I love Minnesota! Some people say that its too cold, and they can’t belive they haven’t moved south already. I look at it as, when it’s hot outside, it’s hot and there’s nothing you can do about it. When it’s cold you can always dress for the weather. Plus the snow is so beautiful! There’s just something about that cold crisp air too. It feels so clean.
Ever since the temp has dropped here, I’ve wanted to share my love of the north star state with ‘little’. I really want to go skating with him. It’s perfect because I’m not very good at skating, I started a couple years ago, so we can learn this wonderful sport of hockey together. He wants to go skiing, but I think that may get a little expensive to get into. There really just isn’t anything like being able to defeat the Minnesotan negative degree weather by skating around outside. Especially when it’s so cold outside and you’re skating so hard all you need is a sweater. I love it and I can’t wait to bring ‘little’.
In order to get him excited about trying this new activity I brought him to the US Pond Hockey Championship over on Lake Nakomis in Minneapolis. It was about 10-15 degrees out so not to bad. We watched the 40+championship game. They were pretty rowdy (probably more rowdy than any 40 year old should be) and ‘little’ really liked that. Our adventure there elicited the exact response that I was looking for. He’s really excited to try skating. I hope he has the perseverance and interest to keep it up. I really want to share my new found love for this sport with him.
NHL Bound
We stayed at the pond hockey for about 45 minutes, but ‘little’ doesn’t own any boots and his feet were freezing. We took off a little earlier than I wanted but it ended up being great. On our way home we passed by the airport. ‘little’ seemed pretty excited about the planes. I remembered when I was a young lad, my old man used to stop on the frontage road so we could watch them take off. Turns out ‘little’ digs that. There’s a state park right there that we parked at and sat on the car to watch the plane fly by. It was a good time for me to grill him on school, family, friends… He never divulges any deep info (he’s 11) but I just want him to know that he can always come to me with stuff if he wants.
Plane Spotting
He hadn’t eaten breakfast so I brought him to his first greasy spoon diner experience. We went to Mickey’s and had the most delicious pancakes ever. His eyes got about as big as the pancakes when he had his first bite! I mean, all they do is basically fry them in a pound of butter. SOO GOOD!! I always try to push him to say thank you and please when we’re out. He starting to do it on his own now, so he asked me if he could thanks tothe cook (who was making the food right in front of us) and I said sure. Say, “Compliments to the Chef” when she comes by. He did. She was confused and it didn’t really go over very well. ha ha, pretty hilarious though. Oh, it’s the little things in life that’s gets us by wouldn’t you say??
The Mickey's Diner Experience!
Yet again, another exciting, eventful outing with ‘little’. I’m just trying to remember what my life was like with out him…