Anniversary Weekend

We celebrated another milestone in our time together this week - number 32.  We spent some time reminiscing about our first meeting and reflecting on how much younger we both were.  Seems like just a few moments ago that we were on our first date - but yet the gray hair and aching joints seem to show that isn't true.  We had an exciting weekend to celebrate anyway.

We spent the week in our usual pursuits of work and exercise.  Our summer volleyball started and we are both really enjoying getting back into playing again.  It is a nice format, the right skill level for us, and the people are friendly.  Also, it is nice to widen our exercising beyond running and lifting.  My work this week consisted of prepping some of the first floor windows on the south side of the house for painting.  This meant a lot of sanding and caulking - not my favorite set of repair activities (especially since, for whatever reason, I manage to get caulk all over my hands every time I do it, no matter the scale of the job...caulk just seems to creep everywhere...).

Thursday night we kicked off the festivities by deciding not to do any exercising - which for those that know us well, realize is a big deal - and made homemade pizza for dinner (white pizza with sun-dried tomatoes, one of Jo's favorites).  We then went for a nice long walk during which most of the reminiscing described above happened.  We walked to Shorewood to watch the annual bicycle race that is held in town.  It was incredible to watch fifty riders flying around tight street corners at breakneck speeds.  Fortunately, no one crashed although how they avoided it was a mystery to me.
Friday night we had tickets to the Brewer's with our friends, Greg and Rhonda.  We had a nice dinner in the stadium club followed by a thrilling game in which our bottom of the league Brewers managed to dominate the top of the league Braves.  As usual, I included a photo of the sausage race - in which the Chorizo won again (must be the spicy sausage's year, also, you know you are in WI when the newspaper carries a story on designer brats).

Saturday after our morning workouts, we did a few chores around the house, before Jo settled in for an afternoon nap and I caught up on some reading.  Then it was off to dinner at Mader's German restaurant downtown.  We shared weiner schnitzel and knockwurst with sauerkraut both of which included one of our German favorites, spatzel.  Good dinner and the apple strudel with ice cream for dessert made it perfect.  Afterwards, we waddled (it was a lot of food) over to the Marcus theater to see Wicked.  This was our first time to see the show even though it has been on Broadway for years.  Every time we were in New York it was always too difficult to get into the show due to its popularity.  We really enjoyed the production and I especially thought the plot did a nice job of meshing with the movie. 

Sunday was a day of rest and shopping.  We went out hunting new hiking shoes but were unsuccessful in finding both a style and color that either one of us liked.  But there are always more stores to search.  We did find hats for hiking and Jo found a new shirt although I was pretty sure when we left that wasn't on the shopping list (only shoes and hats were!).  The afternoon was spent working a bit in our vegetable garden which continues to struggle this year (that is why there haven't been any pictures as yet).