The Beginning of Summer

Friday night we started our annual pilgrimage to Lakeside, OH for Annual Conference. What started six years ago as an obligatory duty has become a much anticipated family vacation. We are back in the same house that I have enjoyed every year (the family for the last 5). We came up earlier this year because we are leaving earlier - we are going on Friday to Indiana for Father's Day. We arrived late at night, unpacked, and decided to get the grocery shopping over with. Lisa and I drove, shopped, drove back, unpacked groceries, and dropped into bed by 2 a.m.

This morning we slept in until breakfast blurred into lunch. After everyone had foraged until satiated we headed out for our first pilgrimage to downtown Lakeside. Of course, it is only 3 blocks away, so perhaps pilgrimage is overstating it. The first stop was the local bike shop, Sypherd's. We rented bikes for the three kids. Lakeside is the kind of community where you can still let the kids run around town on their bikes and not worry about them. While we were there the kids also go to try out a tandem which they found very difficult to steer.

After that it was some quick visits to some of our favorite shops. We picked up a “family” jigsaw puzzle, which is actually kind of neat. It was made up of three interlocking sections with pieces of different sizes so that the whole family could work on it together no matter what their age. We also found a great deal on shorts for Allen at “Marilyn's”, one of the kids' favorite places. They have Webkins an the coolest t-shirts and something new every year.

We headed home, did the puzzle, read, made cards for the troops for church, watched the Belmont stakes, had pizza for dinner, headed to the “Coffee and Cream” for a little wifi access, and then called it a day. All in all a very relaxing decompressing kind of day.

Each year it is a real gamble to see what the weather is going to be like. Saturday it was 90 degrees, and Sunday it will be 93. This is definitely one of the hot years. Oh well, we have a couple of air conditioners and lots of fans and we will survive. The mayflies aren't too bad yet so things are tolerable.

We are going to head out for “Monsoon Lagoon” tomorrow since we can't go on our way out of town. Tomorrow our housemates will arrive as well as almost every other of the about 6000 people that will come into town for the week. Today was a relatively quiet sleepy day in Lakeside. Tomorrow the Annual Conference week will be in full swing.

I am going to try to blog each day and share my thoughts on the conference. We will see how that goes.