South Carolina Trip

We had a pretty good Nevada Day week! Unfortunately, nobody over here cares much for Nevada Day, but they still do the other half of the holiday: Trick-or-Treating!!!

Wednesday night I got home from work really early: ~5:30. We got the boys in their fireman’s costumes (compliments of a friend's birthday party over 8 months ago) and headed down our street. There are some bigger homes on our street with big yards, which made our house to minute ratio too low to meet the quota. We all piled in the car (yes, the car not the van) and went over to Dr. Lewis’ house. His family and a couple of ladies from work were over there handing out candy. I think we got about a quarter to a third of our candy form their house alone. From there we walked around their block and made much better time between houses. Clark and Cal had a great time! I think Cal was a little apprehensive about some of the decorations, but overall he was very brave.

When we got home we poured all our candy out on the table and organized it! That was probably one of the best activities of the night. We ended up with about 4 bags: chocolate, suckers, skittles/starburst, and the outcasts. We told the boys to eat up – and they did. Luckily they really liked the “outcast” bag. They eventually got tired of their candy and tired of being awake, also known as “sleepy”. They asked to go to bed, which request we gladly fulfilled.

Thursday Ruth took the boys to story hour. They had a good time at the library and before leaving picked out some more books and a couple of movies.

Friday was the annual Pecan Festival in Whiteville. It turns out that our house is where it all begins. All week people were manicuring the yard and setting up a huge tent (like a mini-circus) with enough chairs and tables under it for what looked like 300 people. There were several Southern Bells with their escorts and a few dignitaries that were presented to everybody on our front porch. After that they all ate a fried chicken lunch ($20) and headed off to a bunch of other festivities around the area.

To stay out of their way Ruth took the boys to the McPherson’s house to play. They had a good time and made it back in time to see some of what was going on and get lunch. When I came home for lunch the people had all gone, but Ruth had saved her lunch so we could eat together.

That night when I came home we all went out to Joe’s Barbeque. It was alright. The places we’d eaten in Memphis were better. Of course that’s to be expected. After that we went and picked up our van!! Wait, let me put that on it’s own line:

After that…we went and picked up our van!!! It ran fine all the way home.

Saturday I made some German pancakes and when we were all fed and ready to go we got in our van and drove down to Myrtle Beach, SC. It is quite the resort / tourist town. There was a HUGE miniature golf place every half mile on the way in and lots of resorts and hotels. We actually just wanted to go to the beach and had a hard time finding one. After a long time we found a public access parking lot that required that we pay. Besides that, when I got close enough to the beach to see what it looked like I saw hundreds of horses and riders enjoying a ride on the sand. I decided it would be inconvenient for the horses to have to dodge our frolicking kids, so we left before anybody else even got out of the van. We decided no matter where we went we’d probably need a few dollars cash to park so we went to a grocery story and used our debit card to get some. While we were parked I looked at the map and noticed a state park just south of the city so we decided to go there. It took a little while to find, but it looked really nice. When we got to the guard shack they told us it would be $8.00 and we only had $5.00. So, we decided to drive a little further south. As we did we saw signs for Surfside Beach, 1 mile! Perfect! One mile later we realized that it wasn’t a beach per say, but a town. We knew the beach was to the left so we just turned down the street and ended up in a nice beach-front neighborhood with beach access and a place to park! The beach there really couldn’t have been better for what we wanted. It was only about 40-50 feet long from the water to the end of the sand with miles of coastline on either side of us. There were hardly any people around and the boys had a great time playing in the sand and water. And we didn’t have to pay for parking.

We stayed for 2 and a half hours and when we got home we were all beat. Ruth vacuumed out the Buick and the van while I got the kids ready for bed and all the stuff from our excursion put away and cleaned up.

Church was good today. Clark seemed to enjoy primary – he was the only one there. Ruth and I took turns with Cal in the nursery. After church we went to choir practice while the boys played with the toys and ate some suckers Sister Vicky had given them. This evening Ruth made a yummy enchilada dish that’s put together like lasagna. Yum, it hit the spot.

Next week we are taking Shanna to the Neurologist at Duke. Hopefully that goes well.

That’s just about it from here. If you want more details about our lives you can probably find them on census.gov or google.

Love Lee, Ruth, Clark, Cal, Shanna, and Haley