Trip to Ohio to visit Rob and Karen and Family, December 27, 2010-January 1, 2011

We flew to Ohio on Monday, December 26th, arriving at the Columbus Airport in the early evening. Rob picked us up and took us to his home where Karen had a delicious roast beef dinner for us! We enjoyed many fun activities while we stayed in Lancaster. One day, rob and Karen took us to Ash Cave. It is a land feature where the river has carved out a deep area and left cliffs above and caves under them. Large groups of people could stand under the overhang and be protected from inclement weather, but it is not enclosed. Icicles drip from above, forming beautiful water features at the falls and elsewhere. On one spot where icicles drip, the ice forms on the ground and grows up during the winter. I took a video of this water feature, but for some reason, it will not show up on this blog. The ice feature has grown to about 12-f15 feet and about the same circumference, looking like a huge snowman or a buddha. It was an interesting hike and well worth the short amount of time it took to reach the end where the largest cave and the largest ice feature were.

One day we traveled to Columbus and toured the COSI (Columbus Science Museum). We enjoyed the 3 d movie about building airplanes and jets, experienced the tv weather station area, watched fun experiments with electricity where Jonathan was the guinea pig volunteer, and saw kids unicycling 20o feet up on a wire. Jonathan was in line but it took too long, so he didn't end up doing it.

Darrell and Rob spent a lot of time together making repairs on Rob's home. I taught Jonathan how to count to 10 in Japanese and shopped with Karen and the girls for material for skirts for them. Karen treated us to delicious food, Navajo bread with sausage, eggs, fresh vegetables and cheese for breakfast and the most delicious apple cobble ever made!

That evening we ate dinner at Schmidt's Restaurant, a German place. The sausages were delicious as well as the hot potato salad, sauerkraut, and other yummy things. We enjoyed listening to the tuba, and the accordion with the accordion player singing German drinking songs. "In Munchen in dem trinken Haus, Einz, Zwei, Gesuffa!"

We all spent New Year's Eve at Kent and Georgia Emmers' home, eating homemade pizza and salad, and playing Apples to Apples. Kevin and his children, Mickell, and Tia, were there, as well as Jared, Kim and Mike and their son, Kaleb, and of course, rob, Karen, Jacob, Jonathan, Rachel, Kayleigh and Darrell and I.

We flew home on Saturday January 1st. It was a flight we will never forget. It took three legs to get home instead of the usual two. Columbus to Minneapolis to St. Louis to Salt Lake City. And instead of 6 hours, it was 10-12. At least we did get home in one piece! AND,we had a great time with Rob and Karen's family!