11.14.10

Here is the big 1 year old! Here he is at only 1 week old.

Gina and Todd had a frog themed party, complete with a bouncy set up in their garage. Besides the man (boy? baby?) of honor, the other focus of the party was the amazing cake! Gina's friend, who is not a pastry chef, made this awesomeness:

11.13.10

We headed up to Green Bay in the beginning of Nov. for Fisher's 1st birthday party! We got up there Saturday night and got some pizza and made cookies for the party. Cooper put on my boots and attemped to walk around in them also - but mostly just fell every 3 steps.

11.7.10

A little Sunday morning project. He is a robot!

11.6.10

Gina, the boys and my mom and dad came to visit last month. We decided to go to Chuck.E. Cheese for dinner at around 5pm, which was probably a mistake. It was so crowded! It was also a very interesting observation in parenting. Gina pawned her children off on my parents and parked herself at the skee ball for about 15 minutes. Cooper has a nerf dart gun to show for her efforts!

Gina and I had to school my mom on the art of tearing off tickets at Chuck.E.Cheese though. She was just tearing off the amount that had come out of the machine after the game was over...psh! Everyone knows you grip the ticket closest to the machine and pull to get more tickets!

10.31.10

Confession: for the past 5ish years, Halloween was not my favorite holiday. Actually, it was probably my least favorite holiday. I used to work at a place that planned for Halloween celebrations and activities for children for about two months, culminated by a 4 day event. We were also required to work all 4 long days, while dressed in costume. Needless to say, I was pretty much "over" halloween by the time October 25th rolled around.

Finally this year, I turned a corner and decided to embrace the holiday. I even crafted our gnome costumes from top to bottom! Here are a few of my other faves from the party:

and the winner of the costume contest, Ghandi.

10.16.10

Back on Oct. 16th, Wisconsin beat the then, No. 1 Ohio State!!! It was amazing! Jon and his pals were downtown all day long, but I opted to meet up with them right before game time at around 6pm. It was an epic day and night for Badger fans!

Fun fact: I saw a drunken Ohio State fan with blood all over his face from falling (saw that happen too) get arrested as I was waiting in line to get into the Big Ten Pub. Probably put a damper on his trip to Madison for the big game, hey?

10.9.10

I've really let this blog go, haven't I? Yikes. I better pick up the slack if I want to do another 365 project...which I am thinking I might do again in 2011. In the meantime, back in October our nephew Keegan celebrated his 5th birthday...complete with a bouncy house and all his school friends. We were recruited to help keep tabs on all the kids. I'm here to report that only a couple kids emerged from the bouncy house in tears from getting trampled. Pretty good odds, I'd say.

10.7.10

Meghan got THE CALL on a Tuesday that she had 4 tickets to see Oprahhhhhh! Meghan and I were lucky enough to attend a taping a few years ago, but this was still really exciting. I mean, when Oprah calls, you drop everything and go to her...especially because this is her last season, ya know? Following suit, I promptly and without question skipped class on Wednesday night and took the day off on Thursday to go to Chicago. To get to the 9am taping, it was suggested to us to get there at 7am...which meant we had to leave Milwaukee at 4:30am! If you are doing the math, that meant I had to wake up at 3:30am. Basically, I shouldnt have even gone to sleep because I could hardly sleep anyway from being so anxious!

The topic of the show we saw was the 25th anniversary of Love Story. Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal were the guests. It was a sweet, heart warming kind of show....and a great experience. Oprah was as fab as you would imagine.

A really cool part of the day happened after the taping though. We wanted our picture taken in front of the Harpo sign and asked some passerbys to take a picture of us. We made a little small talk with them (2 girls about my age and an older man) and it turned out the man worked at Harpo and offered to take us inside for a backstage tour. Ummm, yes please! We got to see some cool things and got to hear some great stories. I'm so glad I got to go one more time before her show ends!

10.2.10

We headed to a wedding in Naperville in the beginning of October. Since we didn't want to drive 3 hours in our formalwear, and couldnt check into our hotel until after the ceremony, we had to find a spot to get ready once we got to town. Right next to the church was a high school where they were conveniently playing a soccer game. It was cold and rainy, but we did what we needed to do and used their public outdoor bathroom there. Pretty classy.

I must give the styling of this wedding props. Everything from the linens, the paper products, the chivari chairs all the way to the elaborate centerpieces were perfectly coordinated. Beautiful!

9.25.10

Last weekend we participated in the highly anticipated Curd Crawl 2010. Lindsay (pictured) organized this event and it is exactly what it sounds like: the concept of a pub crawl, except instead of sampling beers, we sampled the best cheese curds Madison has to offer...except we also took part in our fair share of drinking beer too.

The Crawl started out at Dotty Dumpling's Dowry, followed by State Street Brats, The Plaza, and The Old Fashioned and finished up at The Great Dane. We consumed a lot of curds, my friends. We picked up a few other random crawlers with us along the way as well...who happened to be from Ellsworth, WI, which is the cheese curd capital of Wisconsin. What are the chances, people!? It was kismet!

Lindsay made official ballots and we all took the judging quite seriously. Plus points went to those places that offered multiple dipping sauces, good appearance, gooeyness, etc. Dotty's offered no dipping sauces and actually charged for a side of ranch. cheap! 0 points for sauces there! By the time we got to the Great Dane, we could only choke down 1 curd per person, but we all were troopers and got it done. At the end of the night we took a poll on our favorite curds of the day and I think the majority said Old Fashioned. Prior to the crawl, I would have definitely said my favorites were from there as well, but The Plaza totally won me over and they might have scooted its way to the #1 spot. Overwhelming worst curd went to Brats. They were starchy and hardly even melty. You have been warned.

9.18.10

We headed to our first Badger tailgate of the year a few weeks ago. The weather was perfect. I mistakenly brought a fleece with me that was unneeded for most of the day. I think I ended up wearing it around my waist, early 90s style for a while. We had a fantastic day - hoping to make it to at least 1 more tailgate before the season ends!

In unrelated news, my hair is a little unruly in this picture. Don't worry, I remedied that situation this week and got a much needed cut and color.

9.12.10

That was getting kind of annoying seeing my feet everytime you visited this blog, eh? Gross. My pal, Heath, did the Ironman again this year, so I went down to the lakeshore path to hopefully see him and cheer him on. I planned it out pretty well this year and tracked him online all day. I successfully saw him around 3pm during his first loop. We walked together for about a mile while he felt like he needed a break...perfect timing on my part, even though I was prepared to run with him too. When he was ready to run again, I wished him luck and bid him adieu...and then met my friend, Lindsey, to watch the runners on State Street.

Fun fact: we saw a blind athlete! Whhhaaa? He was connected by a buddy band type system with another person. We were confused how he would have been able to do the bike though. Is it a tandem? Couldnt be a sidecar situation because he would have to do the pedaling. If it is a tandem bike, does their partner pedal at all? If so, that would seem a tad unfair. Either way, when he came running down State Street the entire crowd rose to their feet and roared with applause. It was amazing...and inspiring...and for about 30 seconds I thought, maybe I could be an Ironman. And then those 30 seconds were over and I came back to reality.

9.11.10

So let me get this straight. Just like that, summer is over?? These flip flop tan lines are basically a thing of the past...even though I just got them about 2 weeks ago when I was lounging on the beach in my swim suit sweating my butt off? Is this correct?

This blows.

Oh, and I just saw a commercial for the Trans Siberian Orchestra.

9.6.10

Labor day afternoon/evening was spent at our pals' house for a bbq. There was bags and bocce ball and a dip contest. We made our own rules for bocce and had to throw it different in each round. I'm sure El will love this angle. And the dip contest? Well, everyone was instructed to bring a dip and we all sampled and picked a winner. Our artichoke dip tied for second place. First place went to Lindsey's pretzel mustard dip...which I didn't even try because mustard makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

9.5.10

We headed to Devils Lake on Sunday to do some hiking. Before we made our way up the bluffs, we sat down to eat a picnic lunch (Subway). It was rather crowded, so we sat in a spot close to a parking lot. We were enjoying our lunch when all of a sudden we noticed a little boy getting horribly scolded. Reason: because he had just taken a large rock and scratched the entire length of the family's Lexus SUV. ummm, yeah. Mom was not happy and made it clear to him that Dad would have words with him when he got home. I'm guessing that kind of put a damper on the afternoon outing to Devils Lake for them.

9.4.10

We headed out for our now annual Labor Day weekend tradition of going to the Taste of Madison and seeing Too White Crew. This year we met up with my cousin and his wife (my cousin-in-law perhaps?) and some friends. We sampled less than we have in years past...instead sticking to what we know and like. Namely, the Old Fashioned's cheese curds. TWC were a little late getting on the stage, but like normal, did not disappoint!

8.28.10

Lisa's sunglasses broke on day 2.

8.27.10

Our annual yurting weekend. I am keeping the incriminating pictures for my personal collection. This year was especially fun, I think. We were encouraged to bring a crazy hat this year, but Jon and I didn't really think about it or put any effort into going out and buying one until the night before. We had this one laying around. My sister in law, on the other hand, busted out this light up fuzzy pink leopard gem.

8.21.10

money shot.

8.20.10

Here I was teaching Jon some things about composition and was modeling for him. Yes, this face and pose has model written all over it, doesnt it??