Week Twenty-Nine: Five Years

This week Mike and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. I still can't believe we've been married for so long. And I'm sure in five more years I'll be saying the same. It just keeps flying by. Especially now that O is here. This weekend we talked about our past anniversaries and what we did to celebrate, and we couldn't remember last year! I guess having a tiny baby in the mix really makes the ol' memory hazy.

Shortly after we were married we talked about how for our five year anniversary we would go on a trip. Because five years is a milestone! Because five years from now we will for sure have the money to do that! Because it's easy to get time off work together and travel!

HA.

So, as it turns out, we were a tad naive back then. Money and time off and all that aside, I can't imagine leaving O for a week long vacation right now! I don't think Mike would want to leave him behind either. Which is one of the main things that led us to our anniversary stay-cation!

We traveled from our home in St Paul to the exotic metropolis of Minneapolis! It was seriously wonderful though. Mike's mom was able to come to our house Friday evening and take care of Owen through Sunday.

We stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn where we were able to get a room upgrade and a couple free drinks for our anniversary. {Also, booked through AAA and got a better deal than any other website I was looking at!} It was downtown and super convenient for walking all over the place.

View from our hotel suite. 

Friday night we ate at Black Sheep Pizza and it was amazing as per usual. {A build your own with chicken, onion, & smoked mozzarella pizza is our favorite.} After our late dinner we found the hotel and relaxed, responsibility free, for the evening.

Ate at the bar at Black Sheep- so entertaining to watch people make pizzas. 

Saturday morning we slept in! {I was up at 7 but managed to fall back asleep until 8:30!} After we lazily got ready for the day we had missed the hotel breakfast, so we enjoyed some pizza leftovers and hit the town. We strolled on Nicollet Mall where we happened upon a bike parade complete with the most ridiculous costumes you've ever seen. As it turns out, there was a big bike/beer festival type thing going on in Loring Park on Saturday. We ended up checking that out later in the day.

One of my favorite bikes from the parade. 

Our first food stop was at Brit's Pub. It was great. They had Strongbow on tap which is one of my favorite ciders, plus the food was good and the view was great. We sat on the upper rooftop patio, which overlooked the main rooftop patio. On the main rooftop there was seating but also lawn bowling! It was super entertaining and we can't wait to come back with friends and play some time.

View of the lawn bowling. I couldn't manage to stand up for a decent picture, apparently. 

Yeah I definitely did a double take here. Fake person. 

After Brit's we decided to check out the artist created mini golf at the Walker. After a long walk to get there we strolled into the mini golf area to find that there was a 3 hour wait for a tee time! Hoppin' place. We got our tee time and headed back to the hotel to relax, recharge, and cool off. 

Sweaty selfie on our walk to the Walker. 

After we cooled down and drank some water we realized we were basically going to die without some ice cream. We had Izzy's in mind but couldn't make it all the way there and back down to the Walker for our tee time that we already paid for, so we decided to try Sebastian Joe's which neither of us had heard of before, just because it was pretty close to the Walker and Yelp said it was great. GOOD GOD. Best ice cream we've ever had. It was so creamy and decedent and delicious without that overly rich taste of instant regret. 

Ice cream finished, we headed over to pick up our clubs for our tee time. We decided to do both 9 hole courses because why not? Especially if we are going to wait 3 hours to play! So glad we did both because course B was by far our favorite. :)

Obligatory sculpture garden selfie. 

Here are some photos of some of our favorite holes. We will definitely be back to try this again next year when a new set of artist-created holes are installed. 

This was the entire Agusta PGA course laid on top of itsself- any hole counted. 

This hole was incredibly difficult and stupid. I'm including this photo because Mike's face is HILARIOUS. He was trying to get out of the photo. Fail. 

This one was cool because once you got the ball up top you put down your club and garden gnome foosballed your ball into the hole. 

The sky- Polaris was the hole. 

This was for sure the favorite for both of us. You had to stand and be the obstacle for your opponent. It got a little silly and a lot fun. 

Last hole was pretty cool. I was at a disadvantage, but we tied. 

Score card! We TIED. Course A? What course A? I didn't avoid posting that score card for any reason.  

After a sweaty golf game followed by a sweaty walk back to the hotel, we enjoyed cooling down with champagne and then getting ready for dinner. 

Ohhh dinner. We had so many ideas and suggestions from other people that we sat and stared at yelp reviews for at least 40 minutes. Finally I decided to just call a couple places and see if they even had reservations available. The first one that did was our winner! Zelo. 

Our dinner was absolutely lovely. Our waiter was a perfect mix of jovial and helpful and I enjoyed the wine and beer list on an ipad where you could tap on a drink to learn more about it. We took our waiter's suggestion of the crab cakes, and then also had Parmesan crusted shrimp and a prosciutto and arugula flatbread with mozzarella and balsamic. Our only regret was not ordering like, five orders of crab cakes. They were one of the best things I've ever eaten. They were a lemongrass baked crab cake with a vanilla plum sauce served with avocado slices. Have I mentioned they were amazing? ;)

I'm drooling all over again. 

Shrimp at dinner. 

Flat bread at dinner 

After dinner we went to Bario. We've been to the St Paul Bario before, but not this location. I love a good margarita, and their house marg is so good. I'm sure I could find something more mind blowing within the ridiculous tequila selection they have, but why bother when the cheap one is so so so good?? What can I say? I'm a classy gal. 

Supremely entertaining to watch the bartenders shimmy up this ladder, pour flights of tequila shots up there, and then carry the filled glasses back down the ladder.

So after a couple margaritas and a whole lot of laughter we headed over to the Shout House {dueling piano bar} to end the night. We both had a great time- that place is always entertaining. My favorite part was when a drunk college kid paid $60 to do a duet with one of the pianists. When he got up there he said he doesn't know how to play piano. Lol. They let him hit one key as fast as he could and he really took his task to heart, getting so into it. It was so, so entertaining. 

Sunday morning we were both excited to go home and see O, but took advantage of the hotel's breakfast first. It was a combination buffet and cook to order. It was kind of weird, but the food was good. We got a bunch of fruit, a waffle, and some coffee, then placed our order for eggs and bacon and such and they gave us a table number like at Noodles. Problem being that by the time they brought the hot food out I was almost full from the other stuff I was eating. Mike and I both had a problem with our eyes being much, much larger than our stomachs. 

After a quick stop at Caribou we were home to see our sweet little baby and he was so happy and excited to see us.

It was a wonderful way to celebrate five years. Can't wait to see what the next five bring. :)