Charlotte and Rose's 6th Birthday

Rosie, Liz, Jim, Rachel
Ruth, Rose, Brooklyn (the dog), Elliott, Steve

 Liz and I had a fun, quick trip to Charlotte on 7/22 and were able to celebrate Rose's 6th birthday with the Hallmarks.  Also want to shout out to Larry and Georgia for making the trek from Asheville so that we could visit and have lunch together.  (FYI: Bennett was away at camp when the picture was taken.)  Many thanks to Ruth and Jim (and Copper) for hosting us - we had a restful and memorable visit.

Hurricane Debbie

We had about 5 inches of rain yesterday and a few trees down in the neighborhood.  A chainsaw made short work of the one which fell across the common driveway which give everyone access to Hwy 441.  Lost power early in the morning and fired up the generator once it was clear it wouldn't be restored too quickly.  Thought we would have to spend last night in the dark but it suddenly came back on about 8pm.

All the family is safe and none suffered any worse results than us.  Margie is in a cottage next door and experienced the same outage.  Pets are back to normal (2 outside cats).  Shannon's girls came over today and brought 3 baby squirrels which fell into their backyard. Looks like a few days taking care of them if they survive.  Still misty today and likely will wait the weekend to begin picking up the tree debris littering the yard.  The old golf cart will come in handy for that.

Hope everyone else is safe.