The ladies take on Minneapolis!

This past week a few of us girls went to Minneapolis to visit Ashley, who moved up there about a year ago.  Her sister, Sara, and I have become extremely close and we were waiting for a good time to go when one of us wasn't pregnant! 

I couldn't of asked for a better girls weekend.  It was perfect.  We left late Friday afternoon and as soon as we got there we freshened up and went to dinner at Mozza Mia.  It was delicious!  I am sucker for good Italian food.  After sharing pizza, pasta, and wine we went to a beer garden called Butcher and the Boar.  They have a tent set up during winter they kept us nice and toasty.  They had a variety of different craft beers, and the one I drank was called Sweet Child of Vine. It was a little hoppy for my liking, but I would definitely go back there again. 



Mozza Mia



Butcher and the Boar

my pretty friend, ashley

Kendra with her Bud Light

 The next day we woke up and went to Ikea.  This was my first experience.  I honestly thought we would be there all day, but the way they have it set up it was pretty easy to navigate through.  We were in there for probably an hour and half.  I could've browsed for a couple more hours, but I thought I would just have to go up there again when we move to our new home.  I did find some good buys...stemless wine glasses, curtains, shelf for the bathroom, play table for the kids, and dishes for the kids.  After Ikea we went to the Mall of America to get a coat for Kendra (she left a few items at home:)) and had a little lunch (and a couple margs!). 

Once we got back to Ashley's it was time to get ready for the BEER DABBLER.  Let me tell you this was quite the experience. It is an outside event at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds that has a ton of different craft beer vendors from Minnesota.  And one word to describe our experience of the event....ROOKIES.  We show up in our winter coats, gloves, hats, two layers of clothing and we thought we were good.  First off, this was the coldest Beer Dabbler in years (or possibly ever).  We start to look around at the crowd and notice everyone else is wearing ski suits, carharts, ski masks, and have the neccessary pretzel necklace for obvious reasons.  Once we got our tasting glasses it was off to "dabble" into some beers.  There were lines at basically every tent, so we did our best to find the shortest one.  Oh, I forgot to mention that the event description said there would be fire pits for warmth.  Well, it's not what you are picturing (like 20 of them that isn't an actual campfire), but what we found were two (that's right, 2), very small fires with a few logs burning.  We arrived at about 3:50pm and decided after about 15 minutes of being there we would stay until 6.  It was 445 and all of us said (casually), let's just check to see how long it is going to take a cab to pick us up?  Needless to say we left 2 seconds later.  Holy coldness.  But it was a very fun experience and glad I am now able to say that I went to the Beer Dabbler.  Maybe next time we will wear our carharts?

 

love this girl!

 

After the Beer Dabbler we had some time to kill before our 815 dinner reservations.  This was probably the best part of the whole weekend.  We all had our comfy clothes out, busted out some wine, snacked on cheese and crackers, and chatted.  It was so relaxing and nice catching up.

 

We met up with Cyndi and Marci (they were in town for a volleyball tournament) and went to eat at Crave.  I had sushi and wine (which was amazing) and then we hit up a couple bars downtown before heading back to Ashley's.  I will say that Saturday night there were quite a few funny convos and maybe a couple trips in the snow??  All in all such a fun night and very successful trip with the ladies.  Great company is hard to come by these day:).

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