Labor Day weekend

Fortunately for us,

and for the Outer Banks,

Hurricane Earl stayed mostly out to sea,

only sideswiping our coastline.

It caused some minor flooding and some power outages,

but the residents and beaches of our beautiful state

weathered through just fine.

If only it had brought us a little rain...

Not even one little drop.

It did, however, give us a bit of a dip in temperature.

Our Labor Day weekend was in the high 80's and low 90's.

Great time for some yard work!

This is on the west side of our house. 

We have wooded areas all over the property.

They are very beautiful, but there was a vine growing on this side

that was choking the trees and Joey continually found himself

tangled up in its leafy tentacles.

(Not so fun having to go and free the dog

in the dark, in the forest.

There are snakes out there, you know.)

Steven worked really hard cutting away the vine,

then pulling and tugging it free of the trees.

I took pictures, and Joey hung out and watched. :)

When the hard part was done, 

I helped Steven load the unwieldy foliage in the truck

and we spent a good part of Saturday, Sunday and Monday

raking and cleaning up this area.

It looks a lot better now.

On Saturday, we went thrift store shopping

and Maya picked out her Halloween costume.

She's going to be a goth girl.

Scott scored big, too.

He found an awesome video game playing chair.

We had a great dinner on Saturday night 

with our new friends and neighbors,

but on Sunday, Scott got to really break his new chair in.

He was Archie Bunker in the making.

He didn't get out of his pajamas all day

and he took over the remote control.

He watched countless episodes of 

Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius,

Avatar

and, much to everybody's chagrin,

Invader Zim.

(Zim drives us all a bit crazy, but Scott loves it.

Maya accidentally called it Invader Spiff one day,

mixing the characters between Zim and Calvin and Hobbes.

Now we all call Scott Invader Spiff.)

The only time he got out of his chair was to go to the bathroom

and to find something to eat.

Man, that kid can eat.

What will we do when he becomes a teen?

There will be no room to store all the food

he'll want to consume.

Not all of us hung out on the couch.

When I wasn't outside with Steven doing yard work,

I was cooking. 

On Sunday, I spent a good part of the day

preparing an early Thanksgiving feast.

We had apple pie, turkey, stuffing,

mashed potatoes and gravy.

Yum.

Maya also decided it was time to say good bye to her tail.

Here she is before the trim.

And here she is afterwards. 

I love this cut on her.

She's such a beautiful kid.

On Monday,

I forced Scott to take a shower 

and to put on some clean clothes.

(Moms...we can be so pushy about the strangest things.)

While his perfect chair sat vacant,

Maya tested it out.

She thought it worked great with the ottoman from the rocker.

We had a great Labor Day weekend.

We thought about Judi a lot on Monday

and wished we could have been celebrating her birthday with her.

Happy birthday, Gramma.

We miss you.

Now that the yard on the side of the house is cleaned up,

we will continue to move around to the back.

The temp fell to 82 last night

and Steven and I marveled at the fact that

it actually felt a bit cool.

(I think we're acclimating to this subtropical climate.)

Fall is coming.

I can't wait!