the world as I see it: Sweet Short Visit from Texas

Brandi came up this weekend to visit us. We took advantage of timing and celebrated Valentines and birthdays while she was here. Yesterday we headed over to Stillwater, MN. It's a cute border town on the St Croix river, one side is Minnesota and the other is Wisconsin.

Here we are in front of the river posing so sweetly.

And here they are pointing at the frozen river they're standing on. Scott had to dig at least a foot down through the snow to get to the ice.

Brandi was excited and was running up and down the river.

The bridge is a Lift Bridge and only one portion raises to allow the boats through.

It's amazing that a river this wide and so deep can freeze solid enough for people, snowboards, and ice houses to be safe on it. You can't see them but the ice houses they have here look like those 12x12 loft backyard storage sheds. They insulate them and stay days out on the ice. A generator helps bring enough comfort to live there.

Back in Stillwater, we admired these beautiful homes. They were everywhere, not just a few. I was inspired for our next home.

Not sure what this is but those metal doors were neat!

And we found another really huge icicle. It's short because the store owners have been knocking down the points as they get closer to the ground.

In one of the antiques shops I found a kitchen set similar to the one I had when I was a little girl. Lots of delicious things were prepared in that cute little metal kitchen. And since my bedroom was next to the bathroom, I used real water to wash my dishes and drink in my teacups.

The inside of the fridge.

At the end of the day, we met up with Mark and Sarah to have birthday dinner at Tavern on Grand. They are famous for serving delicious, fresh, local walleye. Grilled, fried, blackened, cakes, ceviche, tacos, on a stick, with eggs for breakfast...yep, if you can think it, they serve it.

Sweet girls