Ganson Family Scrapbook: August 2020

Saturday, August 1 - We finally got new carpet in the bedrooms! Finding spots for everything that was in the bedrooms was tricky. The kids and I moved most of the stuff out on Friday.

Good-bye yucky old, stained, smelly carpet...

The afternoon of the 1st ended up being horrible. Right after I let the carpet installers into our house, while Ben and the kids were at Wes and Joyce's house, Ben and I and a few others from the church started getting text messages from Lisa Moody. She was on the phone with her daughter, Ella Claire, who was camping a couple hours away with her Dad, Robby...and Robby has collapsed. She was giving us the play-by-play as the paramedics arrived and as they told Ella that Robby was gone and there was nothing they could do. The rest of the day was surreal and horrible. The Moodys are some of our close friends, and Robby was especially one of Ben's closest guy friends. He was only 52 when he died from a heart attack. Mike and Carrie Zieber came over that night to help us put everything back after the installers finally left, and we were able to talk and cry together too.

The next couple of days, Ben did a lot of things "in honor of Robby"... like re-watching the Clemson/Ohio State game on Sunday afternoon. (The Moodys are the only Clemson fans we will watch OSU games with! They had joined us and the Ziebers to watch this game last winter.)

Micah has Challenge B orientation (8th grade.) And after orientation, his class got to dissect sharks since they had not got to do that last year in Challenge A because of COVID setting in.

This was Micah's first year joining cross country. (The Trailblazers are a homeschool team.) The first unofficial "timed" event was just some of the team getting together early one Saturday morning. Lindsey Bucher and the kids had to come to visit that weekend, so Maddox joined in the run too...

It was also Helen's birthday, so she got sung to. :)

Also "in honor of Robby", we went to Knowledge Perk, one of his favorite local coffee places...

Isaac took his nap on a couch across the room beside some guy we didn't know... 😆

Playing "Press Conference" with the Ziebers and Shopes for Helen's birthday. Carrie played her role well. 😁

Lisa and the kids stayed at Lisa's parent's house in Greenville for a couple of weeks after Robby passed away. Sunday afternoon, the 9th, the week after he passed away, Ben and I brought Robby's ashes to Lisa. Her parents live on this beautiful lake, and as horrible as the time was, it is a beautiful place.

The other crazy thing about Sunday, August 9th, was that we had an earthquake that morning! Just shortly after 8 am, I was sitting on our bed and Ben was in the living when everything shook for a few seconds. At first I thought a kid had snuck in the room and was bumping hard against the bed, but then I realized the whole house was creaking. Turns out, Sparta, NC, (about 2 hours drive from us) had had a 5.1 earthquake. Just added to the surreal-ness of 2020!

The kids and I had planned to go to Maryland for a week before CC started, but with Robby passing away (and initialing thinking we would be putting together a memorial service), we didn't go after all. So with just a couple days left before Micah started Challenge B, we took a 2-night vacation to Pawley's Island, Sunday the 16th through Tuesday the 18th. So weird to have to wear masks around the hotel, (and yes, I sanitized everything as soon as we got in the hotel room) but also so, so, so good to get away...

Sunday evening... beautiful, empty beach!

Just as we got to the beach, a guy not too far from us caught a baby shark! (He said this kind grow to be big; this was just a baby.)

SO PRETTY!

Swimming at the hotel...

The water was really warm!

Ice cream Monday night...

Tuesday after we checked out from the hotel, we still spent a few more hours at the beach. We started noticing starfish washing up on shore, so Abby made a little pool to collect them.

By the time we left, I think we had 20 in the pool. A news article said that within days after we left, there were THOUSANDS of starfish washing up on shore.

A few more photos from Ben's phone. (You can never have too many beach photos!) 😁

Brushing his teeth, ready for the pool...

Some of the rest of these pictures/videos are a little out-of-order chronologically...

Golfing one beautiful evening in August when it wasn't horribly hot. August actually had a few very unusually cooler-than-normal days (like in the low eighties and not incredibly humid.)

At Riverwalk...

At Academy Sports with Dad...

First "official race!"

My pretty flowers. I had actually meant to take them to Lisa when I took her a meal, but totally forgot them at my house.

I left my phone temporarily unguarded. This is what I found on it afterward...

The morning after we got back from the beach, Micah started Challenge B!

And one week after that, CC began for Caleb and Abby too!

Hurray! One day our dishwasher started leaking, so I got to buy a new dishwasher!! (Another ugly thing out of the house!) This dirty-white on got replaced with stainless steel!