Sunday, March 21, 2010

Brian's Birthday

This week Brian turned 31! He's been working a lot of hours, so there hasn't been time for a big celebration, but I did have a cake for him on his birthday. He was pretty exhausted in these photos, but he was trying his best to look excited. Poor guy! We're planning a fun day in Des Moines to celebrate once he gets a day off.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

A trip to Minneapolis, MN

The weekend of my 30th birthday Brian took me on a trip to downtown Minneapolis. We haven't spent much time there except for flying in and out of the airport, so he thought it would be a good idea to do some exploring. Mostly it was a tour of restaurants in downtown. Brian made hotel reservations at the Grand Hotel Minneapolis and we got a free upgrade (because they lost our reservation). The accommodations were five star!We got in pretty late at night (driving up after getting off of work), so we slept in the next morning then went out for a tasty breakfast. Brian's breakfast the morning after we arrived- cheese french toast.We had hors' devours and drinks (I had cape cods) one afternoon after spending some quality time in a downtown bookstore.
A toast to exploring new territory in the Midwest!The tomato and mozzarella salad was delicious! Downtown Minneapolis is cool because all the downtown buildings are connected by skyways. So, you don't actually have to walk outside. We did just to get the fresh air, but it was fun seeing all the people inside. There was hardly anyone on the streets. On the way back Brian and I did a little bit of genealogy work for Grandpa Platt and Aunt Judy. We stopped in a small town south of Minneapolis and found the Groveland cemetery to look for Platt stones. There was a lot of snow, but Brian actually found one! The large monument in the right of this photo is for Henry Platt and his family. Brian's digging out one of the smaller stones.

It was nice to get out of town and have a mini-vacation and celebrate a new decade. I hope its going to be a good one!

Ugly Weather

So Hope and I are surviving the ugly time of spring. Not really warm enough to dry things up, but warm enough to make them very wet. As you can see from were my truck is parked and the front of the drive way.
And speaking of ugly things, I just got done fixing the turn signals on the Nissan. Instead of paying forty dollars apiece for new stock turnsignals, I just went down to the local farmers supply store and picked up two trailer turnsignals for five dollars a piece (thanks for the idea Dad)! Thats a savings of seventy dollars! So now my truck is finally street legal with working lights all around. Time to start driving it.