St. Paul, Minnesota

In the new found tradition of spreading my horizons beyond my National Park adventures, I’d like to celebrate the anniversary of my trip to Minnesota! Throwback!

One year ago my grandmother suggested that my cousin Natalie, who is my age, her, and I travel to Minnesota to visit my Aunt Katie, Uncle Brett, and little cousin Sage (who was 4 at the time). In addition my Aunt Eileen would fly up from Colorado to visit too!

Natalie and I were so excited to celebrate Valentine’s Day with Sage since we don’t get to see her often and she is the cutest! We were so excited to see everyone and visit Minnesota for the first time! We were so excited that nothing, not even airport parking failures or Philly TSA could ruin our excitement!

We arrived in Minnesota in the afternoon and realized that they had a BUNCH of snow! More than I have seen in Pennsylvania in years! The best part was a supermarket parking lot had pushed all of its snow into one part of the lot and it was as big as a house and had backhoe on it!

Little did we know we hadn’t even experienced the biggest excitement!!!!!!!!!

A tradition in my family is the Valentine’s Day Tea Party where my grandmother would have my cousins, second-cousins and I all come over for a “tea party” (But none of us liked tea so we would have hot chocolate and Shirley temples). We were hoping to give Sage a mini version of this experience so everything was covered in pink, red, and purple!

Aunt Katie, Aunt Eileen, and Uncle Brett were so excited to hang out with us (which in hindsight should have been suspicious because they probably should have been at work). Aunt Katie was so excited to give us doughnuts from a special donut place down the street. I am a self-proclaimed pastry/dessert enthusiast as you will note in future food blogs, so I was very happy. Aunt Katie brought out a giant box and wen to put it on the table but it tipped too far and all of the donuts spilled out!

We quickly realized that the doughnuts were in the shape of letters and they rushed to put them back in order. The first words they made out were “WE ARE.” I was so excited because I was going to hear back from Schreyer the next week which would decide if I came to Penn State and my aunt went to Penn State so I though they were supporting me. (Side note this entire time Sage is yelling and begging so that she can eat the doughnuts with the sparkly sprinkles).

As it turns out there were too many letters so I thought “Welcome to Minnesota.” How nice of a welcome! I had basically convince Grammy and Natalie that it was a welcome sign. Aunt Katie and Uncle Brett kept moving eh letters and giggling and it took me another few second to realize what had happened.

In the video footage of this event you hear a giant EEEEEEEEKKKKKK screech from me as I realized the anagram was “We Are Having A Baby!” I was so excited. I took Natalie about 10 seconds and Grammy about a minute to finally understand the joyous news we were receiving! We were getting a new baby cousin!

 

Not only was the rest of my week awesome but the rest of my year has been so blessed by Baby Juniper (and later Aunt Eileen’s baby Ellie!)

 

 

 

“Ok so Keeley, you are really failing on this park blog”

Well later that week we travelled to Minnehaha “M” Falls, located in a famous REGIONAL PARK of the Minneapolis area.

*I do not endorse trespassing under any circumstance*

All of the walk ways and stairs used to reach the falls and the river were covered in ice. My grandmother wanted to go down but it was extremely steep and slippery, so they sent their two middle granddaughters to make the trek down.

This trek soon turned into a slide as we realized the only way to get down was to slide on our coats and just try to brace ourselves for the turns in the stairwells! Yes we, and the other 200 people there got yelled at, but we sneakily exited on the opposite sides of the Park rangers!

We also got to go skiing, ice skating, and visited the Bell Museum where my Aunt Katie works, the Mall of America, and the zoo!