MN State Fair

Over Labor Day weekend Paul, Mikaela and I headed to MN to visit my mom's cousin Sue and family. We're really close to them and they had come out to see us in June, so it was fun to get together again. Her daughter Molly had just had a little boy Cash, 3 weeks before our visit, so we got to meet him too. We left Fri. at noon and spent the night with my college roommate Nichole, her hubby Jon, and son Mason. We had such a great visit and caught up again. It was so good to see them. Sat. morning we traveled to MN and spent the day with the family. I got to go to the quilt shop in Rosemount as it is right next door to Molly's Salon. We had a big family meal and spent time trying to get Mikaela to crawl.
Sunday morning we headed out early to the MN State Fair. It was our first time and we had a blast!
I just loved the Coliseum, so much to look at!

I definitely had to pick up some Sweet Martha's cookies.

I had to eat the bucket down too, with a little help!

Paul had some Walleye on a stick.

It seemed there were a lot of things on a stick, including lottery tickets. I bought $15 worth and won $122 dollars! It was definitely my lucky day.
It was a bit chilly when we left, but we bundled up good and had some warm food like cheese curds, pickle dogs, roasted corn, and punto dogs to fill us up!

Mikaela was having fun and everyone loved her hat!

We had to go to the Dairy building to see the butter heads. They were pretty cool, pun intended.



We had an awesome time visiting our family, attending the fair, going to the Twins game, and shopping at IKEA and Fleet Farm, stores we don't have out here. We spent more money at Fleet Farm than the entire trip it seemed. Boy it's a good thing we don't have one of those stores!

Mikaela is 32 Weeks Old!

Mikaela turned 32 weeks old the week we went to MN. She changed so much that weekend that it's kind of hard to believe!

She started crawling! She'd been scooting around backwards, but she's actually really crawling forward now.

She still loves this teething ring. She was all full of smiles while we were at Sue & Al's.

She loved the new puppy we got her at IKEA. We had a fun trip there, since neither of us had ever been there.

She was roaring! She conquered crawling and was so proud of herself!

She even learned to stand up by pulling herself up on their coffee table. Sue thought she could have her walking if she tried.


She enjoyed her first Twins game! We had 4th row seats from the field on left base line. Awesome seats! She was actually really good the entire game.

She loved to people watch, even if we were all watching the batting, she was looking the other way.

MN Wedding Weekend

We're headed to MN this weekend! We've been planning this weekend for a year and a half, so we're really looking forward to it. My cousin is getting married on a riverboat in Stillwater.  Hopefully mom and I will be able to steal away and visit a quilt shop or two on Sat. We plan to go back to Quilters Cove and we found one in Stillwater we hope to stop at if we have time. A trip to Mall of America is also in the works, so hope it works out to go there. Have a great weekend and hopefully I'll have pictures next week to share.

Crazy Family Vacation

This coming weekend was originally scheduled as our extended family (my great-grandpa's side) reunion. They had 9 kids and then my great-grandma had 8 kids... so it's big. With the economy and so many travelling so far (cousin Karin came from Norway 3 years ago), they decided to postpone it. My mom's cousin Sue and her family are very close to my family. They invited our family to the Twin Cities for the weekend instead, so we could go to a Twins game and have fun with the family. We've been planning this trip for the past year it seems. Ever since our wedding when they all came out to our place they've been trying to get us to MN.
Paul started a new job last week and didn't want to take time off so soon, so he won't be able to go this weekend. I was really disappointed, but I'll go with my parents and the rest of the family will join us. I'll get to stop along the way and visit my college friends Nichole and Angie and their little boys.
I didn't want the ticket to go to waste for the Twins game, so on a whim I emailed Jen to see if she would want to meet us in the cities. She was able to get time off from both jobs and is coming to meet us Fri night! I'm so excited to see her and last night I prepared a couple boxes for her to take back with her. I got her professional tote done, so I'll be able to hand deliver it instead of mailing it! We'll be shop hopping together on Saturday. Yeah! I can't believe how everything has fallen in to place to get to see her again, just 2 months after our first face to face meeting at retreat. I never would have guessed this would have happened in a million years. I'm so pumped for vacation in 2 days!