Aaron's Graduation and the Long Island Beer Festival

Two weekends ago Adam and I flew back to MI for Aaron’s (Adam’s brother) graduation. Aaron graduated from the college of Natural Science, majoring in Mathematics. In the Fall he will be back at MSU to work on his PhD in Mathematics education. He hopes to be a college professor one day.
After the graduation ceremony, we all stopped off at the Michigan Brewing Co. We grabbed a quick beer and headed home to change into “evening” attire for dinner at Penna’s. The food was great and my mom, sister and grandmother met us there for the festivities.
On Sunday, Adam came back to my parent’s house after spending the night with his family in a hotel near the restaurant. His parents continued on their journey back to Rochester, NY, only this time with Aaron following behind, as he’s spending the summer working at home.
My mom had invited my Aunt Theresa and Uncle Jeff over, and my Aunt Pennie and Uncle Jim made a surprise visit as well. My grandma came over too, and we had plenty of food. It was nice to just relax with my family outside. My dad did the grilling and I helped prepare the other food. After dinner we just relaxed and packed. I was showing Adam some pictures of me when I was little when I ran across a picture of me and my cousin Andrea when we were young (see photo).
Our flight out of Detroit was on time and we made it back home by midnight, after sitting in traffic on the turnpike for an hour.
During the week I didn’t do anything too exciting. I went to see United 93, which was sad, but it made me angrier than anything else. It was a little hard to watch at parts, and I can see why a lot of people are hesitant to see it.
On Thursday my dad drove from MI to NY and stayed with Adam’s parents for the night before tagging along with them on Friday for the ride to NJ. They arrived at our apartment around 1:00pm, and Adam had taken a ½ day so he had lunch with them. I got out of work at 3:00pm so we could drive to LI for the beer fest.
As for the beerfest, it wasn’t everything we were hoping for. The organizers did a terrible job of running the beerfest and after waiting almost 30 minutes in line, we were finally in. There were a lot of breweries, many of which we hadn’t heard of before, but in almost 1 hour it started to get packed, and it was difficult to get around. With the room becoming more cramped and hot, Adam’s mom played it smart and went back up to the hotel room. My dad proceeded to keep drinking and by the time the Fire Marshall came and kicked everyone out, my dad was too drunk to realize that we really only got 3 hours of drinking when we were expecting 4.
We went back up the room and ordered pizza since the “food” at the beerfest was only samplings from a couple local restaurants. I won’t go into too much detail, but I did spend a good hour of the night cleaning up puke from the bathroom floor, which was surprisingly not Adam or mine…hmmm…
On Saturday, Adam and I headed out to Port Jefferson to look at more apartments for Kendra. My dad spent the morning in the hotel recovering from the night before, and Adam’s parents hung out in their room until we returned just in time for them to check-out. We headed back to NJ and after much deliberation settled on the Bennigans across the street from my apartment for our lunch accommodations. After lunch Adam and I showered and we took my dad to Campmor before meeting up with Adam’s parents at their hotel for the night. I got some awesome sunglasses at Campmor. They were on sale because the color (can you guess???) was discontinued.
After Campmor we met up at the hotel Adam’s parent’s were staying at, and went to dinner at The Mason Jar in Mahwah.
Yesterday was spent cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking and watching some quality television. All I can say is that I can’t wait for tonight’s 2 hour season finale of Grey’s Anatomy.
On another note, I started my diet this morning… we’ll see if I can keep with it this time. I only have 4 days until the shore house, and although I’m sure it won’t make a difference in 4 days, I’m going to try to work out and eat right during the weekdays, because we all know that I won’t be eating well on the weekends from now on.
I hope to have some good stories this weekend from the shore house, and possibly the first of many great pictures from the summer!!!