What A Trip!

Last Wednesday, five girls and four moms boarded Amtrak to take a special Mother/Daughter trip to the Mall of America to shop for formal dresses for their Junior/Senior banquet at the school.

This is Elizabeth and her friend Jessica as we departed for our overnight train ride:
Here are the girls right after taking a bus and the light rail to the Mall of America. We had been traveling for about 12 hours right here:

After a long day of trying on dresses and traipsing around the mall, the girls and moms had a rejuvenating dinner at the Rainforest Cafe....ending with the "VOLCANOOOOO...."

Elizabeth's very favorite restaurant is none other than IHOP and since we don't have one in our town, she got her wish for a special brunch the next morning.....New York Cheesecake Pancakes!....

The five girls on New Year's Eve before heading to the train station....
Natalie and Elizabeth at the train station on New Year's Eve right before boarding.....

Now I must digress and say that our train was only 1/2 hour late....not bad considering Amtrak. So we celebrated our New Years on the train and then tried to sleep on the way home.

Then, around 8:30 a.m., after traveling all night, the conductor came over the intercom and stated that our train had to turn around and go back to Minneapolis because of the blizzard. WHAT!!!! Our hearts just dropped! We were just outside of Fargo and were told that we could not deboard from the train as there were no hotels and no travel allowed.

But Kevin came to the rescue and arranged for hotel rooms and a shuttle to the hotel. Because we had this arranged, the conductor finally approved us to get off in Fargo. We were told that our rescheduled train isn't scheduled to return until tomorrow night! I guess, they have started rerouting some passengers on Greyhound.

Our plan was to have our husbands drive two vehicles to come and rescue us from Fargo. However, all the roads around Fargo were CLOSED, so we had to wait a bit longer. Finally, the roads opened yesterday, our white knights arrived, and we were safely driven the 4 1/2 hours home.

The girls wanted a memorable trip, and they got one! They had a blast and made memories to last a lifetime.

Here we all are right before heading home yesterday.....



Good times, Good times!