Minneapolis Part 2

First of all, I want you all to beware of this post, because I'm being a bit of a hypocrite. I'm doing something I don't like when I'm reading others' blogs...I'm posting a ton of pictures. But I really don't have a way to show everything we've done without them! So here's our summer in pictures.

Welcome to Minnesota: In the first week or so, we had a crazy hailstorm near my work (my poor car). The hail was huge - the picture shows a couple of the hail stones (and they really were as hard as stones - not light, fluffy hail like we get in the west - these two are actually slightly smaller than most of them I saw - and it had already started to rain by the time I got them). A few weeks later, there was some massive rain, and then a crazy windstorm that uprooted trees all over the city, and knocked out the power. Our power was out for about 18 hours, but it was out for others much longer.

Family and Friends: Surprisingly, we have family here! My cousin Grace lives out here, and it was awesome to reconnect with her. We went out to eat, gave her a little birthday party, complete with cake and ice cream, she babysat Scarlett for us, and she and I went to see the Star Trek movie while Kristen and Scarlett were in Utah for a week. Also, we got to see the Pecks (old family friends) when their son Ty got married to a Minnesota girl. Don't mind Scarlett - she just stole someone's bouquet.

  

Yummy Food: There are a ton of great places to eat around Minneapolis. We tried "juicy lucys," which are hamburgers with the toppings in the middle. We ate at the Blue Door Pub (Longfellow), and both got the Bacon, Cowboy-style: cheese and bacon stuffed inside a burger, with a couple huge onion rings on top and bottom of the burger, with BBQ sauce on top. Mmm...my mouth is watering right now. In addition, there's this really awesome thing in Minneapolis called "Restaurant Week." This is where a ton of the super fancy (read: expensive) restaurants have special menus for $10-20 for lunch or $20-30 for dinner. It gives us peasant folk a chance to try something we wouldn't normally. We went to The Melting Pot and Fogo de Chao (a Brazilian steakhouse). Both were good, but super expensive. We'll definitely be back at Melting Pot for dessert, though.




Sites Around Town: There is so much to see and do in Minneapolis. As I mentioned before, there are tons of lakes, parks, attractions, etc. We went to the Mall of America (where Kristen got to live her childhood dream of going to an American Girl store), Lake Calhoun (we want to go back and take out one of the paddle boats), the Sculpture Garden (see last post for a picture of us with the spoon bridge and cherry), the Wild Rumpus (a children's book store - that's Scarlett going out the kids door), I went to a Twins Game with work, a couple farmers markets, and we even went to Old Spaghetti Factory for Kristen's birthday (a little taste of home). We've also been to a bunch of parks (not pictured).

Trips Outside of Minneapolis: We also took the opportunity on a couple weekends to take some road trips. There is so much out here, that we didn't want to miss the chance to see some cool things. Over the 4th of July weekend, we went to Chicago. Highlights include eating at Wildberry two mornings in a row for breakfast (pictured is me with the red velvet french toast, which was basically red velvet cake for breakfast - so good), eating at both Giordano's and Gino's East pizzerias (we liked both, but Giordano's better; we also met up with Chad - one of my first semester groupmates - and his family at Gino's), ice cream and um...planking...at Ghiradelli's (let's be honest - we just love food), and the silver bean and the fountains at Millennium Park (Scarlett crawled under the bean, then tried to stand up and bonked her head - the rest of the trip she would talk about how her "head clonk da bean").

We also took a trip to Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois another weekend. We were able to watch the Nauvoo Pageant, visit a lot of the shops and learn about their history, and see the jail where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered (as well as their graves). Trips are difficult with a toddler who won't sleep in the car, but we loved the chance we had to travel to these places.

 

  

 

Minneapolis has been an awesome experience, and I think I would be happy if we had the opportunity to come back here (we'll see whether I get a full-time offer from the company where I'm interning). And we still have 11 days here - there's more fun to come!

Minneapolis Part 1

I realize that it's been a while. Almost five months, to be exact. My family is currently in Minneapolis, where I have been interning in Marketing & Strategy for a Fortune 200 company since mid-May. It's been an amazing experience, and I've learned so much. It was also refreshing that the work I've been doing is actually going to be used by my company. It wasn't just a "fetch some coffee" or "do this project that we'll never actually look at" kind of internship. I created a marketing playbook for working with a brand new channel, wrote a case study based on the experiences of some of our partners, and devised an incentive plan to help maintain the integrity of both our brand promise and customer experience. I know that's a little vague, but it's all confidential information, so that's all I can share. :)

So that's what I've been doing at work. But in addition to all that, I brought my family along for the ride. It's one thing to move around when you're single, but quite a different experience to move your whole family with you. Kristen has never lived outside of Utah, so this is really new for her. But to be honest, it's relatively new for me too - I've lived in Utah since 2004 (except for one summer in Mexico/Washington in 2005): nine years.

I really never thought I'd live anywhere that long. My family moved almost every three years when I was growing up, and I liked being able to make a fresh start every so often. But I do find myself missing family and friends back in Utah. My best friend is there, my brothers will be (my other best friends: technically they're in Oregon and California right now), and most of my theater friends of course. I've lived there for so long, that it's naturally going to take some adjustment to get used to living somewhere else.

But don't get me wrong - I really like it here. Minnesota is beautiful - it's so green, there are gorgeous trees everywhere, and it really is the land of 10,000 lakes (officially there are 11,842 lakes more than 10 acres in size). The park system in Minneapolis is fantastic, which is great for Scarlett. There's lots of great food (we even found an authentic Mexican place...which took some doing, by the way), cool things to see, museums (including one of the best children's museums in the country), two zoos, a good library system, farmer's markets in the summer... There are just a lot of things to do and see here. As this is getting long, I'm going to break this post into two. In the next one, you can read a little more about our adventures here in the City of Lakes.