America

We left Ohio to come home to New Zealand on the 24th of July. Our flight didn’t leave until evening, so we had the entire morning to finish packing—and we needed it! We had our baggage allowance pretty much maxed out, with nine pieces of checked luggage (only two weren’t big enough to pack 50 pounds into), nine carry-ons and nine personal bags. Air New Zealand has a limit of 15 pounds for a carry-on, so we had to weigh all of those, too. It took the morning to juggle things from bag to bag to get the weights right, and when we finally finished, we packed everything into the van and went to a local business to weigh them on their postage scale, since I don’t totally trust bathroom scales. Thankfully, we were fine with everything, and the job was finished by lunchtime. We ate lunch, then packed our sandwiches for the evening into our backpacks, to eat while we waited for the first plane in Cincinnati. We knew Air New Zealand would feed us—but that would be after takeoff in Houston at 10:00 at night!

I took a quick picture of everyone, just in case I needed to know, for some reason, what they were wearing on the trip. Here is Mr. Intellectual, ready to go home!

We were actually running just a little early, so my father-in-law directed us along a back route that ran beside the Ohio River. We enjoyed seeing this barge going downriver, but then he had another surprise.

He remembered the Anderson Ferry which runs across the river between Ohio and Kentucky. This ferry has been running since 1817—that’s 200 years now! He asked someone if it was easy to get to the airport from the ferry, and she said it was, so he paid the $5 fee and we got to cross on a ferry instead of a bridge! This was my first time ever to ride a ferry. We all enjoyed the quick crossing; it couldn’t have taken more than about five minutes.

In no time, it seemed, we were driving off the boat into Kentucky, where the friendly woman who had assured us that it was easy to get to the airport led us right there; she said she had to go there herself. We really enjoyed this one last adventure before going home!

On our last weekend in Ohio, we went to the Creation Museum. We had been there twice before, but the children really wanted to go again. My nephew who lives in Ohio was turning six that weekend, and he wanted to go, and my sister who lives in Michigan had a birthday that weekend as well, so she and my mom came to Ohio for the weekend. Gayle’s mother and sister, and his brother and his family, also decided to go, so we had a group of around 25 people! We were thankful for people who had guest passes that they allowed us to use to get in. As always, the museum was fascinating.

We spent the morning touring the botanical gardens and the petting zoo. It was very hot and humid, but the gardens were gorgeous.

One of our nieces discussing a huge dinosaur with my mom.

Mr. Diligence with my sister.

Black-eyed Susans always make me think of my dad. They were one of his favorite flowers. He claimed it was because he knew what they were!

There was papyrus growing in the bog garden. I had never seen it before, but recognized it from pictures. Fun to see it for real!

The koi pond was beautiful.

My brother had an extra leash for their wandering toddler, so we put it on Little Miss for awhile.

The Garden of Eden.

The result of the Fall—death.

Life after the Fall—hard work, thorns and thistles to contend with.

Methuselah talked to us about life just before the Flood.

This dinosaur moved and roared!

A diorama depicting people trying to escape from the rising Flood waters.

Praising God after the Flood.

One fascinating room, new since our last visit, held an amazing collection of insects!

Just before we left, Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Intellectual got to hold a snake.

A favorite toy while we were at Grandpa’s house was this go-cart. The boys even rode it to their aunt’s house several times! It was under the tree that nearly fell on Mr. Inventor, and got broken, but a cousin welded it together again.

There was a family gathering, for Gayle’s mother’s family, one Sunday afternoon, and they had borrowed this train. It was in use all afternoon; the children never got tired of riding. The men took turns driving!

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Diligence clowning.

One of Gayle’s cousins invited us to swim with her children one day, and the boys loved it.

Little Miss was very cautious, but ended up all wet. She stayed on the steps.

When we went to the same cousin’s home for the evening, her husband offered to take anyone who wanted to up the grain elevator his family runs. Gayle and all the boys went. They were over a hundred feet above the ground here!

A highlight of the climb was seeing Grandpa’s place!

The house at the end of the catwalk is where we were for the evening.

On our last full day in Ohio, we had a picnic at a park in the nearby town. My mom and sister had come from Michigan for the weekend, and my brother and his family who live in Ohio had joined us. We had a lovely afternoon together, and on our way back to Grandpa’s for the evening we stopped to have a quick look at this double-barreled covered bridge.

I remember taking a class here as part of a field trip, some 20 years ago when I taught at the local Christian school. I’ve always loved the view out this window of the bridge!

One Saturday while we were in Ohio, almost all of Gayle’s family were together. One niece is in Africa, and a couple of other people were missing for one reason or another, but we had a good time just being together all day. In the afternoon, I let a niece use my camera, and she got some interesting pictures. I kept a number of the 100+ pictures, and then took some more in the evening myself.

This is the setup for cooking chicken for supper. They built a fire in that tire rim, and the food was put on the “table”.

Mr. Inventor with a kite.

Grandma’s flowers.

Gayle spent a lot of time that week trimming this hedge behind the house.

Apparently this sign was something Gayle helped make in Young Folks—he can’t remember what it was for. The children had fun with it.

Our old van. When we moved from Michigan to New Zealand, we drove this van to the Cincinnati airport, and Gayle’s parents drove it back to their place. At this point, it is undriveable. The back bumper actually rusted so much it fell off!

Gayle’s parents house.

Getting ready for supper.

Little Miss with a cousin.

The pinata that was the highlight of the evening for the children.

Going after the goodies! I was glad that, besides candy, there were also little toys.

We enjoyed several family reunions while we were in Ohio. The one with my husband’s father’s extended family was held at a state park near Dayton. The children had a lot of fun playing around the pond. Grandpa brought a few fishing rods, but only two fish were caught.

I enjoyed seeing the plants around the trails. This was teasel, just about to bloom.

Mr. Inventor climbed around in the trees, getting bobbers and lures that had been lost by other fishermen.

What he didn’t realize was that there was poison ivy on the trees! He spent the next week, until the day we left, quite miserable with poison ivy all over his arms and legs. I treated him with oatmeal a few times, and we also tried many other remedies. We were very thankful that it dried up the day before we left for home; we were worried that if the Immigration officials saw it when we arrived in New Zealand that he would be turned back. We thought about getting a doctor’s statement as to what it was, but thankfully, because it dried up, he was able to wear a long-sleeved shirt and hide it.

The shelter house at the park, where we had the reunion. It was good to see many cousins, aunts and uncles again!

The pond, which will always be remembered by our family as the the place where Mr. Inventor got poison ivy! It was really beautiful.

We’ve been home for three weeks already, but I’m having trouble finding time to work on my blog. I’ve had a lot of paperwork to do, for one thing and another, and spent a couple of days in hospital last week with a miscarriage. Now that the paperwork and figuring is nearly done, maybe I can catch up the blog!

Grandpa and Grandma had a wading pool for the little ones. Mr. Imagination and Little Miss played in it a lot on hot days—of which there were quite a few while we were there!

This was a very enjoyable evening at my brother-in-law’s house. There were four large families together, with a total of around 50 people!

Little Miss seemed to love this cousin the most of the three big girls in this family. I wondered if that was because she gave her rides on the horses?

One of our young nephews borrowed my camera one afternoon while we were there. I deleted most of his pictures, but liked this one of their kitten.

My husband’s sister organized a canoe/kayak trip down a local creek (we would have called it a river in Michigan!). It went much more smoothly than the one in Michigan! No one was in danger this time. Little Miss and I stayed home to take naps, but everyone else went. I went along to help pick them up at the end, and Mr. Inventor gave Little Miss a quick ride in the kayak.

A lot of the canoeists weren’t really ready to be done at the end; it was a hot day and the water felt good! This was the aunt who organized the trip, heading downstream with a bunch of little boys after her.

One afternoon I woke up from a nap to find that a storm had just blown in. I went downstairs and looked out the kitchen window just in time to see this branch fall, just outside the house! The wind was blowing a gale (we heard estimates of 80 miles per hour). I decided to postpone the trip to town to get online at the library!

I remembered that the van was parked under a tree, so I ran outside to move it out of harm’s way. While doing that, I saw this branch down in the front yard, and the tree across the road half down. After the storm was over, I heard what happened to my boys. Gayle and the boys were around the corner, helping build a fence for my sister-in-law. Mr. Inventor was standing under a tree to close a gate after his cousin drove through when the storm began. His aunt called him to come over to the garage. He did. His cousin drove through the gate, and two-thirds of the tree fell down—right where Mr. Inventor had been standing a minute before! We were very thankful to still have him.

Mr. Inventor and Mr. Sweetie were so happy to catch some wild kittens one morning! They played with them for a few minutes, but never caught them again.

While we were in Ohio, we wanted to go to Kentucky to visit Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter. This is a life-size model of Noah’s Ark, with an incredible museum inside showing how Noah and his family could have cared for all the animals and provided for themselves. There are many other amazing exhibits, as well; my favorite was one displaying various Bibles through the centuries. The ones from before the invention of the printing press were especially amazing to me. I was fascinated to see the hand-copied manuscripts. They were so neatly done they looked just as if they had been printed by machine!

Approaching the giant boat: 510 feet long, 55 feet high.

Bird cages and food storage.

Mr. Imagination admiring the bow end of the boat.

There were displays of various animals, each cage representing a different “kind” from which many of today’s animals could have descended. Fascinating!

Noah and his family praying as the Flood began.

The kitchen area. Little Miss stood and stared at this scene for a long time. I believe she thought the person was real and would move! There was a sound recording of someone chopping food, although the mannequin didn’t move.

Ham and his wife in their private quarters.

Something I had never thought of before: They have tiny gardens under the skylight for fresh food! Sure makes sense to me.

One exhibit that really intrigued me was the room that showed Bibles from the past thousand years. These are hand-copied; this first one is a Latin Bible from somewhere around 1200-1300 if I remember correctly, and the second one is from Ethiopia in the 1700-1800s. I couldn’t believe the perfection of the hand-copied Bibles from the Middle Ages! I never dreamed they could be so neat, looking just like a printed book.

Little Miss and her cousin, tired at the end of the day but having fun together.

Gayle wanted to take our children to a historical park he remembered touring many years ago. We calculated that we were last there 20 years ago, nearly to the day—just after we were engaged! The place has changed a lot since then; they’ve built a huge new entrance building and added a lot of other buildings and exhibits. We spent several hours walking around it and learning about the history of Dayton, Ohio. Little Miss’s favorite thing was the dog stranded on the roof of a house in the building which told the story of the great flood of Dayton in 1913. She thought the dog was real, and wanted to watch it dry off; it looked like it was dripping wet. Mr. Inventor enjoyed the grist mill. I didn’t end up taking any pictures of the exhibits—pictures like that bore me, and I didn’t want to clutter my computer with them!

The name of this road has always amused me. What is a chicken bristle, anyway? We couldn’t figure that one out.

This bell tower is where the park got its name. The owner of the National Cash Register company built it for his wife.

The joys of being a mom—you get asked to pull things out of people’s eyes.

Mr. Imagination

Mr. Sweetie at the Shaker house.

My girls!

Before we got halfway through the village, Little Miss was getting very tired, so when she saw this chair in a pioneer house she made herself at home.

A robin up in a tree at the park.