2 dynamite ladies!

I had lunch today with my Aunt Margo and my mother, both in their 70's. The food was excellent at Mozza on Highland , awesome salads and Pizza and a butterscotch pudding with caramel and cream that knocked our socks off! The conversation was tasty and lively too!
My Aunt has owned several antique stores in her life and several apartment buildings. She is a savvy business woman with a love of good food and travel. She is constantly telling me which restaurants are "hot" and where she and her "girlfriends" just got back from.
Today she was very excited to tell me that Stanford University is hosting a trip to Burma this Winter and they apparently have the best tour guides on the planet. She wants to go and she invited me as well! I've never been to that part of the world, she has many times and loves it.
She has been to India, Asia, South America, all over Europe and the South Pacific, New Zealand and Bali and Australia and the Alps...everywhere!
She goes with other ladies in their 70's and 80's and other girlfriends in their 30's and 40's...a bunch of dames traveling the world together. My uncle (her husband) suffered a bad stroke a few years ago so he cannot travel with her but frankly he was more of a fishing type of guy, Mexico was his place, not Taiwan or Bangladesh!
I admire her courage and stubbornness, she has not "given in" as so many people of a certain age do...they start to believe that they are "too old" to do certain things like travel or go dancing or wear a fun outfit, not these ladies.
I feel blessed to have such great female role models, my Mom exhausts everyone. She is a dynamo who is a very successful interior decorator, an accomplished artist, a fashion icon, a gourmet chef and the best grandma and mother a person could ask for. Generous, funny, beautiful and brilliant...I am one lucky girl.
It shows me with living proof that you can do anything you want as long as you have the desire and the health to do it. I so often see older people who have settled into a routine of watching TV, eating the same things everyday and generally not moving their bodies nor stimulating their minds. Retirement should be a time to learn the things you didn't have time to learn while working and see the things you have always wanted to see.
So many things are free to see and touch that you don't really need a lot of money to live a full and vibrant life, just the desire and the energy and maybe a fun partner in crime, though I have traveled alone many, many times and find it fulfilling as well.
Here's to the older people out there who are LIVING life!