Friday evening Jeff & I were in Fort Mill, at Catawba Ridge High School, for Clara’s final soccer game of her career. She says she is not playing next year. Choraliers takes up so much of her time, and she is getting more and more involved in ROTC, so she says she just won’t have time for soccer. She played a great game – if it is, in fact, her last game ever, she definitely went out on a high note.

Lots of tears after the game, but she did let me take one final post-game picture of her before we all headed home.

Last Sunday I stopped by Nathan and Diane’s house to pick up some BBQ that Daniel sold as a troop fundraiser – it’s not Boy Scouts, and I cannot remember what it is called. The kids were all so cute – of course. Mia had gotten a new sort of kit in the mail, so she opened it & worked on it while I was there, so I could see it. It’s one of those balls where you don’t know what’s in them, and I had seen them for other kinds of dolls and animals and such, but this was a tiny food that you put together. It was SO CUTE. It had all of the ingredients that you squeezed into the tiny dishes they provided, and the tiniest little fruits to decorate it with – it even came with tweezers to pick them up. I think they told me it was a Gordon Ramsey recipe :-). Mia has always loved miniature things, and has always loved to cook, so this was just perfect for her 🙂

Then it was on to Winston-Salem to have supper with Andy & Amy & Liz while she was in town for her college class reunion. Boo had come over from Murrells Inlet just for the meal, and Zollie, Liz, and most importantly Heath had come down from Mount Airy and King, and it was such a special day. Needless to say, Heath stole the show 🙂

One last picture that I took on our boardwalk hike at Congaree National Park. This was one of our favorite spots. The reflection of the trees in that black swamp water just took my breath away. You really could barely tell where the trees stopped and the water started. It was such a beautiful, amazing place. I cannot wait to go back.

I dropped Mallory off in time for her to get ready to head to the baseball game she had tickets for that evening, and I ended up stopping in Rock Hill to catch the second half of Clara’s soccer game. Unfortunately I just missed her scoring – she plays midfield, so that doesn’t happen very often – but then I did get to see her play goalie, which also doesn’t happen very often :-). It was just a really good day all the way around.

Adam’s track meet last week was just the field events at the Top of the Rock Meet, between all of the high schools in Rock Hill. It was kind of weird, because the evening we were there was just the field events – track was the next day. So no runners anywhere, and way fewer people there to watch. I almost complete missed him in this picture – got mostly fence, cause I was trying to take it without standing up 🙂

I got this picture when he came over to chat with us, as he always does, after he was finished jumping. He hit 9′ again, which was his PR, so we were pretty happy about that.

…and as it turned out, it was his final track meet of the season. Jeff was in Indiana so missed watching him compete at York last week, when I made these pictures, but was home this past Wednesday for what was supposed to be the all-conference meet. But there was a bad storm in Rock Hill over the weekend & the kids there weren’t in school the first part of the week, so the meet was cancelled. Mase has had such a great season, and we expected him to place in the high jump for the whole county – and very possibly win – but the meet isn’t going to be rescheduled. His parents and grandparents were way more distraught about that than he was. He is playing AAU basketball now so is sort of ready to move on from track anyway. I did get this picture of him competing in the 4×400 relay last week.

One of his basketball coaches was there cheering him on at the high jump. It was fun watching them chatting together.

Last week I was at the stadium here in town to watch Clara and her JV Lady Blue Eagles take on Fort Mill in their soccer match. Clover lost 1-0, and Clara didn’t get in the game at all – she is still not playing like she did before her broken bone – but I did get this picture of her with her fellow player and good buddy Emery after the match.

A couple of weekends ago my buddies and I headed to the North Carolina mountains for a girls’ trip. It was a beautiful weekend. We stopped and had lunch at this establishment on the way to our B&B. It was originally the Empire Hotel in Canton, but now the only thing in it is the Southern Porch restaurant. The food was absolutely fabulous, and learning about the history of the place made it even more fun. Our table was right over the trap door that led down to the basement, where the speakeasy was located during Prohibition days. Very cool.

On our way home we made a quick stop at Lake Junaluska, and learned they were in the process of releasing some of the water from the lake. In all my years of going there I don’t remember ever going down to the bottom of the dam before, and it was pretty cool. Just a beautiful weekend all the way around.

It had been late when we checked into the hotel the night before, so I was very excited to notice when we got up the next morning that the hotel had a baseball theme to its decor, what with it being right next to the ballfield. There were pictures all over the lobby and hallways of players that were originally from Oklahoma. I thought that was so cool.

We spent a good part of the day that day touring the National Weather Service in Norman. Candice, the Schiele Museum employee who was the leader of this trip, is a meteorologist by training, and the other leader is finishing up her degree to literally be a rocket scientist – I cannot remember what the field was called – but this was a trip heavy on science, which was very different from anything I would have planned, and so much fun.

The National Weather Service is actually on the campus of University of Oklahoma, so we took time to drive around the campus before heading out. It was beautiful and impressive, as so many campuses are. Because they are such a big football school .

After we spent most of the day at the National Weather Service, we had a couple of hours at Science Museum Oklahoma. There were some great exhibits. Since we’d just been to the weather center, I especially enjoyed the cyclone exhibit. You could stick your hand in it to disrupt the cyclone, but then it didn’t take much time before the wind had it going again. Pretty cool.

Supper was at Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” and Grill. There were truck tailgates everywhere for folks to sit on – great photo op 🙂

That night we went on a boat tour down the canal in Oklahoma City. Our boat captain was very entertaining and it was a great way to end a special day.