Minnesota Memories

Robert: “Hey, maybe I could sign up for this dental conference in Minnesota in August”.

Lyana: “Oh yeah! And do you want to take the big kids with you so they can see where they used to live?”

That’s how our conversation went in July...and in mid August, while I was out of town with Mark for a tennis tournament, Robert took Katya and Alex to Minneapolis for three days. 

They got a rental car and stayed in a hotel in downtown. While Robert listened to different conference lectures, they explored on their own. My narrative is made up of the second-hand stories from them, so I hope I got it right. 

Here are Alex and Katya at the conference as well. 

Near the St. Paul Cathedral. I am not sure how they got there, but they did. 

 

Having the time of their lives without Robert and acting all grown up. 

Robert had to get a picture of the Moose Tower--the dental school building. 

On the second day in MN, Katya and Alex took a bus to the Mall of America and enjoyed dozens of rides at the “former Snoopy Land”--now Nickelodeon Universe. Katya had the best memories of this ride! It used to be called a frog hopper! And we have super cute videos and pictures on this ride. 

Alex is just two years old here.

And this is Alex’s “I am having a ton of fun” face. They did have a blast!

In the evening, Robert drove to Maple Grove to show the kids the place where we lived for three years and the place to where we brought Alex home from the hospital. That unit on the left is where we lived. 

And this is the place where Katya spent hours and hours playing in front of our house. I cannot believe how tall those trees are. They used to be twigs fifteen years ago. 

Oh, and the big highlight of the visit was seeing the Macmillans, our dear friends!!! They supported us and befriended us when we were poor students, young 20 something kids... We will forever be grateful for them! These are their two youngest kids--Matthew and Kiera--who used to play with Katya and Alex a ton when they all were little. 

Look what I found! Pictures from our purple house! Pre-blog days....Katya was celebrating her second birthday, and that’s about all I could do being 8 months pregnant. 

We have a ton of memories like that--kids played together a lot. And Leslie, the twins’ mom watched Katya when I was at the hospital having Alex:) 

As a side note...who said that green and purple go well together? hahaha It was a funny stage of life. I was looking through magazines and magazines of how to decorate our home and so when we moved into this townhome in March of 2005, I asked Robert to paint it THAT color. We had it for three years. I don’t know what came over me, but we just thought most positively about it. It cracks me up now. 

This is the Macmillans now. They have three more older children that are married and moved out but Kiera and Matthew just graduated high school. I hear Matthew called Katya a few days after the visit and asked her out on a date for when they see each other again😆.

And then on Saturday, Robert went up to almost the border with Wisconsin to see the McKinleys, our old friends from dental school--Bethany and Ben. 

Here is a picture of Bethany and her boys and Katya back in 2008. 

Boating time!

So fun!!!

On Sunday, they went to church and ran into a few more families that still remembered Robert. Here he is with Chen Liao, one of the friends from our Maple Grove ward who used to give Robert rides to dental school. 

And they got to visit our most memorable home teacher while we were in MN--Bob Kochendoerfer and his family. Bob is actually a dentist so it was always fun to have him come and chat with Robert about all things dental. He also helped me a few times with my horrible dental emergencies out of goodness of his heart.

It was a fun and quick trip down memory lane for Robert and a new path for the kids as they hardly remembered any of it. I miss Minnesota and its great people! Grateful we got to spend four years there.

Lyana.