Trip to the Twin Cities

Last weekend Travis and I went on trip to the Twin Cities. It was a great weekend away! I was surprised at how much I missed Adele though! We stayed downtown at The Normandy. It was so fun to be so close to shopping and great restaurants.
There is a first time for everything...room service! It was fun to have food brought to our room while we watched a movie.

It rained most of the time we were there. I really wanted a picture when we got out of the temple, but it was raining WAY too hard. Makes for some sweet pictures though.

Rain Forest Cafe at the Mall of America. I LOVE ZEBRA decor!

Another first for Travis...the Mall of America. Where they have it ALL!

Itasca State Park

Last Wednesday we took a day trip to Itasca State Park to do some bike riding and meet up with a family that used to live in our ward a long time ago.The legend is that if you cross the Mississippi River at the Headwaters you will live a long and prosperous life...we decided to start Adele young. Let's hope this works!
Travis and I rented a tandem bike and my parents got a Burley to pull Adele. We LOVED it! Addie was so cute in her chariot.

My dad took this picture of Adele and I love it! This is where the Mighty Mississippi begins!

Oh the tandem bike! It was HILARIOUS! You know you have a great marriage when you are okay to sit in the back and let Travis be in the driving seat! I couldn't see and I couldn't move my handle bars, but I loved it anyway! I hope to get our own bikes when we move to Washington.

The fam at Lake Itasca. The weather has been so rainy here that we have to do our adventures despite the weather.

It was so fun to see Heather and her family again! We enjoyed great tin foil dinners and catching up!

Adele Likes To...

...talk on the phone
...drive the car

...get her toenails painted

...color

...wear daddy's shoes

...wear sunglasses

Youth Day

When I was in High School I applied to be apart of a new group called the Bemidji Youth Advisory Commission. The purpose of the commission was to help link youth with adults and provide drug/alcohol free type activities for kids to do in a town with nothing to do. Eleven years ago I petitioned the City Council to mandate June 7th to be 'Youth Day.' We celebrated it by having a youth march with the mayor, bands playing down at the waterfront all day, and a street dance to end the day. It was very successful, but I never thought that it would be still be going on eleven years later! (Kind of makes me sound old!!)

I was in town on June 7th this year and stopped by the youth rally! It was fantastic to see that it had gotten bigger and better! Wish I could find pictures of the first youth rally...pretty sure I did not have a digital camera at the time!

Mayhem

Thursday night after I got done putting Adele to bed I came upstairs to find a tree had fallen on our car in a crazy windstorm. The only thing that came to my mind was an Allstate commercial. "I am a random windstorm. Shaky, shaky, shaky. And if you named your own price on car insurance you could be picking up this tab yourself." Mayhem came to our house and landed on our car! After my dad used a chainsaw to cut the tree off our car it didn't look like too much damage was done. The insurance adjuster looked at it today and any guesses on the price to fix this little dent?!?!

$1700! I was SHOCKED! That $1700 only includes labor--no parts. I went to tell Travis that we are in the wrong profession and he informed me that fixing humans pays way better than fixing cars! We'll see.

Garage Sale

Travis and I decided that we needed to get rid of weight and space for our move to Washington next month. We had a garage sale and had so much fun! It was so much work! I think if I put it into dollars to hours it would definitely be below minimum wage!

Seth and Halle let us have it at their house because we thought we would get more customers at their location and we were right! The cars kept coming all day! We set up 3 tents and hoped the weather would be good...I have a sunburn to prove how wonderful the weather was!

It took a lot of time to set up, but no time to take down. There were so many garage sales going on this weekend and I was sad to not be able to see what other people were selling. Hopefully in Yakima we can find some good finds to replace some of the things we sold today.

My mom, her boss, Halle's mom, Halle and I all put stuff in. Halle and I were the garage sale divas who became the cashiers! It was the first time I had put on a garage sale and had a great time. Well worth the time and effort!

Vacation With a Herd of Goates

Arizona Welcomes Us! At the beginning of May Travis, Adele, and I flew to visit the Goates! We knew we had missed them, but didn't know who much until we spent time with them again! They are the BEST hosts EVER! I want to be like Alissa when I grow up!

We flew into Mesa and Alissa picked us up. A McDonald's run, red light ran through, and a little car ride later we were at their cute house!

Adele LOVES rocks and was in heaven with all of the rock lawns! We couldn't walk very far or fast without her picking up and playing with rocks!

Jason and Alissa have an AWESOME camera and we got this sweet picture of Addie!

Kali and Adele are only 5 days apart and are so SWEET together! Two little friends...I wonder if they will be later in life! Hopefully if Jason and Travis work together!

Addie loves to give hugs and Kali let her! It was so fun to see these two little girls hugging!

Travis doesn't have any brothers and neither does Jason so they went out for some MAN time. The smile on their faces when they got home was PRICELESS. Jason had some fun with some explosives and a good time was had by all!

I am not an animal person, but I was so excited to go to the Phoenix Zoo. I LOVED it! Adele was born a furnace, so the Arizona heat made her so HOT! We got to see all the animals I wanted to; lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys...you name it we saw it!

After the zoo Jason's sister and her roommate agreed to watch the girls so we could go have a grown up dinner. We went to Brio's and had an AMAZING dinner. Eating outside was so nice after enduring a long Minnesota winter.

We can't wait for our next Adventure with the Goates family! Thanks for having us!