We had a great weekend. My brother-in-law, Phil, graduated from Ohio University, so we made the trek out to Athens, Ohio!

On our way, we overnighted at the in-laws’ house and stopped at Molly Malone’s in Covington, Kentucky for some fried pickles and a beer. Any other fried pickle fans out there? It was so nice to be around the Cincinnati area. It feels like home to us!

On Saturday morning, we got an early start and made the next leg of our journey to Athens! I’m always in awe when I go to a big college campus. Hanover (where Chris and I went) is a tiny school of less than 1,000 students. It’s a small and quaint campus, and there’s really no “college town” associated with it. OU is pretty massive with people everywhere and lots of things to do.

The actual graduation was pretty good and quick. Nancy Cartwright, who does the voices of Bart Simpson and Chuckie from Rugrats (among many others), made the speech! She was very entertaining and did her voices and she actually had some great advice for the grads (and for everyone in the audience).

The graduate, Phil, and his proud older brother!

My sister-in-law, mom-in-law, and me!

Not sure why, but I’ve been doing this in photos a lot recently.

Everyone was starving and in a celebratory mood after the graduation, so we headed back to Phil’s house and ordered a couple pizzas. It was SO good.

One thing I can definitely say I hadn’t experienced is the craziness of move-out day on a big campus. A lot of the students dump a bunch of belongings in their front yards for garbage pickup because they don’t have room for/don’t want the things anymore. All evening, there were locals driving around the student neighborhoods rooting through the stuff!

Not gonna lie: We did a bit of rooting when we saw that Phil’s next-door neighbors had dumped a bunch of old vinyl records (in their sleeves) out as trash! There was just about every Beatles album, Simon and Garfunkel, The Monkees, etc. I have no idea why you’d put that out as garbage!

After snagging some albums, we sat on the front porch and watched people drive by and look through all the stuff.  My favorites were these obviously former-hippies:

Before heading back to our cabin at Lake Hope to sleep for the night, we had a nightcap of an OU legend: chicken waffle sandwich. I was a bit hesitant, but it was delicious: two soft and thick waffles with fried chicken, bacon, and a “special sauce” that, to me, tasted like mayo, syrup, and honey mustard. I know it sounds awful, but it was SO good.

On Sunday, we wanted to do a little exploring around Lake Hope and at nearby Old Man’s Cave before making the journey back to Indianapolis. Here are a couple photos from our adventure:

(Excuse my grandma sneakers.)

After such a fun weekend, it was definitely hard to make the [long] drive back to Indianapolis. But here’s to a good week!

OH – And CONGRATS to Phil – we’re so proud of you!