Our 10th Anniversary

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!

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

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

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!