Bill and Sosie take us to The Gardens, The Ricardos

BREAKFAST IN BED
Mary Cassat is a favorite of Kathleen's as is John Singer Sargent.
She was pleased to see both represented at The Huntington.

Fortified by Sosie's homemade beef stew and supported by a cache of Advil, we decamped Randy's back yard retreat yesterday at about high noon, and set out for the famous Huntington Library estate gardens just a bit east of Pasedena.

Sosie (Stan's sister) and Bill are here for a week of frolic, arriving from their canyon home in the Bay Area during Randy's Super Bowl gathering at his Rowena digs. They enjoyed the party guests and the remains of the super buffet arranged by our host. After hearing guest Karri Turner (Lt. Harriet Sims, JAG) relate fascinating anecdotes from her 13 USO tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, and after watching Downton Abbey on PBS, we tucked the funseekers into our nearby Fawlty Towers unit and returned to Randy's for a sleepover in the Poker Palace Murphy Bed.
Bright and bushy-tailed, our guests returned to Randy's the next morning and quickly laid out the beef stew with hot bread.
Bill volunteered to drive and Randy volunteered to watch Birdie, and thus both earned a spot in Stan's Hall of Heroes for the day. We were soon floating down Pasadena's Colorado Boulevard, via the Rose Bowl Parade Route, finally docking at the much anticipated Huntington Gardens iron gates. It was great. If you're not familiar with this fabulous venue, please take the time to google it and we'll save some space here. If you'd like to view our entire exciting photo album (includes a picture of Katie with the Tidy-Whities man) click here. and then click on the slide show.

Katie's knee has been barking of late; no problem for us, we popped her into a complimentary wheelchair and briskly covered the expansive estate, from the desert gardens to the ponds and the Asian pagodas, thanks to the good offices of our personal guide, Heather, an eager volunteer who answered all our questions and showed us around.
(Kathleen's knee will be replaced when we return to Minnesota.)
Eventually we reached the Huntington art gallery to see exhibits that include the Blue Boy and the Green and Green Arts & Crafts Movement room. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to get over to the library to tear a souvenir page from the Gutenberg Bible sequestered there.

Monday during the winter season -- no crowds. We had
our lovely docent Heather -- and most of the grounds --
to ourselves.

Then Bill drove the old mini-van on to the city of Walnut, where Stan and Solveig's schoolmate, Cathy (Johnson) Ricardo (Mayo and Pearl's girl, you know) and her husband Ed had dinner prepared for four guests.  It's been a few years since Sosie last saw Cathy; Stan and Cathy figured it was about 50 years for them. It is actually less than that; Cathy (as well as Stan, Solveig and Linda Rolfsrud) attended Concordia College in Moorhead in 1967, before Linda graduated and Stan, Solveig and Cathy transferred to other institutions.
Dinner had a Mexican theme and was wonderful. A toast to old friends preceded a full-bodied soup, chicken enchiladas followed by a Mexican-style dessert that was so good we forgot to remember the name. A challenging word game, Quiddler, came out after dinner, (Stan won) as well as old stories centered on First English Lutheran Church and Central Junior High, Alexandria, Minnesota.

Cathy well remembered her 7th Grade English teacher, (Mister Rolfsrud) trying to motivate her to write more creatively. "I could put a bomb under your chair," he said to her, and she still grins today when retelling it.
Living room photographs of Cathy and Ed getting married three years ago include her 87-year-old mother, Pearl, who came out to California from Minnesota for the ceremony. She died a year later.
We parted fondly after the traditional Norwegian long goodbye on the steps of their beautiful home.
Then Bill turned his trusty van west toward tinsel-town, his long-time navigator with her I-phone map at shotgun, and gunned it down I-10 into the deepening night, ready for more adventure.

Classmates in the Front Row: Cathy, Solveig, Stan (Stan is one year older)
Back row are spouses Ed and Bill. Please note that Sosie still proudly
wears her Huntington Gardens sticker.