My scary tale of sisters and ghosts.

Anyone who knows me, knows sisters scare me more than ghosts.


This is my mom and her friend playing cello for Boo at the Zoo. They love to dress up in somewhat elaborate costumes, they went as ghosts this year. I don't know why, but my mom completely changes when she's around some of her friends. She gets kind of crazy...and I mean that in the good sort of crazy way, since I assume she may read this.

So I went to Ohio this weekend, that was fun. Friday, after finishing up everything that needed to be done with school (I use the term finishing somewhat loosely here...), I left Ann Arbor, picked up my older sister and my youngest sister from the Detroit airport (they had flown there...it's an airport, it's what you do.) and we went down to Cleveland. This was no random trip back to my childhood home. We went to see my mom, who had also flown in from Texas where my family's living, play cello at the Cleveland Zoo. The more I try to explain this to people, the less sense it makes to me, but it happens. My family hasn't lived in Ohio for like 5 years. My mom used to play cello with her friend every Halloween for "Boo at the Zoo". Even though my family moved many dozens of hundreds of miles away, my mom still flies back to Ohio every year around Halloween time. It's kind of like a vacation for her I think...but they pay her to take it, which seems like it would make any vacation better. I am willing to travel to Hawaii if anyone reading this would like to pay me to go there.

Again, Boo at the Zoo. So, they've taken up playing these funky looking cellos. They're electric cellos. It's because by day my mom plays at the zoo, but by night she rocks out with some pretty hard core bands. You should hear the electric cello, electric banjo, and electric kazoo all play together, you get some pretty rockin' tunes.

On the way to Cleveland, my sisters and I stopped at Cedar Point, which is a pretty awesome roller coaster park. Then we continued on to the east side of Cleveland, where I grew up in a small town called Chesterland. We stayed with some family friends who treat us like we're their kids. Only I wonder sometimes if they don't treat us better, so maybe like grandkids. Let's be serious, I've seen my parents around my nephews and nieces...they definitely treat grandkids better than kids. Saturday I went to Columbus to pick up a friend from BYU who was interviewing for dental schools, then went up to Boo at the Zoo. My favorite part, besides the cello playing of course, was looking at all the kids costumes (apparently this event is for kids like 8 and under, so if you are, say 24, and do not have any kid with you, you actually tend to feel slightly out of place). Halloween's coming up and I always struggle coming up with a costume. So I figured I scope out what was hot, and just copy the most popular costume. Turns out fairy princess is pretty popular. I may not be that.

Picture of Ohio where we stayed. I've got to say, I'm pretty proud of this picture, got the sun just right through the trees. Had to cut down 7 trees to do it, but it was definitely worth it.


Sunday was fun too, went to church with a lot of people I knew growing up. Plus it was the primary program, which means the entire meeting was done by kids younger than 12 (and a few adults to help them). I also sat by a friend who had two of his kids with him that were too young to be part of the program. So, yeah, needless to say I enjoyed the meeting a lot. Kids are funny, and I seem to relate pretty well to them. Turns out we even have about the same length of attention spans.