Wisconsin

Oh boy. Lots of pictures from this awesome trip. Get ready :) A couple months ago Tanner told me he was going to have to go to Wisconsin for a fire training for work. He had asked if I would want to fly out for the weekend and meet him and we could hit up some baseball games, etc. Well, I would have had to be off anyway because of Harvey, so we decided I should just come for the whole time. Brilliant idea. The training was in Marinette. A pretty small town right on the border of Michigan and right on the Green Bay. We had our bags packed and flew into Green Bay on Monday and drove about an hour north to Marinette.

Harvey wasted no time making himself at home and getting into anything and everything. I might as well just say right now that he was so funny in the hotels (we stayed in 3 different ones this trip). He loved running around and tearing the place apart. Playing with the phones, dragging the garbage cans around, playing with whatever cups he could find. The best was him on the bed. He sure didn't want to go to sleep. He would stand up and face plant into pillows and giggle and do it over and over again. It really was quite hilarious. I wish I would have videoed it!

After checking in we wandered across the street to a little park and then over to a little marina.

The next day we had breakfast together in the hotel and saw dad off to his training. Harvey and I then jogged a few miles over to the beach. Um. It was kind of a dumpy beach. He had some fun playing in the sand for a little while but wasn't so sure about the water, which I was actually surprised about because he loves the swimming pool. I guess an endless, dark body of water is a little different.

 

 Then we went back to the hotel and napped. Glorious. Oh man. He napped so good all week! I think after he woke up we walked to a grocery store (we had a car but I couldn't drive it) and the walk was a lot farther than I expected. I was pooped from our beach journey. But it was still fun. We wandered around outside a bit waiting for dad. When Tanner got back we drove up to a different beach across the bridge in Michigan. Way nicer. Fun little park. Here's more park/beach pictures if you haven't seen enough.

Peek a boo.

 

Tanner wanted me to try to do this and I could not even get across two. Pathetic.

 

He stood like this staring at the water for at least a whole minute. Funny.

 

 The next morning we jogged to another park. It was cool and really pretty with tons of trees but there were a million mosquitos, so that part was less than awesome and Harv's interest and my patience for the blood suckers didn't last as long as I was hoping and Marinette was running out of things to offer us.

Just enjoying the ride.

 

 We wandered back and played for a bit and then went swimming. The water was cold and he mostly just liked the hot tub. Me too :) Then it was nap time and after we went across the street to the library, which actually had a really cool little kids section.

 

 He actually "played" with the horses. Besides cars and some planes I've never seen him give life to inanimate objects. Our branding experience maybe helped. On the left  he gave the horse a drink when I told him to and dunked his head in the bucket. And the right he was prancing the horse around on the ground. Didn't last too terribly long but still so cute. 

Where's waldo!?

 

Then we wandered around the park we went to first but didn't play at too much because it had just rained. We happened upon some people watching some ducks and heard the story about how the mama duck nested with her eggs just outside the visitor center right by this water and that morning was the first time she had brought the babies to the water. So we watched them for awhile and it was so dang cute!

 

He was loving throwing rocks in the water.

 

There was just a little bit of goose poop around the place.

 

When dad came back we drove across the bridge again to Menominee and went downtown. They had sailboat races each Wednesday night in the summer. So we wandered in some cute shops on their river street, got some yummy sandwiches and ice cream cones and wandered over to the marina to watch the excitement.

This picture could have been so cute but Harvey was done being held, etc.

The next day was Tanner's last day of training and he got done early so we got to head down to Milwaukee earlier than we were planning. He LOVED his training. Like was so excited to go and had such a great time every day. Basically all it was was fighting fires. They had a really short in class session the first day but the rest of it they were outside fighting gnarly fires.

We stopped and switched out to a non work paid for rental car in Green Bay and continued on to Milwaukee. On the way down we stopped at Whistling Straights Golf Course. It's where the PGA Championship is going to be played. It was raining and cold but that course and club house were AWESOME. We spent some time getting the necessities in the club house and as we were about to leave and Tanner was making a pit stop, I saw a golf cart pull up and step out with a very large trophy. We wandered around back and they were doing footage with the championship trophy at the back of the clubhouse. Tanner was SO excited about that. So we watched that and then got to get some close up pictures with the trophy and the guy was pointing out previous winner's names on the trophy. VERY good timing!

Harvey and I kept ourselves happy with peanut butter M&M's in the back seat.

Tanner found a really cool hotel online for us and when we got there it DID NOT disappoint. Easily the coolest hotel I've ever stayed at. It was the old Pabst Brewery. Hopefully the pictures give you an idea of how cool it is, even though it was cooler in person :)

 Harvey LOVED the place. All the rooms are around the outside of the big brew kettles and it's all open and sweet. Harvey would run outside the room and around our "balcony" floor just squealing. On the floor with all the kettles he would just run all over the place. There was a cool mezzanine place too with cool furniture and window sills that he climbed into etc. It was fun. And the rooms were AWESOME too.

Surprise surprise. He found the garbage cans.

 

 We stayed in that night and ordered from the restaurant that was part of the hotel kind of. Or just attached to it. BEST pretzel I have EVER eaten. I'm basically just salivating just thinking about it. Oh my gosh. I told Tanner I'd fly back to Milwaukee just to eat that pretzel. The other food we got was pretty amazing too.

First thing the next morning we went to the Harley Davidson Museum. Somewhere Tanner has been pretty excited about seeing for a long time. It was actually pretty cool. Harvey did great there, as long as we were letting him run wild :)

Then back to hotel for nap and after that we went on the Miller Brewery tour. Very interesting. I think it's fascinating to learn how anything is made and this brewery was huge and they make A TON of beer. So crazy. The tour took us across multiple blocks. And there were different buildings where the beer was running in tubes across to. I really would like to learn more about the whole process. It was just a tiny scratch of the whole process, but still interesting.

 

They even gave free samples at the end ;) ;)  (No dad, we didn't have any).
After that we dropped Tanner off at a baseball game, and he had a front row seat! And we drove downtown to a lakeside park and happened upon a Polish fest so we entered and wandered around there. I ate some awesome Polish food and I think Harvey was pretty entertained as well.

 

The endless polka stage

 

 Softest dogs I've ever experienced. Some type of Polish sheep dog. Harvey was a fan :)

One of my favorite pictures ever.

 Then we went back and he went to bed while I waited for Tanner. He had a great time at the game. The next morning we went to Betty Brinn's Children's Museum. That place was awesome. So many cool things and all were totally adequate for Harvey to enjoy and have fun with. Man we could have stayed there forever. I wish we had something like that close to us. We had so much fun with him there.

Tanner just having a little fun on his own :)

Whew...home stretch here folks. After that we went to lunch at the Lakefront Brewery which was really cool and really good. They had the best fries and root beer I've probably ever tasted.

Then it was off to our family night at the baseball game. It was so much fun. Harvey miraculously fell asleep and stayed asleep for over two hours of the game. We had to check out of the hotel and so he didn't get a nap before the game. Then they had an OAR concert after which was really really fun and cool. We didn't stay for the whole thing because we were driving back up to Green Bay that night and Harvey was done with having to be sitting in one place.

Dancin' to the music!

It was a short stay in a hotel just by the airport and a just right morning flight out. Harv slept on the plane again and really did great flying and in the airport and everywhere. He is a fun travel buddy. This was the first just our family vacation in a long time and the first real one with Harvey and Tanner and I. It was much needed and actually kind of hard to come home. Lots of fun memories and great times.  Time to start planning another one :)

He's not sleeping. But apparently airplane floors are where it's at.