Welcome to 2025!

 So....it's January in Minnesota and last year was a warm winter and so far this year it is "brutally cold" as the weather guys say!  It's been a busy busy month and today is 15 January 2025.

Our daughter Jenny and 17 year old granddaughter Rooke were here for a week from California and for years Rooke has always wanted to come to Minnesota in the winter and she says "why not?"

So what to do - lots of long mall walks and we got lots of steps in.  Ross is not a shopping man so he got the nice quiet house to himself😊

And since I am a huge Outlander Fan and a bunch of new episodes came out here is Rooke with "Jamie" real name Sam at a kilt store at MOA and I wasn't on that walk with them.

Next up I got tickets for the fantastic MN History and a new exhibit called "Girlhood/It's Complicated" and it was fantastic and very interesting and all about women over a 100 years or more.  

Jenny and Rooke did go to the University of Minnesota Campus as she is interested in it and has already been accepted but she has 7 or more other applications in California universities so we'll see where she ends up next year!

Back to the MN History Center

And another night of the 3 nights we had 8 for dinner this is Rooke, Ross, Jenny, me, Amy's dad Paul and Scott, daughter-in-law Amy and 19 year old grandson Alex who is in his 2nd year of college at University of North Dakota aka UND in Grand Forks ND the same place where our son Chris went and met Amy.

Of course we are always used to being a little bit goofy!

So Rooke is in track and cross country at her high school in CA and she wanted to teach me how to use the equipment at the Y where I go near us - and it's free with Medicare insurance and can have guest passes so a good deal!

Off to another mall walk at Southdale near us - it was the first indoor mall in the USA and opened in 1956 and you had to dress "fancy" to go there.  I remember my first time in 1965 and it was unbelievable!

I decided it might not be a good idea to get these matching "flip flops" with high bottoms and I'm pretty sure I would have flipped and flopped.

Another girls night out at the Guthrie theatre as we have had season tickets for over 25 years and I was able to get an exra one and Ross gave his to Jenny.  Before this we walked half a block in the freezing cold to have a Thai dinner near the theater.

The stage was perfect as always and the play was excellent.

I forced them to take a picture in the "chilly" weather in front of the museum with the State Capitol in the background and beautiful blue skies.

So the girlhood exhibit had places to fill out little questionnaires and the notes hanging up were interested and written by girls of many ages.

Very interesting about menstruation and reproduction (having babies) and nothing could be talked about!!!  

Another "holiday" dinner for 8 and this time Chris and granddaughter Lucy were able to join us after returning from a lacrosse recruiting weekend in Ohio.  

And FINALLY as Rooke says - we got snow and she actually got a sled out of our garage to go down our front yard hill.

In Minnesota our weather always has the real temperature and the "feels like" which is 1 degree on this screen shot.

And of course daughter Jenny has this 2016 photo pop up so we had to take another one and it is certainly easy to see the big change in height of Rooke vs. me.

This is 3 January 2025 at the Santa Ana CA airport the day they were heading to Minnesota and the flight kept getting delayed and finally arrived 6.5 hours late but at least the same day.

Next up - exciting days for me.  8 years ago Jenny got my Honda CRV much needed and at 4 years old had 23,000 miles on it.  So I got a new car and now they get my 2017 Subaru Crosstrek which I've had for 8 years and it got on the shipping truck with 22,075 miles on it.  I have a lot more air miles than road miles and it has never been on a road trip.

9:30pm at night in the butt freezing cold the trucker arrived and we drove my car around the corner to the bigger street and took all the pictures as we were told to do and watched it leave on the truck.

I was glad to get it out of the driveway in the bitter cold and I was afraid one of us would hit it with my new car or Ross's car backing out and we did have the snow guys coming to plow the driveway.

And today on 15 January 2025 after having my car for 5 days and it was only driven from the dealer to our house I took it out and picked up a friend to mall walk.  It has 35 miles on it so we'll see how many I get on in a year.

The woman who we met with for the purchase had it all set up for a short lady like me and she said the license starts with RXY so she said call it "Roxy" and my girlfriends gave it an even better name - Foxy Roxy and it's perfect and the color is sapphire blue pearl which stands out indeed.  2025 Subaru Crosstrek again as I loved my other one.

Sooooo......on we go and I'm mentally packing for our trip to Cuba in a few weeks and we are booking trips into 2026 and as my mom always said "I'll rest when I'm dead" and "Do it while you can" - good advice!