August 2026

I am making my way through 1100 photos from our September Mexico City trip, so in the meantime, here are pictures from our chilled out August. Lots of the house, cat in the backyard, and taking walks.

One noteworthy thing we did was go to Cedar Point with our friend Shawn. We had time to check out Steel Vengeance, Maverick and Siren’s Curse before a distant lightning storm had us leaving the Top Thrill 2 line and heading home. But guess what? I was suspicious of the weather and had bought ticket insurance and we got a Full Refund! Not bad for a 2 ride day (I didn’t fit on Steel Vengeance, sad). Oh aside from rides we found Liz & Sarah’s brick (and developed a system to find it easily next time) and we all ate corndog nuggets. Good day!

This one Friday night Liz played with her co-workers at Natalie’s and then we went to Swenson’s for dinner. I was easily “talked” into trying their French onion soup burger, I mean onion dip burger, and Wow I loved it — not hard to believe!

Then the next night ORB played a community concert in a park and I got a great spot (not!) with a tree perfectly blocking my view of Liz. Next time I bring a chair!

Then the next day we went to Lizzie’s the niece-in-law’s wonderful mission farewell. No pics except for their little London building. And when we got home, we took a walk.

Hey you remember the Piantas from Mario Sunshine?

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!

At the end of July there was a major family gathering in Island Park to celebrate Mom and Dad’s 50th Wedding Anniversary and Liz and I were fortunate to be among those that gathered there. Our trip began with an early morning flight out of Columbus, as our trips often do.

Shortly after getting to Utah we were able to visit with Liz’s friend (and my friend!) Kim who was in town visiting her folks with her fellow Alfredo.

Funny how Kim’s parents’ house is so close to Liz’s favorite fried chicken (actually it makes sense since they’re both in the town where they used to live, pretty likely place to have a favorite fried chicken place).

And then we drove drove drove (nothing like a 4 hour flight followed by a 4 hour drive!) until we were at our cabin of the weekend. Nice place for a gathering! And then all the gatherers began gathering up.

And then it rained! And I’m pretty sure we all had taco salad that night. And took a walk when it wasn’t raining. But then it started raining again.

The next morning, the morning of the big day, the day that some of us go to Yellowstone while other ones of us go to a waterfall. Fortunately (the way I see it), Liz and I were in the Yellowstone going group. But I bet the waterfall was very nice. Here you see everybody starting their day and deciding where they’re going.

Okay I thought I had more morning photos but now here’s photos from the drive to Yellowstone and then through Yellowstone to our first destination. A waterfall!

And then we drove to the part of the park with a whole lot of stinky bubbling mud pots and other dangerous ground things. What’s it called? I’m sure it has a name. Probably.

And then we drove past a bathing bison to the part of Yellowstone where there’s a canyon and a waterfall.

And from there we went to what we thought was the top of that waterfall but instead was some place completely different.

And from there we drove on to a picnic spot, spotting nature along the way. See the picture of rolling hills? There’s a grizzly there. Everyone stopped and looked through leant spotting scopes to have a look at it.

And then we had our nice picnic near a lake.

From there we head to Old Faithful! And the Yellowstone Lodge. But just for a little bit.

And then…just one more walk and one more site before we go. And, as “one more walks” often do, it turned out to be quite the hike.

And that was that for Yellowstone! We next met up with the waterfall folks in Montana for barbecue and park time, followed by ice cream and at-home (cabin) time in Idaho

The next morning, Liz, Greg and I were on duty to get up early and cook the ube pancakes. What a nice breakfast for everyone! What good teamwork by us.

After that we all went to church with like 10,000 other people. Ok. Maybe just 3,000. 1,000? PLENTY. IYKYK! And then came home and took family photos to commemorate being together with family.

And then we changed out of our church clothes and headed out to see the Johnny Sack Cabin.

We came home and held the Big Anniversary Celebration and Dinner. No pics? And then took a nice family end of the day walk around the neighborhood.

You might know I like getting up early every morning to do my studies. I really liked studying on our cabin porch as the sun arrived for the day each day in Idaho.

And shortly after my studies ended it was time for Liz and I to head back to Columbus. We had a nice drive down to Salt Lake, stopping for gas at Flags West outside of Downey, DI and BC in Layton, donuts at Sidecar in Sugar House and my first Red Iguana visit in years and years before saying Hi to Doug at his work and catching our flight back to CMH.

July 2026

July1: The month got off to a great start — we sold our house! The first one, not the one we moved into. What a relief. And it was only officially on the market for three days! (If you want an excellent seller’s agent in Ohio, let me know). Took Liz out to celebrate at a surprise destination … this special McDonalds that we drove by after the nice wedding we went to in May. What’s so special about it? I mean just look at these photos!

July 3: A nice thing that happened this day was Liz stopped by work and we went and had a nice little Indian lunch.

July 4: Liz and I met up with Jeff and some of his Indiana family at the new Buc-ee’s!

And then, at long last, we returned to the Air Force Museum, site of some of Liz and my first Ohio outings. It’s still huge, there’s still too much awesome stuff to see!

From there, Liz and I went up to Lima, Ohio for the rest of our weekend getaway. The idea was: Go somewhere we could stay with an indoor pool and eat at a Hamburger America hamburger place. Lima ticked those boxes. We stayed at a Hojo with a pool inside…

And ate at a Kewpee burger! It was like homemade Wendy’s, very nice, kind of normal, I got olives on my burger, though. That’s the Lima way.

Exploring Lima, we discovered it lacked a certain level of small town charm we had hoped for, but we had a great time picking up bug spray from the Meijer. Then we returned to our hotel for some pool time and a rest up before…

…heading out to enjoy a nice local fireworks show! With no bug bites, because we got bug spray from the Meijer!

And then the next morning it was adios Lima and back to the real world!

The next Saturday Liz played at the Columbus Bookfest and then the Wednesday we were among those privileged to be at the temple for niece Lizzie’s first visit.

Then the next weekend Liz’s sold out a headlining gig at the Ginger Rabbit!

And then we took a big trip to Idaho, but that gets its own post.

Addenda:
Don’t worry, we still have a cat! And he’s really getting the hang of his Rocky cube.

AND July really was a great month for new work photos for our little family.