the twin cities!

we never saw the other twin, but minneapolis was pretty fun!
a couple weeks ago, nick and i drove up there to meet his parents & siblings for a day. we drove 10 1/2 hours on friday, hung out all day saturday, then repeated the drive down on sunday. a LOT of driving, but a really good time with his family!

i can't even believe how much we did in one day, even though i was there to witness it! we did 3 major walking events: sculpture garden, ikea, & mall of america.
we saw the famous spoon & cherry sculpture - turns out it's a fountain! who knew? there's water coming out of the stem!

we're being gargoyles. what else would this sculpture be for, i ask you?

this walkway had so many beautiful flowers all along the way...


this thing had huge iron beams with the balanced platform in the middle - the beams moved when you got on the platform, so it seemed unsteady at best! we all survived.

another henry moore! nick's just as excited about this one as he was the one from kansas city.

the mall of america was different than i imagined. there was this theme park inside of course (we got to ride the ferris wheel!! nick was not thrilled, but accompanied me anyhow - true love, you know), but everywhere else it was just a really big mall. i think i expected it to have huge vaulted ceilings and be elaborately decorated with fountains and geysers or something.

nick had a few favorite stores we hit - the apple store, lake woebegone store, and...

legoland!! again, my expectations were unrealistic. i didn't think about it actually being a store - i just imagined museum-quality lego creations displayed. we did find plenty of those - more than i thought possible to fit in one store! my favorite was the motorcycle guy.

then we had dinner at tucci benucche and enjoyed some amazing italian in honor of nick & i's birthdays. nick's family were so sweet to me - when we got in around 11 p.m. friday night, they took us to our hotel room and there they had a dozen white roses & several birthday presents! then the after italian on saturday, we had a cheesecake with fresh strawberries. i felt very celebrated all around.
it was a good time to enjoy each other without wedding pressures. we had some laughs for a day... then back to branson!
nick and i plan on staying home for the holidays this first year, so we may not get to see our families for a good while. :-(

speaking of news such as that, let me just throw some other updates your way...
as of yesterday, we finally were able to refinance the house!!!! after 5 months of going back & forth, getting rejected, finding new hope, getting rejected again, we FINALLY closed and are officially refinanced!
our grand scheme for the leftover chunk of cash has changed from time to time, but we've settled on using it to pay off as much debt as we can right now, getting us started with paying off ALL our debt over the course of the next 4 years. we sat down yesterday and mapped it out and that's the timeline we're looking at here. it seems like forever, but also a little bit miraculous. i hope no one's offended by sharing too much personal financial information, but right now we have around $43,000 in combined debt!!! can you believe that we can literally pay it off in 4 years?! i almost can't, but the numbers say we can, if we stick to our budget.
my friend katie sent us dave ramsey's book 'total money makeover' and his common sense approach to working toward financial freedom has inspired both of us to start working hard in that direction. it just doesn't make sense to be enslaved to money for your whole life long. it's not really a get-rich-quick scheme, because there's nothing quick about it, but the way he says it, there's no reason why getting out of debt, saving for your kids' education & for retirement, and investing should be impossible. then the payoff is, after you get all of that figured out and have all those ducks in a row, if it's done right, then you should have enough money returning from your investments to be able to 1. have fun (with a clear conscience!), 2. give money away, and 3. work at a job that you love doing whether or not it's the most lucrative.

someday we'll be there. maybe in a little bookstore. :-)