WR: Family & Hockey

Adam's brother, Aaron, closed on his townhouse on Friday so we celebrated with dinner at Curt and Robin's. Aaron's new place is just a few miles from Adam's parent's house, so we were able to get a tour of it before dinner. Chester loved exploring and sniffing.

We had a nice dinner together of salad, garlic bread, mussels and crab, and then relaxed while watching the outdoor Gopher Men's Hockey game. Chester was a cute little snuggle monster with me. He must have been exhausted with all the playing and running around.

 

Here he is snuggled up with me with his head resting on his new Ollie #2.

 

On Saturday, Adam went over to Aaron's place for the afternoon to help him with some cleaning and house projects. That night, Adam and I had tickets to the Minnesota Wild hockey game that I had given to him for his birthday.

We got Cossetta's for dinner, and then got to the game about an hour early. This allowed us time to settle in and wander around the rink. Because it was Hockey Day Minnesota, the game started at 8 instead of the normal 7 pm game time. The Wild played the Dallas Stars, which were the Minnesota North Stars before they relocated to Dallas in 1993.

Our seats were pretty good in the 12th row on the lower level towards the middle on the side that the Wild shot at twice. 

 

I would have preferred to be a bit closer to the rink; not so the annoying people next to us. Apparently they thought these seats were "too close" and would prefer to be at least in row 20, or even in one of the upper levels. ....What? Trust me, these people were strange. During the first intermission, the lady had her arm over the back of my seat the whole time - as if she had her arm around me. It was SO WEIRD.

The Stars tied the game up at 3 in the third period, which led to overtime. Lucky for us, the Wild won in overtime. It was really exciting! 

 

 Chester hated that we were gone for so long, but we had a blast on our little date night.

Sunday morning we got up and going early to make the drive back to my parent's house for the day. My Aunt Marian was in town from Oregon for her birthday, and she hadn't been back since we all got married in 2010. The party was originally supposed to be for Saturday night, but I had those birthday hockey tickets for Adam that I had bought in September, so they graciously moved the party so we could make it.

It was so nice to see (almost) everyone on my dad's side; especially since we weren't at Christmas this year to see everyone. 

 

Here's a group shot taken with my tri-pod of everyone at the party -

 

My dad with most of his siblings and his mom -

We were back on the road by 4, all loaded up with Christine and Kelly's gear as we were also taking them back to college after winter break.

It was a lot of driving for us, but so worth the effort! What a busy and fun weekend!