Before moving to Chicago, Sean and I wanted to make sure that we spent time with family and friends who mean a lot to us. We know that we aren't going to be gone forever, but we are even now not exactly sure when we will be able to make it back to Minnesota. A few weeks ago Sean received his general schedule for the first year of his residency!! As exciting as our thoughts and plans surrounding this wonderful revelation are, we found out that we will be unable to return to the Motherland (as Erin and Chris call it) for any holidays this year. This insight made us all the more determined to see our loved ones before we left. Here are some pictures of the whirlwind of visiting that we squeezed in during the last few weeks in Minnesota.
We went "up north" to my parents' cabin over the weekend of Mother's Day to relax a little bit and hang out with my grandparents on my dad's side. My mom, dad, Sean and I played card games and chatted on Saturday night (even Brigita got in on the action), and we stuffed ourselves with brunch at my uncle's house the next day. My grandparents were able to come out and have brunch as well, and we brought my grandma a guilt-ridden cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory as her Mother's Day gift.
The next week Sean's old friends Randy and Geneva came over for a night of grilling. Geneva is currently pregnant with their second child, and their son Ronan gave us laughs as we talked the night away. I served watermelon with the meal, and he loved it!! He kept going into the fridge to get more. Then he fell in love with Brigita's lair and would continually go in and out of her cage throughout the night. She really did not know what to think of him and tried to be wherever he wasn't for most of the evening. Sean and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time watching the interaction between the two year-old child and the three month-old puppy. The next day, Randy and Sean played with the pipe band at a Scottish fair. Neither of them had played with their former band in quite a long time, so the time together was all the more special.
The following two weeks were a flutter of activities as, in the midst of intermittent packing, Sean bade farewell to his good friend Andy (who was also an usher in our wedding) from medical school, I had brunch at the Wayzata Pancake House with my mom (a long-time ritual of ours) and spent time with my good friends Erika and Allison, and Sean and I went to stay with Sean's grandpa and his wife.
Sean's grandpa has lived in a small town for most of his life, and as this life usually demonstrates, everyone knows everything about everyone. Random people were congratulating Sean about graduating from medical school and asking him questions about our lives and future plans. It was pretty neat. We attended a Memorial Day ceremony while we were there, a tradition of Sean's family to attend, and visited the graveyard where Sean's relatives are buried for quite a few generations back.
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