My college roomie, Amber, is getting married in less than a month!  At the end of August, we had her second bachelorette party (the first was in Vegas, but I couldn’t go…) at my parent’s house in WI!  It was a blast!  So many wonderful ladies there to celebrate Amber’s big day and a HUGE THANK YOU to my parent’s and brother for helping out with food, boating, and drinks.  Here are some pictures of what a great time we all had!

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve had any desire to be on my computer besides work, school or a random Facebook update (I have a 3G iPhone that is dying a slow death and it doesn’t appreciate FB).  I’ve been able to do some of my goals and other events have helped me revise them somewhat.  But the best thing about having my 30 Before 30 list is that I inspired someone else to do one, too!  My friend and former teammate, Molly, has made her own list!  Well, kind of.  I forget how much younger she is than me!  It may not be before she turns 30, but I’m glad she is doing her own list!  A preview of hers is here.

And now for an update on mine.  Here is the original list, and here is what I have done in September.

1. Cook a meal from Mastering the Art of French Cooking
2. Do an inversion in yoga.
3. Complete a “Century Ride”
4. Spend a “Girls Weekend” in Madison or Milwaukee
5. Attend “Oake on the Water”
6. Take the MN Bar Exam (and pass!)
7. Find a job.
8. Get to my ideal weight, and maintain it.
9. Sell our condo.  Small revision once we learned what we could sell it for.  Now it is Buy a House!
   
10. Ride the Peddle Pub.
11. Try a new restaurant once a month.  Done! In an effort to save money (for a house), we have been trying to stay in.  Luckily, my parents were in town over Labor Day and Jason’s dad visited a few weeks later.  Perfect excuse to try a new place!  We went to The Lowry in Uptown with my parents and Crooked Pint Ale House with Jason’s dad, Mike.  Both were delicious!  I haven’t decided where to go in October, but I made a list, haha, of places to try over the next year.
    
12. Paddle board on Lake Calhoun.
13. See a band/musician in concert.  I have an amazing husband.  For our one year anniversary, he helped me cross off a HUGE thing I wanted to do.  I got to see Adele in concert!!! I had tried unsuccessfully to get tickets on three different occasions.  And he managed the impossible.  It was a GREAT night!  We met some friends, the Potter’s at the Liffey in St. Paul and then headed to the concert.  Here are some pictures. 
    
14. Learn how to use a sewing machine.
15. Bake my Grandma Murphy’s sweet rolls successfully. (Plan to do this at Christmas, with Grandma M)
16. Learn how to make a pie crust.  (Grandma B has already offered some tips!)
17. Visit Napa Valley and go on a wine tasting (or two or ten).
18. Canoe on a river in WI or MN.
19. Take a road trip with Jason.
20. Plan to plan less, be more spontaneous.  (edited per Jill!)  Working on this, but hard with school, work and still want to see friends!!  But I’m at least trying not to plan every week, three weeks in advance.
    
21. Spend a day in bed (or at least at home) without cleaning, planning, phone or internet.
22. Complete Corepower Bootcamp.
23. Curl in a mixed spiel with Jenny, Dan, Jason and Ryan. (Getting Jason ready, we start mixed league on Sunday!)
24. Attend 8 events/festivals in the Twin Cities.
25. Eliminate foods with high fructose corn syrup and reduce processed foods.
26. Take a cooking class.
27. Spend a weekend at a spa and/or doing yoga.
28. Call my grandmothers once per week twice per month.  I’m editing this to twice a month because of #20 above.  But it has been really nice to get to talk to them more.  And in August, I even got to sit down at each of their houses and chat for a good, long time.  They really are amazing.  Grandma B is 93 and going strong and Grandma M will be 93 in just over a month!  
29. Shoot under 100 in golf… maybe next summer.
30. Take pictures at gatherings with friends and family and focus on taking pictures of our little family more regularly.  I’ve done MUCH better at this, if you compare it to what I did before.  Here is a picture from Portage in August at my lovely cousin’s home. 
31.    And my weird brother and great mom!

If I could say that in all seriousness, I think everyone would hate me and call me a liar.  But we have had a pretty great year to begin our marriage.  It has been wonderful to think back about that day and all the planning, help and love we had from all of our family and friends leading up to that day.  This time last year, we were hoping that the thunderstorms would pass through so we could golf!  That didn’t happen, everyone survived and our rehearsal ended up in a better location than I could have imagined.

I’m glad I wrote down everything I remembered about those days here, here, and here.

This year, we plan on celebrating with Wuollet cupcakes (without tinted frosting), dinner at our neighborhood fav Rinata, some golf and possibly some kayaking.  Definitely hoping to try Bread and Pickle as well, but that might not work out.  It should be a beautiful day for golf, unlike last year!

Thank you to everyone for being there for us before, during and especially after our wedding as we learn what it takes to make marriage wonderful!

Classes start two weeks from today. I think it might be time to purchase books. I’m kind of looking forward to class starting, if only because it means I am that much closer to being done. Which is fantastic!

Here are my classes for the fall in order of excitement to learn:
Transactions and Settlements
Law and Business Enterprise
Insurance Law
Employment Law
Advocacy (dreading)

Once Advocacy is done, I am free and clear for whatever classes I want to take, it is my last actual requirement! Yay!

I will still be working part time, Monday, Wednesday and a few hours Friday. This means busy! Hopefully, regular yoga will keep the crazy Maureen from appearing, at least most of the time…

This week, I made sure to start calling my grandmother’s as I said I would do a few weeks ago.  Oops.

It might turn out to be one of my favorite things on my list.  Grandma Brunt (at 92) is driving to Ohio with my uncle this week to visit my Great-Aunt Dorothy.  Really? I hope I can sit in a car for 8-9 hours when I am a few weeks shy of 93 and still be able to get out of the car!  I also got to hear some good stories about her taking trips to Mexico when she was younger.  Both driving, one just from Arizona, one from WI with her THREE children, and the one from Arizona to a friend’s beach house on the Baja Peninsula.  Anyone want to volunteer to move there so I can come visit?  No offense to my friends that already live in warm weather locales, I will get there eventually.

Grandma Murphy and I had a somewht more serious discussion about money and wills, but it was still sweet.  One of the items that I’m sure all of her grandchildren will want to remember Grandma by is her collection of china teacups.  They are so beautiful!  Nearly thirty of them, all with a different pattern and I’m sure a different story to each one.  Jason isn’t sure where I will be displaying those, but I told him not to worry about it.  Grandma M still lives by herself (even after bats invading her house the last two years) at 92 and those teacups won’t be leaving that house anytime soon.  My plan is to go over there and get the story behind more of them when we visit next, but I did get one tidbit yesterday.  Grandma M told me she started the collection when she lived in St. James, MN because her neighbors (oh, and her and grandpa were the young ones in the area) would get together for coffee on their birthdays and drink out of these great china cups.  When she moved to WI, they gave her one as a going away present and she kept collecting them after that.

I’m really looking forward to learning more from both of these great women before I turn thirty.  Hopefully, I will be able to add sixty plus years on to my experiences like they both have.

I’m racking up the restaurants this month, but that will not excuse me from trying new places each month going forward.  That would not be as fun!

This week, we went to Risotto on Lyndale and Lake with our neighbors Tim and Michelle.  Tim worked at a fairly high class steak house and we let him pick out the wine to begin our evening.  His choice, a valpolicella.  It was so smooth and delicious!  The restaurant itself was quite tiny, but very well decorated.  I think I would even be comfortable just coming in there to sit at the bar, it just looks cozy.  Maybe next time we have 18 inches of snow, that is where we will brave the storm to be comforted with good wine and great food.  Because, without a 4WD vehicle, trips to South Minneapolis to visit Home Depot or the Riedel household will not be happening in the midst of a giant snowstorm.  Like this.

After hearing the specials, we started with a couple of appetizers.  One was mussels from the specials of the day and the other was a green bean souffle with asiago cheese sauce and mixed greens.  The mussels were delicious and the souffle was good (especially the cheese sauce) but the texture was somewhat strange with the mixed greens.  For our entrees, we were super adventurous… Michelle and I ordered the same thing and so did Jason and Tim.  But it wouldn’t have mattered, they were all AMAZING.  Like, hard-to-stop-eating-even-when-you-are-starting-to-be-uncomfortably-full good.  I wish I had some right now…  The ladies sampled the funghi porcini e pollo  and the guys had the zafferano e salsiccia. 

Normally, I am not a huge dessert fan.  More of a, let’s have one more glass of wine and relax here type of diner.  But Tim found one of his favorite desserts on the menu and kindly ordered two.  Not for himself, but for Jason and I to share.  And another bottle of wine so I could have my dessert choice as well.  Did I mention that we like to eat out with them?  Bring on the red wine, who cares that it’s Monday night!  The chosen dessert was panna cotta or cooked cream/vanilla custard.  Yum!  and so light!

Loved this place and can’t believe it has been open for two years…  We will be back for sure, I can’t wait to try some of their other dishes.

Oh, and Tim and Michelle gave us some insight on Piccolo (amazing, but pricey for the unique and small dishes) and The King and I (which I’m sure everyone from MN has also tried and we have yet to do, blah blah).  I think we will be checking out King and I on Saturday.  This Saturday happens to be my last one before classes and crazy studying begin again.  My plan, to watch movies (HBO has a ridiculous amount of good ones on right now which are slowly being DVR’d throughout the week) and veg.  No thinking, no cleaning and maybe crossing off another goal of mine to spend a day without a cell phone or computer?  We’ll see how that goes..

A few weeks ago, my mom was in town and we went to visit our friends in Shoreview for dinner.  Finn got to come along and he made a new friend.  Kyle, the ferret!  At first, they weren’t quite sure what to make of each other.  But then they were friends.

 

 

For patio night this week, we headed out for dinner and didn’t sit on a patio.  But, the other important parts of our patio nights were still there: good food, wine, conversation, and excellent friends.  Plus, it was a chance to make good on my goals of trying new restaurants each month.

As you might guess from the name, it is in Northeast Minneapolis and has a great atmosphere.  The wood booths and beautiful wood bar plus the little bits of eclectic that each server had, even in their uniforms added to the experience.  Our waiter was excellent, very knowledgeable about the food and came to our table at exactly the right times.  We started with some toasted french bread and garlic butter as well as a brie like cheese with marmalade and crostini.  All delicious!  We all tried something different and each dish was delicious.  The chicken came with an amazing wild mushroom risotto, the pork chop had potatoes with this perfect sauce on it and the gnocchi  was yum!  Some of the ladies had dessert and I got to take a taste of some delicious peach cobbler and a chocolate cake that was more like torte it was so creamy and rich.

We also had some new job celebrating to do for my friend Sara and that required some pink Prosecco.  Of course, that was great!  As well as the vinho vehrde that we had to start the evening.

Overall, I would recommend this place.  It had a very cozy neighborhood feel, the food was good (if a little pricy but that is just because I am so used to being on a budget lately!) and the service was efficient and friendly.

I think I will get to try another one or two places this month (way over my one per month requirement) but I’m good with that!

Here is the website for those curious about the place. http://northeastsocial.com/

 

Last weekend, we made the drive to Chicago to visit our friends, Aaron and Miranda.  We broke the trip up by stopping at my parent’s house on Friday night.  Somehow, we always end up talking so late when we are there!  With a wake up call of 7am to make it to Chicago, a bed time of 1am was rough.  Finn stayed at the lake on Saturday and we headed off in search of Spotted Cow beer to take to the birthday boy.

The best part of the trip was that Aaron didn’t know we were coming down.  Miranda had managed to keep it a surprise for his birthday!  As soon as we got there, mimosas were served and the celebration began!  Our first order of business, after mimosas, was to try some Chicago-style deep dish pizza.  This was Jason’s first trip to the Windy City and that was a necessity!  We attempted a brewery tour of Half Acre Brewery, but arrived too late.  Instead, we sampled some of their beer at The Bad Apple across the street.  Miranda and I took on Jason and Aaron in shuffleboard.  We had them beat until I got a little too excited and slid the stone a little too far…

After a cold beer, we headed downtown on the train to check out the Bean.

The iPhone 3G did a pretty good job of being our camera for the weekend since mine is still hanging out at the location of Steve’s 30th birthday party.

We had dinner at an amazing Costa Rican restaurant that was BYOB.  We sat on the patio and it was a beautiful night.  Three hours of food, drinks and fun before the waiter had to ask us to leave because some guests had been waiting over an hour for a table!  We stopped for another drink and then headed home.  It was a really great night!

Miranda’s brother was in town, and he just finished his first year of law school.  He brought along three fellow rising 2L’s and wow, they made me feel old!  Just turning 23-24 and I’m nearly to 3o and only one year ahead of them in school!  Clearly, I know why and I am good with it, just interesting how a few more years can make a difference in perspective for school.

Sunday morning we headed out of town early to enjoy some time at the lake.  We got in a few hours of family and water time before climbing back in the car for the last half of the trip.  It was great to spend some time outside rather than in a car for the entire day because it was beautiful (at least by the water).

Glad we made the trip, thanks for the hospitality, Aaron and Miranda!

 

The "Bean"

Weirdos

How sad is it that it took me nearly two seasons to make it to Target Field?  Not that I am a huge baseball fan, I really go to talk and people watch.  But this was a big deal!  New stadium, downtown Minneapolis, open air and it still took forever to get there.  I have to say, it was worth the wait.  Definitely gorgeous and loved the whole experience.  Here is a picture of the hubs and I at the game.  It was waaay to hot to wear my Twins jersey, but Jason was nice enough to let me borrow his straw hat.  Thank you to the Riedel family for bringing us with!