Memorial Weekend.

Since 2011, Nick and I have started a tradition of going back up to his hometown for Memorial Weekend. It's a good time to take off work since we have Monday off. We throw one or two vacation days on to that and it makes for a nice long weekend in Michigan with friends and family. As I was going through my pictures from this weekend (which there are barely ANY - shame on me!) for this post, I thought I might add pictures from the past two years too. Well it turns out last year I took zero pictures! Yep you read that right, I did not take one picture while we were in Michigan last year. At least this year I took my phone out for a few; so I guess I am improving. But I just so happened to take a lot of pictures from our first trip up for Memorial Weekend in 2011 (this was also the same weekend that Nick and I got engaged!). Since there are so many pictures and it was such a special weekend and a start of a tradition for us, I thought I may just have to write a separate post about Memorial Weekend 2011.

 

Now, moving on to this past weekend in Michigan...Thursday morning we hopped on a plane to Detroit and headed downtown to hang out at Hockey Town (a restaurant/bar - Red Wings themed of course) before we went to the Tigers game that night. I think every time we've gone to a Tiger's game, Nick and I have made a stop at Hockey Town to get a bite to eat or have a drink. At Hockey Town we went up to the top bar while we waited for my sister-in-law, Lori and her Fiancé, Ken and her two boys to get there to eat with us. Even though it was cold and rainy I still took a couple shots of our view from the balcony.

After Lori and Ken arrived, we ate and headed over to Comerica Park. The game was delayed about an hour because of the rain and by the time it started it was a chilly 43 degrees, windy and drizzling here and there. Needless to say we didn't stay for the whole game! We still had a ton of fun despite the weather and once we left we headed to Lori's house to warm up and catch up more with each other. It was a really fun night!

By the way, I absolutely love my new Michigan hoody! We stopped at a mall on our way to Detroit for me to get something a little warmer than what I had brought with me - oops! I'm glad I got this cute new sweatshirt out of it!

 

Friday morning; the sky was blue and it was much warmer (50's) out, we headed up to Alma, where we'd be for the rest of the weekend. That night my other sister in law, Gina, her husband, Jim, Lori and Ken and a bunch of our friends came over. It was perfect weather for a bonfire by the water, accompanied by music and lots of laughter!

Every Memorial Weekend Alma holds the Highland Festival and Games. There's a parade in the morning, craft tents everywhere and the sound of bagpipes echoing through the town. We walked to the parade and browsed the crafts that morning and then relaxed before we headed out to our friends house and the Beer Tent later that night.

 

Sunday was a relaxing day at the house...we all needed it after all the late night partying we had done! Nick grilled his delicious pork and steak tips for all of us for dinner. Then the best part of Sunday was that we got to see our Nephew, Jake, before he went to Chicago (today) for eight weeks of boot camp! He enlisted into the Navy and we couldn't be more proud of him! It was a pretty fitting weekend for us to get to see him off before he went away to train for the Navy.

 

We came home Monday afternoon and relaxed before it was time to head back to the real world. We miss everyone already but are lucky we will get to see Nick's parent's next weekend in North Carolina for our Cousin's graduation! And after that, we will be back up to Michigan at the end of June for Lori and Ken's Engagement Party!! We can't wait to see everyone again!