Koenig News

SLACKER!!!!

2011-09-07T19:31:00.013-06:00

What the hell... Almost 9 months since our last post!

Don't think that it means we haven't been busy!

So what's been happening? and can I sum up 9 months in less than 30 photos?

January 4 - our good friends Rod and Kelley get married in a lovely ceremony in the woods. Yes, in January. Beautiful, and in a word... C O L D. Oddly remniscient of my Mom and Bob's wedding, also on January 4th, on the beach... in Manitowoc. Also cold and lovely.

I stage managed a wonderful production of Nobody Lonesome For Me, a great fantasy about Hank William's last night by the same author that wrote Lady Day at the Emerson Bar and Grill that I did a few years ago. Matthew Brumlow was stunning as Hank and Peter Silbert held us together as the ghost guitarist.

We actually cancelled a couple performances during this mostly sold out run...

One for the over 4 feet of snow that we got

and One, again 'due to relevant Football game' - yes,amid much alcohol, the Green Bay Packers became the 2011 Super Bowl Champs.

Mom and Dad Koenig visited in January with Dominic Brenden and Madi

And before you know it... Baseball is back!!
Our first game of the season was a Brewers Rising Star game, you guessed it, the Brewers won.

Then another Brewers Game - Happy Brewer Fans and Sad Braves fans

On a whim, we decided that Easter dinner would best be enjoyed at the ball park! Our good friends the McMillions put together a lovely tailgate and we enjoyed a beautiful, sunny, perfect day for baseball.

More summer baseball - a lot of Brewers games this year and a couple of new parks for us, we took in a game at the Corn Crib and cheered for the Normal Corn Belters

We took our Anniversary trip to Minneapolis and took in a game at the new Target Field. It was a perfect day of baseball, we went to the Minneapolis sculpture garden, then over to the game and after the Twins beat the Tigers, we walked up the block a little and enjoyed a few local beers while we watched the Cardinals on TV.

Another new park for us, we finally made it to (some of) a Rapids Rafters game with Gail, Tom, Dan, Christina and our A D O R A B L E Godson Gavin. He's so patriotic! It is a great park and it was shaping up to be a good game when the sky opened up and sent us diving for cover. But we recovered with a night of Quiddler and the game eventually went all the way to the 13th inning!

And finally, to get caught up on the summer (sort of) the end of an era - Pete parted with his golden locks for a much cooler and very snazzy short hair cut!

That's it... only 22 photos and we're caught up! Now, going into the fall, we've also been slacking on our summer house projects, but there's paint and a new sink for the upstairs bathroom, new flooring in the back of the car and lots of plans for the next couple of weeks. Our Goal? September 29th we have to have the upstairs put back together, hopefully less brown and orange!
Stay tuned! Before and after pictures are on the horizon!

Holiday Fun

2010-12-19T20:05:00.011-06:00

We are being very slow about getting our cards out this year! But we did spend some time last night taking a family holiday picture in our new home. The dogs were their usual cooperative selves. I'm pretty sure that they were watching The Madagascar Penguin's Christmas Caper during several of the shots.

We trashed the house in unpacking all of the decorations, but the tree looks great and we have new decorations for our new outside! The dogs were all tuckered out with all of the decorating and now the house looks great! Only Six More Days!

My Library

2010-12-10T19:42:00.003-06:00

Sorry if this is a repeat from some gushing that I've done on Facebook, but I'm just so thrilled with the shelving units that Pete build for our Library. I've always wanted a room full of books and now I have one! It looks great and they don't even have their trim and stain on them yet.

With the installation of the shelves we also put in the blinds that we found (on sale) in October. They also look fabulous and for the first time since we've moved in to the house, we have a little privacy on our first floor. If you know my Peter Pantsless, you know how important privacy is in the Koenig household!

The room is coming along. Can't wait until tomorrow when we decorate for the Holidays. It's going to look Great!

2010-12-05T15:13:00.002-06:00

I spent my fall learning more than anyone should need to know about Laurel and Hardy. But at the end of a month of rehearsing and re-writing and playing I was rewarded with 2 months of getting to watch the incomparable Gerry Neugent and Bill Thiesen play the legendary schtickmeisters. They were very good at portraying the duo, but the fun part of the run was watching them play at making each other giggle. It was good, messy fun.

Once my show was up and running, the Johnson clan got together to celebrate the family fall birthdays. Right now, that's pretty much everyone! Instead of requiring someone to host the 10 people that currently make up our family, we met in Hartford at the Mineshaft restaurant and had a nice lunch and gift exchange. It was great and little Gavin gets bigger and CUTER every time we see him!

Last of the summer fun

2010-12-05T14:36:00.006-06:00

Way back in February, several friends from UW Oshkosh theater found each other on Facebook and decided that a summer reunion would be a blast. Since class reunions are always arranged by year of graduation, you never get to see all of the friends that you worked with before and behind you in school. This reunion was an open invitation to anyone who went to UW Oshkosh and worked in the theater in the 1980s. It was a blast.

We met Friday night for a cocktail party and tour of the Fredrick March theater then followed it up with dinner at the Challis. Saturday we had a picnic in the park that lasted from early afternoon until late night! There was baseball, volleyball, lots of drinking and a ton of remembering. We also rounded out the evening with Phony Tonys and though Pete and I headed back into town to check on the puppies, everyone else went back to the cabins where they were staying for a bon fire.

Sunday we all met for Brunch before heading back to our respective homes. It was great to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in up to 22 years and we made plans for more opportunities to meet up more regularly including another reunion next summer.

For our last adventure into the ball park this summer, we took our friend Michael down to Beloit to experience a Snappers game. We couldn't believe that it was our first of the summer, but of course this summer had a little different priority than previous summers! We had a great time, and it was a good game.

Some family visits

2010-12-05T14:13:00.005-06:00

First week in August we got a chance to open our new house to all of our Omaha family. But first, we took a quick trip up to Manitowoc for dinner with the whole gang and a game of mini-golf. We had a blast! Little Noelle is quite the golfer!

It was great to see how our house could handle a bunch of people, it seemed to do OK! Landon and Skylar slept in the baseball room, Val and Scott slept on the hide-a-bed and the rest of the kids dog piled on the air mattress in the pub room. We did OK!

Lake County Fielders

2010-12-05T14:03:00.005-06:00

Besides the La Crosse Loggers, we did get a few baseball games in this summer. There is a new team a little over an hour south of here called the Lake County Fielders. What we discovered is that though they started playing, they really weren't ready. There was no park, just a field and some low budget concession stands. The ticket price was cheap, but everything else gave us a little bit of sticker shock. The team is owned in part by Kevin Costner - hence the name - and they are set to open with a park next summer. We liked the uniforms, we both got really sun burned because there was no cover in any of the stands. It was an OK game, and an OK time, but the jury is out until next summer.

Some Summer Events

2010-12-05T13:25:00.004-06:00

So what else did we do this summer... We went to our friends Karyn and Bill's wedding at the Pabst Brewery and some of their friends thought they would appreciate a visit from the World Famous Klemments Racing Sausages at their reception. It was a blast! They came and danced for about an hour.

Pete and I took a strange weekend trip to LaCrosse, we wanted to see a LaCrosse loggers game but it got rained out and when we got back to the camp sight Puja had broken out of the tent and gone AWOL running around our campground. It took us 20 horrible minutes to find her but she was safely hanging out in the office with the person managing the campground. She was very happy to see us.

The next day we spent hanging around the campground, we went for a swim in the lake and tried to avoid the homicidal mosquitoes in the campground. Then we went into town to the LaCrosse Irish Fest and saw Gaelic Storm perform. (We took the pups with us this time so they wouldn't be tempted to break out of the tent!). It was a blast!

We drove back to Milwaukee Sunday and went to the Rep's annual company picnic and it's annual kick-ball game. It was a great weekend!

Four months... Wow, Bad Blogger. Naughty naughty blogger

2010-12-05T12:55:00.003-06:00

So... What's been going on for the last four months? Dan, Christina and Gavin came in to town for a visit and took us to the Childrens museum to play. We had a blast! I think Pete had as much fun playing with all the toys as Gavin did!

Our 10th Anniversary

2010-07-31T11:10:00.006-06:00

Since we've been together we have tried to see a new major league ballpark every summer. Last year, we started the tradition of making that new ballpark an anniversary present. So this year for our 10th anniversary, we went to glamorous Cleveland OH to see an Indians game.

We had a great time. We explored Cleveland's west side market, enjoyed a relaxing cup of coffee, browsed through a bookstore and then had dinner at Cleveland's Great Lakes brewery. We took a shuttle to the game from the brewery and had a great time. Our seats were great - high, but right behind home plate.

After the game there were Fireworks set to beach music (since it was a beach weekend) and they were Great!! All in all we had a great time.

Because we were on our usual schedule, we left Milwaukee later than we wanted and I forgot that we lost an hour going to Cleveland so we missed the Akron Aeros game on Thursday night. But now Pete was jonesing for a minor league game, so we stayed an extra day and drove up to Akron for a game.

We got our ball tickets and then found a dog park so the puppies could have a little vacation too. Then we relaxed at the hotel before heading down to have a fairly unremarkable dinner near the park.

The game was a lot of fun and the Aeros, who had been down the whole game, came back to win it in the 8th inning - so it was a lot of fun.

Sunday we made the long drive back to Milwaukee, but decided to skip the turnpike for a while and took some back roads. It's really a beautiful drive off the turnpike!

Secret Vacation!

2010-07-26T13:45:00.004-06:00

Our friends Karen, Steven and Anya came to Milwaukee on a secret vacation. Basically - a facebook blackout! We had a blast sharing our new home with them (their visit encouraged us to finally put the other two upstairs bedrooms together!) and we took in a Brewers game. We had an Irish/French fusion day - Breakfast at McBobs, Bastille days in Cathedral Square and dinner & Athas Irish music at Brocach Irish Pub. Steven finagled a tour of the Walthers train warehouse for us before we saw Toy Story 3 (in 3D!) and rounded out our vacation (let's face it - it was as much a vacation for us as for them!) with everyone's favorite Kopps Custard. Yum!

Thanks for coming you guys! We had a blast!

House work continues

2010-07-14T10:10:00.004-06:00

So here is a project that I am very proud of completing this summer - Our front porch.

Here is what the porch looked like when we bought the house - notice the lovely teal carpeting that was covering several layers of cast-off carpeting, pretty. You may also note the designer (filthy) pale blue window blinds. Again - pretty. And everyone's favorite - 70's wood paneling.

So what did we do? pulled all the carpeting, sanded the gray floor, filled in the areas where it was chipped. Then we painted the paneling our favorite antique white and all of the trim plus the porch floor a forest green designed for porches and decks.

The result? a lovely haven for me to read and drink coffee in the morning and for us to relax and listen to the baseball game at night. If we hadn't done such a good job on the bedroom, this would be my favorite room in the house!

Fathers Day weekend in St. Louis

2010-07-08T09:14:00.010-06:00

Work continues on the house, we were working hard to get some projects finished before the Johnsons/Byrnes came for a cook-out and to see the house. It was in much better shape than it had any right to be! But we weren't as good at baby proofing as we thought! Poor Dan spent much of the day chasing Gavin up and down these stairs and collecting him from some new enticement! FINALLY we remembered that we have a whole closet of games for just this purpose! Thank you Fischer Price farm!!

After a little more than a month of nothing but moving/house work we took a much needed break and spent Father's Day weekend in St. Louise. We started the weekend at a Gateway Grizzlies game where Dad was doing the color guard.

Of course as soon as we got to the game it started POURING down rain, luckily it only rained for about 8 minutes and the game only started 15 minutes late but the poor color guard waited those 15 minutes in the now sweltering sticky heat. They looked fantastic though!

Saturday we had a picnic in the heat and then Pete and I went to Stages to see Big River and visit with our friend Stacy, their stage manager. Sunday, an early Anniversary present from Mom & Dad, we went to a Cardinals game! It was a lot of fun and HOT!!! We got to see Soupan in his return to the Cardinals the only thing that would have been better is if we had won! After some Hodak's famous fried chicken and since the heat hadn't broken yet we went to the movies and saw Prince of Persia - which I really enjoyed. I think we all especially enjoyed the air conditioning! We rounded out our weekend with some Euker and then it was back to the grind of house work!

Long overdue

2010-06-26T13:20:00.010-06:00

So here is our long overdue WE-BOUGHT-A-HOUSE post!

It is a 3 bedroom Cape Cod in the Silver City neighborhood of Milwaukee's South side. We are about 20 minutes walk from Miller Park and can actually see the stadium from the window of Pete's baseball room. We spent the first 11 days working on the house and then spent a maddening 7 days moving from our 49th St. apartment (which has been our home for EIGHT YEARS!). It was a crazy time.

But here is some of our progress...

We gutted the master bedroom closet and painted it white. We added new closet rod and shelves for each of us. We painted the master bedroom, which had been a neutral cream color, to a pale green with dark green dry brushed trim which matches our bedroom set. We pulled up the carpet having been deceived by wood grained wallpaper into thinking there were nice floors under the carpet. Instead, there was a barn style sub floor that was much worse for wear. We still thought we could salvage it, but after $27 worth of wood filler we came to the conclusion that it would never re-finish to what we wanted it to look like and moved to plan B - laminate wood flooring. It went in fairly easily and looks Beautiful!

Pete has always hated the Mud room (little back hall going into the kitchen and down to the basement), it was all paneled, and not paneled well, and carpeted and generally ugly. How could we know what kind of project we were getting ourselves into when we started pulling the paneling off of the walls. After much swearing and gnashing of teeth we got all the paneling down, pulled out the shelf which was built with several different size pieces of wood and a WIDE variety of screws and nails. We primed and started painting the room, Pete replaced several bad pieces of wall board, and it's in a bit of a holding pattern. It's livable, and has been moved down in the priority list.

While we were upstairs, we painted Pete's baseball room and changed it from the lovely lavender to a neutral cream. It too had the barn-style sub floor, although it wasn't in as bad of shape as the bedroom, Pete found a peel and stick tile that he liked and we installed that. The room is ready for pennants!!

The dining room wasn't originally on the priority list, Pete had bigger issues with the green floral wall paper than I did, but it was easy to peel off while we were bored and on the second floor. While Pete was struggling with some project (basement or mud room) I decided I had everything I needed to paint the dining room and did. Wall paper down, lovely beach border (?????) down, and a lovely antique white applied to the whole room. Much better.

I am embarrassed to say that I don't have any before and after pictures of the basement. It is a cellar in every sense of the word and we have been struggling with everything from dampness to down-right lakes since we moved in. Pete has done an amazing job trying to make the basement functional. He installed an entire corner of shelving to hold all of the Christmas, Prop and other miscellaneous tubs, patched holes in the floor so that we have a usable area of pallets for furniture and camping equipment and created a nice, dry laundry area for me. We are still working on it, the shelves need to have additional bracing added and we need to replace the laundry sink. We also FINALLY purchased the dehumidifier that our real estate agent told us we needed the very first time we looked at the house. But it's getting there.

We have also know since we looked at the place that the kitchen would be a challenge, it's small and ugly. There are a lot of cabinets, but they are so disproportionately big compared to the rest of the room and they are impractical to get in to. I had originally thought that I would remove the enormous cabinet over the sink and replace it with shelves for our plates etc. but when I discovered that I would not be able to hang curtains without interfering with one of the cabinet doors I decided to take the doors off of a couple cabinets. In the end I removed the doors from all but one set of upper cabinets (I have to have some place to hide things!). I wasn't sure that I would have enough space for all of my things, but between the pantry and the mud room, I have been able to set up a very workable kitchen. We found a black and white tile that we both love and put that in the kitchen and pantry - we will carry it out to the floor of the mud room when we get to that point in the mud room. The only hiccup we hit is that the room isn't wired for an electric stove, so we have the stove and refrigerator in the room, but the stove is still just glorified counter space.

So that is the story of our house to date. We have been living here for about a month and love the neighborhood - love the house. We planted some flowers and a small herb garden in the back yard, Pete will continue to work on the basement while I move my attention to the front porch and we'll just keep plugging away until we're done. Let's face it, we have 30 years to get these projects done!!

Almost, Maine in Madison

2010-05-16T09:56:00.004-06:00

So after a very successful winter run, my show remounted in Madison for three weeks the end of April/beginning of May. The show went very well and everyone who saw it, loved it. Unfortunately, it wasn't marketed at all and we were competing with The Lion King in the main theater so not a lot of people saw the show. Oh well, the work was nice and the hotel was dog friendly so Pete was able to come up on the weekends and the whole last week. We even had a little time here and there for fun - several of us from the cast, crew and Pete went mini golfing between shows one day. It was a blast.

Slacker

2010-05-11T12:32:00.011-06:00

Yeah, I've been a slacker, or maybe there just hasn't been much going on - well at least nothing that we can officially report yet. Give us a couple of days.

In the mean time - here's what we've been up to in the past couple of months...

Pete and Jay decided that they would like to take up Curling. They went to an informal informational open house and were hooked. They will join the team in the fall - I'm sure that the fact that beer is included in their dues didn't hurt the sale!!

We spent Palm Sunday at Anita and Jeff's house celebrating Easter and got a chance to play with our not-so-little godson!

Then - our first baseball season of the year. We went to another Brewers pre-season game vs. the Tigers. It was a nice day for baseball and we had great seats.

Even though baseball season has started, we were able to sneak in a hockey game. I tagged along on Jay and Pete's annual blues game - it was a fun win!

Then we got in a couple of Cardinals games - Saturday - a good win with a bunch of friends after a great tailgate. It was a beautiful day for baseball!

Sunday Pete and I went to a Cardinals Brewers game, just the two of us. We weren't winning through most of the game and then Albert and Holliday hit back to back home runs to tie the game at 7-7 in the top of the 9th. Too bad the Brewers hit a walk-off homer in the bottom. It was a good time and I love the mini-sausage relay race on Sundays.

Finally, we had a Milwaukee Rep Brewers outing since our friends from the Cast of Route 66 were singing the national anthem and our new artistic director threw out the first pitch. It was a great game, especially if you're a Brewers fan - The Brewers won 17-2 and batted around in two different innings.

Oops! Missed the tour!

2010-02-12T12:45:00.004-06:00

Things have been pretty busy in Milwaukee - the Rep compressed their season this year so we did the same number of shows with less staff in four less weeks so it has been work, work, work for both of us. What did you miss while we were working? My show went out on tour for one night. For some reason I can't get into my MRT Guys on tour blog so I created a new one for future Rep touring shows you can see the link to the right.

Pete joined me this season in judging forensics for Golde middle school, so both of us are suddenly busy on Friday nights and Saturday mornings - I had my first meet last Saturday and Pete has his first meet tonight!

Still no word on where we will be this summer, but we'll keep you posted. The above show - Almost, Maine is back in Milwaukee for Valentine's weekend and then we close for a month and a half before we dust it off and take it to Madison for 3 weeks April 22-May 9.

Winter fun

2010-01-27T11:59:00.005-06:00

We've been having some winter fun... Mom and Dad Koenig came up for the weekend with our nephews Brenden and Dominic and our niece Madi. While the folks were seeing my current play Pete took the kids sledding in the park near our house. Reportedly, a good time was had by all!

Here they are in the aftermath of too much outdoor fun!

In an unrelated event, our buddies Jay and Dylan came over for an afternoon of fun, Here are our boys - Dylan and Mojo. Kisses for Dylan!

And finally, I opened another play called Almost, Maine. It's a very sweet set of vignettes dealing with love in a small town in North-West Maine. It is Romantic, funny and at times poignent. So far it is having a very successful run which is good because we're in Milwaukee through Valentines day and then we play in Madison April 22-May 8.

The extremely talented actors in my show are Elizabeth Ledo and Gerry Neugent in the snowmobile suits and Steve Haggard and Deb Staples stargazing.

Holy Cats!!

2010-01-02T21:28:00.025-06:00

I can't believe that I haven't posted since the end of October!! What happened to the end of the year?!

So... here we are playing catch-up AGAIN!

(PS. Check out the new link to Photo Mojo - Pete's new Photo-a-day blog! It's Great!)

And now - the end of the year by the numbers...

We got to see our Godson Gavin at the Johnson fall family birthday celebration - he's gotten SOOOO big since last spring.

I did a lovely play called The Year Of Magical Thinking at The Rep this fall

We went to St. Louis for Thanksgiving weekend and while there
Took a family portrait, walked around the new Sculpture Garden, then
Threw a surprise birthday party for Pete's Mom's 60th birthday

Then we went to Rochester MN to celebrate our Godson's first birthday.

Finally a Christmas Eve open house that was a very relaxed evening with friends

Christmas day celebration with some family

and after a very low-key New Years (I had to work both New Year's eve and day)
Santa finally brought our family Christmas present, which I am enjoying right now!

Last Camping trip of the summer

2009-10-28T10:18:00.005-06:00

So even though we were in nature's playground this summer, we really on got a couple of camping trips in. But we did get one last camping trip of the summer the weekend after Labor Day up in Door County. We have only camped there once or twice because of their awful reservation system. It is very difficult to get a site in the summer without paying a fee that is almost another night of camping just to make the reservation.

Anyhoo... we drove up after work on Friday, we got out of town at a decent time, just not decent enough to make it to the campground before dark! So we set up in the dark, which was fine because there are 5 campgrounds at Peninsula state park and because it was after Labor Day, we had the place practically to ourselves! It was a beautiful site and huge!

It was a little cold on Friday night, after our experiences camping this summer, I may want to look into a little propane tent heater for next summer. But we got both dogs piled on top of us and it was warm enough to sleep. We woke up Saturday to what sounded like kids throwing rocks at our campsite. In reality it was a bunch of rowdy squirrels throwing pine-cones down from the trees to collect later. They were merciles and had deadly aim, all we could do is hide out in the tent until they were done! Saturday was gorgeous and we drove into Fish Creek to have some of Smilin' Bob's Bar Room Chili and some deep fried Door County Cheese Curds. (Yes a lunch that should only be accompanied by a trip to the cardiologist!) We wandered around Fish Creek for a while until we had haunted each of the shops and then headed back to camp to relax from the effort.

Our friend Lee had gotten us tickets to their sold out show "Guys and Does" so we drove into Ephram as the sun was setting over the Bay to see the show. It was cute, alot like Guys on Ice but in a hunting cabin.

After the play, we rushed to the Drive In to see District 9. It was a good idea and I'm glad that we did it, but we were not as prepared as we needed to be. we had our chairs and our cooler, but because we were running late we missed the beginning of the movie and couldn't get out of the car and set up the way we needed to. Plus, watching the moving from inside the car, our windshield was dirty and we had not washer fluid!! It was still a fun experience and we can red-box the movie if we want to follow it better!

Sunday was all about relaxing in the site until it was time to pack up and go. After we were packed, we did drive the long way out of Peninsula State Park so Pete could take some pictures of the scenery. We also climbed to the top of the tower. It was fun, but I did not stay up long! I wanted to try the Sweetango apples, so we stopped at a couple of farm markets on the way back including the one with the Corn Maze that we actually got lost in!

We stopped at Friar Tucks for dinner as we passed through Manitowoc and had the second perfect weekend in a row!

Then we followed the Cardinals home to Milwaukee

2009-10-26T10:14:00.004-06:00

After a great weekend in Pittsburgh, we had tickets to the Labor day game at Miller Park. We had originally intended to tail-gate, but after the late drive we thought it would be better to sleep in! We had great Club Seats at the Labor day game it was a beautiful day for baseball.

We thought we had a chance of seeing a no-hitter, Carp had a great game going, the no-hitter was broken up by a cheap bloop hit to left field, but he still got the shut-out.

Tuesday, I went back to work, but Gail and Tom had invited us to a Brewers v. Cardinals game that evening. We again had great seats and it was a really fun game! The Cards were losing through most of the game and we got a chance to see the Hell's Bells entry of the Brewers closer, but the Cards made an amazing comeback on a Matt Holliday home run and we ended up winning the game! After the game, we had a late supper at McBob's, it was a lovely evening.

And it didn't hurt that we got a win!!

Anniversary Present

2009-10-23T11:15:00.005-06:00

Since this was the first year since Pete and I have been together that we didn't get to spend our anniversary together, we planned an anniversary weekend for once I got back to Milwaukee. We also were afraid of not being able to see a new major league baseball park this summer. All of that was solved when we discovered that the Cardinals were in Pittsburgh labor day weekend!. Pete took a personal day on Friday and we took a 4-day weekend. Our plan was to drive to Pittsburgh on Friday, check into the hotel and finda bar where we could watch the game. We had tickets for Saturday's game and then we would drive back on Sunday so we could listen to the game and catch the Cardinals at Brewers on Monday (Labor Day). It was a good plan.

We did drive on Friday. We got out a little later than we thought we would, but it was a long game and we were still able to watch a few innings of the game. After we got checked into the hotel and got the dogs settled, we headed out to find a bar where we could get some dinner and watch the end of the game. We came around a curve and right in front of us was a Primanti Brothers restaurant. One of the guys at work had recommended that we eat there while we were in Pittsburgh and there it was with TVs big enough that we could see from the street that the game was on! It WAS a great sandwich and the Cardinals won!

Saturday we relaxed in the room and then headed in to town to explore downtown Pittsburgh. It is a beautiful area. We went to an old market type area and prowled around the shops and took a ride on an Incline. Sort of a tram that you take from the riverside area to the upper bluff area. We rode up, took a ton of pictures, got some ice cream and then took the incline back down. By this time, we needed to head to the game! The converging highways/bridges at the three rivers area are a little confusing and we somehow headed to the wrong parking lot and were on our way to a football game. But it didn't take too long to get back on the right track and back over to the correct side of the river and baseball parking. There are three bridges that cross from North to South and on game days, they turn one of them into a pedestrian bridge. It was a great walk over to the park. ON the street in front of the park, there was a street fair/ Irish fest going on which we wandered around just a little before we headed into the park.

The game was great and our seats were great and there were a lot of Cardinals fans in the park. We had Philly Cheese steaks that were enormous for dinner and generally had a great time. After the game there were fireworks and they were fantastic! Pete had been talking to a Cardinals fan sitting next to him throughout the game and after the game he asked if we would be at the game on Sunday, we said no we had to drive back. He had a sick kid at home so he had extra tickets, we must have hesitated because he said, here, let me make it easy for you and just gave us the tickets. We really thought there was no way to do it, especially with the puppies. But then we looked at the seats - they were 10th row, right behind the 1st base dug-out and fantastic. So now we were thinking about it.

Pete talked to his Dad while we were on our way back to the hotel and public opinion seemed to be that we find a way to see the game! We chatted with the hotel front desk in the morning and they agreed to give us another night for the single person rate and we found a way to go to the game with the pups nicely settled!

It was not a great game, we were ahead for much of it, but then Ryan Franklin melted down and gave it up. Blech. I'm still glad that we stayed and went to the game! The drive back wasn't even that bad. We had a plan to switch drivers every two hours, another plan we didn't stick to! But once you get into a driving groove, it's hard to give it up.

It was a fantastic trip!

Long time no see -

2009-10-22T16:21:00.002-06:00

So I have been extremely remiss in keeping up our family blog after Pete returned to Milwaukee and left me alone in Utah. The rest of the summer went well. The show continued to be well received and I had a lot of fun hanging with my new friends. If we learned anything, we learned that six weeks is too long for Pete and me to be separated. I missed the pups too!

I did have some fun - the annual stage manager's trip to Las Vegas was scheduled to correspond with a carpenters and electricians. By the time we got there, there were 30 people from the festival headed to sin city. I didn't have a show, so I went in to town early and was able to see an Area 51s game with my friend Michael. It was a good gamea nd we had a great time. When we got back to the hotel, I curled up in our fantastic room to wait for the rest of the stage managers to show up. It was a great room, really much nicer than my apartment in Cedar City! Once they got there, we headed down to the strip for a little drinking and gambling. After a lot of confusion about where we were going and how far people could walk in heals... we wound up drinking quietly in a series of casino bars. When we discovered that it was almost 7a, we decided to head back to the hotel and have some breakfast!

Sunday we all met in Paris for Brunch which was, as usual, lovely (made me miss Pete!) and then some shopping before my friend Becky and I went to the Cirque show Beatles, Love. It was a fantastic show and I know that I will get to see it again, because Pete HAS to see it!! It was a long drive back on so little sleep, but once I got back - I had no where to bere until Tuesday, so I was finally able to catch up on my sleep!

4th of July Weekend

2009-07-09T02:38:00.011-06:00

So since we missed our weekend in Salt Lake last weekend, we were able to get away for a three day weekend over the fourth of July. Friday we drove to Orem to see an Orem Owlz game. It was a beautiful night for baseball and the park was pretty nice. It was a little like New Jersey Cardinals in that it was about a 2 inning line for concessions (and another college campus, so no beer) but the game was fun. And afterwards... fireworks!

Saturday we spent the day in Salt Lake City. It is a lovely city and we saw the State Capitol and the Mormon Temple. We were politely asked to leave Temple square with the dogs, but luckily we had walked the entire plaza by the time they noticed us and decided to ask us to leave. We could have carried the pups, but it was a hot day and they weren't really interested in the Temple anyway.

They were much more interested in the park half a block away where they could tromp around in the creek. We had lunch at a lovely cafe and then found a sports bar (can you believe it! In Utah!! The Zion curtain has definitely come down. Saturday night it was once again time for Baseball. We saw a Salt Lake City Bees game. They had someone there with a live Bald Eagle - what's more patriotic for the 4th than someone singing the national anthem with an eagle sitting next to him! It was an exciting game, tied for most of the evening, but in the end, the Bees were not able to pull it out. After the game (which ended at 11:30!) you guessed it; more fireworks! This was a much better show than the Owlz. By the time we got out of the game the trains were no longer running, so we had to walk back to the hotel, but it was a beautiful night and a very nice walk.

For Pete's last week here in Utah, we have been madly seeing shows - Monday afternoon we saw a preview of Foxfire, Monday night Pete saw the opening of my show. Tuesday night we saw Henry V and this afternoon we saw a preview of Secret Garden. With all of that under our belts, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at Milt's steak house about half way up the mountain to Cedar Breaks. After dinner, we continued up the mountain to Sunset point and watched the sunset. I think Pete used 3 rolls of film in addition to the 50 or so pictures he took with his digital camera! It was a beautiful sunset. Afterwards... back down the mountain and Wednesday night Eucher. We actually Won a game this week!!

St. George Dog Park

2009-07-05T17:37:00.006-06:00

Even puppies need a little vacation! Since we were stuck staying close to home in case I needed to be in rehearsal, we looked for an off-leash dog park where the puppies could get some exercise. There aren't any in Cedar City, but there is one in St. George - about 40 minutes away. So we hopped in the car.

The bank we passed driving into the city said the temperature in St. George was 108 degrees (yeah, but it's a dry heat... like a blow torch to the face!)

The park was nothing like our beautiful Grandville Dog park in Milwaukee, but an acre or so of fenced grass with lots of smells to sniff and a wading pool in case it just got too hot! The puppies had a great time. There were even a few other dogs braving the heat. The big dogs had little interest in our two mutts, but once they left, a family with three little dogs arrived, so we moved to the little-dog half of the park and the running, barking and sniffing started all over again.

Once they crashed in the grass and Mojo in particular, looked like he'd had all the fun (and heat) that they could handle, we loaded the pups BACK in the car and headed back to Cedar City. All in all, a lovely day and we were rewarded with two very sleepy puppies when we got home.

Vegas and Vegas

2009-07-05T16:58:00.006-06:00

Pete and I had two trips to Las Vegas in one week! The first, we took my room mate Laura to the Airport when her contract ended so she could fly back to Milwaukee and would not have to suffer the shuttles from Cedar City to St. George and St. George to Vegas. Since I had no rehearsals that day and we were in town anyway, we decided to have lunch and see the Bellagio fountains which we had not gotten a chance to see the last time we were in Vegas two summers ago.

We had lunch at the buffet in Paris where Pete's parents had taken us for our anniversary a couple of years ago. It's pretty wonderful, the whole thing is broken up by province and the food is fantastic. After lunch, we walked across the street to the fountains and although it took three tries, we finally saw a whole song of the dancing water.

The end of this same week, we were supposed to go up to Salt Lake City and Orem, to see the Bees and Owls baseball teams. But the stage manager that I am understudying got a flu bug that has been going around the company so we decided to stay close to home in case I had to cover any of her rehearsals. Luckily, it was only a 24 hour flu and she was better the next day.

So instead of Bees and Owls, we drove to Vegas on Sunday and saw an Area 51s game. I wasn't sure if we would get a game in, and it wasn't a big deal because we saw the 51s a couple of years ago, but it was a perfect day for Baseball. It was 102 degrees, so we got seats in the shade which also had misters and ceiling fans. The Area 51s beat the Sacramento River Cats and all in all, it was a great day.

We were HOT when we finally made it back to Cedar City, luckily, there is a pool right on the other side of our apartment!!

Some nature

2009-06-30T12:17:00.004-06:00

Even though I have been a little busy with my show, Pete and I have still found some time to enjoy the nature here in Utah. We spent one Sunday afternoon at a reservoir called Sand Hollow - it was beautiful. Though the water was cold! It felt good on a hot day. We just lounged on the rocks and read or tried to make our way around the rocks and sandbars under the water. It was a beautiful day and Pete took a ton of pictures (I'm sure they will make it onto Flicker in a month or so!)

We got the best camping tip ever from James, the scenic director here at the Festival. He said his favorite campground in Utah is Oak Grove. It's about 40 minutes away on the the highway, but then another half hour on a winding, one-lane, gravel road. It was well worth the trip. We were lucky enough to get the last campsite in the place and we had a spectacular view of the mountains that surrounded us.

It was warm during the day but cool at night (not Cedar Canyon cool, but all-dogs-in-bed cool.

Mojo started something that he hasn't done for a while - he dug little dens for himself all weekend. By the time we left on Sunday afternoon - there were 4 little Mojo size holes around the site and both dogs needed baths from all the dust. Not sure if you can see him behind Pete in the second picture, but he is in a little den under the bushes staying cool!

There was no place in the site that we couldn't look without seeing a beautiful view. It was just a fantastic campground and we had a wonderful and relaxing weekend.

Comedy of errors Follow up

2009-06-13T11:20:00.007-06:00

We had our publicity photo call for The Comedy of Errors last night and I thought it would be fun to compare the renderings that I posted a couple of weeks ago with the (near) finished product. PS. follow the link to the right to Kathi's Pix to see the renderings and finished products side by side. It's fun!

I think they look great! Last night during the photo call, someone described the show as "Disney on Crack" I think that's a pretty accurate description. Although I haven't posted any pictures of the ladies in the show, they do look an awful lot like Disney princesses - think Beauty and the Beast or Aladin. It's pretty funny.

Below are pictures of the other set of twins, the servants and a picture of both sets of twins together. It's going to be a funny, funny show.

Roadrunners and Camping

2009-06-11T22:42:00.005-06:00

Last week Pete and I finally had a night off together when the St. George Roadrunners were in town. So we drove the 45 minutes down the canyon to see a game. It was a pretty good game, at first we were sitting right in the path of the speakers, so it was a little loud, but once we moved, it was a lot of fun.

The game when back and forth for a few innings, but then settled in with the Roadrunners trailing. But in a dramatic turn of events, they came back in the bottom of the eighth and won the game!

We had a good time, the Roadrunners game seems to be a family event in St. George and by the middle of the sixth inning there appeared to be bands of roving children, stalking the mascot and seemingly without any adult supervision. But they seemed to have a good time and so did we.

Later in the week, I had a Saturday and Sunday off in a row so we decided to go camping. We are only about 30 minutes from Cedar Breaks National monument and we found a campground only about 15 minutes up the mountain from Cedar City so Friday afternoon we drove up and set up the tent (in the WIND) then after my rehearsal ended (around 10:30) I did my notes and things then we threw the pups in the car and drove up to the tent.

It was, in a word... cold. We went straight to the tent and snuggled into the bed and played some cards, then decided that we would just read because we could snuggle under the covers and finally, just got under the covers and tried to convince the dogs they would be warmer in bed with us.

It was a cold night, but the morning was clear. We had a nice breakfast and lounged around the campsite reading and relaxing. Unfortunately, it turned cold again in the afternoon and we decided to have dinner and a fire while we listened to the ball game and then head back to town. So we packed up the tent, got some firewood and started dinner.

Then it started to rain.

We drove back to town and went to a movie, thus ended the first camping trip of the season. Next time we're heading south, into the desert.

The Comedy of Errors at USF

2009-05-23T14:49:00.004-06:00

Here are the pictures of my set drawings and the theater.

Also some of our costume drawings.

Egeon is an old man who is the father of twin boys. 33 years ago, they were separated and he lost his wife and one of the twins at sea. Seven years ago, the remaining son set out with his servant (who also has a twin brother who was lost at sea with his master's brother and mother) in search of his twin and mother. At the beginning of our story, Egeon has been looking for his son for 2 years when he stumbles into an enemy city where the penalty for being from his home town of Syracuse is death. When he tells his story, the Duke of the city gives him one day to try to raise his bail.

In the mean time, his son has also stumbled into the town, with his servant. Little do they know, their long lost twin brothers live in this town. And the hilarity ensues.

It should be a fun production! I know the rehearsals have been a lot of fun so far.

More summer work

2009-05-17T13:57:00.003-06:00

So here I am in Utah. This is the view from the front door of my office. The stage management team (12 of us) are in a house about a block from the two theater spaces. It's very cozy! The third picture is my apartment. I am in the garden unit closest to where I am taking the picture. It was a busy first week full of prep work all gearing up for tomorrow when all the actors arrive and we begin rehearsals.

Today (Sunday - our day off) we had brunch as a stage management department and several of our crew chiefs and electricians also participated. It was a great meal and good to get a head start on putting names with faces. At the height of the festival, there are more than 400 people here, luckily I don't have to learn all their names at once!!

Only 10 days until Pete joins me here - yes, I am counting down.

Dad's Birthday in St. Louis

2009-05-17T13:44:00.003-06:00

Yes, it's a little behind, but I have been very very busy!! Here are some pictures from our celebration of Dad's birthday. There were presents, there was a cookie cake (yum) and it was even cool enough outside for some washers.

After a fantastic lunch of steaks on the grill, we played a game of NHL monopoly and it was an early evening. Which left plenty of time to play more Scrabble and cards!

It was the perfect end to a lovely and relaxing evening.

Summer 2009 baseball begins!

2009-05-03T17:56:00.004-06:00

Although we already made it to two Brewer games before my show opened, the official summer baseball season began last week when we headed down to St. Louis to enjoy our Christmas Present from Pete's parents. Tuesday night we drove down to Beloit to start our weekend vacation with a Snappers game.

The Snappers were playing the Cardinals team, the Quad Cities River Bandits and it was typical A-Ball in April.

Cold.

At first pitch there were 14 people in the stands - I love the picture of granny with her umbrella and cracker jack in front of the big sign that says it's fun to be a fan! Pete was in a contest to see how far you could hit a whiffle ball - the first picture is Pete calling his shot! We are pretty hard core fans and even though the temperature was supposed to be 40 degrees, it felt more like 20. The River bandits were winning 13-1, so we left after the 7th inning stretch. The Bandits went on to win 15-2.

Wednesday we headed down to St. Louis for our Christmas present - watching the Cardinals beat the mets 12-8 from Homers Landing, an all inclusive party deck in Center field. We had a great time, the seats were fantastic and the game was great. We saw Albert and Rick Ankiel hit home runs.

It was 82 degrees and a perfect day to spend in the ballpark.

How I Became A Pirate

2009-05-03T17:32:00.002-06:00

I opened my last show of the season April 17th - a very cute play about a little boy who joins a band of pirates and discovers that life at home isn't so bad!

It's a fantastic set that starts on the beach and then moves out to the open sea - survives a soccer ball eating shark and a storm before returning back to the home port.

We also had an extremely talented group of musicians in the cast - a pirate band that gave us no end of entertainment. I only rehearsed, teched and opened this world premier musical and then handed it over to another stage manager to run the performances...

I miss me pirate mateys!

Top: clockwise from left: Susan Nicholson, Lee Becker, John Nicholson, Todd Denning, James Valcq, Bo Johnson (and Petey), and young performers Andrew Oppmann, Ashley Patin, Teddy Warren at the wheel and Austin Zdziarski

Center: John Nicholson standing above, from Left to right, Lee Becker, Susan Nicholson and James Valcq

Bottom: Bo Johnson with the book on his head - Clockwise from lower left: James Valcq, Ashley Patin, Lee Becker, Austin Zdziarski, Todd Denning, Susan Nicholson and Andrew Oppmann.

The Baptism

2009-04-02T09:20:00.005-06:00

Pete and I are very excited that we are the Godparents of our nephew Gavin Henry. The baptism was a lovely private ceremony in Madison 3.28.09. Just family and friends and afterwards, lunch at Ridges Golf Course.

We gave the 4-generation picture another shot, but there were still a lot of eyes closed! This is a pretty good shot!

Barney & Bee

2009-03-20T22:40:00.002-06:00

Pete's show - BARNEY & BEE opened tonight!! BARNEY & BEE tells the tale of Jo and Stephen, hosts of an ill-fated dinner party to which Stephen has asked Barney, the husband in a newly separated couple. Unbeknownst to Stephen, Jo has also invited the wife (Bee) and her new boyfriend - a recipe for social catastrophe! Two talented actors play all five comic characters in Frayn's witty, fast-moving farce.

It was great and the actors were working very hard but they couldn't have done it without Pete's props which included a fully set table that Pete has tricked out so that everything (plates, bowls, full silverware setting, napkins, place mats and wine glasses) smoothly slide from one end of the table and back!

It's a cute play and Pete did a GREAT job - more pictures as they become available!

Spring Training Day 4 - Mets vs. Nationals

2009-03-10T14:06:00.004-06:00

Our last spring training game, we opted to see another park rather than drive back to Jupiter to see the Cardinals. Conveniently, the Mets were playing the Nationals only about 45 minutes from where we were staying in Harmony. So we got a new park! Also, though this is the Nationals training facility, during

the regular season it will be the park where the Brewers' Florida State League team will play - so a Mets game for Karen, Steven and Anya and a home-town connection for us! It's a beautiful park and we had great seats behind home plate in the sun! We didn't want to return North without a little color!

Because of it's location Space Coast Field has a lot of Cape Canaveral tie-ins including foul poles that commemorate the lost space shuttles Columbia and Challenger. Unfortunately, the Mets lost - 8-3, but as we said earlier, the top 15 Mets are not with the team as they are spread among their home countries teams in the World Baseball Classic. After the game, we went to The Melting Pot for a dinner of bread & vegetables soaked in Melted Cheese and fruit & Cake dipped in melted chocolate. Good friends, Baseball & Sun, tasty food - the end of a perfect vacation!

We had one non-baseball day, Monday we were forced to amuse ourselves around Harmony before our flight home. It was torture to walk to the pool for a swim and then sit in the sun and play cards. Torture!

Back home in the rain and fog, it's still 27 days to opening day. *sigh*

Spring Training Surprise

2009-03-10T13:08:00.007-06:00

So as a special Spring Training surprise, instead of meeting Karen in Downtown Disney for dinner, we went to the Magic Kingdom for dinner and an evening of rides, shows and magical fun!

Pete was in seventh heaven with his Camera - Just when he would think he had the perfect shot, the subject would change colors! I think he has the castle in Pink, Green, Blue, and Yellow, but this is my favorite shot.

We started our evening on Mainstreet and dinner at Casey's Corner, it's a great little restaurant with (you guessed it) a baseball theme! They serve hot dogs, corn dog bites, chili and cracker jack! In the eating part of the restaurant there are tables, but also bleachers so that while you are eating you can enjoy all of the Disney baseball and other sports themed cartoons. The walls were also a museum of baseball history. It was a perfect start to our Spring Training Disney surprise! We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, watched a parade with lighted floats, rode a run-away train roller coaster which we were on when the fireworks started! Then we were off to a 3D musical movie it was amazing! After the fireworks we continued through Frontier Land into Liberty Square and the Haunted Mansion ride. After that it was into the world of tomorrow. There was too long of a line for Space Mountain, but we rode through the whole world and wound up in the Monsters Inc. Laugh floor - kind of a cartoon/live action stand up show.

And because you can only have so much fun, it was time to head home! But not before Pete tried his luck at pulling the sword from the stone and becoming king! As you can see, he did not succeed.

We also couldn't leave Disney without some home-made fudge!

It was a great surprise and we had a blast, Pete hasn't been to The Magic Kingdom since he was 4-5 years old and I haven't been there in 20 years so it was great to see all the updates and new attractions.

We're really not much for group pictures! What a motley crew we are here! But it was a long day and an exhausting but fun evening in the happiest place on earth!

Spring Training Day 3 - Cardinals vs. Astros

2009-03-10T12:31:00.002-06:00

For our third Cardinal game of our Spring Training dream vacation, we get a new park! The Osceola County Stadium is the only park on our trip that is only used for Spring Training, and doesn't have a team during the regular season. It kind of looks like that in it's plainness. But it was a great game and the Cardinals won 5-1! Karen wasn't able to join us because she had to work (more on that later) but with Pete's help, Anya is making headway on her game scoring. It's very strange, it feels like a minor league game with major league players, it's great to see all of our favorites this close!

Spring Training Day 2 - Mets vs. Cardinals

2009-03-10T09:14:00.003-06:00

So on our second day of spring training we convinced Karen, Steven and Anya (Big Mets Fans) to play hooky from work and school and come to Jupiter with us for a Cardinals v. Mets game. I don't recall that it took too much arm twisting! We headed to the game and it was another beautiful day. The game was good, the Mets have 16 players out at the World Baseball Classic to the Cardinals 2, so we joked throughout the game that the Mets had thrown uniforms on the front office staff for the game, unfortunately, they still beat the Cardinals! It was OK though, it was a good close game and a couple of VERY Questionable calls could have easily thrown the game the other way. After the game we wandered around Jupiter, which is a really cute community, and found an Irish Pub to sit and talk and have dinner. We made it an early night. It's a beautiful sunset and a nice bite of summer!

Spring Training! Day 1 - Dominican Republic vs. Cardinals

2009-03-06T20:52:00.007-06:00

Here we are in Florida - we FINALLY made it to Spring Training and we're having a Blast. We are staying with our friends Karen, Steven and Anya and on our first day,

they loaned us their car so we could drive to Jupiter FL (about 2 hours from their house) to the Cardinals training facility to see a game. In anticipation of the World Baseball Classic next weekend, the Cardinals played the All-Star Dominican Republic team. Against the odds, the Cardinals Won! Whoo Hoo! And it was a great game. We are loving how close we are to the action - minor league intimacy with major league players.

One of the great things about this game is that at the top of the game, they started with the Dominican National Anthem and then the US National Anthem (not sure who the singer was, but I'm guessing it was an Elvis impersonator... at least I hope so!) Then throughout the game, all of the announcements were bilingual! They had a guest announcer from one of the Spanish radio stations and all of the announcements were done in both English and Spanish.Pete said he was not prepared for how hard it would be to score a Spring Training game with all of the changes/substitutions to allow many players to get a chance at bat, but he was able to keep up. We met some very nice people who were sitting next to us and had been coming to Spring Training for 25 years. Where are they from? High Ridge Missouri where Pete's parent's live!! Small baseball world! It's just such a thrill to be watching baseball this early. And the weather is great!

Summer Work

2009-02-25T15:19:00.005-06:00

So Pete and the puppies and I are packing Stan the Van to head west this summer. I will be returning to the Utah Shakespearean Festival where I last worked in 1995. It's a great summer job, I'll be stage managing Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, a show I haven't done yet. Pete will have plenty to photograph and there's a lot of nature for the pups to play in! So we're off! I'll be there from Mid May until the End of August and Pete & the Pups will be with me from late May until he has to go back to work at the Rep in July. So... you'll know where to find us if you find yourselves our west!

In the mean time, I have one more week on tour then we're off to Spring Training. Pete is working on the props for Barney and Bee which opens just after St. Patrick's Day as well as still plugging along at the Rep.

2009-02-05T14:09:00.003-06:00

Our superbowl party was again a big hit - we had almost 20 people here enjoying Chili, Queso, Chicken dip, Melissa's veggie pizza, Beatrice's Garlic bread, Jenny's humus and a ton of other snacks.

The commercials in the superbowl were pretty lame, but it was a good game.

The poor puppies were relegated to the bedroom. They eventually came out to play, but Mojo, as usual, was bannished back to the bedroom for taking an unexplained dislike to Alan's partner. Goofy mutt.

The 3-D glasses didn't help much with the commercials, but they made a pretty funny fashion statement!

At the end of the day, a successful, fun night reduced to discarded 3-D glasses and empty beer bottles. Not to mention the quart of chili, chips and cocktail wienies!

Some catch up from Pete's camera... Here's our exciting new years eve celebration, we played Pete's new Baseball trivia game, Scene it, and paused long enough to count down to the new year with Dick Clark. silly, but we were safely in bed by 1a. I know it was only the second tour stop, but I was glad that Pete and the pups came to join me in Sheboygan. We had a nice time relaxing in the hot tub, the puppies got a rawhide treat and some extra attention from my assistant Cheryl who got back to the hotel too late for the hot tub, but never too late to play with the puppies! The last is just a great picture of Mojo enjoying one of his Christmas presents from Nana and Papa - He's super cute... when he's asleep.

sorry for my absence

2009-01-27T12:02:00.006-06:00

I have been remiss in my blogging. We have been busy, but there hasn't been much of great interest to write. These little pups of ours may look cute when they are all cuddled up in my blanket with their furry little heads on a pillow, but Mojo continues his reign of terror on our household. He broke in to the pantry and ate the rest of the Christmas pumpkin pie and blueberry pie. He has figured out how to turn the knob and open the dining room door so we have to build a barricade ala Les Miserable to keep the dogs in the kitchen. There are two stacked gates and a table in front of the door. Last night the little monster broke out. We're still not sure how he did it. He looks so sweet and innocent, but there is a demon lurking inside that makes him misbehave.

In other news, I am back out on the road with Guys on Ice - as always, you can follow our escapades at http://mrtguysontour.blogspot.com/ I'm on the road through March 1st, but I'll try to be better about keeping up and keeping you informed.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-26T09:47:00.004-06:00

Merry Christmas 2008. It was a little quieter Christmas in the Koenig household this year. Preparation was a little off because I was out of town until 2 weeks before Christmas and then when I got back a series of strange events allowed the holiday to just sneak up on us.

One of the strange things that happened is that I had to rehearse understudies for 2 of 4 roles in my show and put them on for preview... fun! Then, on the last good shopping day before Christmas we got 18" of snow. The bad news, no shopping, the good news, a good old fashioned snow day. We goofed around taking a family picture, dug a path for the mailman, hiked in the street a couple blocks to meet some friends for lunch at a pub in slogging distance! And eventually dug the car out so that I could go to the theatre to do my show.

So, to catch up, we got everything taken care of for the holidays - the puppies enjoyed their reindeer squeeky toys, each of them got a little something baseball related and we had a wonderful Christmas eve doing some traditional cooking together. We made rosettes, which led to a happy accident in the discovery of an apple fritter recipe. Pete baked pumpkin and apple pies, and created some home-made braided dog biscuits. I made cookie dough for later baking and now, thanks to my Dad, we had my mother's ribs for dinner. They were just as wonderful as I remember.

Christmas day we spent at my sister's house and got to share little baby Gavin's first Christmas. Dinner was tasty and we had a very nice relaxed day. In a couple of weeks Pete's parents will be driving up to Milwaukee for a continued Christmas celebration. Merry Christmas!!

Big News! A New Baby!

2008-12-05T10:04:00.004-06:00

At 7:50a this morning Pete and I have a new baby nephew. Gavin Henry Johnson was born in Madison after almost 24 hours of labor (yuck!). He is (of course) adorable! I am actually doing Guys On Ice here in Madison on the weekends so his timing was perfect, I got here Thursday night and he got here Friday morning!

Mama is exhausted and proud papa can't take his eyes off the baby! The grandparents are all here in force marveling at Gavin's 'Long' fingers and his 'big' feet! They looked pretty tiny to me!

So we're excited, although this in #21 for Pete and I, this is the only baby that I've ever gotten to visit this new! When I met him, little Gavin was less than 90 minutes old! I hope that with all the visitors this weekend Dan and Christina get a little chance to rest! It was hard work and a long night for all three in the Johnson family. But they sure are a beautiful family!

New Show

2008-11-04T15:32:00.004-06:00

So after a lovely eight week run Isn't It Romantic is closed. I'm going to miss my friends but I'm sure we'll work together again soon!

So I've moved across the street to the Children's theatre and am stage managing the last two weeks of a production of Charlotte's Web. It's a lovely production with a beautiful set and a great group of adult and young performers. I've inherited a pig with a bad knee, but other than that, things have started off very well and I'm looking forward to spending the next two weeks in the barnyard. I'll post pictures as I have them.

Hey look! I found some! Here are pictures of one of our little pigs with the goose and goslings and also with Tempelton the Rat. These actors do a fantastic job of making you believe they are animals. It's lots of fun! Also, check out the first stage blog - the address is on your right...

Gallery Night

2008-10-22T16:47:00.003-06:00

Things have been fine in Milwaukee - Not much going on, so not much to report! My show is STILL running even though on Pete's side of the Rep they have opened 2 more shows and closed them and are in tech for a third and finishing building a fourth! We just keep cranking them out!!

The pictures here are Pete's pictures that were featured in a Gallery exhibit at the Broadway Theatre Center in Milwaukee in their 'Artists behind the Art' series. I'm so proud of him and his pictures are beautiful.

In other news, Our puppies graduated from their Manners class - they were very good in class and I was particularly proud of Mojo, now we just have to get what they learned to translate to every day life!

Pete's parents were here with Mary Jo's Mother in Law, Jane for the weekend. We had a great time, they got to see some Milwaukee theatre and we ate a lot of food with a lot of good conversations. It was a great weekend. My family will be up this weekend to celebrate all of our fall birthdays so the house cleaning never ends!

But that's really it - not much going on!

Isn't It Romantic

2008-09-10T11:49:00.002-06:00

I actually think it is a little bit romantic! My show opened Saturday night - another world premier, my second this year!! A lovely song-book musical of the music of the Gershwins, Rogers & Hart and Jerome Kern. The script is fairly thin, but the music is fantastic and Jimi Ray Malaray (singer) is a delight to watch. So this is where I'll be for the next 2 months - as the song says "Nice Work If You Can Get It"!

OK, so not quite over!

2008-09-10T11:28:00.003-06:00

So just because we're both working doesn't mean we have to keep having fun! The day before we went into rehearsal the Milwaukee Rep had a Brewers outing - it was a blast - there were almost 60 people that came to the game and most of them joined us at a pre-game tail gate. It was quite an event!

At the end o fmy first week of rehearsal, The Rep had their company picnic. The picnic always consists of the annual kick-ball game, Interns vs. Staff. This year Pete convinced them to mix it up a little and they chose teams by counting off. Pete was on the winning team (the twos!) and even got a war wound from a particularly dramatic slide into second base!

As our last trip of the summer we had a mini-vacation to the Quad Cities to see a River Bandit's game. Prior to this summer they were known as the Swing of the Quad Cities but changed their name. It was their last game of the season and we had great seats - front row behind home plate. One of the fun things about the River Bandit's park is that they take the whole Field of Dreams thing seriously (Is this heaven? No it's Iowa) to the extent that they have a corn field at the left field foul pole and the players enter the field out of the corn. It was fun! Unfortuantly the River Bandits lost to the T-Rats, but we got to see the T-Rats pitcher throw an almost perfect game. He was one little in-field bloop from a no-hitter and besides that bloop, he threw a perfect game. We had a great day and it was a lovely little get-away trip before I went into tech.

summer wrap up

2008-09-10T10:46:00.006-06:00

Once Pete went back to work, our summer activities were confined to the weekends! We spent a weekend in the Fox Valley with Kelley, Marty, Kalin and friends, then a night with Anita, Jeff and Ashley then capped off with a T-Rats Tailgate and game with Dad followed by dinner with Dad and Gram. It was a busy weekend - too busy obviously to take and pictures!!

The next week we entertained all of the Mullers and then the Abrahams, it's always great to see them and the kids are getting soooo big! Now it was time for me to go back to work -

My show is a nice one-person show called Isn't It Romantic, and I think it will be!

The last weekend before rehearsal started, we had a graduation lunch for our niece Ashley who is now off to school at St. Norberts. Jeff worked his voodoo with the Ribs - yumm - and it was fun to get the whole family together. Even the gimpersons! Like father like son!

On Friday before the party we weent to Irish Fest to see one of our favorite bands, Gaelic Storm. We had such a good time, we went back on Sunday!

And that's it - back to work!!

Still a little behind on the summer

2008-08-11T09:30:00.004-06:00

Still catching up on the rest of our summer vacation...
The weekend after Pete went back to work we were able to participate in the wedding of our friend, David Mauer. David was my assistant at New American Theatre for a few years and Pete's good hockey buddy. It was a pretty wedding.

The next weekend we were keeping up with our now tradition of trying to see a Cardinals game for our anniversary. We went down to St. Louis, and finally got to see a winner! We also got to spend time with family at our niece Emily's birthday party and a Sunday Brunch that included The WHOLE family and ALL kids!

Our last camping trip of the summer we were back to Token Creek County Park in Madison, this was where Puja had her first camping trip a few years ago. It's a small camp-ground, but it's very close to the Mallards park and there's an off-leash dog excercize area in the park. We got a chance to try out our new tent (third tent of the summer) I think we finally got a winner and it comes in our favorite color!!

We had some beautiful sunsets, a pretty fun Mallards game (even though they lost in extra innings) and the puppies got a good run in the park. We love our new tent and are only sad that we only got to use it once this summer!

The last of our short 2 weeks!

2008-08-06T13:07:00.004-06:00

Off to glamorous South Bend Indiana

So off to the South Bend Silverhawks. Pete found us a State Park and we were on our way. The park is beautiful and a bit of a maze! We had to replace our tent when we left Toledo because we blew out the zipper on the door. It's too bad, it was a great tent and we still could have used it if we wanted to climb in and out of the window, but we decided to give ourselves an early anniversary present! We struggled with the shape of the tent, but we love the screen porch element of the new tent.

The park was very nice. There was a beach and we saw a whole family of racoons! It was pretty funny. They scattered when they saw us and the babies were stranded until mom came and herded them all back into the brush. The beach was separated into regular and dog sections so we were able to take the pups down to splash around a little. The game was a pretty good time, the park is a little bit of a cinder-block, but the game was fun.

The final leg of our vacation - 4th of July camping at outside Beloit with Mom, Dad, Dominic, Brenden and Madi. It was an adventure!

We had a blast at the beach, but the mosquitoes in the campground were horrible. We all went to a Snappers game on the 4th but I got a call during the bottom of the 7th to let us know that our dogs had broken out of the tent and were running around the campground. So Dad and I had to drive back and coral them. At least we saw the fireworks from the highway on the way back. Thank goodness we were headed home for a little vacation break, we discovered that our new tent was a piece of crap and our grill broke!

But, just because Pete is going back to work doesn't mean the summer vacation ends! It's just limited to the weekends for a bit!

The Journey Continues

2008-08-06T12:37:00.005-06:00

We were looking forward to some camping outside Detroit for a few days while we caught a Tigers Cardinals game. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. It took us a long time to find the campground that we'd used a couple years ago, and when we found it, it was underwater! So we camped at the Motel 6! Pizza, TV and air conditioning.

We lucked out with a fantastic ticket agent at the Tigers, without a secret hint, we would have been in standing room, but she encouraged us to buy our tickets in the morning and we got seats in the handicap area on the lower level! No row to climb over, no one sitting in front or behind us, just a very nice Tiger's fan taking his elderly father to his first game! We had a great time, until the Cardinals lost in the 10th. It's still a beautiful park, I just wish we'd seen a winner.

FINALLY we got some camping in! We drove down to Toledo and decided to try to buy our tickets on the way into town. Luckily! There was nothing but standing room available until Sunday night's game. So we bought our tickets and then looked forward to a couple of days of camping. One of the actors from the festival was originally from Toledo and recommended a state park (Maumee Bay). It was very pretty and we finally got to relax and camp after almost a week on our trip! We even got to dip our feet in Lake Erie!

The game wasn't bad either! The park is beautiful, we had a little time to prowl around before the game. During the game, we were rooting for the Mud-Hens against the Louisville Bats, there were quite a few Bats fans sitting in the row behind us. Around the 7th inning, one of the guys behind us asked how many strike-outs the Bats pitcher had, he had 7! We found out he was the pitcher's grandfather! Now we were still rooting for the Hens but we were also pulling for the pitcher! Well, the Bats won but the Mud Hens made it interesting so it was a great time.

What we did on our summer vacation...

2008-08-06T12:09:00.007-06:00

When we left Kentucky we had two weeks to cram in as much camping and baseball as we could. Our trip started in Indianapolis. We stopped for one night at a KOA, usually we steer clear of the resort type camp grounds, but this one boasted a brand new dog park. The dogs LOVED it! It wasn't anything big but it was right next to our campsite and though it was against the rules, there was no one else camping on our side of the river so we were able to toss the dogs into the dog-park while we were setting up. Then we were off to the game - Indianapolis Indians at Victory Field. It was a fun game. We were crammed into our section and after a couple of innings moved to the empty section next to us and then it was GREAT.

Early the next day we were off to Fort Wayne and a Wizards game. We thought we were going to have to stay in a hotel because we couldn't find a camp-ground anywhere in the Fort Wayne area. But we called the ball park to confirm the game time and asked if they knew of any campgrounds in the are and the only one they could recommend was the one in the back-yard of the stadium. It wasn't the most private or rustic of parks, but we did get to walk to the ball field!

The tip of the catch up iceberg!

2008-07-17T09:22:00.012-06:00

Pete and I finished up at the Festival and then took two weeks of camping (much of it in the rain) before Pete returned to work. Here is the end of the Festival, I'll have pictures of camping as soon as I sort through them. Pete took about 700 pictures!!!

My director, Mark Bellamy, was even made an honorary Kentucky Colonel! We've been calling him Colonel Bellamy ever since!

My time in Kentucky wrapped up with the festival, where I met a lot of great people and writers. Our show went well and at the final ceremony/awards The Final Toast won Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Playwright and Best Director. They gave the festival a final curtain call where everyone was invited on stage to take a final bow. It was great!

Of course you recognize Gene Hackman (and he looks GOOD for his age) The other man I am with - Anthony Zuicker the Head writer of CSI and creator of the whole series. He is very sweet and has great & interesting stories about CSI.

But we didn't spend all our time rubbing elbows with the elite! As I've said before, there's always time for Baseball! On Wednesday, in the middle of the festival, Pete, my Cardinal buddy Jeff and I drove down to Nashville and saw a Nashville Sounds game (AAA affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers). It was a pretty good game too - 7 home runs, 7 doubles, sunshine and beer! It was a blast!

Always room for Baseball!

2008-06-20T09:31:00.007-06:00

It's not all murder mysteries and workshops... we have found some time for Baseball. Sunday night we drove over the Blue Bridge into Indiana and Pete & I plus 2 actors, Mick and Sam saw an Evansville Otters game. It WAS a gorgeous night for baseball and we discovered once we got to the park that the team had been rained out Friday night and at the end of a double header Saturday, suspended the game around 1a in a tie and were scheduled to pick up that game in the 10th inning prior to the scheduled Sunday night game. Luckily, the suspended game only took 1 inning for the Paints to beat the Otters and after about a half hour break our game was underway.

We were a little disappointed that it was only scheduled to be a seven inning game until the bottom of the 6th when we started to see lightning in the distance beyond the outfield. By the middle of the 7th it was coming down fairly steadily and when the Paints recorded the final out, it was like the sky was waiting! It opened up and DUMPED rain on us! Thunder... Lightning... quite a show!

This park is beautiful, and also the site of much of the filming of A League Of Their Own. They still keep the Racine Bells signs up and their cheer leaders wear the team uniforms from the movie. Very sweet.

This week, on a day off from the festival, Pete and Jeff (one of the actors in the show) took a field trip down to Nashville for a noon game of the Sounds vs. Oklahoma Redhawks (a team we saw last summer!) This is also a nice park, similar to the Iowa Cubs ball-field but a little older. The unique feature of this park is it's guitar shaped scoreboard. It was a great game, the ball was carrying very well and we saw not only seven home runs but seven doubles between the two teams!! In the end, the Redhawks prevailed and the Sounds lost 13-9. But it was a great game and we had a nice time sitting in the sun!

International Mystery Writers Festival

2008-06-19T09:16:00.002-06:00

The festival is finally open, we spent more time in tech than the number of performances we have! It seems a little disjointed now that we are no longer all at one hotel, but things are going very well. Almost everyone in my cast (The Final Toast) went to the opening ceremonies and then the opening performance of Chimneys. PIctured above are my playwright Stuart Kaminsky and my director Mark Bellamy. Following the performance we all relaxed at a local bar, Bacchus and our own Bing Putney (now a local favorite) took the stage!

Friday my play opened to a sold out house and a very good response. Since then, we have been enjoying many of the other plays that the festival has to offer, a lot of live radio performances and workshops. One of our favorite activities have been the Writers Reels at the end of each festival night, a Q & A with different 'celebrities' as we view movie clips of their work an a huge movie screen on the river front. We saw Josh Hutchinson (Upcoming Journey to the Center of the Earth, and in the past, Zathura and Bridge to Terrabithia etc) And I am pictured here with Rene Balcer, head writer for Law and Order and Creator of L & O Criminal Intent. We also met one of the writers of Monk who is a riot, as you can imagine. He was honored at the curtain speech for one of my performances and we practically had to wrestle the mic away from him to get the show started. Last night we stopped in to support Stuart (Kaminsky)'s Reel, but instead of clips, they showed his entire movie, Once upon a time in America, and we just couldn't sit through an almost 3 hour movie that started at 9;30! Tonight, Rupert Holmes (writer of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but more well know; The Pina Colada Song) He is showing a series of clips of all the movies where that song is used. It should be fun!

We are actually finding time for baseball, and I'll blog later today or tomorrow about the two minor league baseball games we have taken in, but right now I'm off to a workshop on Mysteries in the era of Agatha Christie etc.

Back in KY

2008-06-12T09:05:00.004-06:00

Meanwhile, back in Kentucky things have been CRAZY!! There was a scare last week that we might have to move out of our hotel, what started as a rumor we discovered was going to a hearing on Tuesday and later Thursday but by Thursday evening we had good news, a judge said that the hotel couldn't close without giving its employees 60 days notice. Whew!

Here's where it gets strange. Around noon Friday we got a call that the hotel had closed it's doors and everyone had to be out by 6p on Sunday! So now our poor festival had to scramble to find the over 1200 room/nights for all of us and all of the new people whe had just arrived and for all the incoming festival participants and celebrities. It was Crazy. But on Sunday I bid farewell to my river view and moved 4 miles away from the theater to the Super 8. Instead of all being in one place, the festival participants are now spread out over 5 hotels all over town. We feel a little disconnected but things are moving on.

Before moving day, several of us made our second trip to Goldie's Operyhouse in downtown Owensboro to see our Marketing Director (Travis') wife doing a Dolly Parton review. Tara was FANTASTIC! She looks like Dolly and even more, she SOUNDS like Dolly. The show got a little surreal toward the end of Act I, but overall it was a good time!

And tonight... the Festival officially opens with an Olympic Type opening ceremony at 5p and we'll be off and running. My show opens tomorrow night and then we'll have 10 days to see 14 performances and do all the other things I want to show Pete now that he's here!

While I was in Kentucky...

2008-06-12T09:04:00.002-06:00

While I have been down here working and having fun in Kentucky, Pete has been very busy...

He went to a Brewers/Cardinals game with Anita and Jeff, Celebrated spring birthdays plus Mothers and Fathers day with my family AND got a nice surprise; Dan and Christina are expecting a new niece or nephew for us in December.

When he wasn't taking some of the 500 pictures he now has to sort and upload to Flicker, he was busy building these models for Mayfair Mall's Rosetta Stone exhibit.

He did have a little time to take the puppies up to Appleton to visit their cousins and then he was off to St. Louis where he spent several days with his family, working on projects for Mom & Dad, playing cards with Jeremy and Patty and a trip to the zoo with Mary Jo, Evan and Erin.

But now... FINALLY he and the puppies are here in Kentucky with me where they belong (in my opinion!)

Baseball and Eucher

2008-06-02T11:50:00.006-06:00

Another week in Kentucky has gone by and things are still fun and running smoothly. Didn't want you to think it was all fun and no work. Here is a picture of our stage. It is set up for rehearsal right now, our set loads-in for performance today, so more pictures next week. Here is an important safety tip from Amy, the only woman in the show; "lace up your shoes before your corset!"

The sunsets over the river outside my room continue to be stunning.

And a small group of us made it to opening night of the Owensboro Oilers (Kitty league, similar to the Northwoods league) It was a very strange game, disappointing in it's lack of beer, but a fast game and we sat in front of the Catcher's father, so we got a lot of fun little trivial info! I'm bummed that my group picture is blurry, but you get the idea!!

Mark, our director had us to his house for some grilling, LoTS of chips and drinking & Eucher in the courtyard behind his apartment. It was a lot of fun!

Sunday BBQ

2008-05-26T11:42:00.003-06:00

Sunday night, one of the Riverpark Center Board members invited us all over to their AMAZING home for a Barbecue. It was a wonderful and relaxing way to end the week and head into our day off. And the food was fantastic.

Weekend in Kentucky

2008-05-26T11:10:00.004-06:00

Sorry that I have been so lax in updating my time here in Kentucky! Things have been busy, both with work and rehearsal and with a lot of socializing. Who knew there was this much to do in Owensboro Kentucky!!
(Sean, Amy and Bing - cast members playing the villian, his sister and Charlie Chaplin)

Since my last post, I have met my cast and it is a FANTASTIC group of people, very talented AND friendly. As we are all from out of town, we do a lot together. Up until this past weekend it has been mostly eating dinner and maybe a movie etc. But this weekend suddenly there wasn't enough time to do all Owensboro had to offer!! (listening to Bluegrass - Sean, Mark - our director, and Amy)

Rehearsal was shortened Friday because there was a big event in the theater so we had to rehearse off-site in a small recital hall where we aren't allowed even to tape the floor or properly set up what we need. So we just staged the fights and some dance moments, things that we could later drop into our space.
(The View from the balcony of Riverpark Center - looking back up the street to our hotel)

(for you Family Guy fans - it's a "Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Man!!"

Later Friday night was the kick-off of Owensboro's 'Friday after 5' series, 17 weeks of bands and street-fairs every Friday night. Several of us met for a drink in the hotel bar and then made our way the two blocks down the river to the theater which is ground zero for the Friday after 5 events.

pictured above; us dealing with Gonzon's Toybox -
There was a band outside on the patio, the Velvet Bombers, not great. Inside (the reason we were kicked out of the theater for the day was a 'gospel' program (think Mighty Wind, not so much gospel) but out on the back patio, a bluegrass combo, actually the best music we heard all night.

As the Friday after 5 festivities wind down, the action moves up the street to our hotel, The Executive Inn where there is a lovely amphitheater with a not-so-lovely band called Gonzo's Toybox. I have to admit that we had high hopes for Gonzo, but they were dashed. Luckily, there was plenty of beer and drinks of choice to temper the noise!

Finally we moved back to where we started in the Time-out lounge (my nighmare bar, karaoke five nights a week! AAARRGGH) BUT, they do get Fox Sports Midwest so I can watch the Cardinals games there. It was not a karaoke night, but a night with a band, De ja Vu, which was also not great, but at least they were loud!! and it was a west coast game, so by the time we got back to the bar the Cards were just starting against the Dodgers. So we had another couple of drinks and watched the game. As almost everyone in the cast is from Chicago, there are a lot of Cub fans, but I have one baseball buddy who grew up in St. Louis, so we have been watching the games.

Saturday... We went to Goldies, the best little Operihouse in Kentucky. Holy Cats!! I have never been to a show like this, it's hard to describe if you live in the North. I guess it's what Branson used to be, an old fashioned variety/country music show. The headliner wasn't great, but the rest of the talent (including Riverpark's Marketing Director and his wife) was amazing. I think we're going back in a couple of weeks to see a Dolly Parton tribute show that our marketing director's wife is doing. It was a lot of fun.

I'm in Kentucky!

2008-05-09T11:24:00.006-06:00

I made it to Kentucky in one piece and have hit the ground running with the Mystery Festival. Well I shouldn't say 'running' I was lucky enough to hit the ground with a relaxed tour of the BEAUTIFUL facility and then lunch! But I have been running ever since!
This is the front of the art center where the festival will take place, looking at the Blue Bridge reflection in the front windows I know Pete will have a photographic field day with this place!!

Here is the Blue Bridge, the picture is taken from the River walk that runs between the Art Center and the hotel where I am staying, it's a lovely walk. And almost as if in honor of my arrival, this weekend is the Barbecue festival, so my walk is lined with a ton of vendors all serving various kinds of Barbecue! Yum!

My Neighbors!

This is one view from the balcony outside my room.

Here is a view of the Blue Bridge from my room this morning after the fog rolled in. I hope the weather doesn't put a damper on the Barbecue festival! I somehow don't think it will!

So I'm here until June 23 - www.newmysteries.org - check it out!

T-Rats

2008-04-29T08:57:00.003-06:00

By now it's become an annual thing that we get at least one game that is A-ball in April!! Sunday we went up to Appleton to a Timberrattler's game. It was supposed to be 39 degrees, but was actually in the low 50s and nice when the sun was out!!

The T-Rats played another of our favorite minor-league teams, the Beloit Snappers. The T-Rats lost, 5-3 but since we're Snapper's fans, it wasn't a bad day!!

And like we've said so many times, even a bad day in the bleachers is better than a good day almost anywhere else! And we weren't in the bleachers... another benefit of April A-Ball is that we walked up to the ticket window at 10 minutes to first pitch and got seats in the front row behind home plate!! Yeah Minor League Baseball!!

PS. Check out Pete's Flicker, he added about 4 pages of pictures last night!!

SURPRISE!!!!!!!

2008-04-21T19:26:00.013-06:00

Well we did it! After about 2 months of planning, we surprised Pete's dad on his 60th birthday with a HUGE party at the Knights of Columbus Hall outside St. Louis. We were all amazed that we were able to keep it a secret, but even though he was snoopy and as mom put it, "a pest!" he still didn't figure it out, and until he heard "Surprise" thought he was going to an anniversary party for a fellow Knight. It was very clever of mom to come up with an invitation for them to THAT party!

Pete designed the decorations around a theme of Balloons that Mom had picked and the hall looked GREAT! There were little balloon flowers that Pete designed and we made on each table with balloon confetti (luckily we didn't get into too much trouble for the confetti!) He had 'Happy 60th Birthday" balloons and a banner on the present table along with some balloon garland along the back rail. The place looked Great!

Mary Jo bought a cake with matching balloons and some big birthday cookies for the kids and for Tony, Dad's friend who also had a birthday at the same time! All cakes were tasty, probably even more tasty on the themed Balloon plates!

When this picture was taken, you can't yet see all the FOOD that we had - Mom made three different kinds of roast beef... 40 pounds! I made another 30 pounds of ham! Mom had two different kinds of pasta with Patty's meat balls, I made German Potato salad and Asian Cole slaw, Diane McCart had two giant tubs of picnic potato salad and Mary Jo had a big tray of Vegetables & dip next to a million pounds of fruit that Patty had cut up! If anyone didn't get enough to eat, it was their own fault!

There was singing...

Dancing...

Leaning!...

TROUBLE......

Dad was my favorite "Dancing Queen" of the night!

Sunday, his actual birthday, Pete and I took him to a Cardinals Game, the Cards didn't hold up their end of the present, and we had to watch a loss, but a bad day in the bleachers is still a pretty good day! It was 70's and sunny and we all left the park a little redder!

Round the whole weekend off with some bowling and dinner and it was a long, exhausting, but extremely FUN weekend! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!

Slow News Day in Milwaukee

2008-04-17T13:09:00.005-06:00

Not much going on here in Milwaukee - we went to a Brewer Game with the gang from the Milwaukee Rep. It was a good game... if you're a Reds fan. The Brewers lost 12-4 oops!

But here's the gang, at rest and then after a Brewer's Home Run. We also have installment two of Pete-at-the-game.

Finally, after just over two weeks we finished a puzzle that had been taking up space in the middle of our living room. It's a fun thing to do while the ball game is on the radio! Now the question is, how long will we let it sit there before we can bring ourselves to put all of our hard work back in the box!

More Baseball!

2008-04-08T20:30:00.005-06:00

So we were rained out on opening day and our Cards lost the make-up game, but since then, the Birds have been GREAT! We had a baseball open house at the end of opening week; Friday we had several friends over in honor of the Brewers Home opener. We turned the TV to the porch and watch them beat the Giants 13-4! The most runs ever scored on a Brewers home opener. We put Major League in the DVD and ate some more while we waited for the Cardinals to beat the Nationals 5-4. I had a very successful attempt at pulled pork sandwiches, we had smoked sausages from the grill along with a huge variety of sausages that Jeff (my brother-in-law) brought. Half a dozen dips and salads plus a Brewers cake with matching cup-cakes rounded out the party! It was a great day. Jeff said it was the best opening day ever! Of course we WERE going on our sixth hour of drinking when he said it, but I believe him anyway!!

Here are a a few more pictures of our first live game of the season - the 'spring training' game at Miller Park the Saturday before opening.

Pete wasn't the only one who got his picture taken with a sausage
Here's the line for autographs from Mike Cammeron & Corey Hart
And the first in the 'Pete at the Game 08' series - keep an eye on Pete's pix (link right) for the on-going series.

I know these pictures have nothing to do with each other, but I love the way they look together - Soup and Pu

It's Summer!! Baseball is Here!

2008-03-31T12:30:00.003-06:00

HAPPY OPENING DAY OF BASEBALL!!!

But we've ALREADY been to our first game of the season!! We spent most of Saturday at Miller Park at the Fan Fest which had autograph signing, a rummage sale, memorabilia sales and the unveiling of their new kid zone. It was a great time! Then we watched the Brewers beat the Kansas City Royals in the last spring training game of the season. Sunday we spent watching Baseball movies and the 'presidential opening' at the new Nationals park and today... Yeah!! Opening Day!!

Friday we're having friends over for an unofficial opening day (Brewers Home Opener) Our Baseball Open House will be from 1p-???

Easter

2008-03-26T10:52:00.007-06:00

Unexpectedly... We traveled to St. Louis for Easter weekend. Pete took Friday off of work and on Thursday night we headed South. On Friday, our niece and nephews we at Pete's parents house and after lunch we had a great time in Tower Park. It was a beautiful day and we had a blast in the playground and walking through the pretty park!

Saturday we celebrated Easter at Pete's Folks' house. There was an egg hunt and then Dad grilled pork steaks and hamburgers on the grill to add to all the sugar & hard boiled eggs we had already eaten!

Yes, if you look in the background of this picture of Brenden enjoying his basket, you WILL see Cardinal baseball!! Only 5 days!! Whoo hoo!

Even puppies love Easter! Mojo found this little mat and made it his own 'safe-spot' on Saturday.

Happy (Belated) Valentines Day

2008-03-10T14:03:00.007-06:00

This year for Valentines day, I got Pete and I tickets to Avenue Q and Pete got the two of us a night in a hot tub suite - a mini vacation right here in town. The show was the end of February - and it was a blast. We're still singing the dirty, wicked songs and the hot tub was this past weekend. It was wonderfully relaxing, lots of alone time, good snack food and a tasty dinner out!

But before we headed out for the relaxation we took the dogs for a romp in the dog park! It's been several months since we've been there and we've never been there in the winter so we really didn't know what to expect. What we didn't expect was the layer after layer of ice that had been building and polishing all winter. It was pretty tricky footing at some points, but we both managed to keep our feet. Pete took about 100 pictures, some of the best (or at least my favorites!) are here, more are on his flicker. The dogs seemed to adjust to the ice pretty quickly, although Puja didn't corner the way she usually does, but she was still able to get some pretty good speeds. And Mojo, well, Mojo routinely looses his footing coming up the front stairs or jumping onto the bed so he did surprisingly well considering!

Pete's show!

2008-02-18T10:56:00.004-06:00

I finally got a chance to see Pete's show Faith Healer last week before I went back out on the road. It was wonderful! A little long, but very very good. These are some pictures of Pete's props, he did a wonderful job.

In the upper Left hand corner - a full set picture. Upper right is a banner that he made.

Above Left is Graces room, chair, table etc. Pete created the label on the whiskey bottle.

Left Center - is one of seven chairs that Pete stripped and re-finished. They are beautiful and were a big hit with the cast.

Lower left is a cabinet that Pete bought pre-fab, put it together, stripped and re-finished it to match the rest of the furniture. You can't really see it, but Pete built the table right of the arm chair.

Winter Fun

2008-02-12T14:07:00.000-06:00

I think Patty in particular will like this post - After our 11.5 inches of snow last week, we're supposed to get up to another foot this week. At least someone loves it - these puppies LOVE to bound around in the snow, no matter how deep it is.

Do you love Puja's new sweater? She's such a princess and so cute in it! Mojo is very handsome in his too.

I didn't throw them in the snow, they chased each other there. Jay said they look like snow sharks and I think he's right. I love that after Puja headed back to the porch Mojo just sat there covered in snow and watched the flakes fall on his face. Speaking of flakes!! Now they're sitting here in the living room looking longingly out the window. I suspect much as I don't want to, I'm going to have to suit up and take them for another romp.

interesting things - organically!

2008-02-06T23:58:00.000-06:00

This is my Horoscope for today:

Libra (9/23-10/22)
Sometimes, it's easier to have fun when you are not trying so hard to have fun. In other words: Relax! If you're bored, don't put too much effort into planning something that will entertain you. Instead, why not just go outside and walk around for a while? Engage with the world, and soon enough, interesting things will come your way, organically. You don't have to plan everything -- you just have to put yourself in situations where something special is likely to occur.

Madison is 63 miles from Milwaukee, Ladysmith is 302 miles. Ladysmith was our goal today, but Milwaukee got 11.5 inches of snow and Madison, more than 13 inches. So we are currently stranded in Madison after driving for 2 1/2 hours to get here!

I don't think going outside and walking around for a while will help.

I'm not sure how much more organic interest I can take!

Check my tour blog for pictures of what I found on my walk! www.mrtguysontour.blogspot.com

We're calling this the Car comb over!

Pete's show!

2008-02-03T10:03:00.000-06:00

Pete's play opened Friday night at Next Act theater. This is a play where he designed the props, he did this play in addition to his full time purchasing job at the Rep. I saw the props in tech and he did a beautiful job. Both of us are going to see the play next week when I have a night off from the tour when there is a performance of Faith Healer. It looks to be a great show!!

Mr. and Mrs. Court

2008-01-31T11:36:00.000-06:00

My little Danica got MARRIED! January 4th, one of my interns from NAT married a great guy (Jake). It was a little sureal, she will always be 15 to me! But now, Mrs. Court!

Danica was a beautiful bride and the reception was a blast, there are a few more pictures on flicker.
You may recognize the indian chief in this spirited YMCA dance!
My lap top is finally back in my possession, but they lost my entire hard drive, so I am slowly but surely rebuilding my 'life'! Pete has a show opening Friday and I am on the road (follow my tour blog!) so things are busy in Milwaukee!

The Bachelors

2008-01-15T12:23:00.000-06:00

Another show opening tonight! After 3 days of rehearsal, The Milwaukee Rep production of The Bachelors opens tonight. We run for 2 weeks here in Milwaukee and the 5 weeks on tour. Like last year, the link to my tour blog is on the right there. I'll update it with new names and info, however the only change from last year's team to this is that instead of Lee Becker, we have Katherine Strohmaier. We're looking forward to a fun time on the road (and here in Milwaukee).

My lap top is giving me trouble and I may have to send it out to be fixed which is why I haven't updated here and don't have fun pictures to share yet - but I will, hopefully... soon!

Pictured above: Doug Mancheski, Steve Koehler and Katherine Strohmaier.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-27T08:58:00.000-06:00

We had our now-traditional Christmas eve celebration; we went to church with friends and then back to our house for snacks. This year the group consisted of our friends Raeleen and Will. We hit a small speed bumb when we returned from Church and Mojo had broked out of the bedroom and put himself right on the top of the naughty list by opening presents, his and other peoples!

But we quickly got back on track getting food on the table. Raeleen made a Christmas tree shaped brownie and an amazing pizza sandwich! Yumm! We had the traditional bacon wrapped chestnuts plus cucumber sandwiches, Jeff's Buffalo chicken dip, cheese & sausage and crackers plus veggies (more to make us feel good about the table than for eating!) Top that all off with hot spiced cider and call it Christmas Eve! No one saved room for pumpkin pie, so we had to send it out in doggie bags!

After Mojo's adventures which included eating half a box of chocolate covered cherries (he spit the cherries out) he was WIRED and literally RACING around the house on his sugar high. But Will finally got him calmed down and when he crashed, he crashed HARD.

We celebrated Christmas with my family on Saturday with a ham and all the trimmings, and after all the Christmas eve indulgances, we slept in Christmas morning. Surprisingly, the puppies let us! (Mojo was probably still suffering from a sugar hang-over!)

Santa was good to all of us and we enjoyed opening our presents and then watching Christmas movies. I got some new cook-books from Anita, Jeff and Ashley along with a suggestion of Jeff's favorite rib recipe which we tried for Christmas dinner. Ribs in a slow cooker with a spiced peach barbecue sauce all day - It was a great suggestion!

All in all we enjoyed a lovely day relaxing and snuggling on the couch with only a small dread to Pete having to return to work "all the earlier" the next day.

Remembering Nana

2007-12-26T11:10:00.000-06:00

We lost Pete's Nana on Dec. 18th, Following is the Tribute Pete gave at her funeral.

Margaret Theresa was my grandmother, but to me she was always Nana. It was hard the last couple of years to see her confined to a wheel chair. My childhood memories were of a woman who loved to sing and who especially loved to dance. She LOVED to dance. Did you know because of her dancing the South Side Journal once did a write-up on her? They called her “The Polka Queen of South St. Louis”? (There was a photo!) She also loved to go to the Cardinal games, and she would always let you know that her favorite player was Ducky Medwick. For many years, when I would see her she would ask “When are we going to a game”. She loved going places, and it didn’t matter if it was a dance or a ball-game, it was impossible to keep her at home. She loved life and being out in the world.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case later in her life. Sadly, she no longer seemed willing or able to go out into the world and as time passed it was easier to just leave her be. I can only imagine how frustrating this must have been for her.I know everyone here must have a wonderful story of Nana from earlier days, at a church picnic or homecoming, but I would like to share a story with you from later in her life when things maybe weren’t so easy for her.

One holiday I was asked to pick up the Grandmas. I had Nana in the car and was off to pick up Grandma Ruth when Nana started to tell a story. Having no idea what she was talking about the radio probably had much of my attention. From the time I picked her up she had been very scattered, asking the same questions over and over. But once she started telling this story her demeanor changed. She seemed clearer telling her story with great detail. It took a minute but I realized she was telling a story about the time Grandpa Pete was very sick and in the hospital. She would always stay with him until the visiting hours ended but one night as she started to leave, he asked her not to go, he wanted her to stay with him through the night. She agreed and eventually fell asleep holding his hand. Later a nurse woke her saying “Miss Theresa, you need to leave now” My Nana objected saying that her Pete wanted her to stay. The nurse explained that she needed to leave because he was gone. And now she is gone.

But this is not a sad story because it has a happy ending. My Grandpa Pete has got his dance partner back and I’m sure they will be the first couple on Heaven’s dance floor dance floor tonight. (Can you imagine what that orchestra must be like?)

Good luck St. Peter when you try to track her down to give her wings!

We love you Nana and we will miss you.

Still Decorating!

2007-12-17T21:23:00.000-06:00

LOVE THIS PICTURE!!
Pete took it while we were decorating the tree and the expression of the bird just seems to sum up a certain stage of Holiday prep. You know the one, there still a little bit of shopping to do, a little bit of food to prepare, a stack of Cards waiting to be addressed and a tub of outdoor decorations waiting for it to warm up just a little!

Nice... and Naughty...

DAaaAd! WHY?!? I love you anyway!!

Here's our lovely tree. It is a perfect shape, which is amazing considering when we brought it into the house it was a frozen solid block of ice!

Decorating is hard work!

It's BEGINNING to look a lot like Christmas!

2007-12-13T11:50:00.000-06:00

We have the tree, we have the tubs of decoration unearthed and up from the basement, now we just need to finish the job!!

The weather here is going a long way to making it feel like Christmas! Milwaukee's December snow fall average is 11.5 inches. So far (Dec. 13) we have already gotten 20 inches of snow!!! Luckily we didn't get it all at once and some of it went away before we got hit again. Wednesday we go 7" of wet heavy snow, it was a pain for us, but the dogs LOVED it!

They are wearing their Christmas collars and leashes, they are trying to drink the tree water and when they are not bounding through the snow, I'm sure visions of rawhides are dancing through their heads! I know that Santa has a funny treat in store for them.

Well, this house isn't going to decorate itself, we've got a pot of peppermint coffee (my favorite!) brewing and a stack of Christmas movies and Cds, time to get moving. It's a little financial strain having both of us unemployed at Christmas, but it's GREAT to have the time to spend together. We can decorate without me having to rush off to a show in the middle of it.

Maybe I'll have some 'after' pictures later today!

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-27T12:58:00.000-06:00

We celebrated Thanksgiving down in St. Louis with family. It was a nice, relaxing weekend. Dad cooked a Turkey that fell off of the bones! Yumm. Mom made chicken and dumplings, Patty mashed the potatos and Pete made his usual fabulous pies. All the kids got a chance to play together and with the mutts. I finally got to hold my new baby niece Erin. Dominic has a new guitar and got some impromptu lessons from family friend - Tom. We also celebrated the November birthdays Madi, Pete and Patty and other fall/winter birthdays were also celebrated (Me! Mike, Dominic and Brenden)!

Friday night Mom and Dad, Pete and I went to the Blues game. We haven't been to a live game since before the stike. It was a very exciting game and best of all, the Blues won! 3-0!

Saturday morning we met my family over in Alton for Breakfast. It was very nice. Then we went to the Mills and saw "Enchanted" which was wonderful and sweet. Then we wandered the mall and wrapped up the day with a great dinner at Pujols 5. It was a great weekend!

Happy Halloween

2007-11-01T16:06:00.000-06:00

Poor Mojo! He was a good sport about having the little pumpkin hood on his head! We had a happy Halloween, a friend invited us to the Milwaukee Symphony - they showed scenes from 4 Alfred Hitchcock movies on a big screen and played the scores to them live. It was a lot of fun. Mostly just a note to say that both Pete and I have updated our flicker - follow the links on the right.

The Quiltmaker's Gift

2007-10-23T16:57:00.000-06:00

My show opened Friday and it is extremely cute. Based on a children's book, it is the story of a King who thinks he'll find find happiness in 'things'. He meets a Quiltmaker who makes quilts only for people who need them, not for sale. She refuses to make the king a quilt unless he learns Charity. She promises to make a quilt for him adding a piece for everything he gives away and when he gives away what he treasures most, the quilt will be done.
I would love to take credit for these beautiful pictures, but they were taken by our talented lighting designer, Jason Fassl. The first picture is our Quiltmaker, Liz Baltes, directly above is the Quiltmaker where the king strands her on an island and below, the Quiltmaker dancing with a Bear (Lee Becker - who you may recognize as Ernie the Moocher from my tour of Guys on Ice)

It's really a cute show and our King, local actor/teacher John Maclay is fantastic. The design of the show makes it look very much like a story-book and the characters have done a great job of making our little audiences giggle.

Not to give away the end of the story, but the King does find charity and the Quiltmaker makes him a quilt. There are three beautiful quilts used in the production. The one pictured above is a crazy quilt. All three were made by Milwaukee's Northshore Quilters Guild. They were made specifically for this production and they are fantastic.

Above is part of the cast, all of the children's roles are double cast, so our complete cast is 6 adults and two casts of 10 young performers each. Below are a couple of rehearsal shots. This line of cuties watching rehearsal from under the directors table always made me smile, and the last picture is one of our final rehearsals, our fabulous director, Todd Denning, giving a few last minute notes to the actors.

Conference in Chicago

2007-10-16T09:30:00.000-06:00

The Monday and Tuesday after my Birthday I got to go to an expanded board meeting for my union - Actors' Equity Association. It was a great time. We have a new president and executive director and discussed the many positive aspects of the Union and then things that need work and how to make them better.

Because I am in a liaison city (Chicago is the office city) when I participate in board meetings and committee meetings, it is always by telephone hook-up. The best part of the weekend was getting a chance to put a face with the other liaison voices.

After a long, unseasonably hot day, we all took open air trolleys to Navy Pier and the Skyline room of Chicago Shakespeare for the Regional membership meeting. It was a wonderful view of the city and a great meeting, very exciting.

Overall, it was a little like work, but it was a great birthday weekend!

Bye Summer

2007-10-01T11:21:00.000-06:00

I've been back at work for two weeks and it feels like two months! I'm working at the Children's Theatre on a cute show called The Quiltmaker's Gift, a lot of hard work and some fun challenges, and suddenly it's October First!! When did that happen?

But before I went back to work, we had a lovely day at the beach with our friend Jay and his son Dylan (see Pete's Pix for more pictures). It was a beautiful Sunday and we drove up to Kohler/Andre state park and hung out on the beach. Dylan and the dogs dug in the sand and chased sea gulls on the beach while Pete, Jay and I relaxed in the sand and enjoyed some cold adult beverages! It was a great way to say good bye to summer.

We also got to see one more Cardinals game at Miller Park. Of course, as they have been want to do this season, they lost 13-5. But it was still fun to see our boys, or at least the Memphis Redbirds, one more time. We tailgated with friends and had a beautiful night for baseball! Check out that moon!

Even though the summer is over, doesn't mean we have to stop going to the dog park. Our pups still love romping through the trees, the creek and the mud. We had a great time the last Sunday we were there. We hooked up with a pack of about 5 other dogs including two shepherd type mutts that had the same personality as our mutts. There was a lot of running, chasing and rolling around! It was a great day and we had two VERY SLEEPY mutts when we got home!

Labor Day Weekend

2007-09-06T09:18:00.000-06:00

We actually got to take a long weekend for Labor Day this year like normal people! So we left Friday after work and drove down to St. Louis. On Saturday we had a picnic in the Park and got to meet our new niece, Erin. We at BBQ pork steaks and Brats that were cooked on our spanky new grill and played a family game of soft ball. (There are more pictures of the picnic on my flicker - the link is at the right) After a long day, we really just went home and passed out!

Sunday we had a double header planned, we went to the Cardinals game in the afternoon and saw them beat the Reds 3-2 due in large part to a Rick Ankiel home run - welcome back to the big leagues Rick! Mom wasn't able to come to the game at the last minute so our niece Emily came along. We weren't sitting together, but I thought it was nice of Dad to look at the camera as I was taking this picture from 7 sections away!!

The second game of our double header was a Gateway Grizzleys game. It was the last game of the regular season and it was a cross-town clash against the Rivercity Rascals. If the Grizzleys won, they went on to the play-offs. Not taking any changes, they beat the reascals 16-5. Then, to celebrate, something Pete and I had never seen in all of the baseball games that we've gone to, the TP'd the stadium. They sold rolls of toilet paper for a dollar and as soon as the game was over, everyone started throwing the rolls on the field. The players, from the field, had a lot of fun batting the rolls back into the stands. There were fireworks, but the toilet papering continued through the fireworks and well after the game. It was really funny.

We had a few games of Eucher when we got home, but nothing like the all-night (or at least 3a) marathon of 4th of July weekend!.

Monday we all slept in and then had a great brunch at Uncle Bill's Pancake house and were able to hook up with our Nephews and Niece, Dominic, Brenden and Madison before we headed out of town and back to Milwaukee. So it was a great weekend. We saw all 8 of our nieces and nephews, saw two baseball games and even got to sleep in!

Railcats

2007-08-27T08:42:00.000-06:00

Since we didn't get a chance to go camping, we spent the weekend doing new, fun things. Saturday night we went to a drive-in movie just south of Kenosha and saw the movie SuperBad. It was very funny and we had a good time. I haven't been to a drive-in for almost 20 years so it was a blast.

Sunday, since it was a gorgeous day, we drove down to Gary, IN to see a Gary/Southshore Rail Cats game. We learned a valuable lesson, when driving somewhere involving Chicago, allow an extra hour. We left around 11:30a for a 2:00 game and didn't get there until 2:30 or so. Luckily we only missed an inning and a half. It was a pretty park and we had a good time. AND the Rail Cats won! 5-4.

There was a train running past the out field and, like the TN smokies, in the middle of the 5th inning, a huge group of kids just ran from the left field corner to the right field corner. It was pretty funny.

It didn't take as long to get home, and I think we could try again as long as we had plenty of time. It might be more fun to stop there on the way home from somewhere or try to camp down there and see a couple of games in that league. But in the end, it was a good day and we added another park to our list.

Big Win

2007-08-15T11:46:00.000-06:00

Pete and I got to see a big win by our boys against the home-town Milwaukee Brewers. It was a 25 year celebration of the Brewers winning their last American League penant 1982 (and we all remember who they were up against in the ensueing world series.
Anyhoo - We had great seats in the club level above the first base line. We thought we were going to have the old Kip Wells pitching when he gave up 3 runs (including 2 homeruns) in the first inning, but the Cards came back and the Brew Crew melted down a little so we ended up winning the game (after 3 hours and 25 minutes) 12-4.
Although it was overlooked, the new brewer, Baune came a double short of hitting for the cycle.
It was a fun night in the ball park even though it was hot, and humid - Africa-hot! Because of the anniversary celebration both teams were wearing their throwback uniforms.
These lovely Blue and Red uniforms made our fav David Ecstein look more like the smurf that his team mates call him!

Broadway Bound

2007-08-11T11:16:00.000-06:00

I'm still trapped in Beloit doing a lovely production of Broadway Bound. It's been going fairly well now that the show is open. More pictures coming soon. - Pictured: Back Row - Alex Burkhart (Eugene) Me! Michael Chase (Jack), Ross Zentner (Light op), Nate Burkhart (Stanley), Aaron Sitrick (sound op), Front Row - Carolyn Cadigan (Kate), Rod MacDonald (Ben) and Libby Amato (Blanche), Floor - Caitlin McCown (deck).

New Baby Niece!

2007-08-02T09:29:00.000-06:00

July 31, 2007, our new niece Erin Marie Rhoda
was born at 8:30a. She's 7 lbs 11 oz and 20 1/2 inches long.

As you can see, Mom, baby and new Big Brother are doing well. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN!

Pete's Pix

2007-07-26T10:19:00.000-06:00

Check out the link to Pete's Pix on the right - It has been updated through Venice Beach CA on our vacation and there are some amazing pictures.

Enjoy!

Bull Dogs and Bull Frogs!

2007-07-18T09:34:00.000-06:00

Just because we're back home doesn't mean that the baseball stops!

We went up to GreenBay to a new team in the Northwoods League, the GreenBay Bull Frogs. It's very much like the Madison Mallards (same league) and we had a lot of fun. If anyone is going to a game there - avoid the medium priced "seat-back" seats. This is a ridiculous concept of stapling a seat to a bleacher, of course with the seat there, there was no place to put Your Seat!

But the game was fun and very exciting as the Frogs came from a 4-1 deficite to win 5-4.

And the pups got a chance to play with their puppy cousins. Titan may only be 6 or 7 months old, but since we last saw him, he's grown to be a head taller than our kids.

Back home in Milwaukee, we were able to take another beer tapping-boat tour at our favorite Rock Bottom Brewery. Here are shots of the Milwaukee Skyline from lake Michigan.

And the pups, adjusting to not being on vacation - Mojo has found a new place to hang out when we're relaxing on the porch or listening to the baseball game.