With Mom visiting and my schedule rather free, we explored the town of Madison. After living here for four years, I am a pretty efficient tour guide. Our first stop was to Orchids by the Ackers, where we both drooled over the beautiful orchids. Mom use to grow some of the most gorgeous orchids and we saw many of them in the green houses. Next we headed over to The Bruce Company where we couldn’t pass up deals on tulips at 75% off. Mom purchased some beautiful lemon, yellow woodland, red, pastel, and deep purple tulips to plant in my garden. I can’t wait for the beautiful color this spring.

Next we headed over to Target where Mom got to see hundreds of mallards in the run-off pond. We found an 18 quart roaster in Bed Bath and Beyond to cook the Thanksgiving turkey in on sale- and then I had a 20% off coupon! Tuckered out after the morning jaunt, we headed into town to have Big Mike’s with Mark. After Mom checked her e-mail in the CS lab and I went to a meeting we headed to do a little early thanksgiving shopping and picked Mark up for dinner at Noodles. Mom got the best pad thai dish- I have to remember to order it next time.

Today we did some more shopping for thanksgiving and early Christmas shopping. We hit the local card shop, the discount bookstore above the UW books store, Yue-Wah for potsticker ingredients and edamame (and some of the delicious coconut gel I had at Kuang’s open house), Penzeys for pie and poultry spices and Lee’s Oriental for some delicious candies I can’t pronounce. Needless to say we were ready to watch OC and relax when we got home!