Our Three State Honeymoon: Minnesota

Okay, so you've seen Illinois, and you've seen Wisconsin, and now we're on to the unscheduled part of our trip.  Mr. T and I have been talking for some time now about buying land in Minnesota sometime in the future.  We know that this is ultimately where we're going to end up living for the rest of our lives.  We have big dreams for our future, and the first step would be finding land to start our lives on.  So we decided to drive up to Duluth, MN and get in touch with some realtors to look at land.

Why Duluth?  Well we both want out of the cities, and Duluth is the next biggest area.  We figured we would work backwards a little.  Buy land, and then find a job in that area.  That way we end up exactly where we want to be.  Duluth has multiple high schools, middle schools, and a couple colleges.  There are also quite a few surrounding towns with large high schools.  So with any luck, Mr. T will be able to find a job within a reasonable commuting distance.

So we checked out of our hotel in the Dells, and drove up to Lake Superior.

Mr. T has been up here before, but this was my first time, and I didn't expect there to be SO much water.  It looked like the ocean, where all you see is water and sky.

We had made reservations at a hotel right on the Lake.  And I do mean right on it.

This is the view from our hotel room window.  You could walk out the lobby doors and across a boardwalk and be on the "beach."

The back of Canal Park Lodge from on the beach.  If you're ever in the area, I highly suggest this hotel.  It was absolutely gorgeous, and the price wasn't bad at $116/night for a lake view.  Here are a couple of pictures of the room. (I remembered this time!)

View from the doorway.  The bathroom is to the right.

My hubby relaxing after the drive.

The cute little bar area.

The couch and desk past the bed.

A peak into the bathroom.

We got up early in the morning on Wednesday so we were at the hotel by 2 or so.  We put on our suits and headed down to the beach to put our toes in the water.  Unfortunately, it was freezing, and the beach really wasn't a beach so we couldn't lay out.  But we did take some pictures!

After that we decided to go inside and swim in the pool since it was much warmer.  On the way though, Mr. T thought it would be a great idea to jump into the lake and then run inside to the hot tub.  And I'm not kidding when I say the water was freezing!

How handsome is this man?!

We spent a little time in the pool and then got dressed up to go to a "fancy dinner" which apparently I didn't get any pictures of.  But we headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant the hotel was featuring called Bellisio's.  I got a pricey glass of wine, that was delicious but that I couldn't justify having a second glass of.  We got escargot as an appetizer which neither of us had tried before, but it was actually really good! They cooked each one in a little shallow bowl in a butter garlic sauce with cheese on top and it was served with small pieces of bread.  Very delicious.  I got an amazing lobster cannelloni and Mr. T got some sort of fancy chicken.

We decided then and there that we would come back as often as we could on our anniversary and stay the night in the hotel, and come out for dinner at the restaurant.  I'm planning on holding him to it!

The next morning we got up and drove 1/2 an hour south and met up with two different realtors over the course of the day.  It was very informative to see what kind of land you could get for what kind of money.  We're looking at buying multiple acres, so it was also nice to see just how big 40 acres, or 60 acres really is.  All in all, it was a really great learning experience for us, and got us even more excited to start our future!

Here are just a couple of pictures of some of the land we saw.

We ordered in a delicious pizza that night and laid in bed watching Shrek.  Then we got up in the morning and continued on our journey.  We had to stop in Saint Paul quickly, and then we went back to Wisconsin for a weekend of camping.

Make sure you tune in tomorrow for the surprise I hinted at! It's pretty exciting =]

Our Engagement

The Date

4/4/2009

How He Popped The Question
We had been talking about the future and our plans for awhile leading up to this. We both figured that we would know when it was right, even if it was all happening pretty quickly. For the month leading up to this we had been talking about getting engaged and when we would like to get married, and we both knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of when. We even went as far as looking at rings one time in the mall. But we both decided he should use his Great-Grandma's 80+ year old ring his Grandma had given him. He was going to be in MN for a week figuring out housing and I was flying up to meet him for the weekend and then driving home with him. I hinted that it would be the perfect time to pop the question =] (it didn't take much convincing on my part to get him to agree) I even knew the day that he took my dad to lunch to ask his permission. So I knew, or hoped anyways, that it would be happening, I just didn't know how or exactly when.

I got into Minnesota on a Thursday night and we spent the weekend looking at places to live and figuring out work situations. It wasn't until we were driving home Saturday afternoon that it happened. He pulled off the highway and I figured he was going to a gas station or stopping for food. Then he proceeded to keep driving and nearly get us lost while looking for a little side road he had been to before. He finally found the road that led down to the St. Croix River beach.

He told me this river was significant because it is the borderline between WI (where I spent a lot of time growing up) and MN (where he spent many vacations). By this point I had a pretty good idea of what was happening. So we got out of the truck on a cold windy day and we walked down onto the beach. We were standing in the sand staring out at the water wishing it was warmer out =] Then he got down on one knee and proceeded to tell me many things, most of which I don't remember because I was so excited =] He finished with how much he loved me and how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, and then asked me to marry him. It only took me about a half a second to say yes!

The ring in this picture belonged to Mr. T's Great-Grandma. His grandma found it on her mother's nursing home floor after her fingers got too small and it fell off. She gave it to Mr. T. because he is the oldest grandson. It's over 80 years old! I think it is absolutely gorgeous, and it is even more special to me because it was passed down to him. It has the wedding band welded to it now.