A Quiet Weekend at Home

We spent a lovely weekend at home enjoying a slower pace and some warmer temperatures for once.  Friday night after a leisurely walk around the neighborhood, we snuggled up to catch a movie and enjoy some homemade sausage and mushroom pizza.

Saturday we started out with our usual exercising and then spent the day reading and enjoying another long hike around town to get outside in the warmth.  Sunday was pretty much the same except we directed our hike towards our favorite bakery where we stopped to partake of a cinnamon roll to reward ourselves for all the walking we had done over the weekend.

I spent the early part of this week starting to get our vegetable beds in shape for the summer as I'm redoing the watering system for the third year in a row.  Still haven't found the perfect system (plus I want to keep on track for the $64 tomato - great book for any home gardener to read).  We are finally starting to see some greening up around the yard, including some bulbs blooming.

Oh My Goodness, It is time to stop

Came out from playing volleyball last night to enjoy this all over my car.  When will it stop this year.  It was 24 degrees outside this morning when we woke up with snow on the ground and ice on the sidewalks.

Chicago Bound

After coming back from Dallas, I had two days at home before packing back up and meeting Jo in Chicago where she had a three day conference and I spent a little time with my sister.  Jo flew in from Miami and I enjoyed a trip on Amtrak's Hiawatha Express (got to love Amtrak's names for the routes).

My sister and I spent a day hitting some of the lesser known Chicago museums as we have visited enough to have cleared our checklist of the bigger ones.  So we spent the morning at the excellent Money Museum managed by the Chicago Federal Reserve.  Fun time learning how the Federal Reserve works along with a nice background on how money evolved over the course of the countries history.  One of the fun facts, to me anyway, was the first two attempts at a national bank both failed.  Not sure how a national bank fails but we managed to do it twice before finally creating the Federal Reserve system in the 1900's. 

After the morning learning all about money, including how to spot counterfeit bills, we enjoyed a tasty lunch then it was up to Andersonville neighborhood to tour the Swedish museum.  Here we learned about Swedish immigrants to the states and their landing in the Midwest.  I remain amazed at how people can uproot themselves from their country of birth, pack one or two trunks, and start all over in a new country where they often don't speak the language.  I have a hard enough time moving from one state to another and that is with a moving van full of my stuff.  On the way home we stopped in the Lincoln Park Conservatory to enjoy seeing some green plants for once since the winter has been so brutal this year.

On Friday, Jo and I headed to Elmhurst for a short visit with our good friends, John and Linda.  Always fun catching up on all the doings for their family.  As per our usual trip with John and Linda we enjoyed a delicious dessert, what is life if not lived around dessert, that Linda whipped up - a peanut butter, brownie, Reese's peanut butter cup trifle.  Fortunately, since it was food eaten while "on vacation" it had no calories, at least for Jo and I.  Saturday it was home to take in an Admirals hockey game with some of Jo's HR team before we collapsed on Sunday.  Jo had managed to sleep in 5 different beds in 10 days so she was exhausted, since it is always hard to sleep the first night in a strange bed.

Final Four in Dallas

I am a bit behind in my posting so I'll catch up today.  Two weeks ago we had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Final Four games in Dallas courtesy of Northwestern Mutual.  They are an NCAA sponsor and as a result tickets were available for us to attend.  To add to the excitement the Badgers had made it through to the Final Four so we had the opportunity to see the play.  So we packed up our Wisconsin red sweatshirts and headed to Dallas - for some hopefully warmer weather (which was not to be, Dallas was a overcast and on the cool side with intermittent rain).

The finals were held at the AT&T stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play.  Yes,. the NCAA Final Four has become so popular that a normal basketball arena is no longer sufficient so they play it in a football stadium with added seats to fill in the field.  If you have never been to the AT&T stadium I would recommend a visit if you are ever in Dallas.  It is the largest indoor stadium I have ever seen.  The video screen alone is worth the visit.  It has incredible clarity for a screen that large and, as we found out, it is actually larger than the basketball court! 

Since Northwestern Mutual is a sponsor we were able to attend many of the weekend's events that mostly had to do with eating, drinking, and chatting with people.  But we did enjoy a concert by the Eagles and Dirk Bentley.  Along with that we had the opportunity to see the various trophies (coaches and teams),get a back of the scenes tour of the AT&T stadium, and to shoot some hoops on the actual basketball court.  Personally, I don't see how the players do it - with the court in a massive arena made it hard to judge where the basket was and that was without someone's hand in my face and 80,000 people yelling at me.  You can get an idea of the inside of the stadium and the noise from the video posted below and this is before the game actually started an people starting cheering.

We were fortunate to have seats about 7 rows up from the floor for the Wisconsin game but our cheering was sufficient to help them pull out a win.  Although, it was a great game going down to a shot in the final seconds deciding the outcome.  We went home Saturday night exhausted from the days festivities as well as the emotional letdown of the loss.

The final game was thrilling as we got to cheer for the CT Huskies which we followed for the time we were in CT.  One of the other key highlights for our time in Dallas was finding a Krispy Kreme doughnut store and enjoying a vanilla cream stuffed one morning.  We also toured the George W Bush museum/library which was an interesting stop especially the section on the Sept 2001 bombings. 

Then all too soon, it was home for me while Jo continued on to Miami for a conference.

Off to Madison

A very quiet week for us, especially after all the excitement from the weekend's basketball games.  The weather warmed a bit, anything out of the low teens is welcome, and the snow continues to melt away.  We still have snow which means that we have had snow on the ground for over 4 months!  The grass looks horrible and many of the bushes are showing brown spots so it is going to be interesting to see what out of the landscape is going to recover from this winter.

On Friday we headed over to Madison for a couple of days.  It has been a while visiting with Kathy and John and we wanted to do a little house shopping while there.  Weather was gorgeous, well at least for this year so far, and we all took a nice walk to soak up some sun.  The house we visited has potential but we need more discussion and review before taking any further steps.  Jo and Kathy also managed to get in a little clothing shopping.  However, the big event for the weekend was watching our Badgers win a thriller in Anaheim against Arizona.  It is now on to Dallas in the Final Four for them which will make watching the games this coming Saturday stressful.  We came home on Sunday to get a few chores done around the house before another week of work and to watch some more college basketball.  It certainly has been an exciting basketball tournament this year.

And that is all the excitement for one week.