Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my nephew came over and stayed the night. Being the “Cheer Master” that I am, I of course had a Christmas itinerary planned. Being the 9 year old boy that he is, he wanted to play video games with Joel! So, we did some of both and all were happy. :)

After dinner, we made sugar cookies. Hayden helped mix and cut out cookies. When it came time to do the decorating…well, he decorated 2 and then went and sat on the couch. So, I decorated 2 dozen cookies. Joel found this hilarious! For some crazy reason, he thinks I use my nieces, nephews and own children as an excuse to do activities that are really for my own enjoyment. ;P

Next on the itinerary was decorating the tree. Instead, Joel and Hayden played video games. That was fine by me. I am certainly not going to force him…more fun for me! :)

Sunday morning, we got up and out of the house and were off to Frankenmuth, MI to head to Bronner’s. Bronner’s is the World’s Largest Christmas Store. It is an enormous store of all things Christmas. The place is amazing. If you like Christmas, it’s your place!

The ride over was somewhat of an adventure in itself. Poor Hayden got extremely carsick, resulting in several vomiting episodes…in the car…with all 5 of us. Good times!! At one point we were in a quandary. He was so sick, we contemplated taking him home, but it was 40 minutes to Bronner’s and over an hour to his house, so we pressed on. By the time we got there, it was pouring rain and the place was SO PACKED. Weekend after Thanksgiving...turns out everyone had the same idea. Not that I didn’t think of that, but I don’t think anything could prepare you for just how packed it was. We had to park quite a ways away. As you can imagine, Joel was shooting me the eyes that told me so far he was not enjoying our outing. Ha!

All that being said, it was totally worth it!! As I said the place is huge, and if you have never been there before it is quite impressive.

Hayden couldn’t get over how big it was and just how many different bulbs, ornaments, displays, and trees there were.

We let him pick out several ornaments to take him. Graham loved it too.

We picked out a few ornaments for Macy and Graham and had them personalized.

We had a lot of fun! Well, the kids and I did anyway. On the way home, we encouraged Hayden to take a nap, which he did, so we had no issues with carsickness. Phew!