Wide Open Skies of Boulder

Jo had a board meeting in Boulder that spouses were requested to attend.  So I took one for the team and packed up and joined Jo for a couple of days in Boulder. We landed to bright, sunny skies to really enhance the mountain views.  We stayed right in downtown Boulder with a great view of the Flatirons right outside our window.  While Jo had several meetings to attend they did schedule some downtime for the group and we took advantage of a group hike on the Royal Arch path in perfect 70 degree weather (it was 88 degrees the next day, so great/lucky planning on that one).  It is always fun to hike in the mountains although not sure how it might compare to our lofty Lapham Peak hike from a couple of weeks ago (remember that was all the way up to 1,200 feet - or so).

While in Boulder we had the time to see our sister-in-law, Pat, and her two boys that are in the Boulder area (Karl and Nick).  Karl and Nick had us over for dinner one night and prepared excellent kabobs on the grill with home baked cookies for dessert, courtesy of Pat (notice that was home baked, not home made!).  We finished with Limoncello that Karl had made which was the best that I had ever tasted.  Fortunately, he was willing to share his recipe and we plan to try and reproduce it since it was quite tasty.  It was fun catching up on all the Colorado family doings since we don't get out to Colorado all that much.

We came home on Friday and spent most of Saturday settling back in and having Jo fight a slight cold she caught somewhere on the Boulder trip.  Sunday we decided to see the birds at the Audubon Nature Center and spend the afternoon hiking their trails.  We saw a Barn and Barred owl that were just amazing.  Very interesting to see these birds up close like that.  We actually had a Barred owl at our house in Connecticut that we saw once but never quite that close.  Then it was home to catch up on chores and preparing mentally for another work week - well at least Jo had to do that.

Family Visits

Two weeks ago we had visits from several of our family members.  We started off with a visit from my sister who came up from Chicago for the day.  We toured the latest exhibit at the art museum and then enjoyed lunch with Jo at the US Bank cafeteria (it is better than that sounds - it is a multiple station cafeteria run by one of the best names in chefdom in Milwaukee).  Afterwards it was out to Boswell bookstore for an hour or so of browsing and Cheryl doing her best to keep the place in business.  Then it was home to catch up on all the family gossip before she had to head back to the train station for her trip home.  It was great seeing her and she "conveniently" left one of her books by Jo's seat at the dinner table.  "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" - Jo swears it was by design but it was completely innocent as she was repacking her bag.  But quite apropos I would say given Jo's penchant for hoarding.

The next day our brother-in-law, Michael, came in from Omaha.  He was attending the PGA tournament at Whistling Straights and was able to spend a night with us between rounds.  Spent the time talking about what is happening in Omaha and enjoying a great breakfast at our favorite nearby diner - Benji's in Shorewood.  He headed out in the morning and then later that day we were joined by Kathy and John.  They we in town for Drew's birthday and to attend a Brewer's game with us.  That evening we got to see the Brewer's win (which is a pretty rare event this year) and enjoy a hot dog (for me since I'm a purist) or brat (for Jo since she likes them better than dogs and is more interested in pleasing her stomach than being a baseball food purist) at the game for dinner.  Since what is baseball without a hot dog and a Coke.

On Sunday we we joined Drew and Amy for brunch to celebrate Drew's birthday at Wolf Peach which has an interesting menu.  After brunch it was back to the house for Drew to open a few presents and to partake in some birthday cake, just in case you weren't stuffed from brunch.

State Fair

Last week we continued to enjoy harvesting beans and cucumbers from the garden.  We now have a good supply of frozen beans for the upcoming winter.  Also made our first batch of sun-dried tomatoes for future pasta creations.  Still haven't had any of the full size tomatoes ripen although there are several on the plants and it appears our blueberries are finally finished.  We had another fun and exciting weekend.  Friday Jo treated me to a birthday dinner at Sanford's in Milwaukee.  We have been meaning to try out Sanford's for about two years and finally managed to get there.  We chose the 7 course "surprise" menu to which Jo added the wine pairing menu (more on that in a bit).  The surprise menu is seven courses selected by the chef and you don't find out what they are until they show up at the table.  We absolutely loved six out of the seven (the oyster and foie gras course wasn't a hit with us) and we were stuffed by the end.  Jo's wine pairings were all interesting but she found out that starting with a cosmo before dinner and then having seven half glasses of wine left her a bit over-served and made for a bit of a headache on Saturday.

Saturday we headed to Madison in the morning to show off our condo to John, Linda, and their daughter Jenna.  They came over to enjoy the Farmer's Market and the botanical gardens.  We had a great time grazing our way through all the bakeries around the square before heading out for lunch on State Street and getting to some good suggestions on how to renovate our condo.  John did manage to manuever his large SUV out of our basement parking although there was some tight moments.  We are thinking maybe a Smart car is in our future.  After lunch we headed back home to join our neighborhood block party.  Spent the afternoon/evening talking with some new neighbors we hadn't met yet and catching up with some old ones while enjoying watching the young kids run around in their "Frozen" princess costumes.


Sunday was State Fair day.  We tried something new this year and biked to the State Fair.  There is a bike path that runs from downtown Milwaukee out to the fair and it was a really convenient way to get there and avoid all the traffic and parking hassles.  The bike racks are in a different location than where we would normally park so we did the fair circuit in a new direction and it was like a whole new fair (yes, we are easily amused by things).  Jo got in her annual cow petting and we were almost run over by a run-away pig at the pig judging.  The clever thing figured out how to bump open the gate in the judging pen with its nose and then took off into the crowd - pigs can really scamper.  We enjoyed the usual healthy fair food and managed to eat something wrapped in bacon (tater tots this year  - quite tasty but what isn't when wrapped in bacon and deep fried) along with our favorite fair dessert - whoppie pie with buttercream filling (yum).  Lastly, Jo just had to do one of the rides.

Lapham Peak Hike

From the cool weather of June we have moved into summer with 18 days of 80 degree weather placing 2015 in second place for the longest streak of above 80 degrees days in a row ( the record was 22 days in 1921).  Coupled with a complete lack of rain for the last 3 week has made for some beautiful weather although not all that great for the lawn and plants.  We decided to take advantage of the the gorgeous days and headed out on Saturday for a hike.  We selected the Lapham Peak portion of the Wisconsin Ice Age trail.  Lapham peak (at a whopping 1,233 feet) is the highest point in Waukesha County and is named for Increase Lapham (Jo and I love that name and if we ever decide to start having children - the boy's name is going to be Increase!).  From the tower at the top of Lapham Peak you have a wonderful vista looking all the way to downtown Milwaukee and to Holy Hill.  We had a great 3.5 hour hike through the woods, hills, and meadows filled with black eyed susans and other miscellaneous wildflowers.  Afterwards we treated ourselves to lunch at a diner/coffee shop in Jefferson before heading to Madison and well deserved short nap.

We spent the rest of the weekend in Madison doing some shopping, catching up with Kathy, and just enjoying our new home away from home.  Saturday evening we ran into someone that we worked with at Rohm and Haas and we hadn't seen in over 20 years outside the gelato shop (notice the ongoing food theme).  What a small world especially since she was just visiting Madison because of her son attending school there.  Sunday morning we hiked over to Lake Wingra and parts of the arboretum before snacking on some pancakes at Mickie's Dairy Barn.  Each pancake was the size of a dinner plate and unfortunately we both ordered two.  A bit much, but at least we had hiked a little to help justify eating them.  We did notice that many of our hikes seem to end in us eating somewhere.

Afterwards it was home to Milwaukee.  The garden is starting to produce copious quantities of beans.  We have already frozen eight packs for the winter and the green beans are just starting to arrive.  We had our first cucumbers as well so we prepared a batch of bread and butter pickles.  We have also enjoyed a fairly steady harvest of blueberries for the first time.  Not a lot at any one picking but enough that we have had blueberries on our cereal for most of the last two weeks.