Minnesot-AH!

We left out, headed North at about 6:00 in the evening on New Year's Day. Our plan was to make it to Des Moines, Iowa and then get a hotel for the night. Our GPS said we'd get there about 11:45pm. As we got into Iowa, we could tell they'd had a lot of snow and the roads were a little slick in places. So, we slowed down and we ended up getting to the hotel closer to 12:30.

The temperature in our driveway as we were leaving the house was in the 40s. As we headed North, we were shocked to see this:

7 degrees below 0!

The windows were freezing from the INSIDE! We'd never seen anything like that before! We stopped to get gas and Jason wrote on his window. It was FREEZING!

Breakfast the next morning

The scene outside the hotel the next morning

The temperature FELL as we headed North into Minnesota

This is not a figment of your imagination. It really was 19 degrees BELOW zero!

I have never experienced anything like that cold in my life. We had the heater in the car going full blast and it was still cold. We got out to go into McDonalds for a potty break and just walking from the car to the door our skin was hurting. It was so bizzare!

Minneapolis!

After we got to our hotel and unloaded the car, we headed for the nearest Light Train Station, which was about 2 blocks away. And we almost froze just walking that short distance.

We rode it about 45 minutes to the Mall of America.

The Mall of America is HUGE!

There is a Nickelodeon Universe theme park inside the mall! This is just a small part of it. There were 4 big roller coasters in addition to at least 20 other rides!

We ate at the Rainforest Cafe. It was the boys' first time to eat at one. They thought it was really cool.

We were all so tired and we had planned on leaving the room by 8am the next morning, so we decided to skip going to the Aquarium (yes there is a huge aquarium in the mall too!) and head back to the hotel and get in bed early.

We made it back to the Light Train Station a little before 8pm. The train was supposed to leave shortly after 8. Then we found out there was a dely of 15-20 minutes. LONG story short... a car had gotten stuck across the train tracks in the downtown area, which is where our hotel was. So, it was about 1 hour and 45 minutes before a train actually showed up to the station to get us. We waited inside most of the time, but a whole bunch of people headed outside at some point and we didn't want to miss the train. So, we headed outside too. We waited outside in the WELL BELOW ZERO temps in the COLD NORTH WIND for almost 30 minutes. And we weren't dressed for that cold.

By the time we got back to the hotel it was almost 11pm. I had windburned cheeks. It felt like sunburn. Ouch!

We got our warm jammies on and got in the bed ASAP after we got back!

Come back tomorrow for....

The rest of the story!