VISITING THE TARHEEL STATE

We were away all last week to visit friends and family in North Carolina, if anyone happened to be wondering why I didn't post all week.  Oh, we had such a wonderful time!

Duke stayed with our daughter Holly and family, which he always enjoys:

Clark and I both have brothers who live in the Raleigh area, so we spent some time with them and their wives.  Oh, it was great to catch up on old times!  We hadn't traveled back home to NC since we moved here in July 2013, mainly because of my painful knees.  As with our trip out west, my new knees did fine on this trip as well.  

Beach, Ft. Fisher

We also visited a dear friend in Wilmington, whom we have known since our girls were small.  It is a beautiful time of year, just missing the annual Azalea Festival by being early--we were there on Wednesday last week, and the festival started on Friday. We toured Wrightsville, Kure, and Carolina beaches, and drove as far as the road covered, all the way to Ft. Fisher.  Beaches weren't crowded, the weather was nice (but with thunderstorms), but flowers were blooming everywhere.

Carolina Beach

We visited with my uncle, the last sibling of my mother's family of ten.  I saw cousins I hadn't seen in decades!  We enjoyed a meal, a time of fellowship, and we enjoyed childhood memories.  My aunt told me that my great grandfather Jim Barbee is buried at Liberty Hill Primitive Baptist Church in Albemarle (which I didn't know), and he was one of 12 siblings.  He had married three times after each wife's passing, and fathered a total of 19 children, one of whom was my grandmother, Bertha Barbee Lambert.

My aunt showed me a "History of Stanly County," with old photos of all sorts of things.  And right there in the middle of the book was a school class picture in Albemarle, 1906 - my grandfather Walter Lambert was in middle school!  Wow.

My uncle showed me his prized possession, saying I had probably never seen it, but he'd had it since he was nine years old:  a 1923 Gibson guitar.  He'd had it refinished in the 1960s, and it was beautiful.

Uncle Herman with 1923 Gibson

All in all, we had a marvelous time down memory lane.  We all thought of our loved ones gone before, and as we drove past my parents' home in Sanford, I got a lump in my throat thinking of all

Mom & Dad's former home

the good memories of that place.  I'm so thankful we're all Christians and will see each other again on the other side!