Beer Garden - How Wisconsin is That

We hopped on the Amtrak train to Chicago last week to attend a charity affair in Chicago.  Alex's Lemonade Stand (charity dedicated to raising money to fight childhood cancer) held a special dinner where they had celebrity chefs cook dinners for individual tables along with an auction to raise money for this important cause.  This is one of the charities that Northwestern Mutual has chosen to focus on and they had several tables at the event.  Jo and I had nice evening enjoying the great food (our table was a Creole/Mexican mix prepared by John Besh) and talking with Jay and Liz Scott whose courageous daughter started the first Lemonade Stands.

For the weekend, Saturday morning dawned sunny, with bright blue skies, and almost perfect temperature and humidity.  While I headed out for a morning run, Jo hit the elliptical machine for her aerobic workout.  She is still coming to grips with not running any more and I'm still coming to grips with the wear and tear that almost thirty years of running has done to my joints.  In other words we are both fighting against the inevitable, but we always try to remember the key lesson from chemistry - entropy always wins.

On a cheerier note, after our morning aerobic blast we went to Lake Park to practice a little yoga with great views of a very blue Lake Michigan and then it was to the gym for a little lifting to round out our morning exercising.  Then it was home for a well earned lunch.  Later that afternoon we enjoyed a visit from Jo's sister and partner who were in town to celebrate her son's/our nephew's birthday.

To do this in true Wisconsin style we headed to Estabrook Park's beer garden to enjoy some suds and pretzels and the weather.  We had a great time catching up on everyone's latest adventures especially how Drew's new school year of teaching is going.  Then it was time to pick up some pizza, where we enjoyed a sizeable discount due to Kathy's AARP card (one of the few benefits of aging is retail establishments feel obligated to give you discounts on stuff), before eating dinner on our deck and talking into the wee hours of the night (understand that wee for most of us is around 11).  We were joined by our niece, Angela, who updated us on that side of the family.

Sunday brunch was in order to continue the birthday celebrations and then everyone headed back to their respective homes, Jo got a swim in, I did a few clean-up chores around the house, and we watched a movie to end our busy weekend.