The Full House: May/June 2016

I am going to do a little retroactive updating of the blog. In the end of May and the beginning of June the push was on to finish the treehouse enough to have a sleepover for Drew and Nick Eury's combined birthday party on the second weekend in June. We got pretty much everything ready so that they could have a sleepover in the treehouse. There were 7 boys who spent the night. The treehouse was still standing the next morning, so it survived for us to enjoy another day! We finished the laminate flooring, got the front door in, made a temporary back door (which is still there!), got most of the interior paneling up, the lights wired and installed and the bunk beds installed with their little mattresses. I will put a few pictures down below so you can see what it looks like.
Also at the end of May Dan took a business trip to Asheville, NC for a meeting with his company. While there he got to visit the Biltmore House and have a private tour and a catered dinner in what used to be the stable. It was very nice and the house is absolutely incredible. Opulent beyond imagination. It was a fun trip and nice that I could drive and didn't have to fly.
We went on a family camping adventure for Memorial Day weekend with the Bert and Bowman families. We camped at Morrow Mountain State Park near Albemarle, NC. It is a beautiful park and we stayed in one of the group campsites. It has an olympic sized swimming pool which we visited once when it was really warm out. They even sold ice cream there which was a nice bonus. The kids had fun riding their bikes all over the park and we even got a chance to get our kayaks in the water as we paddled across the lake and up the mouth of the uhwarrie river. We went on a hike up to the bottom of the dam that is just upstream of the park. It was really beautiful. We also found out that they had ice cream down at the boat launch. While we were eathing our ice cream we watching someone capsize the canoe they had just rented. He was wearing a life jacket so it wasn't a dangerous situation, just entertaining.
In the first week of June Cole graduated from Sycamore Lane Elementary School and is on to middle school. He was just happy to be on summer vacation. Also at the beginning of June Kinsey had her dance recital with Karen Gibson School of Dance. They have an annual dance recital in late May/early June each year which is usually about 4 hours long and jam packed with dance routines. Kinsey's classes had about 6 dances that she was included in and she enjoyed performing very much. Shortly thereafter she decided to turn in her dancing shoes for a pair of softball cleats.
At the end of May, Kinsey was selected to the 7 and 8 year old Babe Ruth all-star team from the local Optimist league. At the beginning of practice they were a rough group that was trying to figure out who to play where and struggling to adjust to the faster speed of the pitching machine for all-stars. Due to lack of local teams, they advanced straight to the NC State Championship tournament. They came together as practice went along and had a really good group of coaches. The tournament was in Henderson, NC and of course included the obligatory rain delays and cancellations due to summer thunderstorms. The Laurinburg Optimist team ended up going undefeated during pool play and getting the #1 seed. They won their first two games in the double elimination round, and then won again after their first loss to advance to the semifinals where they lost by 4 runs. All in all it was a very successful tournament and it was a launching pad for Kinsey to join a local travel team composed of most of the same players.
At the end of the month we took a trip to Charleston, SC to go to a wedding. Lizzie Stricklin was getting married to Dan Cooley and Shannon and I were invited. We decided to take the whole family and we stayed with Eric and Bethney Ward. It was a lot of fun catching up with them and the boys had fun playing together as well. When it was time for the wedding we left the kiddos playing at the pool and had ourselves a nice date night. The wedding was at a city park in Charleston that was absolutely gorgeous with an old planation home, live oaks with spanish moss, the whole works. The ceremony was nice and the reception was marvelous They had four artists there doing charactitures of the guest as a free party favor.
A good time was had by all, we were there with the Berts. We headed back home after a morning at the beach on the Isle of Palms on Sunday. That brought the very busy month of June to a close. Here some pictures of the good times.