O-H-I-O

Every time that I talk to my parents, they ask me what I've been up to, and if I say, "Nothing," they say, "Oh, come on, you guys are always up to something fun." And usually they are right. I think that I actually get the drive to explore our city from my parents. I moved a lot growing up, which I didn't love at the time, but I appreciate now. With each move, we had some many new places to explore and my parents always jumped right in and took advantage. They didn't let the fact that they had four little kids stop them from doing some pretty awesome things. We saw Dorothy's rubber slippers in the Smithsonian when we were living in DC, we visited the Grand Ole Opry while we were living in Tennessee, we camped in Goblin Valley while we were living in Utah, we swam at Sacred Falls while we were living in Hawaii. Oh I'm sure there was complaining and moaning, and I know there was usually a very tight budget, but my parents didn't lose their adventurous spirits.

Later, when I wanted to be an exchange student in Japan, they didn't hesitate to let their 16 year old go. And when I decided to study abroad in London, they encouraged me and when my mom saw that my account was getting low, she asked me if I needed her to deposit more money in my account because she didn't want me to miss out on anything. She even encouraged me to tour Europe afterwards, but I was in too much of a hurry to get home to Larry after four months away.

Now when I move, I try to follow their examples and dive right in to local life. It's funny how my friends who've grown up in Columbus often tell me that I've seen way more of the city than they have, and I think it's because I'm used to the idea that my time where ever I live is limited. Most of my life it seems, there's always been another move scheduled so I just tried to use the time I had to its fullest.

Even though I've had seven years in Columbus(by far the longest I have ever lived anywhere), I still have a list of things I'd like to do here. The past year, we've been doing our best to check things off of the list, but it just keeps growing because we keep adding new things. This week we checked off eating at the Banana Bean Cafe, eating at El Arepazo, visiting the zoo one last time.

Can you tell that Creed's shorts are on backwards? We didn't realize until halfway through the zoo.

I guess that's what happens when Dad gets you dressed fast!

We saw Sabrina at the Ohio theater because I HAD to pack in one last movie from the CAPA summer move series (thanks Nikki and David for a great double date)but I've come to accept that there are many things on the list, that we just will not get to. Instead the list has been shoved aside to try to squeeze in as much time with our family and friends here as possible. We celebrated Donny's birthday a bit late, and loved having him stay with us briefly. We saw the new Indiana Jones movie with Kirk and Eva. We've been having regular movie nights with Kirk and Eva where we take turns cooking and then put Creed to bed and watch a movie and we made if through all the Indiana Jones and Back to the Future movies with them so we had to see the new Indy movie with them, even if it wasn't the best. Lucky for us, and not so lucky for Kirk and Eva, their basement flooded in a freak storm this week and there power was knocked out so we got to have a big sleepover here.

We celebrated Father's Day early with the Erneys and Hudsons. I don't even want to think about how much we will miss them.

I guess having so much notice that we would be moving this summer was good in away because it helped us use our time wisely so we wouldn't be full of regrets of things we never had a chance to do and people we wish we'd spent more time with.

So is there anything that you've been interested in doing, but never seem to get around to it? Make a plan TODAY! You won't regret it!