Our super awesome trip to Wisconsin

We journeyed north this past weekend to the land of our kin, Wisconsin. It was a long drive, but we managed to entertain ourselves.Evie worked on Car Bingo while driving through Chicago. Then she got engrossed in a DVD of the Electric Company. I think she watched the entire 168 minutes three times on this drive. I guess we'll be getting that one from the library again!
Annalise passed the time with a sucker. She was pretty sticky when we finally got to Madison.

When we arrived the party started. Aunt Becky decided that the Turner family would go out with a bang and she got a whole keg. In Wisconsin, this isn't very impressive because it's only a half barrel. Annalise witnessed her very first tapping this weekend. As far as I know, there was only legal consumption of the Lenie's and the children only were interested in the ice.

Morning came pretty early for us East Coast time zone people. Someone forgot to tell Annalise to sleep in so we were up at 5 am. Yay. Remind us not to go to California until she is a teenager. Anyway, we got an early start on the day. We carted everyone down to the Madison Farmer's Market. We have been to a lot of Farmer's markets and this is probably the best ever. Where else can you get your weekly supply of vegetables and a giant donut??

The sun rises over the capital building. We were there by 7:30 local time. It wasn't too crowded.
Here's the early morning crew getting a drink.
Even Uncle Kevin and Aunt Elizabeth are up and moving.
Probably the cutest tree huggers in all of the State.

On our way out of the farmer's market, Evie found a fountain and Aunt Elizabeth dared her to put her nose on it.
Annalise walks the balance beam with Uncle Kevin.


We left the farmer's market at 8:30 and then we headed to the free zoo that Henry always goes to. Unfortunately, we were too early and the zoo was closed so we passed some time at the park until it opened at 9:30
We saw lots of animals at the zoo and Annalise identified almost all of them. The kids really liked to pose in the animal cut outs. Here's the cutest little bear at the zoo.
And three wild Monkeys.

And that's when we stopped taking pictures. We headed back to the hotel for lunch (by noon local time) and then we all took naps. We went over to the Turners to drink more beer and get ready for church. God must not like when parents have a beer before church because He punished us with 2 little monsters during mass. Annalise didn't even make it into Mass (neither did mom) because she decided it would be more fun to throw an hour long tantrum instead. Post Mass, baptism was looking up. Evie proclaimed and jumped up and down when June was baptised--"She's baptised!!" What joy for the Lord. After the Baptism, there was a rainbow in the sky and Evie said it was a gift for June from the Lord. How sweet.

We headed back to Aunt Becky's for more cake and beer and then back to the hotel around 9 pm local time. We thought that the kids would be so worn out that they would sleep late. Wrong. Annalise's internal alarm clock went off at 5 am again and we were up and swimming at the pool by 6. Lucky us. After brunch at the Turners', we headed for home. They both took pretty good naps and were good in the car, but EVERYONE is going to bed early tonight.

So check Henry's blog and Natalie and Oliver's blog for more pictures.