The Land of Eternal Christmas

We are in the land of eternal Christmas (It's like the opposite of Narnia). We started off our day at Bronners which is:

Which made me feel like this:

I can't possibly describe to you just how...red and green Bronner's is, so I'm just going to post a few pictures...

It's just kind of insane really. I literally got exhausted from roaming this store. It's this decked out all year long.  They are closed for five days out of the entire year: New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas (and one more but I can't remember).  But the cool and slightly odd part of the store is that they cater to all belief systems, as you can see here:

And they have even figured out how to please all parties.  

Can you tell what that is? If not, let me regale you with the intricacies laid out before us. It's like a crockpot meal of Christmas...Santa and baby Jesus simmering on low for eight hours. Dash of nativity, a pinch of ho ho ho...Santa is kneeling at baby Jesus' manger. I thought that was....ahem....weird. Yeah, let's go with weird.

There was room after room (after room) of ornaments. Everything you could possibly think of and then some...

The alien one especially made us think of my mom. They had a section devoted to fake trees and lighting which is where we found Santa rappelling. 

Josh and I were pretty certain that Dave Tanis would approve of his technique....

They had an entire room devoted to antique Precious Moments and Goebel Hummel figurines.  In that room they also had four glass cases with nativity scenes from around the world in them.  Some of them were awesome!

After we left Bronner's we went further into Frankenmuth to explore some of the less kitschy (only by a little though) shops. We got a little silly...

Don't you just kinda wish that he'd say, "Please sir, can i have some more?"

But, I think my favorite was probably the popcorn shop...They had like 32 different kinds of popcorn. I've decided that this is what heaven will be like. 

We stopped in at the Ultimate Mirror Maze, paid our eight bucks and proceeded to get lost in a maze of 2000 square feet of mirrors. It was pretty awesome. We had to wear gloves so that we didn't get prints on the mirrors, because that would be cheating after all. It's for good reason that horror movies are filmed in funhouses. But filming it would be an absolute nightmare.

Frankenmuth is a very picturesque and quaint little town, and with the Christmas lights and the fresh dusting of snow frosting the evergreen trees, it was downright postcard material.

However we did find some oddities to the village....

This is the Moonwalk Man Moon Bounce. I took this picture. Josh says it looks like a holy place.

Josh took this one. He said that now it looks like a crackhouse.

The following sign gave us a good chuckle. A good enough one in fact, that we turned around to get a picture of it.

"Coming Soon: Digital Sign"...It's a good thing they warned us. If it just appeared all digital and such, it might give me heart palpitations.

Tomorrow we're off to go even further up Michigan, Newaygo to be exact. One of Josh's old roommates is living there now and we're going to visit him for a few days. It'll be fun to see a familiar face again!

Not a Bad Way to Spend a Thursday...

This has got to be one of the best Thursdays we've ever spent.  We had lunch at a Potbelly's today and then made our way over to DreamMaker of Ann Arbor to say hey to the owners, Bob and Lee.  Bob and Lee are a part of a small business group with my parents where they travel to each other's franchises (which are all over the country).   They use the time together to dissect every part of the business from head to toe to help better one another.  It's an incredibly neat program and has been extremely rewarding for everyone.  Over the years, the group has become a pretty tightly knit family of sorts.  Everyone was down at my parents' franchise just this past May so I had gotten the opportunity to see how it works (to a small degree) and meet everyone briefly.  So long story not so short, we stopped in to say hi and got a whole lot more than we were expecting.  We saw their showroom which is super awesome! And we asked them what we should do in the state and they gave us some really good recommendations (which is why we are where we are now) and then Lee told us that if we hang out for a little we can go flying. Flying? As in a kite? Or watch birds do their thang? Or ....nope. Flying. As in a plane. As in up in the sky. Above the ground. Did we stick around? Oh heck yes.

Our first look at the plane. It was getting some fuel

Uh oh. That's a tiny plane. What have we gotten ourselves into??

It was surprisingly accessible.

We're in the air. In a tiny box with wings. And it is awesome!

How incredible is this view? All photography credit goes to joshjosh for this one. It's an awesome picture.

Look in the middle of this one. There's a rainbow!

Lee, our fearless pilot and keeper of all aircraft knowledge

Can you tell what i'm doing here? Why yes, I am flying. Flying a plane. Flying. A. Plane. Holy Crap.

We flew over Lee's house. That's a fun way to see someone's house for the first time.

It's not just anyone who can pull off the whole talking ear muff thing. Future pilot? I think so.

Enjoying the view

We landed safe and sound and Lee tucked the plane back into the hangar. It only just fits in there.


We had an AMAZING time flying. We can see how this is an appealing activity.  Not gonna lie, we were both a little nervous and unsure about being in such a tiny plane (Cessna Cardinal) but it is waaaaaay better than any commercial flight. Lee said something to the effect of 'when he's up in the air and taking in the aerial perspective, all the problems seem tiny, far away, and not so important'. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Among the recommendations that Bob and Lee gave us, one of them was Frankenmuth, which they said, if you like Christmas, you should probably see. Frankenmuth is the Mecca of Christmas. No lie. The whole town is decked out in Christmas lights--all year round. Not sure it would quite as enjoyable in April or August, but when it's almost Christmas, it's pretty awesome. 



More pictures will follow. We only just got  here and will spend tomorrow exploring this Christmasland (which is very fittingly located on Christmas Lane.) Since we are in said Christmasland, we figured it was the opportune moment to decorate our "home" for the holidays...

Christmas penguin!

And...we put up the tree :)

Headin' West

That pretty much sums up what we did today.... We started in New York this morning:

And then went west for a little PA-lovin':

We were only in PA for about five seconds (okay, an hour). We went across the top left square portion and then continued west:

Ohio. Is. Flat................

But, you can go 70 mph, so it had that redeeming quality.

We were in Ohio for a really long time. We stopped at two travel plazas and used a whole lot of gas across the Ohioan flatness. Plus side though, Ohio gas is (literally) 57 cents cheaper than NY gas.  Oh hey, look at that--two redeeming qualities...And we stopped for dinner at a....

Big Boy!  I've never actually been to one. Hadn't even seen once since the original Austin Powers (timeless classic that it is). Josh had been a looong time ago.  Really cool moment of the day: after dinner we grabbed the tripod so that we could take this touristy/cheesy picture with Big Boy himself. We were setting it up (in the middle of the parking lot b/c that's where the best angle was) when a guy came out and pretty much took the camera from us because, as he said, we were in the middle of the parking lot.  He was pretty funny....after he took a couple pics for us, he asked Josh how long he'd been in a chair and why. Turns out this guy had a C-5 injury a number of years ago (showed us his sweet scar) and was in a chair for awhile too. Then last year, he was in an accident that broke most of the bones on the left side of his body and here he is, fit as a fiddle and up walking around. (It was at this point when his friend chimed in and said they'd been friends for thirty years and the guy just won't die haha).  It's so very encouraging when those types of moments happen.  Meeting former chair users is so....i can't really think of a word that really encompasses what i mean. Hopeful. Meaningful. Encouraging....Peaceful. If you can think of a word that means all those things combined, let me know. It just kinda makes us feel like our tiny puzzle pieces of what we can see of our lives actually make a bigger picture.

Real time over. Back to sardonic reality. Because it's my favorite.... Now we're in:

And tomorrow we're gonna stop by:

We kinda creeped on DreamMaker Ann Arbor.  We went around the building to the back of the parking lot to take a picture of the trucks to send to my dad (because obviously the DMBK vehicle wrap would be new to him) and drove slowly by under the watchful gaze of security cameras. Hopefully they don't send creeper vehicle updates to the shop owners or they might not let us in tomorrow....