I woke up yesterday morning to pouring rain.  I could hardly believe it after so much sunshine.  It’s been pretty cloudy again today but that’s okay, we’ve been busy driving around and visiting with friends and family in the Youngstown, Ohio area.

After Ellen cooked up a delicious french toast breakfast for us Tuesday morning, we drove up to Youngstown.  Our first stop after lunch at an Italian cafe was to another Ford dealer.  This time to have a second key made and get the keyless entry code (the dealer we bought the car from couldn’t find either), no vehicle service was necessary.  That makes it five Ford dealers in four states since we bought the car and with any luck it will be our last for a while.

Tuesday evening we met our friend Greg for dinner before he had to go to work.  He’s a truck driver and has been working nights lately. Greg and Bill went to high school together and he’s been up to Alaska a couple of times to visit and will hopefully come up again next summer to do some fishing.  It was really nice to see him and catch up.  The dinner was real good too.

On Wednesday afternoon, we met with a long time family friends Claude and his mom Becky for lunch at Bob Evans.

Becky is 94 and totally amazing!  Claude isn’t doing too bad either.  We sat around for about four hours chatting about everything imaginable.  It was a very fun and entertaining lunch as it always is with Claude.

Social butterflies that we are, we went straight from lunch (although it was about 4:30pm) to our dinner engagement with Bill’s nephew Bob and his wife Betsy, daughter Corey, and son Kent

as well as their other son Ryan who has his own family, wife Nikki, son Benjamin and newborn son Dominic.

We all went to dinner at Inner Circle Pizza after congregating at Bob and Betsy’s house.  Benjamin did amazingly well for an almost two year old having to be patient during dinner at a restaurant.

He would much rather play with trucks.  Dominic, at nine weeks, was very well behaved, he slept almost the whole time.

It was really nice to see everyone again.  It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen most of the family and the first time meeting for a few.  It was great pizza and conversation.

Now we’re back at the hotel watching a baseball game and getting ready for sleep.  It’s been a great couple of days.

Tomorrow, if it’s not raining, we’re going to Peninsula, Ohio to ride bikes on the Ohio & Erie Canal Tow Path Trail in Cuyahoga Valley National Park .  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for sunshine.