Softball

Here are some pictures of Ben playing softball. The one of Connor is when he was trying to be the third base coach and tell them to stop, stay there!

Grandpa Gregs Bday

Grandpa Greg (Ben's dad) celebrated his birthday the other weekend, and for his birthday his sister Linda, and her husband George, came up to visit from Virginia. Connor and I had never met them before, and Ben hadn't seen them for many years, so it was great to spend the weekend getting to know each other and visiting. Connor really had a thing for Linda, and he still asks, "Mom when is Linda coming back?" It's really sweet, but she also came with many presents for him, so she really won him over.

Girls Weekend

So the second weekend in August we had planned a girls weekend trip to Chicago. It was me, my mom, my aunt Tammie, her daughter (my cousin) Alisha, my mom's neighbor Kaye, her daughter Stephanie and their friend Corina who went. The 7 of us all road together in my aunts van (yes it was tight for room) so we had to make several stops on the way there. We left Thursday morning at 10:00 from New Richmond and made a stop for lunch in Black River Falls, mainly so we could get our picture taken with the famous orange moose.



Then we decided we needed to stop at the rest stop when you first come into Illinois, once again to get our picture taken. Somehow I downloaded the wrong picture here, so we all look a little goofy, but I didn 't want to try to find the good picture, so this is what you get:)


We made it to our hotel at in Arlington Heights, just outside of Chicago, at about 5:30pm and I wish I could say we were all starving for dinner, but our stomachs were saying something else. "Where is the closest beer." There was a flyer hanging up in the hotel advertising the restaurant Sweet Baby Rays, and it just so happened that on Thursday nights that have a special on Bud light. So we were game. It was also pretty coincidental that the restaurant was Sweet Baby Rays, as my dad is completly obsessed with Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce. So we had to make sure we got out picture taken by the sign.

At the restaurant we all ate some great food and polished off a few beers faster than I thought possible. But we were at a restaurant and looking for a bar to go to so our waitress recommended a dive bar within walking distance so we took a chance and headed there. Once again it was our lucky night as they had a special on all miller products. So we had our fair share of beers at this bar. As you can see from the picture below there must have been some men in the bar that had a thing for all our boobies, we all got felt up that night:) After the bar we went next door to the liquor store, bought some more beer for the hotel room, and called for a ride back to the hotel. By the time we got back to the hotel everyone was really tired so we decided to call it a night and go to bed.


The next day we were going to head into the big city. We took the Metra train to Chicago which took us about 45 minutes to get there. This picture is from the second story on the train looking down at the girls below.

When we got into Chicago we walked Millenium Mile and did some shopping, and visited Navy Pier where this next picture was taken.

After a long day of walking we headed back to the hotel to put on our jammies and drink some more beers. While shopping I bought a game called Would You Rather... and we had a ton of fun playing that game. We also got a fun show from Kaye when she came up to our room dressed like this.....

The next day brought a lot of time spent on the trains as there was construction going on, and we weren't quite sure where we were going. We wanted to go to China town first and it took us a good 2+ hours on the train to get there. We spent a little while there, and then had to leave again as we had tickets to a comedy show that night and wanted to make sure we got there in time. We found the theater and decided we needed to have a few drinks before we went and also needed to get some food. We went to a restaurant and we all ordered a beer.

But thanks to Stephanie, we had brought a whole bag of beer and mikes lemonade with so we didn't have to buy any more beers, we just took the beers from our bag and poured them into our old beer bottles, or a beer glass. Pretty sneaky, I can say I've never done that one before. Also while we were eating Kaye decided to surprise us all with the beautiful rings that she "bought" for us. Her friend was actually trying to get rid of them, so Kaye gave them to us. As you can see, they aren't the most stylish of rings, but it was still fun.

We still had about 30 minutes to burn before the comedy show started so we went across the street to a park to finish our drinks. Alisha and Stephanie did a few shots of vodka.
And for some reason we wanted to take a picture with our boobs hanging out. We were getting a few stares and laughs from the other people in the park.
After the comedy show was done, and we had all had multiple drinks, we had to try to figure out how the heck to get home. This is a picture of everybody looking at the maps thinking they knew what they were looking at. We did make it back to the hotel that night, somehow.
And finally this is everybody jammed into the van on the way back to NR. It was a long but fun weekend.

Wiener Island

Well our camping trip was a complete success. We went up to the Chippewa Flowage with our friends Brian and Terri and their daughter Alexis, and Ben's cousin Jake and his wife Emily and their daughter Sage. We ended up staying on the island called Weiner which inevitably became the most commonly used word of the weekend, and the butt of all the jokes. We let Brian and Ben head up Thursday night after work to find a campsite and get it all set up for us. By the time they got up there, it was pitch black and downpouring rain. Once the rain stopped the packed up the boat to find an island, after searching dozens of islands, they finally found an unoccupied island, which happened to be Weiner Island. By the time we got there with the kids on Friday around noonish, they had set up a nice camp, and to our surprise the island even had a toilet! The kids had tons of fun playing together, and we all spent a ton of time fishing. However, it's a good thing we brought some fish from our freezer that Ben had caught earlier in the summer as the fish weren't biting too much. There were tons of tiny blue gils caught but not enough to feed us all for dinner. However, we did learn that we brought way too much other food so there is no way we would have starved anyways.

I also took the kids out for a couple rides around Weiner Island in the poke boat and they both enjoyed that very much. They got to take turns paddling the boat and splashing the water. However, I thoroughly enjoyed taking it out by myself at sunup while everyone slept for 3 more hours than us. I would take the boat out to the middle of the water where I could see the sun and just sit and read my book. It was the most relaxing thing in my life, I wish I was there right now.

During the weekend, Connor decided that he didn't want to be potty trained, or he was just too lazy, so there was many clothes of his being washed in the water and hung up to dry. He did like to pee into the water however, so once we figured that out, he would at least not pee in his pants.

Now these pictures were taken from Jake and Emily's boat on our way back to the boat landing. We managed to get all of our junk, 4 coolers, two tents, 6 camping chairs, bed mats, clothes, food, sleeping bags, fishing poles and tackle, and everything else we needed for the weekend, all in the boat. And if you look closely in the second picture, we also were towing the poke boat behind us, filled with more of our stuff. I wish we could have got an aerial picture of the boats to show you just how packed it was. I didn't think there was any way we would make it all in one trip, but leave it up to Ben to get it accomplished.

The weekend was absolutely great and we can't wait to go back again.

Brewers vs. Twins

Well I think it has been decided that Connor is going to support his parents by becoming a professional baseball player. He's been showing us his skills lately and it is pretty impressive. He gets so excited when he hits the ball. Then he even runs the bases for a home run. Now it's just a battle over which team he would play for, the Twins and make mommy happy, or the Brewers for daddy?!?

Connor also had to show us how brave he could be in his jeep. He thinks he can drive right through anything and over anything. My plants and flowers take a pretty hard beating from the jeep, especially now that it goes extra fast and he figured out how to steer it. He also decided he was going to drive backwards up the bean bag platforms, I thought for sure he was going to tip over, but he acted like he knew exactly what he was doing. He thought he was pretty tough shit.

Turtle

Ben's friend Todd and his daughter Savannah brought a turtle over to our house the other day and the kids just had a blast with it. At first they both just stood back and watched it and whenever the turtle got close to climbing out of the box, they would scream and run. But after about ten minutes they were both trying to hold the turtle. Connor would try to pick it up with his fat and pudgy fingers that weren't long enough to reach around it and when he would get ahold of it and try to lift it up, he would drop it right back down, sometimes landing smack dab on the rock in the box, or head first into the ground. Then Savannah would try, and the same exact thing would happen. I'm not sure how many times that poor turtle was dropped. The kids then decide they weren't having any luck with their hands so they decided to get a racket and try to scoop it up with the racket, only to end up getting the poor thing higher into the air, to drop/fall back onto the hard rock or ground. After a few minutes of play, the turtle decided it was best just to stay inside his shell and not come out until the abuse was done. Either that or it was already dead. I'm not really sure. However, they both did have such a great time with the turtle. I just hope that he is now swimming with his family/friends in the lake, instead of floating in it.

Wildlife

We have lived in our house for 3 years now and the only kind of wildlife we have ever seen are pheasants, and then the annoying wasps and ants and bugs, and we can't forget the gophers that dig holes everywhere in the yard. This past week it's been kinda crazy with the critters that have been coming through the yard. It all started with our hawk that has been living on our hawk pole that Ben put up last year. The pole was put up in hopes that the hawks would come and take care of the stripped gophers that are tearing up our yard. It seems to be working because I have only seen one stripped gopher in our yard and usually we have about 3 hanging out everyday. Then the other day we were out in the yard playing and I saw something moving across the yard. I went over and it was a turtle. I'm not sure where he came from or where he was going, but we kept him for a few hours and played with him then we brought him down to the lake so he could go find his mother (as Connor would say). Last night Ben and Connor were outside and I heard Connor yell, Mom come here, so I went outside and they had found a salamander. Connor thought it was so cool, he named him sugar and they played for awhile and then let him go too. When I woke up this morning I looked out our window and there was a bunny right next to the window, so I woke up Connor and he got to see it to. It's not like these are some unusual animals to find in the country, but it is just so weird that we haven't had any of them for 3 years, and then they all decide to come out of hiding in the same week. Connor has been pretty excited.

Yesterday when my sister was watching Connor, she took him down to the library in town because they were having wild animals visiting. So he got to see a big snake, turtle and what he calls "DragonTales". I assume to be a lizard. DragonTales is a cartoon on PBS that he watches. On our way home yesterday he says to me, "Mom, I had fun with Hailey." It was so cute. He has had quite an experience with the wildlife this past week and is so excited about it, I can't wait to take him to the zoo this summer.