Because it is a Sprague Adventure (TM) there has to be some kind of frantic prelude. This time it was a flurry of very welcome but tightly timed visitors.
First Davi and Lauren arrived from the UP on their way to vacation with Lauren's family at Dollywood (in Tennessee, y'all.) Their visit coincided with the arrival of Lannie, a Taiwanese exchange student who lived with us back in about 2009. Fresh off completing her Master of Accounting at University of Illinois (GO ILLINI!) she arrived along with her parents (Dickson and Wendy) and twin sister (Irene). Despite somewhat chilly weather we put together a little cookout with some other friends who also knew Lannie. We followed that up with a walking tour of Dexter that serendipitously included the Model Railroad Club in the Dexter depot. (Be sure to see it if you are in Dexter on a Wednesday evening.)
Davi and Lauren stayed around long enough to enjoy Thursday doughnuts at the Dexter Bakery and then we started packing in earnest...to go to Cleveland. Quang, who sheltered with us for much of the pandemic, graduated from Case Western Reserve University with twin B.S. degrees in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Quang has become such a part of our family that we couldn't miss his graduation or the chance to finally meet his mom and dad. His parents came all the way from Hanoi!
Even though we were heading for Cleveland, Quang wanted to bring his folks to Dexter first to see our house where he lived in 2020. After a quick dinner at the Pub we all drove to Cleveland. Quang foolishly left us unsupervised with Lan and Phuong so we had plenty of time to fill them in on details of his life in the US that he might have "forgotten" to tell them.
Case put on a nice, briskly paced graduation ceremony and had us out of the field house in well under two hours and then they fed us. (College of Wooster should take note.) We wanted to stay longer to bask in the glow but we had to jump in the car and get back to Dexter to reload the car for the boat launch.
Just because there was a tiny hole in our schedule we also managed to fit in a dinner with friends Jim-O and Kat between the out-of-towners. No pictures from that but hopefully they'll show up in future posts.
We felt WAY underprepared to be leaving for 3-4 weeks but so far I've only missed a few items I should have packed...long underwear, wool socks, bird book, kite.
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