My cousin Susan’s daughter Allison, her husband Ross, and their children Lillian and Holden were in Rock Hill on their way to vacation at the Outer Banks with Ross’s family yesterday, and they stopped by to visit with Gran. It is SO hard to keep a 6-year-old still when he’s been cooped up in the car for hours on end, and it’s way past supper time. We put to Gran & then Sherri & I went out to eat pizza with the Meltzes. It was such a fun, fun visit.

Our computer has been having some issues, so I’m just now getting pictures downloaded from the golf tournament last Tuesday. Mallory had a good day, especially on the front nine. Proud of our girl!

Yesterday morning I picked my friend Kirkie up and we headed to Charlotte to take in the Sistine Chapel Exhibit at the Savona Warehouse there. It really was pretty amazing. There were real size replicas of all of Michelangelo’s paintings there – the very size he painted them. It said we were getting the same view he had when he was painting them, which was pretty incredible. He painted seven prophets from the Old Testament there, and each picture must have been about twelve feet tall. There was a small description by each painting, like this one about Jonah.

We also chose to take the audio tour, so we got tons of information about the paintings themselves, as well as a lot more background about the Biblical figures, and some history about the Renaissance era itself. So interesting. Alas, the picture I took of Jonah did not turn out, but this is the one I took of Zechariah. Each of the pictures of the prophets was maybe 12 feet tall – just these replicas were awe-inspiring. I cannot imagine what it must be like to see it in person. Such a great exhibit.

After we spent the day at the lake on Wednesday, Adam and Mason came back and spent the night with us. They were still fast asleep when I got up Thursday morning, which is when I got this picture. They told me later that they’d stayed up until 5 AM – no wonder they were still snoozing 🙂

Yesterday Jeff, Adam, Mason, & I headed out early to spend the day at the lake with Sherri and Gary. It was a perfect lazy lake day. Warm enough to swim, but with a little breeze blowing so it wasn’t burning up hot. The boys swam, rafted, played wiffle ball on the beach, and here, headed out to do a little fishing. Wonderful time.

Junior Golf started back up for Mallory this week, and we were there to watch her in action. The season opened up on Clover’s home course, and Mal had her best score ever for that course. It wasn’t as good as she wanted to do, naturally, but we were still proud.

It has been a long, long time since I had a grandchild here to help me in the kitchen. Saturday, though, Mason was here for a few hours while Addie, Lee, and June took in the Pride Festival in Rock Hill. We were celebrating Andrew’s birthday here for lunch on Sunday, so Mase was a good helper making the carrot cake 🙂

Yesterday Mallory, Clara, & I were off to the greater Hickory area, where we spent the morning touring the Henry River Mill Village. It is an old, sort of decrepit mill village that was where they filmed the scenes of District 12 in the Hunger Games movie. The house that was the Everdeens’ house in the movie is the one that’s on the tour, and the bedroom still has the furniture in it from when Katniss and Prim were in there in the movie. That was pretty cool.

We’d taken a picnic with us, so we found a part where there were picnic tables, and then went on down the road to explore the Bunker Hill Covered Bridge – one of only two left standing in North Carolina. Clara finds a covered bridge to be very creepy, but we all thought the history of it was very interesting. Great summer day.

We finished up our museum visit with a stroll through the beloved dinosaur exhibit. June & Mase weren’t as excited about it as they were when they were little, but it is still pretty cool.

June wanted to get one selfie of us before heading home. Such a fun day.