The end of summer - school is back in session!

Summer was filled with classes I was taking + baseball.  Lots and lots of baseballl. 
Mercer's All-Star team went to the state playoffs in Savannah.  We were representing "District 2" and were playing against other 8 other districts in the state of Georgia.  

There was a banquet on a Friday night.  The first of the tournament games started on Saturday morning.   There was a local (Savannah) college baseball coach that was the keynote speaker at the banquet.  After the speech, we were welcomed by the Chatham County Little League association who was the host for the Georgia tournament.  Finally, players and parents had dinner.  There was supposed to be a movie night in the park after dinner for the players, but it got rained out.  

Just as well - we had to check into our apartment for the week and get settled before the game in the morning.  We booked a place downtown above a storefront on Broughton Street - a few blocks from where we used to live.   

It had a lot of character (15' ceilings, single pane windows so you could hear everything outside - ha!).  It was cool to be back downtown.  The beauty, too, about being in an apartment is that we had a kitchen (we could save some $ by eating breakfasts or dinners in -- with an occassional restaurant outing).  We also had a washer/dryer - which was key to washing the uniform between games!  (We had to wash a team-mate's uniform b/c they didn't have laundry in their hotel.)

The first game went well.  "B"East Marietta played a team from Athens, GA and won 11-1 after 4 innings.  Mercer played a great game - went 3-3 with 2 doubles, a triple, 3 runs, scored 2 RBI's and pitched almost 2 innings of the 4.  He gave up 1 run and struck out 4. 

After grabbing a late lunch and re-grouping, we had some free time.   The first free night, we rode a ferry across the river to visit another team-member and family who were staying in the resort on Hutchinson Island.  They had a pool at that hotel and the family rented a cabana for us and a couple of other families they invited over to swim. 

The boys (and us adults) had a nice time hanging out (away from a baseball field) in the pool and hot tub!  The kids made s'mores at the resort and Isabella played with a fuzzy caterpillar for several hours while there.  (And we brought it back to the hotel with us / she played with it for several more days!)

Early the next morning, I took a rental car up to North Carolina to go to my Grandpa's service (as posted in the previous blog).  On the baseball front, Mercer's team played their 2nd game on Sunday.  They did not win this one.  They took a tough loss 15-3.  Mercer played a good game, however, going 2-3 with an RBI.  The "B"East Marietta team went to the Crab Shack for some seafood on their next free afternoon. 

The boys played again on Monday.  This time, they went up against Cartersville.  Unfortunately, they lost that game as well (11 to 1) - so their season came to an end.  (It was a double-elimination tournament).  I made it back on Monday for the end of the game.  The kids were a bit despondent that they didn't keep going, but honestly they had never gone this far and we were ALL proud of them!! 

They accomplished a lot!

Who knows?!  Now that we know what it's like / what our competition is like... maybe we'll get back to the state championship for the 12U playoffs and edge up on our state-wide rivals?!  (Of note - if they had gone on... they would have missed their first days of school (August 1st / 2nd) for the tournament was out-of-state on the 2nd!  And... the Little League World Series tournament went on all the way 'til August 22nd!  Works for kids who are in school up north who don't start 'til after Labor Day in September, but for those kids in the south who start in early August... they're missing school.  Todd found out that there are tutors, but still!)  

Since we did not know how long the boys would play in Savannah, we booked the entire week there ahead of time / decided that if the tournament was cut a little short, we would make a vacation out of the rest of the week -- which we did!

(Unfortunately, this is the week that we had planned to visit family along the east coast (NC and NJ)... so we were not able to visit them this summer.  :(     

One thing to note:  it is HOT in Savannah in July.  We would partake in a morning activity, then be wiped out much of the afternoon!  

We visited the cool SCAD bookstore across the street from Eichberg Hall (our architecture building.)  Our home-away-from-home is pictured behind Isabella here.    We also walked around the city for a bit -- back down to the river.  The giant freighter container ships were popular.  Every time one would pass, you would have to stop and look.  They're like mini cities when they are stacked high with the containers!

(In the background on this day, you can see the resort hotel across the river we went to earlier in the week.)

The kids (and we) had fun in the Savannah Sweets shop.  We spent a lot of time watching the candy maker begin the process of making salt-water taffy in this crazy machine, rolling it... coloring and flavoring it... then it would spin and eventually be wrapped.  It went through a ceiling-mounted conveyor system to another room in the candy store where it dropped into the taffy bin!  (it didn't hurt that every now and then the guy would toss some wrapped taffy out to the spectators... and also every now and then a piece of taffy would fall off of the conveyor belt/ a kid would snatch it up!)  :) 









We had the kids sample the pralines that we served at our wedding... which they did not like (pecan and brown sugar goodness).  We also bought a small pack of key lime cookies from a market so they could try this other treat served at our wedding.  (They liked the cookies more than the pralines.)




The kids also thought it was kind of cool "living" downtown.  We could go grab breakfast at the bakery the next block over to bring back up to our apartment.  (Here, Isabella is decorating their wall while we wait on our order.)  Loved her drawing!

And - below - another of her drawing creations... in "3D."












Isabella had a meltdown at one of Mercer's games... she insisted that we were only in Savannah to celebrate Mercer... that he was so good and she was not.  :(   We intentionally tried to include things that we thought she would like to do, but - I don't know if it mattered.  Even after the trip she kept saying our whole trip to Savannah was just for Mercer.  














But - while we were there (for Isabella), we went to a nearby nature preserve.  There were snakes in cages that she watched.  A naturalist even pulled a turtle out of a tank so she could look at and touch it.

There were rescue owls, eagles and a rescue bobcat.










My favorite thing (which I am reminded by this picture on the boardwalk) was when we all took a moment to be still.  


Stop walking.  

Listen.

Below the boardwalk were tiny crabs... thousands and thousands of them. They were walking around and making clicking noises while the tide was low.  It was a little creepy to know all of this was milling about underneath you, but cool at the same time.

Another thing that was creepy / cool....these turtles in the algae at the pond!  Sometimes all you would see would be their heads above water... they almost looked like water snakes swimming with their heads above water.  

This pond was FULL of wildlife.  There were (loud) nesting trees and lots of these birds milling around.

Aaah... air conditioning. We spent a little time in this room just soaking in some cold air and visiting the lone wolf... who clearly needed a pack to roam with~

Here's a cool (abandoned) fire tower on the property of the nature preserve.... it would be idyllic to set watch from that perch and overlook the marsh (as seen behind Mercer in the picture above!)  

We hit the beach out at Tybee Island a couple of times.   We saw dolphins in the water as well as those giant tanker ships. (As seen in the background of one of the pictures.)  We played in the water.  We dug in the sand.  Isabella met a friend too.   Isabella and Todd played cards while Mercer and I went to explore the boardwalk at Tybee + the tacky shops in the little downtown area.  In addition to the beach, we had a couple of nature outings as well.

Our other nature trip was to go on a Dolphin boat tour.  Isabella chose this for our family -  Captain Derek's Dolphin Adventure - instead of a (smelly) horse and carriage ride through downtown.

GREAT CHOICE!  They guarantee that we would see dolphins... and we did!  We saw several "pods."

In fact, one of these photos that Todd took caught a dolphin jumping clear out of the water!!  (Look hard!)

It was fascinating... and well worth the money!  We had a great time and would recommend it to others.  There was also some other beautiful scenery seen on the tour including this abandoned lighthouse.

I went to Tybee early on our last day to see one sunset from the beach.

We were in no hurry to leave Savannah the next day.  We took the kids to Bonaventure cemetery.  Strange, yes, but... it's such a pretty place.  We looked up the "famous" sites to see in Bonaventure.  Bird Girl has been removed.  We found Gracie.  And - we weren't even thinking about this, but Johnny Mercer was buried there.   So, we found his plot / and multiple family plots surrounding it. 

While in Savannah, we had dinner with some friends who we went to college with.  They were telling us about an exhibit that SCAD had put on that was sort of Disney-ish.  While we waited on our turn to go in, we were looking through their year-by-year photos on a touch-screen monitor.  We found a photo of Todd on the baseball team! SCAD was celebrating 40 years and seriously went all-out on this exhibit.  


There were walls that moved (in this front room the fireplace moved back which led to another room), animated videos that streamed on multiple walls, drawers that pulled out that had TVs in them and different things streaming on them.  After watching the story of the history of the school and the vision on the founder... Isabella was saying that she didn't want to go to her school anymore.  She wanted to go to this school.  

(Sure it looked fun... there were cartoons streaming on the walls!)  She almost pitched a fit / didn't understand why she couldn't go.  Their marketing worked on Isabella!  (These photos are from various websites that featured the exhibit / the renovation.)  In looking up the cost - it was ridiculously expensive to construct.  It was well-done!  






https://www.bizbash.com/experiential/media-gallery/21068581/savannah-college-of-art-and-design-40th-anniversary-scadstory

https://www.architectmagazine.com/project-gallery/savannah-college-of-art-and-designs-scadstory






We also went to a creative cafe (that specializes in kids crafts).  Isabella worked on a project while the rest of us had lunch, then we headed out of town.  Mercer was pretty bored!








We had promised Mercer a chance to get together with friends over the summer.  So, when we got back, we had a few boys come over to our house.  The idea was that they would play with beyblades for awhile (this was the toys they played with at Mercer's birthday) and we would head over to the pool that we were members of.  We ordered pizza at the pool, played catch for awhile, and then had a night swim.   (M had been wanting to order pizza at the pool / thought it was so cool& so novel!)

A couple of the boys came back to our house to spend the night.  The previous month, Mercer won a gift card to a candy shop on the square at our neighborhood putt-putt golf tournament.  He couldn't decide what to spend his bounty of $10 on... so he bought a mystery bag of treats.  The candy shop sells weird sodas too / there was a soda in the bag.  

M bought more soda.  When the boys came back to our house after the pool party, we had a "weird" soda tasting.  (I wouldn't let him buy puke-flavored.  The worst one was dirt-flavored.)  ha!    I was a little sad that NOW Mercer knows about this candy shop.  We have been avoiding taking the kids to it.  Oh well... cat's out of the bag!





We had breakfast the next morning and a silly string battle.  It was memorable and we're glad he had a little end-of-summer bash with some friends he had been wanting to get together with all summer.  :) 















There was something else on our list to tackle over the summer... another last hoo-rah:  going to Six Flags.  The kids earn a free pass for reading a certain number of books.  (Of course - the adults have to bring the kids and it's not cheap to take them on this "free" trip to the amusement park.  But, we sucked it up and went.  Honestly - the most enjoyable part was the water part of the park.... the water slides and tunnels as well as the big inner-tube rides in the water.   (It is pictured behind Isabella... and a professional photo off of the web is below.)   If you're not paying attention -- or even if you are paying attention, but you get caught while you're walking up all of the steps -- you may get completely dumped on by a giant bucket of water coming from the top!

We rode several roller coasters, of course, including the historic scream machine.  But, it was too rough for all of us.  The mindbender was probably the fastest / loopy one we rode.  Mercer didn't love it, but Isabella did.  They went on the ride again!  Yikes... we have a speed demon!  






We also rode the historic carousel.  I believe it is over 100 years old!

 Too cool for the carousel.

Mercer liked this Bat Man car.  











And then.... school started.  Like it or not - summer was OVER. :(


Here are our First Day of School shots!

Mercer is in 6th Grade -- in middle school.  (But in Marietta, there is a school JUST for 6th graders.  whew!)

Isabella is in 1st Grade -- she has also started going to a one-day-a-week "Mile" program.  She's in her regular 1st Grade class 4 days a week and spends 1 full day in a different classroom with other gifted children.  Should be interesting!























And...since school has started, we have been to at least 5 end-of-summer parties / end-of-summer pool parties.

1. One pool party was for baseball end-of-all-stars celebration + the cookout at the field + kick-ball game + presentations of player achievement afterwards.  

2. One pool party was at the house of one of the baseball players. A bunch of people from his school was there / a bunch of guys from the all-star team were there and... gulp... his 12 year old female cousin was there and she was MAJORLY flirting with Mercer.  Todd, the dad of the birthday boy and I took notice... it was so obvious and so shocking to see first-hand!





(There was a photo-booth at this player's house... here's a shot of the baseball moms.  Here's another photo of our family.  sort of! Mercer is hiding behind a catcher's mask.  ha!  Again - too cool for pictures.)

3.  One was at our pool where there was a cookout. They announced the end of the season is near / our pool will be closing mid-September.

4.  One was at the house of the youth leader at church for the youth group (including boys and girls (yikes!) from 6th - 12th grade that Mercer has just moved into. 

5.  One was with some friends from church.

It's Labor Day today.
I guess summer is OFFICIALLY over.........  Pools are closing for the season.  A new season has officially begun of life-as-normal in school, after school activities and back to the grind~

The first half of July was really really hard.....

Our summer ended up being very focused on baseball... and it went on much longer than we anticipated since Mercer's team advanced to the State playoffs.

Pretty much every single night, Mercer had practice.  The coach from last year's All-Star team (coach Alan) kept the boys together throughout the school year this past year on a tournament team called the Spikes and I would say that it certainly paid off.  The majority of the All-Star team was made up of boys from the Spikes with a couple of additional players.  They really do play pretty well together and it showed.  In addition to a lot of practice, there was a lot of fundraising so that the families could get some assistance with the cost of travelling and lodging in Savannah.  They came up with a new slogan called "B"East Marietta as seen on their new t-shirt (instead of East Marietta) as a part of this effort to promote the boys' team.

Because Mercer's team was advancing to the state tournament, we had a very short window to pop up for a quick visit to North Carolina just before the 4th of July holiday - when there was a few days without practice.   I am really glad we went - as my grandpa was not doing well health-wise.  We visited him and grandma in the nursing home several times.  Unfortunately, he didn't really seem to know that we were there as he slept a lot.    












Our visits to the nursing home that trip were focused on spending time with and supporting Grandma.  The kids had activity books, Isabella played with a moth that was in the sun room, and we played matching games in the garden.  

One day while up, we took a trip to the zoo - and there was a major highlight for Isabella:  the temporary butterfly house.  She and I spent at least 30 minutes in there while mom and Mercer sat it out in the muggy heat.  (We found them later inside the cafe at least drinking a cool drink.)  Mercer was not interested in going inside the butterfly house.  Isabella was forlorn to leave.  She could have stayed in there for hours. 

The blue morpho butterflies were so impressive.  Huge.  Isabella patiently sat waiting for one to land on her, but never did.  There were others that did, but these striking blue ones just fluttered by for an occasional photo-op.

We also visited Aunt Becky.  The past two times we have been there, Uncle Tony was asleep...unfortunately, we had not seen him in quite some time.  


















The kids and I made it back to Georgia in time for our local 4th of July parade.  We missed part of it by the time we finished walking up there, but the kids seemed OK with all that we saw.  Mercer really has taken a liking to corvettes..... hmmm...

After the parade, Mercer and I stayed and "served" for the youth program at our church helping to sell parking spaces for the festivities on the square.  We walked back up for fireworks later that evening.  

Sadly, both grandpa and Uncle Tony passed away the following week.  Neither have been well for quite some time.  They took their final breaths one day apart - July 10th and July 11th.  The small town of Liberty, NC lost very very good men.  Both were funny and brought a lot of light to others around them.  Both took pride in their land (Grandpa's was much more extensive of a farm with crops, large-scale chicken houses back in the day, and acres of cattle roaming "the back 40."   Becky and Tony raised acres of peonies and other flowers to sell to florists and at a farmers market when not driving a truck.)  Both were devoted husbands and (grand)fathers.


Although both were suffering in different ways, I - with heavy heart - went up to visit with family later that week.  (Todd and the kids were in Savannah, as Mercer's tournament had just started.)  


I was not able to make it there in time for Uncle Tony's service, but went and visited Aunt Becky the next day.  My cousin Jeff and his family had already left, but I visited with my cousin Josh, Dan and their friends. We shared a meal, some hugs and some laughs.

This photograph used on his service announcement was typical Tony.  He liked to make BBQ - and - looks like he was licking his fingers....something you're never supposed to do, but likely was unapologetic about it!  :) 

Aunt Becky said that the church in town was packed with people -- many of whom told funny stories about Tony.  One even told how he asked my grandpa, Poppy, for permission to marry her... which really got to her / choked her up.  

He was a unique Uncle (he would always pick on Todd for being a Yankee and he would pick on all of the rest of us for any number of things).  Our kids thought he was funny "Crazy Uncle Tony."  (in a good way, of course!)  Becky and Tony had just moved into Grandma and Poppy's house earlier in the year - selling their little 2 story log cabin just down the road.  I am sure that she did not intend to live in this house by herself, but I do hope it brings her some comfort to be in her childhood home.

I did make it to Grandpa's service in time.  It was a small graveside service.  It was hot.  Grandma, Uncle Mel, my mom and I stayed in the van until it was time to start the service.  Perhaps because it was hot, the service was brief; but it was very nice.  It included a 21 gun salute that was administered by 7 veterans.  One of the veterans presented a flag - the one that was on Grandpa's casket - to Grandma.  

Grandpa lived 94 long years.  

There is a bit of family that I haven't seen in awhile - my cousins Tracy and Mandy as well as their kids +  my uncles' families Erika, Lauren, Emma and Michael.  (We had a chance to get together with my Uncle Eddie and his wife, Rhonda, when we were up just before the 4th of July.)  It is the first time we have all come together in several years.  Each was mourning their loss. 


Melvin Cornell Nunn was a veteran of the Navy and worked for the State of North Carolina doing inspections (like his youngest son, Uncle Eddie, does now).  Some of my fondest memories are of Grandpa, however, at his Farm and Garden store - which is still there across from their house.  

It was fun to go in there as a kid and "explore" - there was every size nut, bolt and screw there -- even ginormous ones.  There were these barrels of seeds - red ones, yellow ones, white ones. I LOVED playing with the dried seeds... it was a sensory haven!  

This picture is the "retail" part of the store.














Sometimes in the back area - the warehouse - there were animals like kittens to play with.  Grandpa always impressed me - even into his 80's - throwing a 50 lb sack of feed over his shoulder and loading into someone's truck.

This picture is the "back-of-house" part of the store.

I also remember Grandma making lunch for the "boys" every day.  Sometimes I would run it across to them.  There was a little area off of this back warehouse where they had a cooler with cold cold sodas.  

I did a search for Liberty Farm and Garden online.  I came across a local photographer to the area who took pictures of rural places.  Here's one from his blog that has a glimpse of the inside of "the store."  

In rural areas of the country, general stores and farm supply stores act as social centers as well as retail outlets. I stopped by Liberty Farm and Garden in Liberty, North Carolina on a cold winter day to pick up some farm supplies. I was greeted by old friend and classmate Mike Foust on arrival and I found owner Melvin Nunn inside close to the stove.  (Photograph by Dan Routh, 2010)

It was definitely a social hub of this farming community. Grandpa in a rocking chair answering the phone or answering a question that someone had about farming.  He was a wealth of knowledge that people would come to seek advice.  

Often, there were men huddled around a heater in other chairs "sitting for a spell" -- sometimes talking -- sometimes not.  Just sitting.  It was a different way of life that I appreciated coming from the "city."   His oldest son, Uncle Mel, ran the store as Grandpa was aging, but was sold several years ago.  I am certain some of the same layers of dust are in the store from 20 years ago!  :)    I am sure Grandpa's wisdom and spirit still carries through the walls of the old farm and garden! 

The other photos were found online.  The rest of them came from Google Maps.  It's interesting how much you can find online.  Although I never really thought to take pictures of the store, I am glad that someone did!  



We have a tiny little farm and garden store here where we live.  I would much rather patronize them than the big chain stores.  In Grandpa's honor, I will continue to get my plants for our garden there and remember the times in his store in North Carolina every time I do.  

Both Grandpa and Uncle Tony will stay close to our hearts.