Yohs Gather 2022

The Minnesota Yohs weren’t able to come at Christmas time, so we hadn’t seen them for a whole year.  I always think it is nice of them to travel to Ohio.  I remember the burden (fun?) of going to Kansas every single summer.  For the most part, I really wanted to go and see everyone.  But there was a part of me that just wanted a regular vacation to anywhere else.  That said, I wouldn’t trade the family time and memories with relatives.  While I am not visiting my cousins and aunts and uncles every year, I do feel like whenever I do see them it takes very little to reconnect and just enjoy being together again.  I am hoping the reward will be the same for these cousins. 

When they come in the summer, the New York Yohs also come, so we can all be together.  It is a good time.  We have, once before, convened at a different location.  I think that would be fun to do, too, so we all have a bit of a vacation.  Maybe we will start talking about ideas for next year…

They arrived on Sunday afternoon.  We joined people at Gloria’s for supper and catching fireflies – a novelty for even my kids who are not usually out that late to do it.

         

Monday morning, Jeremy was still feeling a bit under the weather from his hoarse voice he acquired on Thursday at the Guardians game, so he tested for COVID.  Positive result.  Negative consequences.  We called and talked to the out-of-staters to see what they would feel most comfortable with.  The verdict: Jeremy can quarantine.  The rest of us can hang out.  Best case scenario for the cousin bonding.  (Random photos follow…)

   

That afternoon, we hung out for awhile indoors before heading to Johnson’s Woods to walk the boardwalk in the old growth forest.  Only Miles survived the car ride over without falling asleep, so he joined us while Jason hung out with Theo and Zadie sleeping in the car.  We meandered slowly on the boardwalk while Arturo spun tales with Ellie about landmarks in case we got lost.  We paused frequently to learn about jewelweed and other plants and trees.  Miles and Madison stayed on the look out for numbered benches – each with a predication of how many we would find.  The answer: 9.  One hour, 1.4 miles, and an unmentionable number of mosquito bites later, we emerged. 

    

Monday night we went to listen to the Ohio Light Opera and Orchestra perform in the square in Wooster.  It was a beautiful evening for it.

Tuesday, I took the girls to hike around Kidron park with we met everyone in Wooster for aerial yoga.  This was a gift from Marianne who had one a free personal class in a drawing.  Madison, Ellie, and Erin B. were super excited since they had done it before.  Theo took to it like a monkey in the trees.  Miles and Zadie were much more tentative, but gave it a try at some point in the hour. 

           

Tuesday evening, Jen and Arturo took the kids exploring in Kidron Park.  They stumbled on clay and began making pots. 

Wednesday, we met at Steve and Stacie Tshciegg’s house to go swimming in their super fun pool.  We are so thankful for their generosity.  It was a lof of fun – jumps off the diving board, slides down the slide, swimming with flippers, diving for treasures, touching the bottom on the deep end, running from sharks in the shallow end.  The sprinkles and clouds didn’t dampen anyone’s mood. 

Afterwards, people came over to our house for chipotle chicken bowls.  (And Jeremy stayed secluded in the basement.)  The kids immediately gathered with the toys I had set out and began playing – kitchen, doctor, vet, and train engineers.  The adults hung out and talked. 

Grandma took a picture in front of our patio fence to compare to one a year ago. 

    

Thursday, we met people in Moreland at the historic church for a Bricker reunion of sorts.  Ellie dressed just like me since I bought these “cool” ripped, mom-jean, jean shorts.

It was a lot of people the girls (or me) didn’t know, but we shared a meal and caught up with some we hadn’t seen for awhile.

After playing a bit with the 3-D wall upstairs in the church, we headed home by 3pm.  Madison had 4-H judging for her Designed by Me project (next post) at 6pm.

Friday, we headed over around 9 to wish the MInnesota Yohs good-bye.  It was a good week for cousins to bond. Ellie stayed in Kidron to fire the clay pots with Arturo in the fire they built together. 

They turned out pretty well.

Saturday, Madison, Ellie and Jeremy joined Jen and Arturo hiking in the woods a bit.  I stayed home and knocked out some much needed to be done chores at home.  Then, we met Diane (in from Florida) and Amanda at Broken Rocks for lunch.  After a bit of meandering around the shops in Wooster, we headed home. 

Sunday, church was followed with a mid-afternoon lunch at David and Marianne’s.  Julie and Amanda joined us there.  We ate, played some charades, and talked.  It was a relaxing afternoon.

Monday evening Jen and Arturo stopped over to say good-bye.  They were heading back to New York the next day.  They are so good with their nieces and nephews – thinking of fun things to do, teaching them new things, spending quality time with them.  They are a gift for sure.

Summer Fun Things

Ellie’s diabetes camp was quickly followed by Myrtle Beach.  Then, we had about a week of time before we had out of state family entertaining us for a week (post coming soon).  In that week “lull” we found some fun things to do….

The library sponsored an animal show at Secrest Arboretum one night.  Ellie had seen this guy at school toward the end of the year and said it was good.  There were a lot of kids/people there, but we just squeezed right in.  We took Sam with us – which I love that as a freshmen he is still willing to come with us to these types of things… not sure how long that will last.  Ben and Cale met us there; Landen really wanted to come, but he got a horrible headache and had to sit it out.  The guy did a great job telling about the animals and allowing kids to come up and interact with them.  Snakes, a rabbit, an armadillo, a tortoise, a chinchilla, and more.  It was fun. 

Ellie is involved with Stirrup Courage, equine therapy program.  They decided to walk in the Orrville parade on a Wednesday night and were looking for kids and their families to walk with them.  We had been in the Dalton Holiday Parade with 4-H, so we added one more to our list.

The parade route is long (2 miles?) .  There are lots of people.  We had a couple horses that walked ahead of us.  Jeremy volunteered to be the pooper scooper – brave man if you ask me!  The girls tossed melt away peppermints.  I held a sign and passed out brochures. 

   

It was a lot of fun, but the wait to start the parade was long.  The parade stepped off at 7pm.  We did not leave the parking lot until almost 8:15pm.  It was amazing how long it took to get everyone through.  The general consensus was it was fun to be in the parade, but they missed watching it.. and getting the candy. 

Myrtle Beach (Part 2)

Wednesday

This was supposed to be one of the hottest days of the week. The first few days were gorgeous – low humidity, mid-80s.  The last part of the week had much higher humidity, more wind, and warmer temps (upper-80s to 90s).  That said, we were at the ocean, so it didn’t feel like it would feel when you are land-locked. We went through our morning routine. 

        

But after lunch, we chose to just stay in, do laundry, get ready for the evening.  We were headed to the Pirates Voyage, a Dollywood production.  We saw the show 7 years ago when my family went to Myrtle, but the girls didn’t really remember it well and wanted to go again. 

   

Madison tried some gear on in the gift shop!

The show is filled with diving, fire, aerial tricks, trampolining, “sword” fighting, and even a seal and dogs!  While you watch the show, you consume biscuits and soup, chicken, potato wedges, ham and corn on the cob, and an apple turnover – mostly eaten with your hands.  My favorite quote of the night was when Madison said, “I don’t know how to be excited AND eat at the same time!”  It is, admittedly hard to cheer and clap while pounding down food. 

    

We came home and walked on the beach for a bit before bed.  It was a pretty breezy evening. 

    

Thursday

Thursday morning we headed to the beach, but only after Jeremy ran to the store for more eggs… and brought home a new boogie board for me as an anniversary gift!  I was pretty stoked.  I love trying to ride waves in.  It was the perfect gift. 

Thursday afternoon we choose a unique to us, but not to Myrtle Beach, experience.  An escape room.  We chose Riddles Escape Room, which happened to be close to our condo.  We booked the Marooned Island experience.  It was challenging.  We used all our hints.  We had a few quibbles about who got to do what, but overall worked fairly well as a team.  Escapes rooms are weird in that they are not really a scavenger hunt, but a pile of hidden locks and clues around the room that eventually get you out.  We figured out all the locks.  We had everything in place, except that the last combination the letters we put in went front to back YES64, and they should have gone from back to front YES64.  Jeremy says were were ripped off and we really made it.  I think I might agree :)  At any rate – win or lose – it was a fun way to spend an afternoon. 

    

We decided to drive down to Myrtle Beach Strand area – reminded us why we chose not to stay right there.  Then, we went to Broadway on the Beach.  It was similar to Barefoot Landing where we had went shopping earlier in the week – some of the same shops in both places.  But I really like the vibe at Barefoot better.  Although there was a neat Hangout with bubbles, sand, and live music that was cool.  And this Illumination art exhibit with things that, I think, lit up at night.  The girls enjoyed the swings briefly.  (It was also much hotter when were here, so maybe that was my problem?)  We treated ourselves to ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery (Ellie) and Sweet Molly’s (the rest of us). 

    

We went back to enjoy a bit more beach time, some pizza and a movie (Sing 2 on Netflix), and a bit of packing.  Last night on the beach.

Friday

This was our 16th anniversary.  I have found that we are often on a trip of some kind on our anniversary (Gatlinburg and Honduras come to mind, but there may be more).  We went about a week prior to this one night to watch Maverick: Top Gun at the theater while my parents watched the girls.  Such a good sequel!  This time, Jeremy texted me around 7:30 from the beach and said he had two chairs set up.  (He tried on our honeymoon one morning to get me to watch the sunrise at 6am in Hawaii – pretty sure it was our first or second morning there – and I just couldn't roll out of bed. My body had adapted well to the time change; his, not so much.) I put on some flip flops, saw the girls already reading on the balcony, let them know, and headed out.  It was a nice morning.  We sat and talked and just enjoyed the view and sounds. 

He had just mentioned that we hadn’t seen any dolphins this time, when what did we see not far from shore – a dolphin jump partially out of the water and catch our attention!  We saw a number of them swimming together.  I ran back and hollered at the girls to look for the dolphins and come out if they wanted.  They joined us pretty quickly.  As they dipped their toes in the water one last time, we watched them.  Soon they were whispering and writing in the sand a message for us.  It was pretty sweet. 

   

We walked a bit down the beach before finally saying good-bye.

  

We finished packing up leftover food, tossing what we couldn’t take, and looking around for missing things one last time.  We rolled out exactly at 10am.

We made a slight detour to the Duke University campus on our way home.  Jeremy really wanted to see the campus – partly for the lure of Cameron Indoor Stadium and the campus appeal, but partly (mostly) because he has a distant relative that apparently donated enough money to get a facility named after him.

I think it was a pretty cool experience for the girls to be on a college campus.  I realize that we have not really taken them back to either of our colleges, except a drive by years ago.  They had a lot of questions about college – what it is like? if you get lost easily? – so it was good.

         

We learned when we got there that there was a athletic apparel surplus sale happening.  So, we bought a few Duke clothes (not because we are fans necessarily, but because it was a memory).  Jeremy was pretty stoked to be on the floor in Cameron Indoor.  It was much smaller than I imagined; I can only picture how crowded that must get during a game!

    

We also ventured into the chapel.  A pretty elaborate place. 

    

After that, we moved on to our expensive (and incredibly normal) hotel room in Princeton, W Virginia. 

Saturday

We let the girls swim Saturday morning and didn’t end up leaving until almost 11am.  But we made it home around 5pm, unpacked the car, grabbed supper at Subway, and went to pick up the dog at Grandma and Grandpa's pet sitting services.  We stayed long enough to retell vacation while showing them pictures of our trip – a huge perk of this digital age and not waiting to get film developed.

It was a good trip.  And I would go back to this specific place again and again and again.  If I am going to do the beach, I have realized on want to be on the beach, not a walk from the beach.  And while I say I am a mountains over beach kind of girl, I do really love playing in the surf and listening to the waves from my shady balcony.