We left town very early in the morning and headed out for Faribault. The trip was fun, I got to drive Jen’s van -yippee!- it was filled with jokes, laughter, great tunes, dancing (that was Jen!), and even some signing.
We reached Faribault and decided to check into our hotel before we went to the School for the Deaf for our tour. Jen had been a dear and found a hotel online and made reservations. Well, we pulled into the parking lot and thought perhaps we had the wrong place…nope, no such luck! The place was pretty much a dive! We tried getting out of our reservations once we viewed one of our three rooms and found it to kind of dirty, but we were not able to. So we decided to make the best of it! (I took pictures with Nikki’s camera of some of the “detail work” in the rooms and the exterior…but I don’t have copies of them yet to post the pictures.) So we had them clean one of our rooms again while we went to our tour of the campus.
Oh, and what a beautiful campus! The buildings were absolutely wonderful. We had a short session where we asked a group of juniors and seniors attending the school some questions. We had a quick tour of a few of the school buildings and the classes and the girl’s dorm. The tour was short because on Friday’s the school closes at, I think they said 2pm. So the children/students can go home for the weekend.
After our tour we all went to the mall in the neighboring town. We had to blow a couple of hours (4 to be exact!) before the play started back at the school. The mall was very boring I must say…a good choice, for there were many different things everyone could do…but for me shopping is not something I favor. So Lyssa, Naomi, and I just sat in the food court and chatted for a few hours!
The play, The Emperor’s New Clothes, performed by students at the school, was very good. They all did a great job. Unfortunately we were unable to take any pictures during the performance because of the flashes on cameras…otherwise I would have posted a few pictures! So you will just have to take my word on it that it was good!
After the play, we went back to our “scary” hotel. (I think by this time it had changed from “hotel” to “motel”!) Lyssa and I were scared of what be in the beds or in the rooms and we thought about sleeping out in the van. We also thought about driving an hour and staying at Brandon’s house even id we had to sleep on “grandma’s bed”! (yep, only Brandon will get that joke!) But we decided we could probably handle it after we all stopped at Walgreen’s and bought Lysol and Fabreeze and a couple of new blankets! Good Gracious!
Nikki and Jen were sweet and went throughout the three rooms and sprayed everything with Lysol and Fabreeze! We felt a little better and safer and it didn’t smell anymore! Poor Jen was feeling really bad about the whole motel thing…since she booked the reservations…but it wasn’t her fault…we called it false advertisement!
We certainly had fun in the rooms though…many jokes…at the expense of the motel…funny stories were shared, Julie tried teaching some of us yoga or pilates moves…I didn’t fare too well with those…we just had a good time!
Saturday morning we all got up early and were on the road by 9am. First stop…3 blocks down to McDonald’s! Breakfast. Both Lyssa and I don’t like McDonald food so we brought our own bagels, cream cheese, and orange juice into McDonalds’s. Everyone else ordered from the restaurant so we didn’t feel quite so bad about bringing in our own food…at least we didn’t have to suffer through stomach aches!
On to the Mall of America…I now know the meaning of the saying “shop ‘till you drop”. We were in the Mall for 7 hours! The first few hours were fun…Julie was looking for a new dress to wear on a date…so she was trying some on at Maurices. I was not looking for anything in particular…so I told Jen to choose a dress for me to try-on for the fun of it…turns out I fell in love with it! We also tried on prom dresses at Nordstrom’s Rack…we were having fun! But soon…after we shopped, ate, shopped, hit the bathrooms, shopped, hit the bathrooms again…we finally left and headed for Saint Paul.
I was still driving…I got to drive the entire weekend!! Luckily everyone trusted me to drive in Saint Paul! We were early to the play so we just drove around for a little while. Absolutely beautiful homes! Then Nikki needed some advil and we all wanted some chocolate treats…so I drove until I saw a place that said something about groceries. I pulled in and Jen, Meghan, and I walked in…looked around…came back out. It was an organic grocery store! Only herbals there to take away a head-ache!
We even had enough time to go through the Cathedral! Again, absolutely amazing! Beautiful…if I were to attend mass there, I would find myself not paying attention to the homily, but gazing up at the artwork! Finally we made our way to the college for the play. A wonderful play done by a group of Deaf Russians, the play was all in mime. OF course a little sign was incorporated into it, but a person knowing no sign would have understood it. We all loved it!
Then the long drive home. I was not tired…more like bouncing off the walls…I think the espresso drink from Caribou helped though!...so I drove home and let the others sleep. Pretty much an uneventful drive home…long, but good…plenty of good tunes to keep me company!
We all had a great weekend…one we will remember forever!
Mike holding his gun...we were at his girlfriend's house shooting out over a cornfield...yep!
Me...trying my hand at shooting...i got the moving target on the second try...but that was the only one i got all day! boy was that fun though!
Brandon...in this picture he was using a smaller gun to shoot this particular target. When Brandon bought his house there was a little glass statue of lemons in his kitchen...and it was still there for two years...until he decided it would make a great target! He shot it and killed the poor lemons!
Nick...shooting at the statue of lemons! Nick loved to load the launcher we had for the clay pigeons and release it when we yelled "pull"! He also had a hand launcher...he was pretty good at that!
Brandon and i shooting together! One clay pigeon was released and then i would try shooting it and if i missed Brandon would try...want to guess who shot it? Yep, Brandon!
