July! July! July!

July is the month of ShepAlder. Both Josh's and my birthdays and our wedding anniversary are all within a week of each other, so we are big on celebrating ourselves in July. This year, we went to Winnipeg for Josh's birthday to watch "The Dark Knight Rises" on a real IMAX screen! (This was really important to Josh). Turns out? Winnipeg sucks. But the movie was good!

We also went to the one Mexican restaurant in GF and Josh got a free birthday meal completely by accident. It's a real thing that the restaurant does, but we had no idea when we chose the place.

he looks about as thrilled as one can while eating Mexican food in North Dakota

For my birthday and our anniversary the next weekend, we decided to venture to Minneapolis for deep dish pizza and the Mall of America. I had to work for most of my birthday, but I allowed myself to sleep in and ran out at the end of the day to get to Minneapolis by 10 in order to eat some deep dish for my birthday dinner:

about the tiredest I've ever looked in a picture

It turns out that good deep dish pizza is impossible to find in Minnesota (and it absolutely does not exist in North Dakota), which makes me sad. I've been craving some good pizza. Josh chose this place because it was open late, but also because of this:

It's called "Coca Cola Freestyle," and it had some of the fizziest soda Josh has ever tasted in his life, had a lot of diet options, and basically offered endless combinations of flavors. It's new, so things aren't so backward in the midwest as a Pacific Northwesterner may assume.

For my birthday, Josh gave me the newest Nancy Drew game, and for our anniversary the next day, I woke up to a big bag of peanut butter M&Ms, so this is how I spent my morning:

he knew what I was when he married me

The ShepAlder lore is that Josh and I had our first date on the same day that I had my first date with someone else at a church function. One of the snacks at the function were peanut M&Ms that were snapped up rather quickly. I made an offhand comment that peanut butter M&Ms were better anyway, and when I came home from my first date, I had a bag of peanut butter M&Ms waiting for me on the doorstep. So I called Josh up to thank him, which turned into inviting him over to watch a movie, which turned into dating for a year and a half, and then being married for 5 years. All because of peanut butter M&Ms. 

Eventually I got out of bed and we went to the temple. From there we went to the MALL OF AMERICA:

Which was bigger, but not necessarily better than other malls.

They didn't even sell real Ducks hats. Sheesh.

But I did get to eat a fabulous wedge salad at Tucci Benucch, which still makes me happy thinking about it.

We didn't ride any of the MoA rides, though they looked fun.

But we did stop in the massive Lego store, which is just topless (roofless?) in the middle of the mall.

the gigantic wall of single Lego pieces

And in the rafters there were these massive Lego sculptures that were extremely impressive.

When we got back to the hotel, Josh tried to watch the Olympics, and since we don't have cable he was excited about the prospect of seeing some of the games. Unfortunately, this is what NBC looks like in the midwest:

he still left it on for an hour or two

That night we went to a former speakeasy:

To sample a local delicacy, the Juicy Lucy (or "Jucy Lucy" depending on who you ask):

Unfortunately, as with all trips, this one had to come to an end, but Josh had a very specific request for the ride back to GF:

We absolutely had to stop in the teeny town of Darwin to see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, made famous by Weird Al:

Josh was pleased:

It really was a very big ball of twine, housed in its own little enclosed gazebo:

So that was the gist of our trip to "the cities" (that's what they call them here). We took one weekend off from traveling and that appeared to be a mistake because I spent all weekend sleeping rather than being productive, so we're going for a trip again this coming weekend and, yes, it will involve temple #50. I've been thinking all week about how this will be my last chance to visit the temple in awhile (unless I want to drive 6+ hours round-trip to Bismarck) and I realize how spoiled I was/am in Oregon having a temple 15 minutes from my house. 

There are a lot of things that I was spoiled to have in Oregon, like friendly neighbors and more than one running trail. After a month away, I am realizing how much of an Oregonian I am and how much of a midwesterner I am not.

Temple #49: St. Paul, Minnesota

Josh and I decided to spend the morning of our fifth wedding anniversary at the St. Paul, Minnesota temple, which is about a 5 1/2 hour drive from Grand Forks. I love going to the temple on our anniversary.

This temple was dedicated in 2000, so it's one of the smaller, more plain temples. There are a couple pretty notable things, though. Firstly, this temple may have the least amount of grounds area than any temple we've been to so far. What you see in this picture is literally it: 

The temple shares a parking lot with a stake center, but even that isn't very large. The other unique thing is that this message, which appears on all LDS temples, is etched in glass over the door. I don't think we've seen that before, either:

Finally, the temple workers were mostly young marrieds, which was unusual. But maybe it was just that weekend for some reason. Also, someone's cell phone went off multiple times while I was in the dressing room. In a temple that small, you can hear that stuff. Turn off your cell phones, people! You're in the house of the Lord!

a weird, backward way of letting you know with my fingers how crazy we are for visiting so many temples

I have said many times that the 50th temple makes us officially crazy. Well... we've chosen #50 and we're heading there soon. I'll let it be a surprise as to which one it will be.