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

Yardwork, Ikea and Pumpkins

My new parents-in-law got us a dehydrator for the wedding. Knowing we were going to be cleaning up the garden and going to farmer's market, we took a gander at our millionth kitchen device during breakfast.   Scott added granola to his oatmeal.  The oatmeal was rather bland, just the way Brooke likes it.   Scott was actually cleaning up so I had to take a quick photo of him as proof.  Scott told me he was, "putting a blanket down for Peanut," while singing. During the winter months peanut needs a warm place to peer through the window. Seeing as it was nearly November, I setup his blanket for him. Seeing as the farmers market season is dwindling down, we headed to the market...once again. The close proximity to the cities central farmer's market has to be one of the best assets of living in NoMi. We were both amazed by the bounty of produce still on sale. We quickly filled up our first bag and took it back to the car....

Work Trip: Cincinnati Rules or How I walked and biked the inner core of Cincy

Another week, another 360 college campus shoot. This time I was photographing the University of Cincinnati. I was stoked to go here and tried talking Brooke into going, knowing that it's an awesome place for old house nuts like us. Unfortuntely Brooke didn't say yes until after rewards tickets disappeared. First stop was Short Vine right next to the University of Cincinnati campus. Reddit told me I needed to try out Al-Madina so that's where I headed. With no car I just walked everywhere the first couple of days. I found a place to eat behind the local library. Al-Madina is well worth a stop. This part of town was already making me fall in love with this city. Why is it not mentioned alongside Boston, New Orleans and Savannah as great American architectural cities? My room at the Graduate Hotel had a corner dedicated to local rock and roll acts. A nice touch. Cincinnati was rad. A place that felt equally East Coast while being squarely in the Midwest. Missing teeth in pla...

Hike Trip with the Kids to Nerstrand State Park

Meadow and I had so much fun hiking and geocaching last weekend, we decided to do it again. I was busy photographing for a project in Lake City. Our state park pass expires at the end of the month so we decided on Nerstrand State Park. A short drive from Minneapolis I'd always wanted to go.  I love that they had this natural playground. First we wanted to see the waterfall. Little hiker. The waterfall was a lot smaller than I expected but it was open for free play. I let the kids play for awhile. Then we found another area to play. Mr Independent had to hike back himself. That's my stubborn little guy. We took a lunch break before geocaching.  Meadow didn't believe me she had smoothie on her face. Theo either. We finished our day by hiking almost the whole park to find the cache. Too bad Scott couldn't have joined us.