Minnesota Summer

We had a great time in Minnesota! Unfortunately, it was an unplanned trip because my grandma passed away. Fortunately, Grandma was 94 and lived an amazing life! I want to get some good pictures to post of her because she was a great grandma. My sisters and cousins and I always had such a blast at her house, so it was fun to reminisce with my huge family!

Erin, Megan, and I all participated in the service. Erin did the Bible readings, and Megan and I brought up communion. My uncle, Dan, spoke about Grandma and made us all laugh and cry. It was wonderful to be with my family!

This is most of the gang. My aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and sisters tend to make it difficult to fit us all in a camera frame! I guess it was a good thing not all the husbands and little cousins could make it. Kidding! It would have been amazing if everyone had make it, but in a big family, that's hard to do!

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center is a fun place to visit downtown. In all the time Dave and I have spent in Minnesota, we never made it down to see the famous "Betty Crocker Spoon" as my family calls it. It is actually called Spoonbridge and Cherry. Dave didn't think my self portrait skills were good enough to fit us and the sculpture in the frame, but look how talented I am? One try, baby! That is the Basilica of St. Mary in the background. Such a beautiful church!
We went to the Star Wars exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota on Sunday before the Twins baseball game we had tickets to that afternoon. My whole family loves Star Wars, (yes, we are dorks) and had fun seeing the actual costumes and props used in the movies. Here is Dave's Vader face. Are you scared yet?

The Twins won the game and moved into first place in our division, which explains the #1 on the cake. My sister, Megan is really good at decorating cakes. She used to work at Dairy Queen and learned her skills on their delicious ice cream cakes! Dave's 28th birthday is coming up on the 24th, so my family had a celebration while we were all together. We love celebrating birthdays!

As usual, there were too many things to do and not enough time while in Minnesota. Every time we go back, I'm reminded how much I love my family and it makes coming back to Seattle very hard! I love living out here, but it would be so easy to just move back and feel right at home. I'm sad that Grandma died, but she gave me one last gift of a wonderful trip back home that I wouldn't have made otherwise :-)

Off to Minnesota!

Dave and I are flying to Minnesota this afternoon. I will hopefully post some pictures while we are there. I am really excited to see my family. I'm also looking forward to the hot weather! Maybe there will be a thunderstorm- I miss those since we rarely hear thunder around our house in Seattle.

I've Been Tagged!!

Melanie, from The Knutson Family blog, tagged me to share six things about myself that you may not know. I am excited that this is my first tag ever, so thanks, Melanie!!!

1. I am a Minnesota Wild hockey fan, a Minnesota Twins baseball fan, and a Seattle Seahawks football fan. However, unless you are there in person, I hate actually watching the games! It's so agonizing to watch, that I'd rather just know the score after the game is over. I hate the feeling of disappointment and wasting my time if my team loses. Guess I'm not the best fan in that way!


2. I have two sisters. Megan, on the left, is my younger sister. Erin, on the right, is my older sister. We are 24, 26, and 28 right now, though this is a picture from a few years ago. They are my two best friends and I miss them since we live so far apart!

3. When I was in middle and high school, I leased an Appendix Quarter Horse named Buddy. His show name was Ima Jaguar Too. We exclusively did dressage. When I first started riding him, he was scared of the white poles of the dressage arena, so getting to recognized training level shows was quite an accomplishment! My heart still aches a little when I think about him. He is still at the same stable, and I hope he is doing well. He was my first horse love!

4. I am 100% scared of frogs! I know this sounds like a silly irrational fear, and I agree. I just can't get over their sliminess and the way they jump at you. Yuck! I couldn't even put a real picture of one on here, it disgusted me too much! Give me spiders and snakes any day.

5. I am an engineer at Boeing. I work for the 737 program. We make the cute little planes, as I like to call them! It is thanks to my mom that I became an engineer. I always really liked and was good at math and science. She always told me I could do something in a technical field like engineering. It is definitely important for young girls who are good at math and science to be encouraged to follow what they like, even if it may not be "cool" for them to do so! We need more women engineers in the world!

6. Dave and I have a goal to visit all 50 state capitols. I also want to visit all 50 states, period, so this will help accomplish both goals! I have been to at least 30 states already, but we've only been to five of the capitol buildings so far: Minnesota (pictured above), Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington, and Oregon. I think it's cool to hear the history and see how different the buildings are. I'm not a big history buff, but I think it's amazing how varied our country is, and I want to see it all! So far, Minnesota was my favorite building. It's beautiful, but I think I might be biased since I grew up there!

I don't know who hasn't been tagged yet out of the blogs I read. Seems like everyone has done a post like this recently. So if you are reading this and have a blog of your own, I am tagging you! Let me know if anyone does a post because of me!

Wild Hockey Game

On March 9, Megan, Aaron, Dave, and I went to a MN Wild hockey game! We had a great time in the State of Hockey!

Here we are all decked out in Wild gear. It was fun to see all the fans in Wild jerseys and clothes. It seemed to me like the best bunch of fans for wearing the team colors. I love it!

This is right after we scored. The Wild were good, but not good enough to win this game :-( But they are in the playoffs now! If I lived in MN, I would definitely go to a lot more games. We all had a great time!