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Relax at Cobblestone Hotel & Suites in Austin, Minnesota

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Cobblestone Suites relax

We recently headed to Austin, Minnesota for a much-needed weekend getaway, and oh my gosh, we had such a fun, relaxing visit! (Watch for my full review soon!)

Have you ever been to Austin, Minnesota? It’s about 90 minutes south of the Twin Cities, and it is home of Hormel Foods and the SPAM Museum. We enjoyed so many attractions here, but we also enjoyed a comfortable stay at a brand new hotel, the Cobblestone Suites & Hotel!

The Cobblestone Hotel & Suites just opened up this summer of 2020, and has many amenities for an affordable price, so we were excited to try out this new hotel for our stay.

Cobblestone Hotel & Suites is located right near both interstate 90 and highway 218, and is just a few minutes from downtown, so it’s super convenient. 

Cobblestone Suites Austin

Cobblestone has a beautiful. elegant lobby with Seattle’s Best coffee available 24/7 (of course I had some :).

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Scheels in Eden Prairie is a Shopping & Entertainment Wonderland for Families

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Scheels Eden Prairie

Have you heard about Scheels?

Scheels in Eden Prairie originally opened in 2006 as a 20,000 square-foot retail store specializing in sports products, fashion and footwear.

This summer, they moved to a newly built 250,000 square-foot location in the Eden Prairie Center. It’s more than a shopping experience now, and has everything from a 65-foot ferris wheel, a 16,000-gallon aquarium, a cafe, a candy shop, a toy shop, plus many interactive games and activities for the whole family.     

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Sever’s Stories, Riddles, & Rhymes is Silly Fun for Families (Review)

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Sever's Riddles

This past month I shared that Sever’s in Shakopee is offering a safe, unique drive-thru event this fall! It’s called Sever’s Stories, Riddles, & Rhymes, and it’s a safe storytime adventure with magic, humor and visuals.

This unique adventure includes a 3/4 mile magical trail where families will be able to enjoy humorous rhymes, riddles and large scale illustrations that give readers of all ages a whole new take on storytime. There will be a huge treasure hunt, a larger than life chicken samurai, a zany squirrel named Hayley with her adorable pumpkin pet, and a lot more!

It takes place Thursdays to Sundays now through November 1st, and the cost is $7 per person or $25 per car maximum.

It sounded like a good option for families during this time, so we decided to go check it out and share our experience with you. We went recently and thought it was cute, silly and sweet!

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Girls’ Day Out! Driving Bulldozers at Extreme Sandbox in Hastings, Minnesota

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Extreme Sandbox Hastings

Two moms driving bulldozers together. Driving over dirt piles, pushing vans, flipping tires.

Sounds like a perfect Saturday afternoon, right?

Well, it is – my friend and I did this, and it was awesome!

Until this year I had no idea a place existed where a girls’ day out – or any other day out – could involve driving heavy construction equipment together, and having fun doing so!

Then I learned about Extreme Sandbox in Hastings which offers anyone age 14 and up to drive heavy construction equipment just for fun. (Thus the appropriate name “Extreme Sandbox” – it really is a giant sandbox for adults and big kids!)

Heavy Metal Drive Thru

And since March, when they had to temporarily suspend their regular business, they offered “Heavy Metal Drive-Thru” shows that you could watch safely from your car, for FREE!

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Dinosaur Adventure Drive Thru Review (& 25 Things to Do in Your Car While in Line 2 Hours)

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Dinosaur Adventure Drive Thru

Dinosaurs have arrived at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds! And you can see them in a safe drive-thru adventure called “Dinosaur Adventure Drive Thru.” It’s happening the weekends of July 31 – August 2 and August 7-9.

Tickets are $40 for a regular car, truck or minivan that seats up to 7 people. We bought a ticket for opening day for the 6-8pm timeslot. 

This is what our confirmation email said:

Dinosaur Drive Thru email

So we arrived at 6:20pm and the line was starting to go out past the main entrance off Snelling Avenue to the street. I figured it wouldn’t be long once we got in. 

Minnesota State Fairgrounds Dinosaur Drive Thru

However, the line of cars actually wound around the fairgrounds and the attraction was on the other side, so we literally sat in our car until 8:20pm – for 2 hours! – before we got to the entrance of the Dinosaur Adventure Drive Thru!

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Our Visit to Wild Mountain Winery in Taylors Falls (& Wine & Cheese Plate Deal!)

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Our Visit to Wild Mountain Winery in Taylors Falls (& Wine & Cheese Plate Deal!)

My friend and I got together this past weekend to just have fun around the Twin Cities, and one of the places we had been wanting to go is a winery.

I had checked out Groupon for deals and found a great one for Wild Mountain Winery which is in Taylors Falls. It’s not far from Wild Mountain Adventure Park, too. Both are open right now during COVID but with social distancing requirements, of course.

The deal was for two glasses of wine, a cheese & meat plate, and a bottle of wine to take home, for only $24! Regularly it’s $38. There’s also a deal for double that (four glasses of wine, etc.) for $48. That’s more ideal for two couples to share, so my friend and I just got the first deal.

Check out the Groupon deals here!

Our Experience

We went on Saturday afternoon and arrived just in time for live music, which we didn’t even expect! Many people were seated at the patio tables enjoying the beautiful day.

Wild Mountain Winery

We traded in our Groupon voucher for our wine and cheese plate. We got to actually choose our wine from a list, and sample up to 3 if we weren’t sure what we wanted. They had about 16 to choose from, listed from dry to sweet. I chose a Mountain Sweet Red wine, which is fairly sweet. It was delicious!

Wild Mountain Winery

My friend and I enjoyed our wine and cheese plate at a table as we listened to the live music. They have a list of their live music on their website.

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Our Front Row Experience at Extreme Sandbox’s “Heavy Metal Drive-Thru” in Hastings

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Heavy Metal Drive-Thru

In April I posted about a unique and FREE event for families in the Twin Cities area. It’s at a place called Extreme Sandbox in Hastings, MN, where you can operate real construction equipment. It’s family-owned and they even were on the popular show, Shark Tank! (Check it out – it turned out well!)

Unfortunately, Extreme Sandbox had to close this spring to regular visits due to COVID-19, but they came up with an alternative – Heavy Metal Drive-Thru, a FREE drive-thru show where you can park your car in their lot and watch their heavy construction equipment at work!

Heavy Metal Drive Thru

Then the show became so popular they added more shows, now through the end of June!

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Our Drive-Through Visit to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

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Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Drive Through Visit

After being closed for a couple of months, the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum had opened its doors to drive-through visits only starting May 1st. We visited during May and below is my recap!

However, I just learned that they are now in Phase 2 – which means they are open for walking on designated paths as well. Check out their website for details and updates.

We had visited the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum a few years ago when our kids were younger (see my review!), and it was a full day of walking, exploring and playing. But now with so many places closed due to COVID, we were getting excited for any place we could visit, even in our car. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum was open to drive-through visits only, so we booked in advance, paid the $15-per-vehicle fee (free to members), and visited on a Saturday morning in May! (Note: Since our visit they have opened some walking paths and the price is now $15 per person, though members and kids 15 and under are free.)

There were a LOT of cars, but traffic moved steadily. There were some spots where it got backed up and we were stopping and starting, but for the most part it was just a nice, slow drive along their 3-mile drive.

We entered and our printed ticket was scanned (you need to have it ready in advance), and we proceeded through. The visitors center was closed, though I learned that the parking lot there is now open.

Note: All of these pictures were taken from our car, since everyone is required to stay in their car except for using public restrooms in two areas of the drive if needed.

Also – this is not a sponsored review. We paid for our visit and this is just our experience!

Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Visitors Center

The first part of the drive was through some wooded area. I loved this little cabin in the woods!

Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Cabin

There were various types of landscaping along the way – sculptured hedges, for example.

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Device Pitstop is Open! Our Experience Selling and Buying Laptops (Maple Grove location)

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In the past few years, our laptops have gotten slower and slower (zzzz), as technology tends to do!

My kids each have one for schoolwork at home (and for some fun kid-friendly websites), and it was just time to replace them both. One had pretty much stopped working, and the other was just too painfully slow. We realized that the RAM for both was only 4 GB (at least 8 GB is ideal), and they were getting pretty old (one was 10 years old), so we figured we got all the life out of them that we could.

We had purchased them used at Device Pitstop of Maple Grove, which buys used devices as well, so we decided to head in to see how much we could get them for and what newer ones we would find!

With practically everything closed right now due to the pandemic, it was so nice to drive up to Device Pitstop which was totally open for business like normal. Computers and other devices are certainly essential right now!

We brought our old laptops up to the counter to sell them, and the team member scanned them to see their condition. As he did this, we browsed the store.

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What Groceries We Got for $20 at Ruby’s Pantry in Bloomington (Minnesota)

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Ruby's Pantry Groceries

This month I finally had the opportunity to visit Ruby’s Pantry. Ruby’s Pantry is a community outreach program based in Minnesota, where basically you pick up food shares for a $20 donation. There are no income or residency requirements. There are many locations here in Minnesota and Wisconsin, though there are currently only a couple in the metro area, including Bloomington, which is where I went to today.

The food is a variety of fresh, nonperishable and frozen food. Some is past expiration, some is not, but it should all be perfectly fine to consume.

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