The Brittish Invasion Sweeps Kenosha

Sara and I have been married now for exactly 1,250 days! We've had some great times amid those many days, but one of the best ever was the night we went to the Draper Days festival back in Utah and I made a complete ninny of myself on stage, thereby winning an electric guitar signed by The Beach Boys. After my spectacle was over we stayed and listend to a Beatles Tribute band and watched the fireworks. It was a fabulous night!

Since then we've been crazy about watching Beatles Tribute bands. We've learned that a summer night featuring the Faux Fab Four always leads to a lot of fun. Sara either had her belly or her arms full of Zoe last Summer, rendering us unable to see any Tribute bands, so this year we made up for it by going all the way down to Kenosha's St. Therese Church Festival to watch The Brits impersonate the world's greatest band. They did a very good job, I declare, though I can't say they were the toppermost of the poppermost. They knew every song (even the odd requests) by heart, and each band member played his instrument exactly as the album dictates. They could have used some help on their Liverputian accents, however.

This was Zoe's first experience with a mop-top, and she did not faint, but she did get down and dance with conviction, making her daddy very proud of her. Aren't outdoor summer concerts the best? It really doesn't even matter what the music is, its just a ball to sit there and listen...and chase Zoe all over the park. It was great to talk to Beatles fans both young and old there, no other band could be so recognized by such a wide variety of people (some wider than others). Paul, Ringo, if you're reading this, I love you guys!

A Midsummer Night's Game

July was the month of lawn games. The grass spends six months of the year covered in snow, and two more months looking all brown and nizasty. During the 4 months of the year that it is looking pristine and pretty we celebrate its health by beating the living daylights out of it with blunt objects and mallets. For this, my first Fathers Day, Zoe got me a croquet set and a bag of Bocce Balls. For those of you who aren't familiar with Bocce Ball, you're missing a lot. I don't remember if this sport is as famous back in Utah as it is out here, but all's I gotta say is yehaw! We've read up on all the rules and might soon become gold medalists. Except we really suck. But there's something very therapeutic about hurling a heavy chunk of rock as close as you can to a smaller chunk of rock. And speaking of strange lawn games, we've discovered an odd bean bag hurling game that always seems to show up at tailgating events. I don't know how to play this game, but people are quite serious about it. Ah the summer.

Summer at the Zoo

We were fiscally responsible at the beginning of the summer and got a yearly membership to the Milwaukee County Zoo. We can now drive right by the ticket booth and park for free whenever we want to mosey about the zoo looking for animal action. The zoo isn't too far away from our house, and makes for a great place for a leisurley stroll, so we've been going just about every week. I've got more pictures of the zoo than you could shake a stick at, but I thought I'd post only these two as they represent the coolese zoo moments of the summer. The elephants at the zoo are always doing way cool stuff, including the day this picture was taken. Ruth was standing at the very edge of her little cliff there reaching all the way to the branches of the tree across the way. That was pretty cool. I love elephants, they're such strange creatures. Everyone knows they come from a different planet.

I'm not really sure if the tiger at the zoo wants to eat Zoe, or just nibble on her face. The zoo stays open until 9 on summer Wednesdays, and we've discovered that in the late evening the big cats do their prowling and eating. Every time we show up to look at the tiger he stops doing his laps and comes straight to Zoe and stares at her for a few seconds. I'd like to thank the good people that make the glass between Zoe and the tiger. Thanks to all of our time at the zoo this summer I've begun to rethink my career...I want to be a veterinarian. Or perhaps a popcorn vendor.

The ongoing saga of the Favre

Given some of his recent career decisions, any Wisconsinian who doesn't live under a rock Up North somewhere has become very aware of and developed a strong opinion about Brett Favre. That opinion is always somewhere along the lines of, "its not his fault, aliens must have somehow gained control of his brain". Since I'm not really sure if this has been the headline news in the real world that it has been out here, I guess I ought to explain that after his retirement at the end of the last football season, Favre spent the month of July announcing his return to the Packers, getting rejected by the Packers, talking the Packers back into reinstating him, going back on his own reinstatement, talking to other teams, and eventually being traded to the New York Jets. Now remember that Favre was traded from the Falcons to the Packers in '92, and became thier starting quarterback after the fourth game of that season. He started for every Packers game from that day on, until his retirment in 2008. That's dedication. Or se we all thought. Sara and I are absolutely blown away by how much press coverage this got out here. I saw grown men crying in the streets the day he announced his retirement, and they all but closed my office early that day.

I really enjoy asking local football fans (which constitute all but about .08% of the population) about what they think of Favre's trade. No one really knows how to explain how they feel about it, probably because they feel it blasphemous to say anything negative about their fallen demi-god. I really like how our friend Dale explained it. He says (with my slight embelishment) that this is an Adam and Eve decision that has to be made by Packers fans, for there are two conflicting commandments, "Thou shalt love the Favre, thy god with all thy heart, might mind and strength" versus, "Thou shalt honour thy Packers and thy Brewers so that your summers may be long throughout the land". The Wisconsin sports fan can not keep both commandments, thus they live in fear of being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, flowing with beer and sausage, into the lone and dreary wilderness (Chicago). I enjoy a game of football, but I'm no fanatic, I've always just made sure I knew how the Packers are doing, and always hoped they do well. It'll be fun this year to check up on the Packers' second branch (The Jets) to see how they're doing. Somewhere on my left shoulder a little devil wishes that the Packers win the superbowl and the Jets get totally skunked. Wow, this post has become long, looks like I've once again become immersed enough in the Wisconsin culture to drone on about it for many paragraphs. Let me know what you think of Mr. Favre.

Go Pack Go!

Yeah, so this is a pretty awesome picture of our little crew. No, they didn't kick Sara out due to her wearing a Chicago shirt. They sure have put together some extensive gift shops there, too. Someday I'd like to actually go and see a Packers game, but I really doubt it will ever happen. You have to know somebody to get tickets, since they're sold out for the rest of time. You have to be on a 100+ year waiting list to just buy a ticket. There are actually people who put their new born baby on the waiting list, and that baby in turn passes the position along to his or her progenitors in hopes that one of them might actually get a ticket. Those fancy suite seats are available if you want to sign a 7 year lease for around 60,000 dollars per year. Of course, you get that box of 20 or so seats for all the games of the season. If you work it all out, that's 60,000 dollars divided by 20 seats divided by 8 games per year times 7 years, that's only $2,625 per seat. Quite affordable. That price doesn't include the $30 for the cheesehead. And how dare I forget to mention that on the way up to Green Bay you can stop at the Kohler toilet museum for their three hour tour.

Our next kid's name will be Vince

Nathen and I drove home together after we picked them up from the airport. On the way there, he told me that we should try to convince Jennifer and Sara to go up to Green Bay to check out Lambeau Field. You can tell by these pictures who runs the families here...da boyz!

In past posts I have tried my best to explain Packer love and how it is a major string in the tapestry of Wisconsin culture. One can never fully understand how cool the Packers really are unless he or she has made a pilgrimage to Green Bay. Lambeau field is absolutely immaculate, its like the Palace of Versailles minus The Sun King plus Favre the Great. And the tours they give are very good. They've even managed to hire guides with thick Wisconsin accents. You get to sit in the most expensive seats, walk through the players' tunnel, walk on the field and hear all about the history of the team. I'm very glad that Nathen convinced us all to go up there. It's one of those little trips that we always said we wanted to do, but had never gotten around to. The trip up there was only an hour and a half, and Green Bay itself is very pretty, although we had a really hard time finding a place to get a good picture of the water.

Playin' at the Piper

I thought these were some pretty good pictures of Annie and Zoe at the Organ Piper pizza joint. This was definitely Zoe and Annie's favorite eatin' place.

Attack of the Killer Elmo

When I was growing up, my favorite toy was a My Pet Monster critter who I named Marcus. He was terrifying in a very cute sort of way. We discovered on Zoe's birthday that Tickle Me Elmo is cute in a very terrifying sort of way. Annie and Zoe hovered around attentively as I loosened the twist tie bindings that were restraining this fuzzy beast in his cardboard cell. His beady eyes and trusting grin deceived me into releasing him onto the carpet to begin his dance of death. Once he sprung into life the area was instantly vacated by our little girls both retreating into their corners in hopes that Elmo wouldn't see them. And then the crying began. Elmo giggled and laughed because he knew he had won, and that we were forever in his servitude.

Since that fateful day we have regained the status of dominant predator in the Elmo-McArthur eco-system. He now does as we please, and only laughs when it is clearly appropriate. Zoe has warmed up to him and has even become sort of an Elmo whisperer. Once he begins slapping his knee and wobbling about, she cautiously knocks him over and runs away, before he has a chance to see her, thus gaining the advantage. It really is a pretty amazing toy, you just push his tummy and he stands up and does his little act. This is the world's first step towards robot dominance. All those sci-fi shows are wrong, if we ever get to a point where every family has a Rosie-like robot at their service, each of these animatrons will be red and fuzzy with a big orange nose, and evil browless eyes.

Zoe turns One!

Wow, a year has passed since my inflated wife waddled into the hospital and brought our precious little Zoe into the world. I sure love that little kid. I proved my love for her by showering her with far more presents than I should have on her first birthday. It was great to have Zoe's aunt and uncle and cousin out to help us celebrate. We put all three to work in an effort to capture this once in a life time experience in a well-wrapped package of Kodak gold. I was on the cell phone with one grandma while Jennifer held up the web-cam for the other. Sara was in charge of the "snappy" camara and Annie was in charge of testing out the toys when Zoe had moved on to the next one. We always put Nathen in charge of the video camara since he's tall enough to get the entire perspective.

Don't worry, I will spare you the pictures of Zoe making a Hiroshimatic mess with her homemade Elmo cake, but I can't avoid posting this picture of her yelping with disdain as we tried to remove her from her airplane car to get ready for bed. After her bath she spent the remainder of the evening relaxing in her new wagon. To this day, she can spend an hour getting in and out of that wagon, its our favorite babysitter. We're very fortunate to have a good little girl as part of our family, we're big Zoe fans. I'm surprised at how often I wonder to myself what she's gonna be like in a year from now. I thought it was a ball to watch my Sea Monkeys grow, but this is at least ten times better. Happy Birthday Zoe!

The Air Up There

Yep, we hauled Nathen, Jennifer and Annie up to the top of the Sears Tower. This is all part of the Kason and Sara tour of Chicago (admission to buildings not included). Just the other day Sara was telling me that we have far too many pictures from the observation deck on top of the Sears Tower. She's probably right. I am quite proud of myself though for having not posted all of them on my blog. Here's Nathen dancing with Annie atop the Western Hemisphere's tallest skyscraper. Just look at those building way down there, from the ground those buildings are no short chunks of steel, but from big daddy Sears, they look like toothpicks. Zoe has a strange addiction to the step that surrounds the telescope thingies in the observation deck. As soon as the elevator gets to the top floor she makes a bee-line to one of them and steps up and down the entire time, while the rest of us are pointing and picturing.

Sara recently informed me of an upcoming Chicago skyscraper scheduled to be completed in 2011, the Chicago Spire. I'm so excited about this I might wet my pants. Check out the new Chicago skyline:

The skyscraper will be 150 stories tall (compared to the Sears Tower's 110 stories) and when completed will be the Western Hemisphere's tallest building (by the way, the CN Tower in Toronto is taller than the Sears Tower, but not a skyscraper). Look how close it'll be to Navy Pier, too! The coolest thing about this joint is that it will be twisted from top to bottom, and designed by Santiago Calatrava, the same guy who did the Milwaukee Art Museum. This isn't some architect's pipe dream either, the foundation has already been poured and the plans have been set in motion. For any of you skyscraper fans, the wikipedia site is worth a read, be careful though, as you click from building to building, you will get lost in a fantastic maze of super structures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Spire. The world's in a skyscraper fever pitch right now, with most of the action happening in Asia, so its nice to have some fun getting built close to home as well. Oh if only I could visit the United Arab Emirates to see the completion of the Burj Dubai...ho hum.

The Pier, Pizza, and a Promenade

On the way back to Milwaukee from Nauvoo we made a touristic stop in Chicago. This was our first time to walk the length of Navy Pier, and I'm still not certain if I liked it or not. I think the view at the end of the long plank is worth the walk, but I can't say it was worth the parking fee. It was a beautiful day, and I really like this picture of us against the Chicago skyline. No matter how many times I've been to Chicago I can never get over its sheer immensity and energy. What a great town. We saddled up the strollers and took a hike up and down Michigan Avenue this time as well. When it comes down to famous streets in big cities Michigan Avenue just about fits up there with the Champs Elyses and Park Avenue. I guess the big difference is that I was hoping to see some world-famous monument or building as we marched from cross street to cross street, but I never really saw anything. Maybe I'm just not well enough versed in my Chicago lore.

One thing I do know about Chicago though is that the best pizza joint in town is Giordano's. You better believe we patronized this fine establishment and stuffed ourselves with stuffed pizza. The good people at Giordano's know how to make the perfect pizza pie, but they do so under the premise that it takes about 45 minutes to turn an order into a product. This is why the picture above features the blurry versions of Zoe and Annie. In 45 minutes the two of them had run out of new things to chew on and throw across the room and had begun to channel their energy through more wiggly pursuits. Notice that all the spillable vessels had been relocated to the less reachable ends of the table. The pizza was great and there were no left overs. Mmm Giordano's.