Reflecting on the trips and memories we made in 2024

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With 2024 coming to a close and as we get ready to celebrate the new year in about a week I find myself reflecting on this past year and being grateful for everything I have. I came very close to losing my mom multiple times. We went through some really bad times and I would like to believe we came out stronger because of it. There were a lot of ups and downs and we keep moving forward because we have to. We tried to find some happiness wherever possible. We took a lot of trips this past year. We wanted to bring in some positive experiences in between all of the stress we were going through. We found ways to take trips cheaply. I've become the family trip planner by finding things that were inexpensive or free. This year we've been to Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and all over Ohio. We started our 2024 with a trip to Dayton Ohio in February where we went to the flight museum. We went to Sandusky to the Merry-Go-Round Museum, Rutheford B Hayes Museum in Fremont Ohio (we've been twice this year), Fort Meigs in Perrysburg Ohio, Tony Packo's in Toledo Ohio (great hot dogs), we made a trip to Cleveland and checked out b.a. sweetie, Athens Ohio twice and we went to Hocking Hills in Logan Ohio, we went to Cincinnati where we went to Jungle Jim's and the Findlay Market. We made a trip to Fort Wayne Indiana which was probably one of our more stress-free trips where we checked out the former home of Carole Lombard, went to Johnny Appleseed's grave, checked out the military museum there, we ate some good Italian, went to a candy store there, checked out Science Central and a really nice used book store. We went to the Ohio Caverns and back to Dayton for some great Korean Corn dogs. We made a third trip to Wapakoneta to see the space museum and back to Dayton where we once again got some Korean Corn Dogs, went to an amazing bookstore, and then traveled to Yellow Springs where we checked out all of the shops. There was a trip to Marblehead where we toured the lighthouse, went to the beach, and ate some great pizza. For my son's birthday, we made a trip to Columbus where we went to Cosi and the History Center and we checked out the Asian marketplace there. We went to Frank's for hotdogs while there because it's one of my son's favorite foods. The next day after Columbus we traveled to Toledo and took him to Urban Air and to Spaghetti Warehouse for Spaghetti his other favorite food. He told us it was the best birthday ever, our last big trip of the year was to Frankenmuth Michigan where we went to Bronner's and then we traveled closer to Ohio to Monroe Michigan and ate at Pete's Garage. We've made a bunch of trips that I'm leaving out but those are some of the bigger ones. We've made a year full of memories, so we had something good to look back on in between the stress and sadness. Over the summer our favorite trip was to Findlay where we'd get groceries and stop and get ice cream after getting dinner somewhere. Our next goal is to make a trip to Steubenville and Pittsburgh once Christmas is over and we get some things worked out. I hope we get to make that trip. We've saved a ton of money on traveling by only making day trips, doing mostly free or cheap things and buying an Ohio Connections pass that gets us into a lot of cool places in Ohio and the pass wasn't even 70 dollars with a discount we got and we have saved a ton of money with it. We also have a pass for a Science Museum that has saved us a bunch of money by going to reciprocals. Our top places we like to visit when we go somewhere new are: Markets, bookstores (mostly me), history museums, hiking trails (my son loves all things outdoor), diners, candy stores, unique stores. There are some other types of places I look for too. I have a strange love of cemeteries which is why when we were in Cleveland we checked out Lakeview cemetery which has a bunch of famous people buried there and has Garfield's mausoleum which is HUGE. His casket is in plain view and you can go up to the top of the mausoleum and see the Cleveland skyline. It was a really neat experience. My husband and son like to tease me about my weird love of cemeteries, but they really enjoyed it too. I always just think it's cool to learn about the people buried there. In a nutshell that has been a bit of my year, there have been a ton of bad things that happened to me this year but I like to try and remember the good memories we made as a family. We got to do and see some amazing things this year like the total solar eclipse and while we struggled, we also had a lot of love and laughter mixed in. I really hope 2025 is a better year filled with more family trips and less stress and sadness.