Meeting His Family...

I sit writing this in my home timezone: central! It's been almost a full 7 months since I have been in CST. I have spent the majority of 2015 in Pacific and a little in Mountain Time and the first week or so in Eastern Time. I got my timezone bases covered for awhile now! As many of you know, I hopped on a plane and jetted back to the Midwest for the Fourth of July. What some of you may not know is that I spent it in Byron, MN with Aaron and meeting the Wait side of the family. I remember everyone's names and who belongs to who. Read up.

Roxanne and Chuck are Aaron's mom and dad and his sister is Kelly. Chuck's sister is Ellen who is married to Mark and has two daughters, Margit and Betsy (who I did not meet), and a son Matt. Chuck's brother is Mike who is married to Beth and has a daughter, Emily, and a son, Eric. Chuck's parents are Dorris and David. And no, Aaron is not sitting next to me to ensure I get this right. 

So, I barely slept on the plane but have no fear, I took a few naps throughout the day on Friday. So we got picked up from the airport by Aaron's parents and made our way to Byron. I took a nap as soon as we got there before I met the family. After my nap, I wandered downstairs and ran into some of the family (before I had my coffee). I took a walk with Beth in the morning, played birdie/badminton before lunch, ate an enormous plateful of food, took a nap, went to the Oxbow zoo, went to a Honkers baseball game and saw fireworks at the end of the game!

Saturday, I took another walk with Roxanne and Beth in the morning. Chuck cooked another wonderful lunch of steak and salmon. The Wait family also decided I needed to get my Star Wars education finally. We started with Episode 4 and I fell asleep during it. Hey, Aaron is still dating me so it musn't have been too big of a deal that I wasn't into it :) In the evening, we went to a parade in a nearby city. I managed to get some popsicles which was pretty nifty. Aaron and I grabbed some Subway for dinner and then headed over to the church to watch the fireworks. We played frisbee with the cousins before we enjoyed the fireworks. All the fresh air left me tired and I crashed hard that night.

Sunday, most people had to leave for home. In the morning, Beth, Mike and Erica started the drive back to Ohio. The rest of us played hearts before lunch. Then we said goodbye to Ellen, Mark, Matt, and Margit as they started the drive back to Iowa or South Dakota?? for school. Then it was Aaron, Emily, Roxanne, Chuck, Dorris, David, and I left. To be totally honest, I don't entirely remembered what we did Sunday evening but I do know it involved more good food stretching my stomach to the max!

Then came Monday. David and Dorris left early in the morning. The rest of us had dinner with Roxanne's parents at a restaurant called Honkers. Emily had Thanksgiving for lunch. No seriously, Thanksgiving was literally on her plate. In the afternoon, we played more cards, snacked, and then had to start packing our belongings back into suitcases. We dropped Emily off at the Rochester airport before heading to the Twin Cities for our flight. We said our goodbyes, checked in, jetted off back to Eastern Time, retrieved my car, drove home all before midnight. And the cherry on top of the huge, wonderful, amazing cake was that I didn't even need to work the next day :) Instead I hiked Mailbox Peak (9 miles roundtrip, 4000 foot gain). 

All in all, I had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend with the Wait family. They are all so sweet and extremely kind. Oh, and have I mentioned how great of a cook Roxanne is?! She went out of her way to make sure I had vegetarian, dairy free food to eat :) And Chuck sure knows how to run a grill!! Poor Aaron has to eat my cooking again. Moral of the story, I had a great weekend!