Not Guilty

Not going to feel guilty because I have been so bad about keeping on top of this blog, just going to try to be better.

Here are a few photos from our vacation this summer.

We took 11 days to drive through the South East and see some baseball and return to Cave Mountain lake.

Friday/Saturday
Drive to Atlanta.
Uneventful except for the 2 1/2 hours it took us to get through downtown Chicago and the horrible Motel 6/Denny's/Waffle House experience in Elizabethtown PA (good movie, dump town).

 Saturday we arrived in Atlanta and went to a local Sports bar where they serve the local (Sweet Water) beer. We enjoyed the Cardinals vs. Philly's game on the TV and some wings... yum.

Sunday we drove up (down? over?) to Montgomery AL for some Dreamland BBQ before a Biscuits game. We hooked up with Cheryl and her boyfriend John for lunch.

Downtown Montgomery i lovely, it reminded me a lot of Downtown Beloit, quaint, storefronts and diners.

The BBQ was fantastic, we all ordered sandwiches, but it felt more like a half slab of ribs on some white bread. There was no way you could have picked that up and eaten it like a sandwich. We didn't have any trouble picking up the ribs!

After lunch we headed across the street to the Biscuits stadium. It's very cool, reminded us of a lot of those Building/Stadiums (Camden, Mud Hens, Akron). This used to be an old train depot. The only issue we had on the day was that it was Hot as Hell!

Cheryl had come up with fantatic tickets, second row on the third base side, but it wouldn't have mattered where we were, it was hot and sunny! Good thing there was plenty of cold beer.

After the game, we freshened up and then went to John and Cheryl's local watering hole, Nail on the Head, and drank way too much Yuengling. Meh... we're on vacation!

Next up... Guinette Braves.

SLACKER!!!!

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.