Frankenmuth

This past Sunday/Monday....My mama and sisters and I headed to Birch Run/Frankenmuth MI for our little annual girls shopping trip. This year we used the celebratory excuse of Vanessa's graduation from Grade 12.  I lugged my camera along for some random photo ops here and there. The weather was quite lovely so Sunday afternoon, we wandered around Frankenmuth. We were pretty content to be outdoors, soaking up the vitamin D that has been pretty much non-existant since about September last year.

We did dine at Zehnders for dinner Sunday night and it was all pretty delicious!

When we arrived back at our hotel in Birch Run afterwards, there was quite the excitement going on. We had a prime viewing location from our room window...

Just across the hwy from our hotel are the Birch Run Outlets. Apparently, Sunday afternoon the following happened:

1. First there was a bomb threat at the outlets. The entire complex was evacuated.

2. Later that afternoon, the outlets reopened once the bomb threat was cleared. Then there was a car fire on the hwy in front of our hotel. A tanker truck tried to avoid the burning car on the hwy (as he was carrying flammable contents) and rolled his truck, spilling these chemical contents. Hwy was completely shut down in both directions for the rest of the afternoon/evening/night while they worked to clean up the mess. The outlets were evacuated once again since the wind was blowing in that direction and they were concerned about the chemicals. Big excitement.

The outlets were open for business Monday morning on schedule so all shopping ladies were happy. :)

Continental breakfast in the morning at our hotel...

First stop of the morning, Coach. Which after taking a photo, we discovered it was closed for renovations. LOL! Not to worry. A temporary shop was setup elsewhere. Which we promptly drove over to. First store to cross off the list....

Belts were purchased...

And so was a purse...

and a wallet....

That was the extent of my photo taking. I was not really in the shopping mood, just wanted to be outside enjoying the sunshine I think. So I actually did very little damage...a couple of tshirts at the end of the day and some candy for Max and that's it. All the others took dad's advice to heart "If you see something.....buy it!" which can be dangerous....but nobody took it overly seriously.  ;)  The border crossing back home included about a 20 second wait. Sweet. It was nice to get away...and even nicer to come back home to my boys. :)