Lets Play!

Brad finished off this semester on thursday! So it is time for us to play before the next semester begins. Once again the guys did a bead growing competition from Thanksgiving to the last final. We got together for a big dinner at Chili's to vote for the best beard and to enjoy being over with one more semester of school. The countdown to boards begins now. Also on friday we got to go to the Nutcracker! The milwaukee ballet did a really good production of it and it was a very enjoyable evening except for the parking ticket we found on our car at the end of the night (who knew that the meters around the Bradley Center were in effect till 9 pm even when there are no games). Well after Brad ranted about how he hates parking tickets I did tell him I had good news, we are going to save over $50 a month on car insurance. Really our insurance agreement just expired and after some good recomendations for Progressive Insurance I got a quote and starting today we will be saving a bundal on car insurance.

Here is Brad's beard this year

Here are all 3 Brads and their beards


And the group of beards (now that is a lot of facial hair)


And here we are after the Nutcracker, we didn't get a chance to take a picture at the theater.
(and notice clean shaven on the next day)

Sheards in Wisconsin

So we were lucky enough to have my parents come visit us here for the first time last weekend. My dad had a work conference in Michigan so they drove over afterwards. The first full day here we took them to Chicago, you can tell from the pictures that it was cold enough to start busting out our winter gear that weekend. We went up to the Sears Tower (now called Willis Tower) which used to be the tallest building in the world. It was pretty cool to get a new view of the Windy City. And best of all they just built these glass boxes that stick out the side of the building so that you can look down onto the street. This is my new favorite spot in Chicago. My next favorite is the Bean, which of coarse we went to, and can't miss famous Chacago Pizza. Brad even took the day off studying to go down with us (which he is making up now by studying for finals on his B-day). I took monday off of work so that I could take my parents around Milwaukee, not quite as busy but just as cold. We went to the Pabst Mansion which was all decorated for Christmas, out to the art museum and the lake, to a lighthouse, the bronze Fonz, and on a Sprechers tour. And best of all my parent took Brad out to dinner for his B-day to Claim Jumpers and we got the biggest brownie I have ever seen for dessert, lets just say that it was so big that we took some home with us. Thanks Mom and Dad for visiting!


Here is the view of the magnificent mile from the top floor.

Here we are in the glass box over 100 stories above the ground.

I told Brad that I was confident they over engineered the glass structure so here he is jumping in it to prove his trust for engineers.

Here we are looking down.

Proof that my mom did step out on the glass.

Reflection in the Bean.

Parents doing a typical Bean pose.

Brad's excited to be here jump (he gets those mad hops from when he was a skater)

True Chicago Pizza, we finished it all.

Here the Pabst Mansion is behind me, we couldn't take pictures inside.

Here we are outside of Milwaukee's Lighthouse.

My mom wanted to see Lavern and Shirley when she was in Milwaukee, when we went on the Sprechers tour they had a bottling line that looked just like the one on the show, so close enough for her.

Roberts Thanksgiving 2009

We we lucky again this year to have the Roberts family fly into Milwaukee to visit us for Thanksgiving. As you can tell from the picture above we had an awesome time with them here! And the weather was fabulous for touring Milwaukee.

Here we are starving before our wonderful feast.

Dad was designated turkey carver, and boy was it some good turkey this year!

The next day we traveled around Milwaukee first stopping at Marquette campus to see the Saint Joan of Arc Chapel.

Too bad that campus was closed so the chapel was closed too, so we just took a picture outside.

Luckily though the art museum on campus was still open. I made sure that there was a new exhibit showing (cause the last one was so weird). This time they had this sweet sculpture that you could make music when you moved the rods together, that is me playing above.

We also found the Bronze Fonz (I figured Mom and Dad Roberts would have actually watch Happy Days)

And then we stealthily made it into the secret Safe House for lunch. The Safe House is a spy theme resturante with all this cool decor, here is a piece of the Berlin wall.

That night we went to the Domes (indoor gardens).

They had the show dome filled with Christmas flowers!


The next day we went hiking at Lapham peak, even though there are no more leaves on the trees the weather was nice and turned out for a nice little hike.

Last stop was at a Decorative Arts museum located in an old mansion on the lake front. I have been wanting to go here for a while so it was a nice excuse and turned out to be a pretty cool place.

They have this enormous backyard garden that leads down to the lake that we wondered around.



Here is Jenny showing off the plaza in the middle of the house.

Lastly we watched the BYU/Utah game, of course. Go Cougs! That was a close one.

Chig-Town

Even though we live pretty close to Chicago we haven't really gone down too often, but this last weekend some friends were having a reunion in Chicago that I couldn't miss. The weather made it up to a fabulous 70 degrees (surprising since the week prior was high of 40s). Shelly made a wonderful tour guide for only having lived there now a couple months. The best part was just being able to enjoy spending time with friends that I don't get to see a lot.

Here we are outside the cultural center (I had to represent WI)

We took a stroll through Millennium Park

And of course had to take some sweet pics at the bean (my favorite part of Chicago)

When we were walking by the Art Institute they had a cooking show being filmed so we stopped to have a look and a taste. They even filmed us as we tried some Crepes of the Future, so look for us on TV some day.

This guys had his own portable crepe maker

Then we got front row seating on a Vertical Horizon concert promoting their new CD

See how close we got!

Next stop was the Zoo

We were trying to get a picture with the Cougar, but then we found out it wasn't even a cougar

This was the biggest Gorilla I have ever seen

And we tried to get a shot with the lion but he was camera shy

After some misdirections and lots of walking we found ourselves walking across this bridge (that really was closed to pedestrians), but it had a pretty sweet view.

But we did make it to our destination eventually for the night

The next day we walked the Magnificent Mile, and saw the cutest little kid drumming

We had famous Chicago Dogs for lunch (mine probably not as famous because I opted out of all the toppings)

Brad meet us on Sat night so the only pic I got of him was our pit stop at the boarder on the way home

Here is a little clip of Vertical Horizon (sorry small format makes it not too clear)