Minnie-soh-tah

As I mentioned last week, Brandon and I were able to get away for a long weekend, a MUCH needed long weekend. We headed up to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Specifically, we went for a bible conference, but also just to have some time away since we hadn't taken a vacation while I was on break this year.

We left Thursday morning and made it to Minneapolis by 2pm. That gave us plenty of time to get in some sight-seeing before the conference, which started Friday afternoon.

As soon as we got into town, I was in love with the feel of downtown {although that was pretty short-lived}! :) On Thursdays, they hold a Farmer's Market on the main street so smells of fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers, and freshly popped corn was in the air.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous and a reprieve from the heat we had been experiencing back home! Once we got settled in our hotel, we went out to explore.

The Mississippi River!

Nerdy, I know, but we were so excited...we had never seen it before!

A lock on the Mississippi River; they are fascinating; Brandon had never seen one before...but we didn't get to see any boats use it...except a canoe. :)

After we tired of walking all around downtown, we hopped on the Light Rail and headed for....Mall of America!

I knew there was a roller-coaster in MOA but I didn't realize it was an entire theme park! If we hadn't eaten so much lunch a few hours earlier, we would have gone on a few! Instead, we settled for an awesome round of mini-golf! (I lost.)

Many of you will be sad to hear that the shopping aspect of MOA was lost on me; I hate shopping... (my mother dragged me on so many trips when I was little, I think this is my rebellion :) The amount of stores and levels (4 floors!) was impressive but all we left with was a magnet (our staple souvenir) and a spur-of-the-moment bathing suit purchase (I tell you...buying a bathing suit in MN in October is the way to go...an otherwise $80 suit was $8!!).

{Purpose of the bathing suit purchase: we are not big fans of swimming but found out our hotel had a heated pool and, after a long day of walking, that sounded heavenly to us...so we decided to be spontaneous! (Yay! We aren't spontaneous people...which, to be honest, made the swim-suit shopping quite nerve-wracking for me!) But, it was nice. We had the pool to ourselves and took advantage of it for, oh, about 20 minutes!}

Thursday evening ended with a little TV watching (a treat since we don't have cable at home) and then we knocked out!

Friday AM we were supposed to get up bright and early and do a little more sight-seeing but we woke up at 9am! Whoops! We got up, wandered around until we found a little diner to have breakfast at, and then headed over to the convention center for the start of our convention....

...but....since this post has become quite lengthy after just one day of our trip...I will fill you in on the rest of it later this week!!