the rest

So I left off yesterday telling you about a weekend of traditions.  Saturday we had planned to go to Stockholm, WI for their women's weekend and then to Lavender Lane which is near Winona. Stockholm is a town of 66 people, yet they have all these cute shops and restaurants!  It's fun.  Lavender Lane is another thing we do every year.  We always go in the afternoon, and its usually cold and blustery.  It's a gift shop that is in an old church.  They have very affordable and very cute things!  If you spend 10.00 they give you a ticket, and that ticket gets you into a little tent outside the store.  They serve soup, croissant sandwiches, cider, coffee, and Christmas cookies while you sit by an old wood stove fire and listen to Christmas music.  It's amazing.

Well, we left about 9 ish to go to Stockholm, but when we drove past Lavender Lane, we saw this:

It was about 9:40, and there was a line of about 30 women waiting to get in!  We had never gone early, so we didn't know about this rush to get in.  So, we pulled over and got into line!  They had drawings for prizes, they brought us hot cider while we waited, it was great!  But then, they opened the doors.  You could not move.  We ended up leaving because you couldn't even turn around!  When we came back later in the afternoon like usual, we found out someone had passed out that morning in all the chaos.  Here's a better picture of how big the building is... now think about cramming 75+ people in there at once!  Chaos!

I love that place.  Stockholm was fun too.  We had a delicious lunch, shopped, and ate pie.  We also picked up a few things for our Thanksgiving celebration, and I got a bag of sun dried tomatoes that I cannot wait to cook with!

Another thing we do every year (or at least when we remember) is to go see the migrating tundra swans.  The swans stop a little bit south of Brownsville on their way south.  A few years ago, there were so many- it was breathtaking!  There were a lot this year too, but more will be there next weekend.

If being an occupational therapist doesn't work out for my sister, she can always go into professional bird watching.  She's got the squint.  : )