Just For Fun

During Sean's last rotation, I visited him at work for the first time on one of his slower call days and brought him dinner. Of course I had to get out the phone and snap a picture of him doing his thing!! I'm so proud of him. He works so hard and never complains about it. I think I complain about him working hard, long hours more than he does! Anyway, I just had to share.

Minnesota Friends

This weekend, Sean and I hung out with one of my friends from my old job and her husband. They flew out on Saturday to see Wicked in the afternoon and called us up after that to have some dinner and visit for a few hours. We took them to a great Italian place for dinner, and then we walked around near their hotel. It was so nice to see a friend from home. I miss all my friends from my old job. We had a really good group of co-workers. Sean and I had a great time!!

 Mary and I

Arlis and Mary

Christmas 2008

Since Sean did not have any consecutive days off in a row at Christmastime, we were not able to go home and see both of our families. We expected this when we first moved down here, so earlier in the year my family bought tickets on the train from St. Cloud, MN to Chicago.

Their travel experience left something to be desired on both the trip out and the trip back (they were delayed four hours out after having to drive to St. Paul to leave and seven hours back), but once they were here, we had a wonderful time with them.

They arrived on Christmas eve, and we went directly from Union Station to Greektown to have a hearty dinner of yummy food. Christmas day is also my mom's birthday, so our tradition is that we open gifts on Christmas eve, and she opens her birthday gifts on Christmas day. We scrapped that this year and just opened everything late on the 24th into the 25th. 

The next day, we lounged around in our pj's and had a leisurely morning. It was my first day hosting Christmas dinner, so I did my first turkey (with lots of help from my dad) and fixin's, along with pumpkin and cherry pies. 

On the 26th, Erin and Chris were able to come and visit for a few hours on their way from Minnesota to Indiana. The novel gift this year was a fancy similar-to-a-French-press coffee extravaganza that my brother got for my mom. Now she truly is a coffee snob. It did make wonderful coffee, though; all the bitterness was taken away. We had her make many a cup throughout the course of their stay. 

After another leisurely morning on the 27th, Sean and I drove my family to Union Station to catch the train. Amtrak did not get any points for their communication skills, and they waited from 1:30 in the afternoon until about 8pm before their train left. This was incredibly frustrating, but what made it more so was that no one would give them a straight answer about when they were going to leave. We could have picked them up again and made another day of it if we had known it would be that long. Warning to all train travelers in the winter - Don't do it. 

Despite the travel hassles, Sean and I were happy to have such an enjoyable Christmas for our first major holiday away from Minnesota!

Holiday Fun in Chicago

There is so much fun stuff to do in this city! When we first moved here, I discovered that my favorite singer, Sarah Brightman, was going to be having a concert in December. Sean and I went on December 4th, and it was fantastic - the best concert that I have ever been to (and I have even been to two other ones of hers)! Sean was even quite impressed. Here is a picture of her.

Later in the month, we decided that we wanted to go to a Christmas play. We found this little theater on the North Side that was in their last year of a production called The Christmas Schooner. It was a musical made about the true story of a group of men in the late 1800's who sailed down Lake Michigan to Chicago to bring Christmas trees to the people living in the city. This went on for a few years before the original schooner went down in a storm on the way to deliver the trees. Other captains rallied to the cause, and this tradition continued for about 25 years. The theater was tiny, so we were right up there in the action. It was wonderful.

We also went to the Christkindlmarket, which is a German tradition here. German vendors come from all over, even Germany, and sell ornaments, food, drinks, and various trinkets in outdoor tents in a plaza near downtown. It was warm enough to be raining, so we bundled up and tried to stay under the shelters. We listened to some German music for a while and drank hot spiced wine, while we wandered the festival. Here is a picture of us posing by the giant Christmas tree set up near the festivities. 

Thanksgiving 2008

This entry is really late, I know, but I was anti-blog for a while there because my pictures would not load in a timely manner. New year - new resolution not to let the slowness of the picture-loading experience ruin my blogging fun. Now to play catch-up...

Holidays away from home for the first time are interesting. We were sad that we did not get to spend as much time with our families as we would have liked, but considering Sean's residency schedule, we are thankful for what we were able to do. We got to see Sean's family for Thanksgiving and mine for Christmas!! That is a lot during intern year...

Thanksgiving this year (last year?) was a whirlwind but definitely worth it. Sean actually had off for a few days, so we drove back to Minnesota to visit his family. 

On our arrival, Sean dropped me off at a restaurant in St. Louis Park while he arranged to pick up Varsana and Malia (his brother Jamie's girls) to take them with us to his parent's house. I got to steal a little time to see my friend Allison, who I had not seen in almost six months!

The next day, we all drove to Sean's Aunt Mickey's house for a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner.

We left on Friday morning early and arrived home in time for Sean to take a nap before working on Friday night. Lots of driving around and crunched schedules was easily forgotten by a time of good food and fellowship.