Minnesota

I have been in Minnesota this weekend with Mel and Emma. We left Friday afternoon after Mel and I each got home from work and we arrived at my sister's house in Woodbury around 9:30 Friday night. Emma slept for most of the car ride up here, only really waking up when we stopped at McDonald's in Clear Lake, Iowa, for dinner. Betweeh feeding her the baby food squash we had and her bottle of formula, as well as taking time for us adults to eat, I think we spent about an hour at the McDonald's. That has to be the longest I have spent at any McDonald's.

Yesterday morning we did some shopping at Babies "R" Us. We needed some new car seats for Emma as she is about to outgrow the one she has. We had some coupons for Babies "R" Us, but the closest one to where we live is in the Des Moines area, so we thought we'd stop at the one near my sister's house. Now we just have to figure out how to fit the two car seats into the car for the drive back home.

After shopping, we all headed down to Hastings, Minnesota, to see my grandmother who is in a care center there. She is doing pretty well considering that she is suffering from cancer and has decided to discontinue treatment for it. She is sometimes hard to understand when she is talking because she tends to switch around consonants in words she is pronouncing. She also has a tendency to use the wrong name or to refer to people using the wrong gender or relationship. Nevertheless, we understood most of what she said. We are planning on stopping there on the way back home to see her one more time before returning to Iowa.

Before seeing my grandmother yesterday, we had lunch at Green Mill with my aunt and uncle who live in Cottage Grove. It had been a few months since we had seen them. We had a nice lunch of pizza before heading back to the care center to see my grandmother.

For dinner yesterday, Mel, Emma, my sister, and I went to Saint Paul to meet some of my sister's friends for dinner at Fabulous Fern's. They had really good food there. I would recommend it as a place to go for my coworkers who occasionally come to the Twin Cities for work, but I am not sure I could give them adequate directions on how to find the place.