Labor Day Week! Dun, Dun, Dun...

Well, the "dun, dun, dun" part is really only because Saturday morning when we went outside, all the spiders in the whole world went insane building webs overnight and our bushes and lawn were COVERED in webs! It was really freaky!

You can kind of see in the corner on the lawn little white spots which are actually spider webs too. We counted over 20. 

We actually looked it up because there were so many, so suddenly, and discovered that there are tons of funnel web and grass spiders in North Carolina and they are most active right now before it starts to get cold. You can see this one's funnel built right into the bush, by a spider about the size of a ping pong ball, and if you dare peek in closer you can see its beady little eyes shining. We call it Shelob's Lair in honor of Lord of the Rings. 

Anyway, we wanted to do something fun to celebrate the official end of summer, so we picked Saturday to drive into Charlotte for a little play day. I looked up some foodie recommendations online and again and again "Dish" restaurant popped up as a great place to try. It features Southern comfort foods with a twist, and was recently featured on "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives." Certainly looked like a "dive" from the outside!

Holy moly! SO YUMMY! They weren't very busy with the lunch rush yet, so they stuck us outside on the patio basically by ourselves, which was fine by me since sometimes we get dirty looks when we haul in our 3 kids, so there was no pressure to be quiet. We let Leah crawl around and it was the most relaxing meal out we've had in a long time!

We started off with the Potato Poppers (pictured above), which were basically the insides of a twice-baked potato battered and deep fried, and then Jon ordered the BLFGT-- a bacon, lettuce, and fried green tomato sandwich which was super yummy. Lucy is our little future foodie and she got the chicken and dumplins.

I've been living in the South now for over 2 years and still had never had Shrimp and Grits, so I finally ordered them and I certainly didn't regret it. They were fabulous!!

Jonathan had searched for fun things to do in Charlotte before we left, and found a little indoor Splash Park only a couple of miles from the restaurant. We ended up being like the only white people there, which was cool and culturally enlightening, but more importantly it was cheap and the kids had a blast!

There was a lazy river, a hydrotube slide, and lots of fountains and things to climb on. Here we are taking a break because someone had to go and barf in the pool, so they made everyone get out for 30 min. while the lifeguards cleaned it up. Just glad it wasn't one of my little pukesters. Ha, ha!

We then headed over to IKEA to spend the rest of the afternoon shopping and dropping the kids off at Smaland-- the little play place inside. I stocked up on all things Swedish-- cooking utensils, kiddie cups and bowls, and their chocolate bars of course. We had a great time.

A big treat for my kids is that every so often we let them watch a movie in bed instead of reading a bedtime story. Since there was no school on Monday, we let them have a movie party in bed and they were pretty excited. See that huge handful of popcorn Leah nabbed before she got kicked out?

 Our Labor Day fun didn't end with the weekend either. My parents flew into Richmond, VA to attend the BYU game in Blacksburg that weekend, and on Monday evening drove down from OBX to spend a few days with us in Pinehurst. After my dad got his round of golf in Tuesday morning, we picked up Zach-O from preschool and headed to Panera for lunch.

 We then toured the Shaw House, which is a historical site in Southern Pines I've driven past a million times but never stopped to check out. It's an antebellum cabin of one of the first three families to settle this area-- the Shaw family, and was built around 1820, and features period furniture pieces and pottery. I happen to love history, so it was actually pretty cool even though it was pushing 100 degrees in the shade! 

 That night we took Grandpa to Rita's for our favorite cold treat-- he'd never been in all the times he'd visited us in Philly or Pinehurst, and I'm not really sure how that happened?!? We love Rita's!

We spent the rest of the week enjoying Grandma Joanie's company. She's so good to get me motivated to work on projects and crafts I've been putting off, so we finally painted Zach's dresser, which turned out so cute! We were inspired by all of the cute shabby-chic projects we saw while antique-ing out in West End. All too soon Friday rolled around, and after I made her come to my Body Pump class that morning, we got to enjoy one last supper at Bone Fish Grill. We sure love having visitors! All in all, it was a fabulous Labor Day Week!