good part of it. The history of it is very interesting, but it is now open three weekends in the fall every year for people to come and go through Oz. This revival was actually started by the former employees who worked there when it was a theme park. I thought that was pretty cool. In the first part where you walked through, there were lots of signs about the park, including this one about the man who first came up with the idea.

One of my favorite parts – well, I had many favorite parts 🙂 – was the Gale House. You walked through the house upstairs, & it was all fixed up like an old farmhouse would have been at the time of the story. Then you walked through this part that was all windy and black lights that was the tornado, and then in the basement there was a complete replica of the house, with the rooms all destroyed like it had been through a tornado. It was just such a great idea.