Bronner's Christmas Wonderland

Tuesday morning Garytt and I made it over to Julius and Betty's house around 9 in the morning. The plan for the day was to travel to the adorable German town of Frankenmuth, MI. Frankenmuth is home to the worlds largest Christmas store...Bronner's. While we were waiting for Betty to finish getting ready, Garytt decided to turn on their radio and jam.



The dancing continues until he gets distracted by the knobs and doors...



We left for Frankenmuth around 10 in the morning, which is pretty close to Garytt's normal nap time since Michigan is one time zone over from us. So, he slept for the hour drive.

My hope for going to Bronner's was to possibly get some pictures that would be good for a Christmas card. Well...it's pretty difficult to pose a one year old and then take the picture myself. When we do posed pictures, it usually takes both Justin and myself to make it work. So, unfortunately, I failed miserably in this task.

Before going into the store, we walked around the courtyard. There is a permanent nativity scene there. It would have served as a nice backdrop if I could have gotten him to sit still.



Also in the courtyard, there was a huge float on display. Garytt enjoyed walking around and inspecting that.











They also had Christmas trees with big metal packages by them. I thought I might be able to get a good picture by the trees if I could get him interested in the packages...yeah, that didn't work either.







My final attempt to get a good picture was just inside the door. They had a nice little scene with Santa Claus. I thought I could just sit him near Santa and take a quick picture but with the hustle and bustle of people going in and out of the door, that didn't work either.


Not looking


Walking away


Interested in the floor


The best shot of Garytt...bad lighting because the door opened just at that moment.

Although I didn't get the photo of Garytt that I would have liked, I did very much enjoy seeing Bronner's. I haven't been there since I was a child. It is an absolutely huge store. It took us a little too long to go through it though because Garytt had had enough by the time we left. There are just too many breakables inside to let him get out of the stroller. So, we let him run around outside again once we were done.

Here are some pictures of the outside of the store.


The drop off entrance


The entrance says "Welcome" in many different languages


The clock marks the month instead of the time of day.

I wish we had time to explore the town a little more but Garytt needed to nap again and we needed to head back to Betty's house. It was a fun outting and put me in the mood for Christmas.