Holiday Season 2025 - The Solstice and Calvin

Sunday, December 21, 2025 

Calvin's here with us this weekend. 

He's here on a layover after a trip he took to Japan with his friend Joaquin. On Friday night we met him at the Mall of America. He and Joaquin took the train there after their flight got in. We met them and Joaquin's aunt and uncle at Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company. What nice people. Mom was also with us and had a great time. Today Calvin went to church with Mom at Nativity and we met them at Pittsburgh Blue in the Galleria for lunch afterward. Calvin wanted to go downtown and walk around so we took him to Dayton's to see the holiday market there. We entererd the Crystal Court in the IDS Center and took the skyway over. 

The holiday market was nice. After we checked it out we walked Nicollet Mall.

We took pictures with the Mary Tyler Moore statue. 

Chilly outside. 

But it was sunny.

And fun to walk around. 

It was also fun to look in the Dayton's store windows. 

Calvin also wanted to stop at Target to look for some classic toys he's collecting that he can't get in Germany. He found a few. 

I haven't been on the Mall in quite a while.

I used to be there all the time in my younger days. 

It was good to be out and about and it brought back lots of different memories. 

Dale made chili for dinner and we had Mom over. 

Calvin wanted to have tea after dinner. 

He brought back some little tea cakes from Japan that he wanted to share with us. 

He recommended that we eat them with green tea. We didn't have that but we had some spearmint flavored black tea that worked pretty well. The trick was to take little nibbles of the cakes and then have a sip of tea. It was quite satisfying and delicious. 

Before we took mom home we took pictures. 

It's been wonderful having him here to stay with us - an early Christmas gift.