Weekend Basketball and Ice Cream

Paige spent the night on Saturday with the Gobles, so it was just Connor at home this weekend. I spent the day on Saturday with my dad and when I got home on Saturday evening I asked Andrea if she wanted to get ice cream with me. Connor had just challenged her to a one on one in basketball so I had to wait until they were finished before we could leave. 

Connor drove us to Christy's Dream for ice cream and took a picture of me with my girl and our pupper dog.

 

Connor's JV Tennis Team Pictures

Connor's school took their official tennis pictures for the yearbook and we thought they turned out pretty well so we went ahead and purchased them. Tennis season's actually almost over already, it went pretty fast!

 

Bolles Tennis Lessons

The kids had lessons at Bolles on Saturday morning and they were hitting the ball well so I took a few pics and videos. They're both improving lately, which is great to see.

Gobles Move to Florida

The Gobles arrived in Florida on Monday this past week. Their drive took them a couple of days and thankfully they had good weather and a safe drive down. Ryan drove a huge Penske truck and was also towing their car, so it was quite the test of his driving. They arrived on Monday evening and parked the big truck in our neighborhood's Amenity Center parking lot overnight. The next morning Ryan and Amanda took the truck to their house and met with their builder. They were supposed to close on the house Tuesday and take possession, but there was one final issue with a shower that held things up and they had to wait until Wednesday to wrap everything up. 

Andrea took care of Graydon and Griffin on Monday and we decided to let Paige skip school to hang out as well. They watched Andrea's team play tennis in the neighborhood, went to the park, drove around in the golf cart, went to lunch at Barbara Jeans and played outside. Amanda and Ryan closed on the house and unloaded the moving truck with the help of some local neighbor boys they hired. Amanda came back to our house in the evening and Ryan ended up coming to stay the night as well. In the morning on Wednesday the Gobles all left and they've been working on the house and getting unpacked ever since. Andrea and Paige went by on Friday afternoon to help, and the Gobles did some shopping for furniture, although it will be a while until it's all delivered so their place is fairly empty at the moment.

Connor's Driving Lessons and Practice

I've been doing quite a bit of driving with Connor recently, at every opportunity when he and I go places together. While he's done well with it so far, we thought it would be a good idea to have an actual instructor work with him and Andrea scheduled time with him to have some driving lessons. It's convenient since they pick up at our house and Connor's first lesson was on the 19th. Connor has done most of his driving around the neighborhood, and for his lesson he went over the basics and stayed fairly close.

Recently we've been venturing further and further out of the neighborhood and Connor's practiced driving to school and to some places nearby. He's driven at night a couple of times now and gotten on A1A which was a little more congested and difficult. Connor doesn't love driving by any means, but he's good at it and I'm pretty comfortable riding with him. 

Spring Break 2022 in Wild Dunes, Isle of Palms SC

For Spring Break 2022 we spent a week at Wild Dunes in a cozy house in the Twin Oaks area.

We were excited for our Disneyland Adventures by Disney trip that Andrea had booked us for the last two years. We'd planned to go during Spring Break in 2021 but COVID caused it to be canceled. We had it booked for this year and were hoping it'd happen, however it was canceled a few months beforehand since some of the Imagineering events are still closed due to COVID. Thankfully Andrea had the foresight to anticipate that might happen so she booked us a nice house in Wild Dunes. We were in Wild Dunes over Spring Break in 2020 when COVID came to America and we left early to get home on that visit. We went again later in the summer of 2020 for a brief summer getaway and we spent time socially distanced from anyone and only did tennis with our own family, so it wasn't quite the same experience (http://www.vernonvolumes.com/2020/05/wild-dunes-early-summer-getaway.html). For Thanksgiving 2020 we went to Wild Dunes again (http://www.vernonvolumes.com/2020/11/thanksgiving-2020-wild-dunes-during.html) and we haven't been back until this visit. 

Thankfully their tennis program is back to normal and we were excited to have a more normal experience and have some time to relax as a family. We drove down on Saturday and unpacked, then played wallball and a little pickleball. On Sunday, the weather was super cold, and the girls stayed home in the morning while Connor and I went to tennis. The tennis was well staffed and there were quite a few people signed up. They had two full courts for the "Peak Performance" clinic, which is supposed to be fairly advanced. We love that Connor is definitely old enough to play with us and we had a lot of fun playing together against everyone. Connor hits well and we enjoyed some banter with the other adults that challenged him and in many cases met their match against him. 

Monday morning I worked and Connor slept in while the girls did tennis in the morning. Andrea and Paige enjoyed tennis and we went to McAlister's for lunch as we did most days. In the evenings we watched the Indian Wells tennis tournament or movies. We brought two of our Apple TV's and set one up in the family room and one in the kids' room. The kids were cute about watching a bunch of movies together in the evenings when Andrea and I were watching tennis. 

We spent a lot of time outdoors as much as possible. The weather was good except for Wednesday when it rained all day. Paige was cute about cooking during our trip. Wednesday was our morning off from tennis and Paige prepared pancakes for Connor in the morning. In the evening, I fixed a big pot of chili and we enjoyed eating it for dinner on a few different nights. Aside from cooking, we ate Southern Comfort food at Page's Okra grill and pizza at Luke and Ollie's, as well as our fave McAlister's Deli. Andrea came across a milkshake place called "The Crazy Mason Milkshake Bar" and we tried it out one evening. They had pretty elaborate and picture perfect shakes, a sugar overload for sure.

Andrea took Paige to the nail salon on Wednesday while it was raining and they had a nice girl's day out while I worked and Connor chilled at the house. 

Connor had a couple different tutoring sessions to give him some strategies for passing the PERT test so he can start dual enrollment college courses in the near future.

Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, Andrea scheduled semi-private lessons with a surf instructor and the kids squeezed into their wetsuits and got in to the cool ocean water to surf the SC coast. The waves weren't huge but the kids loved it, and it was a good surfing refresher.

Overall it was a wonderful Spring Break together and we all enjoyed ourselves much more than we expected. Perhaps because our expectations were low, perhaps because the weather was so pleasant, perhaps because the tennis and pickleball were so much fun, or perhaps because we just enjoyed our family time together. It's hard to know, but it all added up to an awesome time.