Technically, Minneapolis is not my city anymore.  But it's been less than five years since I moved away, I lived there for a third of my life, and I still know the back streets and shortcuts through much of the city - so if you don't count the technicalities of my current address, we spent the weekend as tourists in our own city.  We held The Mitchell Family quarterly meeting (as directed by our current President and CFO's...otherwise known as my mom and dad), and in typical Mitchell Family style, we packed every moment with fun and activity.

After checking into The Depot on Friday night, we walked through Minneapolis and went to eat at Moose & Sadie's where my friend Jessy is a chef.  The kids and I had been talking about it for days and they were both excited to meet A CHEF (or SHEP, according to Martin).  I think they were both a bit confused when we got there, Martin wanting to know why she wasn't wearing a tall white hat, and I'm pretty sure that Sophie thought we were meeting Jessy from the movie Toy Story 2.  Here we are - me, Martin, Sophie and our friend Shep (aka Jessy):


After some delicious pasta, pizza, soup and salads we went back to the hotel and went swimming in the chlorine-playland.  After a long day, we retired to our room where the kids crashed, my dad fell asleep watching basketball, and my mom and I chatted over gin martinis.

On Saturday, we were joined by my brother Ryan and sister-in-law Carrie.  We started out the morning by exploring our temporary neighborhood.  Despite the fact that several of us lived in Minneapolis and all of us have been there many times, none of us had really spent much time walking around in that area.  Here's a (rough) map of our route.  The wiggly lines represent the ACTUAL route we took, since walking around with little kids means that there is no such thing as a straight line down a sidewalk.


From our hotel, we walked down to the river and realized that we were very near to the new Guthrie.  The building is fantastic, and the view from the "Endless Bridge" provided us with an overview for our adventure.  From there, we stopped off at the Mill City Museum which is a terrific building, combining old architecture and new purposes.

Despite how it looks on the map, we didn't cross the river by swimming, but instead used the Stone Arch Bridge to get to Northeast Minneapolis.  By the time we finally crossed the river, we were all starving and feasted at Punch Pizza (thanks for the suggestion, Meghan).  The food was fantastic, and everyone was well behaved.  Even my brother.


After lunch and another round of swimming, my mom and I took the kids to the Walker Sculpture Garden.  It's been years since I've been there, but it was a great place to bring the kids.  They could run, see some art, and I didn't have to worry about anyone barreling into traffic.


Neither of the kids had naps that day, but they did remarkably well.  So we decided to chance it and take them out for dinner at Sawatdee.  That's when Sophie lost her cool and spent most of the dinner shouting "wanna go home" and yelling that she "pooped".  If you were in the restaurant that night, please accept my apologies on behalf of Sophie and me.  Especially my parents, you were both patient and calm as we all slowly melted down. 

To make bedtime easier, mom and dad took Martin to the Depot Ice Rink while I put Sophie to bed.  Dad and Martin rented skates and took a few turns around the rink.  Martin did great, and dad didn't even make him pay a nickel to take to skate with him like he used to do to the girls when he was young.


On Sunday, we went to the Como Park Zoo and checked out the animals.  This was our second trip to the zoo with the kids, and they did great until the very end, which I'm not counting because, dang, we were all tired.  So tired, in fact, that we didn't even get any pictures.

Our quarterly meeting went well, was packed with action, and gave us all time to visit and celebrate the March birthdays.  Having time together like this is important.  It gives us time to share the important lessons in life like those illustrated here on Ryan and Martin's matching classy t-shirts: