Minnesota Favorites

It's much easier to love Minnesota in the winter when you're not living in Minnesota in the winter, but since the move we thought we'd put together a little list of our favorite things our family enjoyed while living in the North.
Yep, 10,000 lakes. While we obviously didn't see them all, our skin and hair loved the humidity and we enjoyed the beautiful sceanery the state had to offer. It was a great place for family outdoor time and there were tons of fantastic parks all within very close proximity of where we lived.

ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education) was so much fun for Rachel. Here she is with "teacher Heather" who was her teacher the whole time we lived here. It was a great program to be involved with because it gave Rachel school time that parents could be involved with too. We also aquired quite the array of fun craft items that our little girl made. For you Minnesotans, we highly recommend that you check it out (St. Anthony was awesome) because since it was on a sliding fee scale and we were, well, sliding right to the bottom based on our student income of nothing, it was so inexpensive for how much fun it is for kids. The only downside is you have to go to the parent portion, which wasn't the most enjoyable, but worth the sacrifice!
Living in Minnesota gave us the great opportunity to see how the Church of Jesus Christ operates outside of Utah. We had a lot of discussions with neighbors and friends about the Gospel and our testimonies were strengthened as we did so. We also loved our ward and the extended family it felt like while we were away from home. We already greatly miss the friends we made through church and hope that we'll be able to stay in touch.
The Twin Cities offered so many great things to do for families and a wonderful library program made them FREE! Outings to the museums and zoos were so much fun and even with the many trips we made, we only saw a small portion of the offerings. Our favorites were the MN Zoo and the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
Professional baseball! One of the major bonuses for Justin of Hamline was being in close proximity to the Twins (they've always been one of his favorite teams). We'll miss having a hometown team to support, but the Twins will continue to be a family pick.
This is a very unprofessional shot of our local Roseville library. Many hours were spent in their cute little playhouse and puppet stage. All libraries are great, but there were many fun ones very close to where we lived. We also appreciated how we could register our card in Ramsey and Hennepin county libraries to reap the benefit of both great systems. Libraries were a major lifesaver in the freezing winters!

All in all, we're so glad that we were able to live in Minnesota for a while and will mostly miss the great friends that we made. We'll try to teach our little Ian to be proud of his birthstate by enjoying hockey and saying "you betcha" (maybe we could think of a few more things). It was a great opportunity for our family and will probably be considered "home" for Rachel for a long time!