Chao’s Family Was In Town – West St. Paul, MN

I was lucky enough to have my family come up from Illinois for a visit this weekend!!! It was a pretty laid back weekend, but we got to do some fun things. I was worried about how mobile they would be since my mom just had surgery on her rotator cuff and my sister just had a wisdom tooth out. On top of this, my neice has a 7 week old baby and her fiance, Porky, with her, so I wasn't sure how much sight seeing we'd be doing. But they did great! My family is a bunch of troopers!

Saturday, D.Rough’s mom, LunchLady, came over to meet part of the family and hung out for a bit after breakfast. I don't think they scared each other away, so that's REALLY good!! Then we headed to Ikea so my sister, Notmomsfavorite, could do some shopping. Luckily, her daughter, Froggy, talked her out of everything she wanted so she managed to spend less than $20 – which somehow is less than I spent and I didn’t even plan to go there.

We headed over to the Mall of America after that, since my family is pretty serious about shopping. We grabbed some lunch first at Tony Roma’s and it was then that I had realized I hadn’t started a batch of food in the crock pot that I needed to make for Bad Movie Night. D.Rough and I raced to the house to make food and told them we’d pick them up in a few hours.

It all worked out well and we were able to make everything we needed. Plus we got home early enough that Porky and I could play some Big Buck Hunter in the basement on the Wii, using the 12 foot projector screen. Bad Movie Night went fairly smoothly, although one of the movies didn’t go over as well with this audience. The first movie, “The Swedish Bikini Team in… Never Say Never Mind” was a spoof on a James Bond film. Sadly, there is a severe lack of bikinis in this film. The second movie, “Bikini Bloodbath,” was made to be a bad movie, which is why it didn’t go as well for this crowd. It’s pretty campy and has lots of fake blood and poor acting. People didn’t think the characters in the movie were dying fast enough to keep it entertaining. My back-up film, Piranha, went really well, though. Those that stayed were treated with a plethora of painful computer-generated graphics and copious T&A, despite the star-studded cast.

EJens had brought a couple half gallons of rootbeer flavored milk (yes, you read the right) for us to try. He seemed like a kid in the candy store he was so excited about it. It was hilarious to see him like this. Plus, the milk was quite tasty. Much better than I had expected. I haven’t even seen it before in stores, so I’m not sure what Chinese black market back alley deal he found this in, but it was made by Kemp’s, so it’s got to be available SOMEWHERE. Bring it to your next fancy gathering, like you would a bottle of nice wine. You’ll be the hit of the party!

The following morning, D.Rough and I took my mom and sister to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market. We picked up all kinds of things like fresh veggies, salsa, garlic, (I got a donut), and probably more stuff I forgot about. We swung by Target on the way home to get some grilling supplies and also some of these pina colada marshmallows D.Rough got my mom hooked on. They’re like pineapple marshmallows rolled in coconut. Very weird, but interesting. We got back and grilled out some brats and corn on the cob for lunch.

My niece and her fiancé hadn’t seen much of Minneapolis nor St. Paul, so we drove them around town and showed them some local hot spots and finally ended up at Café Latte for some delicious cheesecake.

All in all, it was a pretty fantastic weekend. It made me miss my super fun sister, PalmMapper, from Michigan, but I’ll see her soon.

And as a bonus, my family stopped at the Floyd Bear in Floyd, Iowa, on the way home and took a photo for me. It’s a long standing tradition that HotGirlsBrother and I started a few years back to stop and take a photo there (while looking for Templeton Rye). We’ve now got other people doing it and sending us photos. Hoooray!!!