Skip to main content

A Rare Weekend in Minneapolis

For the first time ever we got up early and were out of the house before 10am. We headed to Lake Nokomis for a Nature Club meetup. Nokomis Park had recently replaced their playground and added  a natural playground. Meadow was loving the balance beams.

She even got me, Mr. I'll-Watch-You-Play to try it out.

Before you know it Meadow was racing back and forth down the tree balance beams.

Our friend Anna runs the nature club for the Minneapolis Park Board. She lets the kids take charge and explore the environment. This time they built a structure out of branches.

All the kids and adults were involved and helped each other out.

It turned out to be a pretty nice structure.

Once it was built everyone crawled inside and Anna read a book about fall. It wasn't the book she had planned, but all the kids liked it.

Before leaving the kids played on the playground.

Back at home Meadow and I played some games.

Well we accepted an offer on our house and put in an offer for a condo. 

Since we will be packing up before Christmas I figured it was okay to put out a few decorations before Thanksgiving. We also needed to slim down our 6 boxes.

We're not going to have nearly the storage that we currently have nor the space for endless Christmas decorations.

Of course the advent mittens had to go up.

Just the little tree this year.

After we finished decorating the house we had to drive down to our potential condo for the inspection walk through. The condo is in southwest Minneapolis near Lake Harriet. We never imagined ourselves living in such a swanky area, but it turns out we could afford a condo. Where we'll be living, is a mix of older apartments and charming, but expensive homes.

It will be change losing 1000 sq ft of space with a baby on the way, but I think we are going to love living here.

After the inspection we were invited to the Northstar Roller Girls Roller Derby.

My friend and realtor, Nate, is sponsoring the league this year.

 I had never been to a roller derby before and was completely lost at first at how the points work.

Eventually we caught on. It was a pretty entertaining way to spend a Saturday night.

There was a guy making balloon animals for all the kids. Meadow requested a sword and was having so much fun with it that she popped it. 

So then I took her back down to get a new one. This time she picked a flower.

At this point we hadn't eaten dinner yet.

After some discussion with Nate, Jess and their friends we ended up at J. Selby's in St. Paul. When we first sat down a part of Meadow's balloon popped. The whole place stared at us. Whoops.  

The cauliflower "wings" were really good.

Brooke got faux-chorizo tacos, Meadow the near-chicken nuggets and I got a simple asian stir fry. After finishing I kind of regret not getting one of the fake meat menu items. We'll have to take Blake here next time he's in town.

It was getting late and we were ready to head home. 

It was a nice change of pace to actually go out with people back in the cities. We usually only go out with folks when we're out of town. I think that might change a bit after we move to the new place near Lake Harriet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Range Camping for Work and Fun

Scott had more shoots this weekend. This time it took us way up north. With Meadow back in school we left Friday afternoon.  Luckily Meadow's teacher canceled their afternoon meeting and we were able to leave earlier than we planned. To break up the long drive we camped for the night at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park . We booked the last site, I can't believe people are still camping. When we were setting up our tent Meadow said, "Why are other people so close to us?" We don't go to normal campgrounds very often I guess.  We set up early and went on a hike before dinner. We should have brought our canoe along, but a hike would do.

Backcountry Camping with Kids in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Day 1  Back in May I stumbled upon Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I had no idea there was a National Park in North Dakota and that it was the northern end of the Badlands. Usually our summer vacations coincide with Scott's work trips. Since he didn't have any this summer I thought we should take advantage of actually taking a vacation. What, my workcations are always classics? I suppose a second real vacation this year wouldn't hurt. We definitely have more time than normal. As long as we took Covid-19  precautions and avoided people. We finally settled on a time to go. Blake joined us so we borrowed our dad's van so we could ride together. Scott had just driven from Michigan the day before. Blake had met my parents in Wisconsin to get the van and then drove from Duluth to pick us up. I offered to drive since I literally only drive twice a month.  I was still pretty tired from a long drive home. Since we were near Fergus Falls we had to stop by the abandoned state ho...

Meadow's 13th Birthday Party

We woke up to down pouring rain.  Once the rain had slowed down, Theo and I walked over to the Kingfield Farmers Market. Theo picked another Bundt cake as his treat. I have never seen it so dead.  I got some rhubarb to make jam and Israeli bagels that I wasn't expecting to be long. On our walk home we also picked up some free pots and a Minecraft book.  Both of our vacuums have bit the dust. I was trying to hold out until Black Friday to buy another one when I saw there was deals thanks to Prime Day. Theo said he's never seen me this excited before, not even my birthday.  I used up all of my gift cards I'd earned from Medica. Yeah, I know, it's weird. Walking for two years got us a vacuum. I had vacuumed in the morning with our old vacuum and then again with our new one. Ew. Usually I'm the one stressing out before guests come over but this time it was Scott.  We both have blind spots for different parts of the house I guess. We originally thought we'd have her ...