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.