Week at Lake Erie with Family

 

Locks of Old Ohio and Erie Canal

And on the towpath, where equines are no longer allowed.  

But they used to be used by mules to TOW the boats up the canals.

Family Bike Ride on Ohio's Erie Canal Tow Path

 

Maggie's Graduation Open House

Maggie's graduation open house was held at Riverside Alliance Church on Sunday.

The pavilion kept us dry and cool and hopefully safer considering COVID constraints, masks were worn.

With her sister and friends from church and school.

With Uncle Kevin and Aunt Kristin and church family.  

"Aunt" Suzi even drove in from an hour away to be the life of the party.

And there was cake!

With her fellow BFA student sisters....

parents...

and family...

Our graduate with high honors, congratulations Maggie!  

Pleasure Cruise of Portage Lakes

Family friends from church invited us on their boat nearby Renee's parent's home south of Akron.  

It was a beautiful night with pink clouds, not too hot, but no rain.  God Bless America.  

Lydia Turns 17!

We celebrated Lydia's birthday with a visit to a family fun center with go-carts...

 along with her friends from Washington state who visited for a week.

Here is the birthday girls with Kate and Madeleine and sister Maggie after playing mini-golf.

and having cake at home...

Happy Birthday Lydia!

Summertime Fun

The kids enjoy their hammocks in the yard with Uncle Kevin and Aunt Kristin

Lydia finishing out her Calculus prep course, which she admitted she did kind of enjoy.

Madeleine and Kate visited from Ellensburg.  

So we went for a 16 mile bike ride along the river and canals tow path of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  It was perfect day and temperature of 82 degrees but very high humidity and muggy.  We made it back before the rain came in time to snap this picture.  Only a few skinned knees were the souvenirs.  

Injured Reserve and 70th Wedding Anniversary

Grandma twisted her ankle on July 4th and ended up in the emergency room.   

Here she is recuperating a broken bone over a game of Rummikub with Renee and the kids.

We attended this 70th Wedding Anniversary at church this weekend.

Renee is standing nearby where we cut our wedding cake 20 years ago.

Masks were worn almost the whole time.

Bill feeds a (no-look) bite of cake to his wife.   They were married in this same church at a different location in July of 1950.  

Cornerstone Church of All Nations Online

This is a great message of God’s love presented online by our church family Of missionaries from different continents. 

Our church is about half foreign and half Mongolian.  It has at times consisted of people from over 15 countries. I hope you enjoy as much as we do...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5-kEnwJGJfk

God is So Good

Click here to hear a short clip of this simple song of praise in Mongolian by our brothers and sisters in Christ https://youtu.be/EXzBQFIkN8g

Mongolian Independence Games Begin!

Rough translation: 

“At the worlds only Mongolian games,

Have a nice fair time playing on the Steppe!”

Johanna Turns Fifteen!

Family and cousins were in attendance at grandma and grandpa's house singing "happy birthday" over cupcakes made by Mom and Aunt Kristin.

Maggie pushes Josiah on the swing outside the house where we're staying near Akron.

Maggie and Josiah made a game called "Twisty Tubes" that they're playing here.

Hot days outside, internet, and air conditioning result in some group screen time.

Happy Birthday Johanna!

Ohio COVID Quarantine Scenes

The kids have enjoyed playing lots of Monopoly during quarantine.  

They served us a private meal with a window seat on the screened-in-porch for our 20th Anniversary!

The property where we are staying has lots of wildlife.  Here's a deer with one of her two fawns.

We're grateful to the C&MA Central District for furnishing us a van to drive.  We drove it to church our first day out of quarantine.  

And here are the kids with their masks and a friend who showed up to worship as well.  

It was good to be back together again and out of quarantine!

Historic Mongolian Flight in the News

I was just reading the news from Mongolia and learned about an evacuation flight to the USA.  The first ever direct flight from Ulaanbaatar to USA happened this week.  Mongolian Airlines landed one of their fleet of seven jets in Seattle.  It was loaded with masks for the Navajo Reservations, and returned with about 200 Mongolian nationals who were stranded in America and wanted to return to their country.  Mongolia's borders are still closed.  Here's the link to the whole story: https://news.mn/en/793139/  The really big news is that they plan next year to establish a regular flight to the US.  This would be a game-changer those of us who live there.

Happy Father's Day

We've got one week in quarantine down after traveling back to America to reunite with our girls.

Here we are before taking a walk around the peaceful property where we're staying.

The kids made this creative card for Father's Day which was sweeter almost that Renee's signature cinnamon rolls.

The girls played settlers on the covered porch while it rained and thundered outside.

Josiah and I helped here and there.  Here he is studying up on more lego designs.