Well since I can barely remember what we’ve done myself most days, I’ll just let some pictures do the talking…
The last weekend in July was our northern WI vacation, so we’ll start with a glimpse into that.
The first day we went to Stevens Point Brewery in Stevens Point, WI; found Nueske’s, the famous bacon-makers; ate lunch at Red Eye Brewing Co. in Wausau, WI (don’t freak out, i only had one small sample glass. the rest of the sampler was ryan’s); then checked out a supper club that Ryan discovered called Marty’s Place North before spending the night in Minocqua, WI. On our way out of town the following morning we swung by Little Bohemia, where the movie “Public Enemies” was filmed and the real-life John Dillinger hid out.
The rest of that weekend we explored Madeline Island (1 of the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior); Bayfield, WI; and Ashland, WI. That upper coast of our state is simply beautiful, and we had a blast.
The last day of our vacation was spent in Green Bay. Since Ryan and Della are now Packers shareholders, we met up with 2 of our friends at Lambeau Field to attend the annual shareholders’ meeting. It was really hot, but even as a Bears fan I still had fun.
The following weekend we went to my first, and quite possibly only, Brewers game of this season with friends.
Then the Tuesday after that was d-day – my last day of work and Della’s last day of daycare.
The rest of that week was spent getting ready for our annual summer party/birthday party for R and D.
And since then, D and I have been getting into the swing of our stay home routine. You know, helping me in the kitchen (yes, i actually made that Elmo cake pictured above), taking walks to go explore the beach, and playing at the park.
And that about brings us to the present. We did go to the Wisconsin State Fair last week and the Milwaukee Air Show yesterday, so I’ll get those pictures up soon. Despite losing my job, we are having a great summer!
Bittersweet? Definitely. I’m beyond sad to be leaving a workplace I loved, but I’m also excited to get to spend time at home with Della. I think these next couple months with just her before the new baby comes will be priceless.
And we already have plans for our first day home together. I should say I’ve made plans for us, she’ll just be along for the ride. Since tomorrow is her birthday, I’m going to take her to the zoo for the first time. I hope she loves it, since she totally digs animals right now. I think 1 or 2 of my girlfriends and their little ones may join us, so D might have a birthday entourage.
And although tomorrow is her actual 2 year birthday, her monthly update post will have to wait a bit. (nothing new there, though) We have her 2 year checkup tomorrow night, so I’ll get her official height/weight stats there to include. Plus during the day we’ll be busy zooing, not blogging, duh.
I sent my farewell email out at work yesterday with tears in my eyes, but they dried pretty quickly. I’ve realized I need to just calm down and enjoy this time off instead of constantly bemoaning the fact that my paychecks have dried up like those tears. This is the time I so craved after D was born. What am I afraid of now?
So hopefully I’ll still be around fairly regularly to keep you all entertained, even though I’ll no longer be sitting in front of 4 computer screens all day. Maybe my eyesight will enjoy this break too, come to think of it. I do owe you a lot of pictures from our recent travels though, plus I’ll still keep you abreast of my weekly pregnancy growth.
And with that I say good-bye, desk at work; hello, summer!
Ryan and I went to the Zac Brown Band concert at Summerfest last Thursday night, and it was incredible! Our seats ended up being beyond excellent, aside from the fact that they were standing-room only.
At least we didn’t have to worry about anyone yelling at us to sit down this time. Ahem. (i’m not still bitter about those stupid wrigley people or anything…)
The show started at 7:30 with 2 opening acts, so we figured getting in there around 8:30 would be good. Not really. ZBB didn’t end up coming on until after 9:30, by which point the temperature had risen about 15 degrees as people packed into the standing room area and my legs felt like they were about to explode.
Maybe people who say to wear compression stockings during pregnancy aren’t so crazy after all. But not on a 100+ degree day, thanks.
Anyway… Once they started playing they didn’t stop for about 2 hours, so we definitely got our money’s worth. Plus the area in which we stood was directly in front of the stage, and had we gotten there even earlier to get right up against the stage, we easily could’ve touched the band members as they came by. But I wasn’t about to battle drunk, sweaty, stinky crowds of youngin’s for that opportunity. Me and my pregnant self were perfectly happy a few rows back.
I think there were only about 2 songs of theirs I love that they didn’t play, so I was very happy with the performance. I’ll let the photos do the rest of the talking, but this makes 2 shows of theirs we’ve seen now and both have been beyond great.
Pregnant lady needed to stay hydrated…
He was deadly with that t-shirt cannon!
My favorite part was when they all came out to the front of the stage, sat down, and played Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion”. It was SO good!
The violin intro to “Free” gives me chills every time…
Ryan loved this guy because he was wearing a Packers shirt. He was crazy! (the band member, not ryan)
Ryan and I went to see Roger Waters perform “The Wall” at Wrigley Field Friday night, and it was pretty amazing. The stage was enormous, and the wall they constructed covered the entire outfield, from foul pole to foul pole. It was over 3 stories high, and it served as a giant projection screen for much of the show, too.
The wall was seriously incredible.
If you’ve ever seen this production, or even just know the songs from this Pink Floyd double-album, you know “The Wall” is rife with anti-government, anti-politics, anti-establishment overtones. So there were plenty of hammers, a giant fascist pig floating around the stadium at one point, a video tribute to fallen soldiers from all eras projected on the massive wall, a model bomber plane that crashed into the wall in flames, an opening montage of fireworks, and a general f*** the man sentiment throughout the concert.
Doubling as a jumbotron for those not on the field.They built up the wall during the 1st act - almost complete here.Hammers and machine guns - pretty typical for this show.Bring 'em home!
Ryan is a HUGE Pink Floyd fan, and although I’m not nearly as big a fan as he is, I do know most of the songs from the album. In particular though, my favorites from this show were Waters’ duet with himself from a 1980 show singing “Mother”, “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” (the one with, “hey, teacher! leave those kids alone!”), and “Comfortably Numb”. You know, all the songs non-Pink Floyd fans know.
I must admit, the huge tribute to all the fallen soldiers was extremely moving, especially since they projected a number of civilians too. It began with his father, who was a British Army pilot shot down in World War II and included a ton of children from today’s conflicts. It literally brought me to tears.
The fallen projected on the completed wall at intermission.
The show ended with the wall coming down amid chants of “Tear down the wall!” as the giant floating pig covered in fascist slogans that I mentioned above was grabbed by the crowd and ripped to shreds. It was a pretty amazing spectacle.
"Tear down the wall!" The show ended with the full band on stage in front of the destroyed wall.
Unfortunately, the awesomeness was marred by one huge lowlight. Our seats were excellent – front row directly behind the Cubs dugout, first 2 seats on the aisle, almost dead center of the stage. Basically as close as you could get to being on the field without paying the extra $100+. But apparently the entire rest of our section had dubbed these as “no standing” seats.
I'm not kidding, our seats were phenomenal.
Now, riddle me this – when have you ever gone to a concert, let alone in an outdoor venue and seeing PINK FLOYD, and not stood at any point in the show? Yeah, me neither. NEVER.
Someone in at least each of the handful of rows behind us at some point yelled at Ryan to sit down. And to his credit, he kept his cool pretty well for almost the entire show. He was extremely accommodating, trying to either sit on the back of his chair so as not to be up so high, seeing if standing in the aisle instead would work (it didn’t), or simply just sitting back down after a minute.
He was even proactive, knowing this was going to get ugly if they didn’t shut up, and asked the usher 1) if we were, in fact, allowed to stand in those seats (of course we were!), and 2) if we could be moved because of all the complaining. The usher was very understanding, told us that we could definitely stand in our seats, came down and even told the people behind us so (too bad that didn’t shut them up), but was unfortunately unable to move us at intermission.
The worst offenders were this group of 3 women directly behind us. They obviously were neither Roger Waters nor Pink Floyd fans, and had to look the band up on Google on their phones at intermission. Huh?? Why are you sitting in such great seats then? At one point, the chick in the middle reached around and shined the camera flash on her phone right in Ryan’s face. WHO DOES THAT??
Finally with about 10 minutes left in the show we simply left our seats. We moved over about 2 sections, where EVERYONE was standing, and watched the remainder from there, in seats not nearly as good as the ones FOR WHICH WE PAID. As we were walking up the aisle to move, the crowd of course thought we were being kicked out and shouted at us to “enjoy the rest of the show you asshole”, and one guy from a few rows back even threw his beer at Ryan. WHAT?!?!?
Sorry for all the caps, but my god, people. How about some maturity? You are grown-ass men! And yes, I know Ryan was finally shouting back at the end, but come on. I can’t disagree with him at all – we were in no way in the wrong, we had to stand to see the stage over the crowd of people on the field, and we weren’t even standing the whole time, only during the climactic songs when Waters urged the crowd to get into it himself.
You know I hate confrontation, so my route was to simply ignore the heckling, and it seemed to work. No one said anything to me directly. Granted, I never once turned around to look at who the heckler was or said one word back to anybody, and I did try to keep Ryan from doing so. But finally he’d had enough and I couldn’t do anything about it. I saw neither the phone flash nor beer being thrown since I was trying to be as oblivious as possible and simply watch the show, and maybe it’s better that I missed those antics. I think I would’ve flipped out on those douchebags if I had witnessed such childish, ridiculous behavior. As the only 100% sober person there, I can say without bias that everyone was just being stupid.
We did get to see the end of the show from the other seats and didn’t have to miss anything, but still. Talk about a horrible way to end an otherwise spectacular concert. I felt particularly bad for Ryan since I knew how much he was looking forward to this and Pink Floyd is his all-time favorite band, but fortunately he said it didn’t ruin his entire weekend, just that little piece of the show. Overall he was still definitely glad we went. Good.
So sorry Wrigley fans, but your concertgoers are some of the worst, most obnoxious people I’ve ever been around. This experience has definitely soured me on ever going back there. At least the rest of the weekend was fantastic – we spent the remainder at my mom and stepdad’s house, enjoyed some delicious smoked pork from the inaugural run of their new smoker/grill, soaked up as much sun as we could stand before it got too hot, and watched Della run around playing with everything in sight.
Della LOVED her Cookie Monster ice cream from the Plush Horse! And her new Elmo flip-flops.
Summer is here, my friends. And I say bring it on! Just not at Wrigley!
Saturday we went up to Road America in Elkhart Lake to watch the AMA Pro Racing Superbike races, and it was a great day. It started off a little breezy and chilly when the sun went behind clouds and then some rain passed through late in the day actually delaying the final race of the afternoon, but as a whole we had some really nice weather.
R made a batch of his famous jambalaya and we caught up with some friends we hadn’t seen in years, so fun was had by all. I will admit, this is the first time I’ve been to these races and stayed sober the entire day, but it was still a wonderful time. I’m not big into motorcycle racing by any means, but seeing those bikes in action is always pretty amazing.
Plus D had a blast running around all the open grassy areas near where we were sitting and even found some puppies to pet. Her day was complete.
It was a typical tailgate set up, except instead of watching a ball game, we were watching motorcycles zoom by on the track. D actually didn’t mind the noise at all, which was a nice surprise.
The way these guys take corners is insane and always blows my mind no matter how many times I see it.
Like I said, our littlest racer had a great day too.
Running up and down the hill with Daddy helped tucker her out for a nap in the stroller as we walked around the pits, checking out all the bikes up close and in person.
We got to see a racer from one of the TV shows R watches, so that was pretty cool too (#23 in the picture above with the 2 bikes). Once again, the knee-draggin’ was in full effect and Road America did not disappoint.
One of the highlights though, for me anyway, came right at the end of the day as we were leaving. Our good friend Craig, who hadn’t met D before that morning, commented on how well-behaved she was all day, just having her own little fun being around everyone. He said we must be so proud. Yes, yes we are.
Ok, I know I’m way behind on my picture posting. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to work on them this weekend either, so you’ll just have to keep waiting. So sorry.
But this weekend was fantastic. We headed down to my mom’s house Friday after work, because we were going to the Badgers vs. NIU game at Soldier Field in Chicago on Saturday. So we caught a couple trains into the city Saturday morning, met up with all our friends at one of their friend’s condos, and trained it back downtown to get into the stadium shortly after kickoff. Our whole group sat together in a section full of NIU fans, but they were quickly silenced as the Badgers dominated, winning 49-7. Oh yeah, Bucky!! Plus the weather was absolutely perfect for a game day – right around 70 and sunny. So awesome.
Here’s a teaser pic from the game. Sorry for all the peeks. The full photographic run-downs will be coming soon. Promise.
