SO, in Minneapolis, MN, there is a Monarch Festival to celebrate the monarch's migration to Mexico. It occurs in early September and it's a made into a carnival type thing, kids have their faces painted, adults donate money and time, people dance, blah blah blah.

The reason I'm interested in it is because monarch butterflys are a bit of a symbol to my family.

When my grandpa died in Feburary 2008, my entire family struggled with ways to cope. I went comatose, my mom found Jesus, but my aunt, she went into research mode. She wanted to find a tattoo to represent my Papa, and she found the monarch butterfly. She felt that the butterfly represented long, hard journeys, of which symbolized many things to her: her long life journey, our families journey from poverty, to a thriving business, and my Papa's two year struggle with liver cancer, ending in a relapse that lasted 17 days. SO, she got a beautiful monarch on her shoulder, to symbolize long journeys, like the monarch embarks on, one that is celebrated in Minneapolis.