June 27th, 28th and 29th
Leaving our home of almost 32 years is one of those happy/sad moments. Having raised 3 daughters and enjoyed seeing their graduations from Herndon High and JMU, along with three beautiful weddings, and add the birth of 5 grandchildren is giving us lots and lots of memories to take with us.
Add also to that, wonderful neighbors, great friendships (including some in Maryland, too) and an incredible church family really leaves our hearts full and so grateful for the time we have spent with all of you.
We left our Stowe Rd. home late on Saturday, July 28th and spent the 28th, and 29th with Thad, Shelley and their sons in Bristow, VA. We enjoyed our R&R time with them; burgers on the grill, church on Sunday, and dinner at Blue Ridge Seafood Sunday night.
June 30th
We had a very quick and mostly painless closing on our Stowe Rd. home with Sharon Zareski and her attorney in Fairfax City. We then made one last trip to our "old house" and checked throughout to make sure everything was spotlessly clean (which is was!) for the new owners. A quick trip up the pipe stem to pick up David's car from Rick & Jayne Turner's home and we were on our way to pick up Lilly who had been staying at Just Cats since Friday.
Lilly rode on the front seat of my car and loudly "meowed" for about the first half hour and was fine the remainder of the trip. Here she is in her special carrier.
We decided to not drive the 6 hours in one day, since we were both in separate cars, so we stayed at a Sleep Inn (pet friendly hotel!!!) in Staunton, VA. Coincidentally it just happened to be across the street from the very famous Mrs. Rowe's Restaurant, home of good home cookin' like Mom used to make. We had a delicious dinner there of meat loaf (me) and chicken fried steak (David) complete with pickled beets, homemade slaw and mashed potatoes. YUM!
July 1st
After a mostly restful night, and a very delicious (not!) hotel breakfast, we stopped at Mrs. Rowe's for a frozen shepherd's pie to take with us for dinner when we arrive in Belmont. We also bought some of her very, very delicious raspberry cookies for snacks later on. This is a picture of some of her homemade baked goods. BTW, if you would like to stop at this wonderful restaurant and bakery, take Exit 222 on Interstate 81, just south of Harrisonburg. You'll be so glad you did!
Belmont Exit
Not a lot there, but remember every time we shop, we carry everything 3 floors up to our room. Makes us think twice about whether we really need something or, can it wait.
Later in the day--
First stop was the Belmont Post Office. We've rented a PO Box there until our house is finished. And, we had mail waiting for us. It feels good!!!
We stopped by Lake Point and checked out our home.
Here's our view of Lake Wylie from what will be our back porch.
And this is where we will call "home" until our home is finished. We're renting a furnished one bedroom apartment in Hamilton's Bay (on the 3rd floor, no less!!!). It's about a 10 minute drive to our lake home, so it makes it easy to run over and check progress, meet with the builder, etc.
And this is David and Lilly enjoying Porch Time sans rockers on our tiny porch.
July 2nd
Luckily for us, we have found a Walmart about 10 minutes from our apartment. As you all well know, it has anything and everything. We needed some staples to get us set up and we found most of what we needed there. As much as I miss Target and Giant, especially, we are making do with Walmart til we settle in a bit more. Here's one of our first shopping trips.
July 3rd.
Trying to figure out what to do to celebrate the 4th tomorrow, we decided to take a rode trip to Tega Cay for a hometown parade and a boat parade on Lake Wylie. Tega Cay is a planned community and was built as a weekend get away for Charlotte residents. It is now a year round community.
July 4th.
So, we head to Tega Cay about 30 minutes from our apartment. The parade was great and full of patriotically decorated golf carts. The residents use them to drive through their very hilly neighborhoods. The boat parade was rather small. It was a nice get away and a great day trip.
July 5th.
July 6th
We attended the First UMC today. There are 4 Methodist churches in our small town, so there's a lot to choose from. It will be a challenge to find a church like we left in Herndon, but we just need to find one that feels right. This one didn't pass the test, so we'll try others.
After church, we drove to Charlotte to explore and find Costco, Trader Joes and Total Wine. The trip was great and we came with some great purchases.
July 7th
This is the first of many Bar-B-Que restaurants we'll be trying, knowing David's love of it. This one is in Belmont. Not bad for a first try!
Progress on our house. The stone work is coming along nicely. It's like putting a puzzle together, making sure each piece fits just right.
This is how Lilly likes to spend her day.
July 8th
Time for another day trip; this time to Treehouse Vineyards in Monroe, NC. There are actually two tree houses here. One (behind David) you can rent by the hour. The other one, you rent overnight and it comes complete with a mini kitchen, bathroom and bedroom for $125 per night. We chose neither, but surprisingly the 1 bedroom treehouse is rented all the way through December.
July 9th
We met Eric, the builder, and the Deck Guy at our house today. While there, I took this pictures of the stone work. It's almost complete now. Beside our front door is a piece of granite with a verse from Hebrews that we "borrowed" from Chris & Kathryn Adams that they have by their front door. I've always loved it from the first time I saw it.
July 10th & 11th
They took us to lunch at the Smoking Pig B-B-Q which David rated as better than the one in Belmont. He's on his quest to find the best NC B-B-Q.
Next, we went on a tour and tasting at the Palmetto Moonshine Distillery, where 100+ proof legal moonshine is made. They also made flavorings you could buy and add to them because for some reason they can't sell the moonshine mixed. The very delicious flavors included--strawberry, blackberry, bloody mary, and my favorite, apple pie. Below is the hostess at the tasting bar.
July 13th
Today we went to Good Sam UMC (as they call it) to the Praise service. They have a 9-piece Praise Band and a great, vibrant young minister. When we left, Jason the pastor, gave us a book entitled
"Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference?" by Philip Yancey. Prayer is an essential part of this church.
Probably will return to this church, but still have a few more to check out.
Another first for us today--breakfast at Waffle House!!! Need I saw more??? They are everywhere here.
Another day trip to downtown Charlotte. Today we took the Lynx; $2.20 round trip and takes just a little over 20 minutes to get downtown. It looks like people use this also to see the Charlotte Knights at the BB&T stadium and to visit downtown museums, etc.
David enjoying mocha ice coffee at the 7th Street Market which is the last stop on the Lynx.
Another view of the Market--lots of food shops and eateries here.
July 15th
This is where we begin most of our days. We're very fortunate that our apartment complex has a gym, albeit small, but it works for us. Most days, we're the only two in there. I guess everyone else has gone to work! What's that???
Today, we decided to begin exploring the stores on Main Street in Belmont. Keep in mind, the Main Street in Belmont, is just a little bit bigger than Herndon's. Our first stop was Piccolo's (described below). This place was amazing and huge!!! This is David checking out. We bought the antique white mirror on the floor for one of our bathrooms. It was 50% off and a steal! Mirrors are expensive, so we felt great about this purchase. Because we were in this store for a "long" time, we felt we need a little nourishment.
So, our next stop, was the General Store. Now, this really does look like a step back in time. It has an old fashioned ice cream bar where we enjoyed some delicious ice cream. (Charleston salt carmel!)
Besides ice cream, they have about 400 drawers of just about any size of nail, screw, bolt, etc that you could want and it was fully stocked! They also had a sweet little gift area with lots of made in NC items. Great ideas for Christmas gifts and other gifts this year.
Living in this one bedroom apartment can get pretty boring, especially at night. Even though we have a "deck" big enough for 2 small chairs and a small table, it's boring. So, I decided we would put a puzzle together to help with that. This is our first attempt at a 1,000 piece puzzle. David is hoping we finish it before we move. Also, Lilly is enjoying knocking the pieces off and chasing them around our "hardwood" (not!) floors.
All of the stone work is now down on the front of the garage. Not much else happened today.
Oh!!!, we did get a phone call today that we are having a visitor from home join us for lunch on Thursday. More on Thursday.
July 16th
Today, we visited the Town of Ayrsley, which is a development south of Charlotte. We had passed it before and I wanted to go back and see what it was. It's a new development with a ga-zillion apartments and town homes. It has a nice little retail center with a movie theatre. It reminded us of the Fairfax Corner center. It's so new that a lot of stores haven't opened.
So, while we were there, we had a very tasty lunch at a yummy Mexican restaurant called Salsa's, which is pictured below. It was beautiful weather here today (mid-80's and no humidity) so we ate outside. It was a pretty filling lunch, so we brought the left overs home for dinner. Yum!
I felt like we struck gold today--TARGET!!! about 10 or so minutes from our apartment. And it is HUGE! The workers are so friendly and so helpful. We stocked up on a few things. I'm trying not to buy large quantities or too far ahead, because of eventually moving into our house, which looks like mid-September.
Knowing that, I made flight reservations for us to go up and visit Sara and Bill over Labor Day weekend. We're so excited to see all of the updates they've been doing.
Luckily, I found a cats only boarding kennel for Lilly called "Cat's Cradle". It's a lot like Just Cats in Reston, but about 1/2 the cost and they give 20% discount to Seniors. Can't go wrong with that.
Our mail is being delivered to Belmont post office, so every day when we go to check it, we drive past our home. So, today, we stopped by and there were 3 men cutting and placing flagstone pieces on the front porch and steps; another guy was driving a small front end loader/bobcat, leveling the lot; and inside the house were 2 other guys installing the hardwood floors!!! The floor guys came at 8:30am and were just about finished when we were there. Lots happening there today. The picture doesn't show much, but will have more tomorrow.
We're meeting dock builder tomorrow to see what plans he has and when we might start that. Busy day tomorrow with our first visitor, too.
July 17th
We stopped by our house this morning on our way into Belmont to meet our "first" visitor and this is what we found:
These are the unfinished floors in our family room!
And these are the unfinished floors in our eat-in kitchen!
All of the hardwood floors are now installed!
So, our first visitor is Richard Yuras a long time friend from our HUMC family. We also go back to when our kids were in band together at Herndon High. Rich had been here with a few of his biker friends. We met him at a Belmont local:
Sammy's is one of about 7 or so downtown restaurants. After lunch, we took Rich with us out to where our house is being built.
This is a different crew of stone masons, cutting and fitting pieces of flagstone on the front porch.
Rich and David at our front door, which will eventually be painted yellow.
Looking carefully through the trees, you can see David and Rich down at the edge of our lot checking out the lake.
Meantime, back at our apartment, Lilly has found a new resting place on a box filled with molding samples!!!
And the puzzle we started yesterday---well, Lilly discovered it during the night and rearranged several pieces, etc. So, we now cover it to "protect" our work.
July 18th
David has been doing all of the driving since we arrived here, so today was my day to drive in an attempt to get used to the area. We drove to Gastonia which is about a half hour North of us. They have a lot more shopping options there. While on our way, we saw this ReStore. I've always wanted to go in and see what they have. Well, this store was huge and had everything and anything you could need or use. Besides building supply-type things, it had lots of furniture and household items.
One of the volunteers told me that it was their biggest store on the east coast. Interesting, huh?
After shopping at other stores, we decided to have lunch at Jack In The Box. One of the beauties of being retired, is having lots of time to explore "new" places. This Jack In The Box serves hamburgers, etc., not tacos like the ones we used to have in the DC area. Well, this is one restaurant we can check off our list and not have to worry about going there again.
July 19th
It was a bit misty, and dreary here today, so we took a road trip to Mint Hill, NC which is about 1/2 hour from us and west of Charlotte. We visited Cats Cradle and made a reservation for Lilly to board there while we go to Sara and Bill's over Labor Day. They only board cats which is perfect for this somewhat neurotic cat we have. I'll post pictures when we take her there. The price is half of what we paid in Reston.
We next drove to Concord Mills Mall which is Northeast of here up by Lowe's Speedway (for those of you who care!!!) This place is ENORMOUS and probably the biggest mall I've ever been to. I can't wait for the girls (our daughters) to come and see this. A few statistics about this mall, it's a 2 mile, yes 2 miles, to walk around the inside. There are 200 stores in it plus an Aquarium. There are a variety of kid activities inside too, like bungy cord jumping, carousel, and a variety of coin-operated rides, etc. Quite a place! These are a couple of pictures, but it's hard to do this place justice with these.
July 20th
Today marks the anniversary of the first month that David retired!!! He's so enjoying this part of life, as am I!!!
Continuing our quest to find a church, we went to the South Point UMC which is about a 5 or 6 minute ride from our lake house. We were welcomed by several very friendly people. The sermon was great, too. We may revisit this one. The one thing we've noticed in the churches we've visited so far is their lengthy prayer requests in the bulletins. They are much longer than what we had at HUMC. Today, we laid hands on and prayed for a lady who is having her 5th knee surgery! Yikes!
David has been internet searching for nearby restaurants that have brunch on Sunday. Last Sunday was Waffle House. Today is was Bagel Boat, a much better choice. The owner makes his own bagels but we had delicious egg sandwiches in bread made from a nearby bakery, all natural.
Kind of another dreary weather day today, so we drove south to see Fort Mill and Rock Hill, NC. No real purpose, just a nice Sunday drive in a little bit of misty rain.
As I'm sitting at our kitchen/dining room table writing this, I'm staring straight ahead at our purchases from Lowe's this past week. These are all of the lights for our new house. Our builder gave us a line item budget for it, but we think we did better on it! We'll be reimbursed!!! Poor David pretty much carried all of these up 3 flights of stairs. BTW, he's the one who wanted the apartment on the 3rd. floor! And in a few weeks, he'll get to carry them all back down; but I can help with that!
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