We got to go to Ocean Isle Beach for Labor Day weekend, the Folk Festival was back in Greensboro, and we got a new roof.
This is the view of Ocean Isle Beach when crossing the bridge onto the island. There is only 1 way onto the island, and this is it. The girls got to leave school a bit early to beat the traffic, and we made it in time for dinner and the Friday afternoon music in the park. This time around, our family was to tired on Friday afternoon, we could barely put one foot in front of the other, so there wasn’t much dancing, but we still had a good time.
This time around, Rosie was really into something:
If you are viewing this from a phone, you might not be able to tell with great clarity, but that is Rosie on a boogie board. She did this for almost 7 hours on Saturday, and the same on Sunday. The waves were awesome, and Rosie was fearless. There were groups to the left and the right of slightly older kids, but Rosie still wanted her Dad out there to “tell her which waves to get.” I was happy to oblige, and give her that big push on the board to catch the perfect wave in. It was all smiles.
Mercy was almost all smiles this weekend.
I love this picture. Rosie is so happy and proud for an audience to watch her on the boogie board.
Though there interests are different, one place where the smiles are shared (almost every time), is the golf cart:
One evening I got to spend a little 1:1 time with Rosie and hop over to the ice cream place. It is hard to get that time with her now because when she gets home, Mercy always escalates and screams and demands attention, and Rosie is so busy with dance and friends, it seems like there are less moments with her. So, I jumped at the chance to take her for ice cream, and we saw this:
It wasn’t just 1 deer. We counted 9 of them:
Not too far away, we saw this little fox. It looked a few pounds bigger than a cat:
Finally, after a long, long drive home, when it seemed there were way too many potty breaks, and way too many “Are we there yet”, we got home. You know what these kids did when we pulled in the driveway?
They stayed in the car and played together. Whatever. They were smiling and laughing. Often these moments are the same: Rosie will be trying SO HARD to play with her little sister by getting her to do something, and Mercy will “play” by absolutely messing with her sister, and refusing to do what she says; Mercy smiles while doing the opposite. A bit mischievous, but I see what’s going on here.
Folky
The Folk Festival came to town this weekend. It has been in Greensboro for several years now. This is something we tried to figure out but couldn’t: how many years HAS this event been happening? 5? 7? We didn’t really know.
But, we got the chance to go downtown on Saturday night and meet up with our friends the Cores and the Lynams. Now that I look at it, I don’t think we got any good pictures of us together. Maybe I am running out of excitement to catch these moments for the blog as they happen?
It seemed like a good turnout.
We ran into Amelia and Matt.
Rosie got to meet up with a friend, Hunter, who is also our neighbor. It was fun, but there isn’t much to share about this. The music was ho-hum, but a fun atmosphere, and unfortunately, I didn’t get any of it on video.
A new roof
Our house is almost 70 years old. We have been in this house about 4 years, and one of the things that has been in need of work is the roof. We have these trees that allow mildew up there, and it was just showing its age. I was afraid it would spring a leak with any passing storm, and by then, the price would have ballooned quite a bit.
Like most things, pictures don’t do it justice. We tried twice to see if there was any hail damage, but our homeowners insurance denied it both times. The roof was around 20 years old, surely there was SOME hail damage during that time, right? I am not sure exactly how insurance makes their determinations about that kind of thing, but they didn’t see it that way.
Ugh, that image above looks terrible.
But, knowing that it had to be done because we plan on being in this house for a while, we researched a couple of roofing companies. The range of pricing was wild. However, we went with the company that had been around for a long time. They were a bit more expensive, but they said that if they found any damaged wood underneath, they would replace it was part of the price. Since I overanalyze everything and was confident they would find utter ruin, that spoke nicely to my concerns.
The weather was brutal on those workers, but they got it done in 1 day.
They worked hard for that money. It was tough to work from home that day, so I spent most of the day at the coffee shop. Unfortunately, Taylor had trainings all day, and had to endure the sound of hammers, and a barking dog all day.
The finished product looked great though. One less thing to worry about.