Land of 10,000 Lakes

This years Polaris dealer meeting was held in Minnesota. I had never been to Minnesota so it was really fun to discover a new place.

Polaris combined 3 days of meetings into 1 and 1/2 realy looooooooooong days. The new product reveal was held at the Excel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul, MN. Despite all the crappy economic news, Polaris introduced a lot of new stuff including......

an all electic powered Ranger. Several other models were also updated and red is the standard color this year.


The second day of meetings were held at the Polaris R&D (research and development) facility in Wyoming, MN. We boarded the bus at 6:30 a.m. and returned back to the motel at 9:30 p.m. The R&D facility is amazing! It is a state-of-the-art multi-multi million dollar facility with an awesome test track.

With the meeting behind us, it was time for some fun (i.e. retail therapy) and the best place for that is:

Our first stop of the day was (of course)

the American Girl Doll store. What an amazing place. So many dolls. So many clothes. So many accessories. Not to mention the hair salon and Bistro. Sydney and I were in doll heaven (Ted not so much).

After about 8 hours of shopping we headed back to St. Paul for our RiverBoat dinner cruise down the mighty Mississippi.

The morning of day four found us at the Wabasha Street Caves for their "Gangster Tour" If you ever happen to be in St. Paul this is a MUST! We all had so much fun and learned so much about the history of St. Paul (it was a safe haven for gangsters such as John Dillinger, Ma Baker, and Babyface Nielson).

Our guide played the role of Edna Murray (the kissing bandit) and she was amazing!

We saw the gangster sights such as the Baker Boys house

John Dillingers apartment building

as well as other historic St. Paul sights

F Scott Fitzgerald's home

the Cathedral of Saint Paul

and the Minnesota state capitol

After a "Gangster" filled morning, we headed back to the Mall of America to the Underground Aquarium where we saw lots of fish, sharks, and seahorses. Then finished out the day with some more shopping and rides.

It was a really quick trip loaded with lots of fun!

Camp Cloud Rim

Sydney survived a week of Girl Scout camp (and we did too). She attended Camp Cloud Rim with another Girl Scout in our Service Unit. Camp Cloud Rim is just beautiful. Here are some of the fun things they did at camp:

Lake Brimal - they have soooo many fun things to do on the lake: swimming, kayaking, canoeing, wind sailing. The girls even do an early morning "Polar Bear Dip"


Granite wall - Sydney said climbing this granite wall was a ton of fun!


Mosquitos - I guess they have a pretty intense mosquito season. Sydney came home with over 50 bites (and she says she used the bug spray)

I am so proud of Sydney and that she survived (and thrived) at camp. I trully thought she would get homesick. I just can't belive how fast she is growing up.


This is part of a conversation we had on Saturday when I picked her up.
Sydney: (pointing out a couple of the girls who were really homesick) "...see that girl, she just cried to go home...can you even believe that!"

Sheri: "Didn't you even miss me at all?"

Sydney: "Well yeah~but not enough to cry about it!"

So needless to say, mosquitos and all, she is ready to sign up to attend again next year.

Out of a Blackout!

Yes~I am finally posting! Let's just say we have had major techinal difficulties at the Dearden House. If it wasn't for my Blackberry we would have been in a complete technology blackout.



But we are back among the technology blessed with a new laptop! Now to get all those files/pictures transferred. Hopefully you will be seeing more posts (with pictures) in the near future. We have had a really busy/fun/crazy summer, so we have lots to blog about.