Friday, April 27th, 2018
We haven’t been down to Miami to visit Grace all year so we planned a weekend getaway and it turned into a great party. Courtney and I, my Mom and Dad and Emily Jane took off from Euclid at 10:00AM with a car packed full of food and toys. We stopped at Wolf Ridge Brewery in Downtown Columbus for lunch. We had a great lunch: my Mom and I had the vanilla coffee cream ale -the reason to stop there, and Dad had the Heferweisen. Courtney and I split celery root soup and a salmon burger, Dad had an Italian sub and EJG and Mom had the chicken sandwich. A great place. It was just about a 2 hour drive to Oxford from Columbus and we checked into our two cabins at Hueston Woods. We each had a 2 BR family cabin and the Purcell’s also had one – we had our own cul de sac – perfect spot. We unloaded and drove to Miami to meet up with Grace. It was a perfect sunny Friday afternoon and all the coeds were out sunning and enjoying life. We took a nice tour of the amazingly beautiful campus and headed back to Hueston Woods. Claire, Corey, Jack and Sophie arrived about 5 minutes after we got back and we quickly settled in to cocktail hour, enjoying the beautiful sunny afternoon. Seamus, JP and pals all came over and Dennis and Penny who also rented a cabin for the weekend all came over for cocktails and a great dinner of Mom’s sloppy joes. We started the bonfire that stayed going for most of the weekend and relaxed in front of the fire. Jim, Patty P, Colin and Owen arrived around 8:00 or so. All the older kids took off for the bars around 10:00 and us old folks hung out around the campfire. Kathryn didn’t arrive until after 11:00 as she was with Shea at volleyball in Columbus.
Saturday, April 28th, 2018
Jack and I were both up early and got the fire going as it was really cold. It dropped about 20 degrees overnight. Everyone was really slow getting up and we didn’t really eat breakfast until around 10:00. The Purcell’s took off to campus to walk around and we went for a nice hike through the woods towards the lodge. We hung out at the lodge for awhile, played some ping pong and found out we could get $50 off per night because grace had A’s last semester. What a deal. Early afternoon we went to downtown Oxford and went to Steinkeller and had some great German beer, potato pancakes and pretzels. Dennis, Penny and Seamus met us there as well. Claire, Corey, Jack, Grace and I continued our day drinking expedition and went to Brick Street where hundreds of Miami faithful were having a fun Saturday afternoon. We met up with Rachel’s parents there as well and the Meaney’s were there too. We headed back to the cottages and got the fire going and happy hour under way. We ended up with about 30 people for dinner – grilling hot dogs, brats, hamburgers, salads, macaroni and cheese. Nice spread. Celebrated Mike’s birthday. Fun time. We stayed up too late enjoying the fire and good cheer.
Sunday, April 29th, 2018
We roused everyone up and gathered everything up. We had some breakfast casseroles, Penny brought bacon and sausage and we had a good breakfast on a sunny morning. We were all packed up and hit the road around 10:00 for the long ride back to CLE. Great weekend. We scored big time earlier this week and were able to reserve three cabins for graduation in May 2019. Apparently everything sells out in less than an hour so we were really lucky to get through.
Eat On Edgecliff 