When The Kids Are Away, The Parents Will...

Take a road trip...sheesh where was your mind?  This is a family friendly blog friends, so we're keeping it G-rated around here.  Even if we did embrace some romantic moments because we were sans kiddos, I'll never tell.  And you can all let out that collective sigh of relief now.

Anywho...last weekend, my parents came up from KC to watch the kiddos while B and I took an impromptu little get-a-way to Minneapolis to celebrate his new job, relax, reconnect and reflect on these past 8 1/2 months, before starting the new routine.  We had such a great time together, but in true Jackson style, it wasn't without a little drama.  Now, it was nothing like last year's Minneapolis trip where the little Mr. decided to offer his free lawn-watering service to the good people of the sculpture garden.  He's very generous like that.

First, on our way to the good city, we noticed our car was pulling a little to the right.  We stopped, and B gave the tires a look and noticed the front passenger tire was low...the culprit?  A screw embedded in the treads.  He was certain the tire would make it the rest of the way,  so we filled up the tire and made it the rest of the way to Minneapolis, where we had the tire repaired quickly.  We laughed that most likely the worst had happened and we could now freely enjoy our trip.

We made a pit stop at Ikea and the Mall of America where we had a celebrity sighting:

Elizabeth Berkley from 'Saved By The Bell' and *ahem* 'Showgirls' was doing a book signing.  I was like, "Oh, my goodness...I watched "Saved By The Bell' every Saturday morning!"  and B was like, "Yeah, she successfully made the departure from that type-casting." Whatever.  I discretely snapped her picture so as not to draw attention to my utter dorkiness.

After I came down from the high of a celebrity sighting, we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Uptown area where they have great shopping, a huge selection of restaurants and eclectic people watching.
We ate at our favorite pizza place, Pizza Luce, and had dessert at Sabastian Joe's (hands down the best ice cream ever!)



Pizza 'Athena' and the 'Ruby Rae' at Pizza Luce...their Baked Potato pizza is also amazing...



The next morning we slept until 7:30 (that's like sleeping til 10:30 pre-kiddos)...

Then went to Spyhouse in Uptown for coffee:

I spent the morning chilling like this in an Eames chair:

We wrapped up our whirlwind trip eating more, walking, window shopping and then we couldn't go home without feeding B's pension for good architecture, so we checked out the Guthrie Theater by french architect Jean Nouvel. 

Herein lies our final bit of Jackson drama.  I chose to stay in the car, because frankly I was pooped.  B left the car keys with me, and decided to do a walk around and take a few pics. He quickly came back and said I just had to walk around as well, because the views inside the building were amazing.  So I got out, locked the car door and walked over to Brent who said, "Great, let's go...where's the keys?"  We both peered into the window to see the keys sitting in the ignition.  Crap!  My fault.  So, he called for a locksmith while I pouted at my utter stupidity...luckily I have a super-gracious hubby.

AAA arrived, popped the lock in 20 seconds to the tune of 63 bucks (such a rip) and we finished up our tour on a good note with an amazing view of the Mississippi River from a cantilevered portion of the building:

So, drama aside, we had an amazing trip and were back in time to spend Easter with the kiddos and reflect on what a mighty God we serve!