Imagine his surprise!

I got a parking ticket.  You have to use quarters here when you "plug" the meter. That's the short version. The cool part to this story is, when I came out of City Hall there was a bear in the tree right there in downtown Duluth.  So it evened out, didn't it?.  Bad=parking ticket  Good=seeing a bear in downtown Duluth.  And he stayed in the tree.

This is right after they sang "Happy Birthday" to me.
As you can see, no cake.

We are taking one last picture with Elder Damron before he goes home to Arizona.  We will miss him. He was an awesome missionary! We commemorated his leaving by having lunch at Grandma's Restaurant.

We drove up to Thunder Bay, Canada where we visited an Institute class, and a seminary class, a new seminary teacher and the Elder's apartment.  And then we took them to breakfast at the Java Hut.  But we didn't take pictures because it was too rainy.

Then we packed up and went to see Pelican Lake and spend a few days there at a place called Breezy Point.  It really lived up to its name!  Very breezy and rainy.  This is called the "lake area" which is kind of funny in a state of 10,000 lakes.  (There are actually 11,842 lakes bigger than 10 acres in size.)    We took this photo near the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  It is even smaller if you drive another hour North. 

 Wade and Patti Newton came and played some Hand and Foot with us.  As you can see, Patti and I had no luck.  It was pretty sad.  Wade, however, is having a pretty good time.

.Ron has been stopping to look at aluminum trailers for months and months.  So he found one for sale and bought it.  Now, I don't know what he will stop to look at now!  But I am comforted knowing I can take all my stuff back to Idaho in 6 months

We went to a Minnesota fish fry at the Conservation Club.  These are the guys frying the fish.  It was excellent!

Pelican Lake, calm and peaceful.  This was just the one afternoon.  The rest of the time there were whitecaps!

I am going to add some pictures that have not happened in Minnesota but have an impact on our lives anyway.  

3rd place in the Pinewood Derby.  Miss you Sean!

THESE PEOPLE ARE COMING HERE TOMORROW!!!

 Mother's day in Utah with Nanalee, Ashlee, Megan, Angela, Afton and Gloria

Here and there!

 The Northern Lakes Second Harvest Food Bank had a big fundraiser called "The Empty Bowl". People from the community, including artists and schoolkids, made ceramic bowls and donated them.  Hundreds! Restaurants donated soup and bread. On the Empty Bowl day, people came to the old Train Depot and each paid $20.00; then they could choose a bowl and have a bowl of soup and bread.  Some of the beautiful art bowls were sold at a silent auction for a lot more than $20. There were lots of volunteers including missionaries!  A great community event.

 We went to Brookfield, Illinois to meet baby Vance .  He is a cutie and it was fun to see the new parents (Scott and Jessica) "parent" him,  He has reddish hair!? 

 This is how we watch a hockey game on TV with sleep deprived parents!  Everyone sound asleep!

We drove all the way to Bismarck, ND(!) for our Seminary and Institute training. In this photo are other senior missionaries who do what we do in Bismarck, Fargo, Rush City, MT, Pierre, SD, and Rapid City, SD.  We learned a lot and broke our diets--a WHOLE table full of snacks!

   I am writing their names so I will remember them:  Brimhall, Metallo, Pearson, Gent, Forsgren and our trainers Troy Matheson and Mark MacDonald.

And THEN, we went to Fargo, ND to a young single adult conference where Elder Stratton taught a workshop on personal finances.  Do you want to know the lesson?  It is:  1) Plan - you are in charge of your finances,  2)  Get a education that will earn you good money.  3)  Invest money so your money can earn money instead of only your time earning money.  4)  Give 10%.  5) Retirement/long-term savings 10%.  6)  Reserve savings 10%  and live on the rest.  Wasn't that interesting?  Well not so much.  But pretty important.

We were home for just 2 nights, then we drove south to visit seminary classes in Pine City, North Branch and Wyoming (the MN town).  Such awesome classes and we took no pics.  But we did find a few fun things to do.  One day we went to Taylor Falls, on the St. Croix river, which divides Minnesota from Wisconsin here.  There is an outdoor sculpture garden with such interesting sculptures, I don't know if they all qualify as art but the artist sure had a good time with his heavy equipment and acres of land.  I will share some of the ones I thought were strange/interesting/artistic.

Yes, this really is a  house, suspended in the air.  Very Oz'ian.

These are lifesize because they used to be alive.

A big cage full of round rocks.  I should have added something for scale but the bigger rocks are bigger than the size of your exercise ball.  so this sculpture is pretty big. And the next one is too.

Lifejacket totem

This one is called Lizard Lounge.

Then on to St. Paul where we met up with other senior missionaries for a conference. It's possible you are confused by our two groups of friends (senior missionaries).  This group in St. Paul are all senior missionaries serving in Minnesota and NONE of them have anything to do with Seminaries and Institutes.  We are lucky to have two groups to associate with.  Such awesome people!

Names: Forbes, Arringtons, Thompsons, Grafs, Soelbergs, Morrisons, Becks and Marzos and Strattons

One of our activities was going to the Minneapolis Museum of Art.  There was a special display there where local florists came in and chose a piece of art and then made a floral sculpture to match the art.  It was fascinating.  I will just post a few.

 Some seemed obvious and others... not so much.

This is Haylee.  She is in my (Ron's) Sunday School class.  She was explaining why she didn't get a hello text from me.  Evidently she had maxed out on her Data Plan.  Then she said "If my GPA was as high as my data usage, I'd have it made for life."  No truer words ever spoken.

And here is a scenery picture.  See, no ice and snow?  And we have some leaves on the trees.  Must be Spring!