This Couple Must Be Crazy!

Can you believe it? Three in a row! We're really on a roll now. Well, it's the day after Thanksgiving, and we have had some adventures over the last 24 hours. We had a leisurely Thanksgiving morning, watching part of the Macy's parade. I think Brandon is still a little upset that he missed seeing Santa in the parade, but we needed to get on the road by 11 am. After driving around a bit, we found Cracker Barrel and enjoyed a delicious meal. There were a lot of people there, so it wasn't sad or depressing - and everyone was so festive and happy! Our waitress was amazing - she brought me glass after glass of sweet tea (ah, sweet nectar), and our food was prepared in minutes. We gorged ourselves (following that age-old Thanksgiving tradition) and then set off to go where the road would take us. Normally, I'm not the biggest fan of riding around, but it was snowing and everything's so pure and clean after a nice snow. So, we drove and drove... I saw my first two ski slopes - and they were having to add fake snow since we didn't get very much at all. We thought about trying to ski, but they were pretty expensive, and no one else was out there - so we'll wait a bit. We got to one of Minnesota's famous parks...and we were underwhelmed. So, I suggested we go back to Minnehaha Falls Park where we know how beautiful it is, so we could take pictures and see a waterfall in freezing temperatures. We saw it in the fall with Mom and all of the colors were amazing. Now, there aren't so many colors, of course, but the snow and ice make for an equally breath-taking view. They also make for a shivering westie. Poor Pocky was in her sweater the whole time, but she has forgotten what the Chicago weather was like in the winter. Now, she spends most of her time as close to the fireplace as possible (see evidence below), so when the high doesn't get above freezing, she's quite unhappy.

A little sidenote for those of you wanting to get some edu-ma-cation:

Minnehaha Falls means "Falling Water," not in fact, "Laughing Water," and comes from the Dakota Native American langauge. You may have heard of the falls before because they are heavily featured in Longfellow's 1855 poem, The Song of Hiawatha. Fun fact: Longfellow never even visited the Falls - he just saw a picture of them! Here's a short extract from the poem to jog your memories:

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them;
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

I confess that my knowledge of Hiawatha came from the 1937 Disney Silly Symphony cartoon, Little Hiawatha. I remember that this little Native American boy traveled by canoe to the shores of Gitche Gumee, and his pants kept falling down. Oh, and of course, he met many animals on his adventures. Both Brandon and Mom were familiar with the Longfellow poem, and looked slightly bemused when I started rambling on about a cartoon. Well, there was my attempt to provide a little historical background for you.

On to the rest of our adventures. We took some pictures that may appear in Christmas cards shortly, and then bundled up our freezing dog and came home. It was early evening, and Brandon and I began talking about the Black Friday sales. Neither one of us had ever gotten up to be at stores when the doors opened, so we thought we just might do it this once. We looked online to check out some of the deals, and there were one or two things that we really thought would be great gifts (and deeply discounted). So, we decided we would go straight to bed and get to Target at 6am! If you can believe it, we followed through - the alarm went off at 5:15, we groggily brushed our teeth and threw on layers of clothing. We got to Target right as the doors opened, and even though there was a huge line snaking its way down the strip mall, some staffers waved us in to another door. There were a LOT of people, but no shoving, no grabbing, and sadly, no pictures (the batteries died on our camera). But we saw some incredible deals, and if we thought that we need a giant flat screen TV, this would have been the time to buy one. Of the two or three little items we did buy, I got a little thrill to see that I picked up one of the last few, and that more people were headed our way to grab the rest. We checked out quickly, and then walked to Best Buy to browse, and then made our way home. By 7:45, we were back in bed. At 11am, I decided to get up and blog about our fun little Thanksgiving. We hope you had as much fun as we did!

And now, some pictures for your enjoyment...