Brinker Family: September 2008

My family spent last weekend in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with about 80 other family members. We all went for Todd's cousins wedding, and we had a blast! We drove up Thursday and started enjoying our vacation right away. We had dinner with some other family members and then the kids swam until 11PM! We spent Friday at the Milwaukee County Zoo. We were able to get in free with our Fort Wayne Zoo pass - which was an added bonus. It is a beautiful zoo with lots of trees and big animals that we don't have at our zoo. The weather was perfect and we really enjoyed ourselves. The kids each took a turn with the camera, and they actually took better pics than I thought they would! Riley is getting pretty good at it. He is asking for a digital camera for Christmas. Maybe he is ready for one. Friday night we went to Stone Fire Pizza for dinner with Jody & Susie's family and Krista & Steve. It is basically an upscale Chuck E. Cheese. They had great food and bumper cars inside the building! It was a little pricey, but the kids had fun.

Saturday the kids swam in the morning, and then we went to the wedding. It was beautiful! The bride and groomed looked fabulous, and you could tell they really enjoyed the day. We went to the reception and had a good time. It was a late evening, but we were glad we traveled there to share it with the family.

Sunday morning we went to church in Milwaukee. After I dropped the kids off at their classes, I went upstairs for Bible study. Shortly after it started, I heard some commotion behind me. A baby squirrel had ran in after someone and was running around the auditorium! Women were screaming and jumping up on the pews. The men started chasing it around and finally got it cornered. The problem was they didn't know what to do then. One man grabbed an empty trash can and they chased it inside. After they took it outside, the man in front of me turned around and said, "Don't worry, that has never happened here before!" Let me just say that it was difficult to focus on our Bible study after that! We enjoyed meeting the members there. They were very friendly, and they gave us some good suggestions about what to do that afternoon.

We went to a science museum called Discovery World. It was very cool. They had a tank where you could pet stingrays, slipper lobsters, horseshoe crabs, a small shark, and starfish. They also had things like a flight simulator and a bed of nails to lay on. After we spent a few hours there, we went outside along the shore of Lake Michigan. It was so beautiful! There was an art museum next door to Discovery World, and the roof opened up to look like wings. At 5pm every day they close. We stayed and watched them. It was so neat to see! We had never seen a building like that before.

Monday morning we woke up, let the kids swim, and then started toward home. We decided to take our time. We visited the Jelly Belly Factory in Wisconsin. They had a sample bar where you could try as much as you wanted. Todd even tried some of the gross flavors - vomit, pencil shavings, moldy cheese, toothpaste, and booger! I couldn't even watch his face while he ate them. They also had the delicious flavors. Then we went on the train tour of the factory. When we finished the tour, they gave us handfuls of samples to take home. That was a great end to the weekend. I am trying to post a slideshow that I made but I am having trouble. If I can't figure it out, I will just post some pics.