From the beginning of January to the end of April, we returned to Alliance, OH, to continue to work with our client Sherry who owns several buildings in Historic Downtown. Her goal is to create several family-friendly tourist attractions to stimulate the local economy and change the course of city’s visible deterioration.

We came back to help Sherry with staffing and opening the Cat Cafe that we built the year before. We also helped open an event venue for weddings and other gatherings. At the Cat Cafe, we were essentially an extension of the animal shelter, serving as a temporary home and showcase for adoptable cats and a permanent home for our resident cats.

We met Sherry through her daughter, Maria, who we met on the road in 2019. We hung out with Maria and Jono whenever we had time off to drive to Cleveland from Alliance.

We visited the house from A Christmas Story which exists in a real neighborhood on a dead end street. The house is preserved as an interactive museum and guests can reenact the scenes from the movie all over the house. Jake grew up watching this movie on Christmas, so he went around and acted out all of the scenes.

We started playing Pokemon Go again and spent a lot of time walking around the local parks, including the campus of The University of Mount Union which we lived only a block away from. Coincidentally, there were a few Pokemon references hidden around campus.

We took a drive to Canton, OH to visit the area surrounding the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There is a large park and walking path connecting it to the President McKinley Memorial Park. We took in the sights there and got some square pizza.

Our favorite pizza place to order from in Alliance, OH, is Stone Age Pizza, a small dinosaur themed pizzeria that made great pizza and definitely fit the theme of what we were doing in Alliance in the first place: making fun and memorable locations for low-income families to visit and enjoy.

In March, I took a flight home to visit my family in South Florida and celebrate my brother and his wife having their first baby.