phase two: eastward

Sunday it was onward to Chicagoland. We stopped in beautiful Oak Park, IL to visit Crissa and her new digs. It was really good to see her and we got a lot of good decorating done in a really short time. Her apartment is lovely and I can't wait to go back and help solve more decorating dilemas. We went to Portillo's and I made her share a chocolate cake shake with me. Yum.
After Crissa it was time for Highland Park.

We decided to have family game night. First we played Clue, which I won by a landslide (Mr. Green in the lounge with the candlesticks). Then Tim offered to school us at Scrabble. He lost horribly. Alex is proudly pointing out that she won (which only happened because I gave her my J).


The next day we headed on up to Milwaukee for a day of greatness. First stop was the Miller Brewery Tour. The first part of the tour was a 15 minute video that started "Since the beginning of time, man has been in search of a thing called MILLER TIME." It only got better after that. The following pictures are in order of brewing proccess, not tour stops.

This is the room with the big copper things

these steel ones are right next to the copper ones
(this room didn't smell like beer so I wasn't paying attention)

BEER!
lots and lots and lots of itthis room is 5 football fields long and stacked 20ft high with beer
it is all shipped out and refilled every 24 hours
that's a lot of beerthe caves
no clue what they were for

alex loves a good caveoh yeah so I forgot my ID in Illinois so instead of a beer tasting, I got a pop tasting.
much less exciting
felt like a fool

After the tour we hung out downtown for a while, bought some CD's and found not only a design store (with really great light fixtures and a cool plastic chair) but 2 doors down was the stationery store. Alex and Tim let me wander around for a while (they rule). It was the best.

I found these little fortune things and made us all pick one and this was Alex's. It was so great because that's what we were doing!

Game Time!Oh yeah, btw, the point of going to Milwaukee was to see the Brewers/Cardinals game. It was a good time. Tim was excited for batting practice so when Pujols was batting we went to catch home runs in the left field bleachers. We didn't catch any home runs but I yelled at Chris Carpenter and he threw a ball up to me!! I may or may not have panicked and made Tim catch it (but then demand that he let me keep it).

woo!

fireworks inside!

THE SAUSAGE RACE!!!this was the only part of the night when they were both excited at the same time. polish won (of course).

Tuesday was go home day. We went to see Eli on the way home (not really on the way) at Starbucks. Tim was pretty excited about what my cup said. We even tried a Peanut Butter Whoopie Pie which Eli wouldn't give to me until I actually said "Whoopie Pie"

Then we drove for a long time.
The End.