Mawwiage

All of this tragedy and sadness has me thinking about life, and the things + people that really matter. Of course, the person that matters the most to be in the world is my husband.

Last month, we celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary. Eight years!

Four years ago, I wrote this post about how we met/ended up getting married. So, I'm not going to re-hash that story again (even though it's my favorite story).

It's been a lovely eight years. I'm not a liar, it hasn't all been lovely. But what in life is lovely all of the time? And we're lucky. The less fun times are few and far between. At this point in our marriage, in our lives, it's pretty rock solid.

Do I think it will always be that way? No, of course not. I'm not an idiot. Sometimes, it will take work. It will take more effort to be happy than it takes right now. But I honestly believe that I married my true partner in life, and so, the effort is all worth it in the end.

Being married (and being married to my husband, specifically) is awesome. What's not to love? You get to live with your best friend. (You can do this without being married, but still.. work with me here.) Someone is always there to support and encourage you.

And, the coolest part - you get to watch that person learn, make mistakes, and change and adapt as an individual. You get to watch them as they evolve. And since we never stop evolving, there's always something new to learn about them.

Not that I would advise this to everyone out there, but I love that we got married young (in our early 20s). As our opinions changed, as our experiences became more varied, we got to discuss and share that with one another. We weren't "set in our ways". As we evolved ourselves as individuals, we evolved our relationship too.

And I think that's just so cool.

Be a better human.

We live in a sad world. A world in which bad things happen.

Sometimes, it's really difficult to see the world as anything more than a place in which bad things happen. It can really make you wonder what it's all supposed to be about, anyway.

And it's frightening, because we have so little control over the vast majority of the bad things.

If I'm being 100% honest, sometimes it makes me (the lady with a mildly adventurous spirit) want to hide way with my husband and my dog and shelter myself from the world. I'd have no problem living life as a homebody. As long as I had those two (the husband and the dog), some good books, coffee/tea, and a few good television shows and games - I'd be totally fine with being a hermit.

That's no way to live (at least not for more than a few days, because let's be honest, sometimes living that life is really awesome). But if I do that all the time, and I do it out of fear of being out in the world - if anyone of us does that - then they (the bad guys) have won.

We need to remember to explore, experience, laugh, and love.

It's true, we don't have control over much of our environment, and sadly - we could find ourselves in the midst of something terrible - just as all those people did yesterday.

But we do have control over ourselves and our own behavior. We can live our lives in a way that makes us joyful. We can treat others with respect, and acknowledge that each and every person is a fellow human being with their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, dreams, fears, experiences, etc.

We can do our best to be a better a human.

So let's do that - let's be better humans.

Restless.

I have a mildly adventurous spirit.

Sometimes, I get a little restless, and it's usually for no reason at all.
Like right now, for example.

In my last post, I listed all the cities we've visited in the last year (one of which was just three weeks ago!) - and I let you know that we have a trip planned in October as well.

So why am I feeling so restless?

This is going to sound totally crazy, but I feel this weird pull to visit Portland. We don't have the time or the money to go on such a visit, but yet I still feel the pull to somehow make it happen.

Is this feeling a symptom of something else, or am I really supposed to visit Portland for some reason and my intuition is trying to get me there? And if it is my intuition, why on Earth would it want to send me to Portland?

Weird, right?

Minneapolis (and other) Adventures

I really enjoy traveling and exploring new cities. Over the last year, we realized that we didn't have to spend huge amounts of money or even go that far to have some fun adventures!

First Avenue and 7th Street Entry

In the last year, we (or I) have visited the following cities:

Bentonville, Arkansas
Denver, Colorado
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (I went on this trip with a friend.)
Des Moines, Iowa
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Only one of those (Philly) involved air travel. The rest were all within driving distance - Denver was the longest drive at 9ish hours. Both Bentonville and Des Moines were the shortest, at about 3 hours each.

Minnehaha Falls

Anyway, when we went to Des Moines in April, we realized that Minneapolis was only a few more hours north and also a pretty easy drive. So, when we decided that we'd like to go on a little mini-vacation to celebrate our anniversary, we selected Minneapolis.

And it was great! It was a larger city than I expected, with a really active downtown (even on the weekend, which wasn't the case in Des Moines at all). Because it was 95 degrees one of the days of our visit, we really enjoyed having the Skywalk (11 miles of buildings connect to one another) as a way to still explore yet still have a reprieve from the heat.

I think my absolute favorite was the Minneapolis Institute of Art. They have a really wonderful collection. We are spoiled with the Nelson Atkins, and the Minneapolis collection was just as good, if not better in some areas (a much larger Impressionist collection, for example). If you find yourself in Minneapolis, do yourself a favor and visit this place.

Just a random collage of photos from our trip.

We also enjoyed the Mill City Museum, Minnehaha Falls, and the University of Minnesota. And despite our original protests, we even broke down and visited the Mall of America as a way to get out and explore while having lots of access to air conditioning.  We didn't buy anything, which I find humorous, but we did enjoy the people watching and marveling at the sheer size of the place.

And the food was great too! My favorites were the Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes at Hell's Kitchen (not affiliated with the television show) and the tacos at Barrio. Both are downtown restaurants.

Overall, it was a great visit and I'd love to go back sometime! But in the meantime, there are other places to explore.

In just a few months, we're heading to the Big Apple, and I am so excited!