Tag: WI sports

Badgers, Brewers, and Bears for me :)

Posted on

Week in My Life – Day 7: Sunday

We made it! The final day in my Week in My Life with Mel from Adventuroo, and I survived. I’ll admit, it’s been hard work and some late nights, remembering to capture all the everyday moments I wanted to share with you all, figuring out what I wanted to say about everything so you got a true glimpse into our lives, and getting each picture edited and uploaded here for your viewing pleasure.

But you know what? It’s been great! I’m so glad I undertook this endeavor because I think looking back on this record of these 7 days years from now to see how we all looked, how little D was, and what our daily routine was will be pretty special. So here’s how my last day went down…

I know yesterday I said I was going to document our sports moments this weekend, but today’s Brewers vs. Cardinals game got moved to a 7:05pm start time, since the Texas vs. Detroit series ended yesterday. That meant ours was now the only game being played today, so they pushed it back to be a night game for tv.

Total boo on that, since night games are harder for D, what with the staying up late and being at the ball park way past her bedtime. Plus it totally screwed up our tailgating plans, because R was making jambalaya for it today and now we didn’t feel like lugging all the stuff for it out there.

Night games we usually park outside the park lots and walk in, which isn’t conducive for tailgating. Plus doing my post after another night game would mean staying up way late for me again, and I just got caught back up on my sleep from last week. So anyway… A change of post plans.

Instead of Brewers game pictures, I thought I’d share a little of our outside time this afternoon since it turned out to be a really nice Fall day.

D took a nap from 11:00 this morning until almost 12:30, then had some lunch and we headed outside to play with Daddy while he listened to the Packers on the radio and cooked the jambalaya in the driveway since it wasn’t going to Miller Park with us.

These were all taken around 2:00pm and prove that D was a little less enthused to be “jumping” in the pile of leaves than we expected. They were also taken with a real camera, not my iPhone this time. My treat, you’re welcome.

So that’s that! I hope you’ve all enjoyed sharing a week of my life with me. I know I’ve discovered some great blogs and bloggers through this process, and hopefully some feel the same about me. Like I said, this has been kind of a marathon blogging experience for me, so now I need to rest my feet. I’m gonna take a little break, but I’ll be back in a few days, nice and refreshed. Stay tuned!

Week in My Life. The End.

Posted on

Week in My Life – Day 6: Saturday

Seeing as I don’t normally post on weekends, you may be wondering what I’m doing here. Well, we’re still in the midst of Week in My Life over at Adventuroo, so I decided I’d give you all a glimpse of what my weekend life is like as a little treat. I see you’re thrilled. Excellent!

I couldn’t figure out what I was going to document for today, since I really didn’t feel like doing the whole day. 1.) I don’t have enough energy to run around snapping a picture of every hour, and 2.) I’m really not all that exciting and didn’t want to bore you to tears. So I chose to capture the sporting moments of this weekend. Wisconsin sports are ON FIRE right now, and this weekend holds both a Badgers football and Brewers baseball game. We’re big fans, so I wanted to show you how we here in SM land root on the home teams.

Today the Badgers played Indiana at 11am. It was a home game at Camp Randall, and our Homecoming. Go Badgers! Unfortunately it ended up being probably the least enthusiastic Badgers cheering section in our house in a long time. It wasn’t a super important game to get all fired up about since we were favored to win by 40, but still. 2/3 of the Badger contingent spent the majority of the game doing this…

And then there was me, stuck watching a good portion from behind one of the 5 loads of laundry I did this morning. Awesome. (but remember, at least it was only laundry, no other cleaning since i did all that crap last night. wahoo!)

D woke up a little over an hour into the game, and immediately began cheering on top of Daddy. Fortunately there were plenty of “touchdowns!” to cheer about today.

Since we didn’t exactly have the most exciting Badgers game viewing party for you, here are some bonus pics of D from this morning. She was playing in the bathroom as I got ready and then was enthralled by the animals on Jack Hanna’s children’s nature show on tv. I’m not really a fan of plopping her in front of the idiot box, but she LOVES animals and I figured it was relatively educational.

Tomorrow we’re going to Game 6 of the NLCS when the Brewers come home in a must-win situation against the Cardinals, so I should have a little more to show for that one. Hopefully the right team wins. Go Brewers!

 

Posted on

Week in My Life – Day 3: Wednesday

This Week in My Life with Adventuroo is rolling right along, so let’s see how Wednesday played out, shall we? In case you need a recap, you can check out Monday and Tuesday here and here.


Just as a reminder, I’m focusing on documenting the “after work” hours of my days here, since those are what’s most important to me. However, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek as to what my desk looks like during all those hours I’m hiding from you, so I compiled this little gem today. I sit in front of 4 monitors all day, so I tried to capture that. This pic doesn’t really do my setup justice, but here is what each of my monitors looks like, in their real-life order from left to right.


Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

As we creep closer and closer to the end of our prolonged nice weather here, we decided to take advantage today and go out into the woods on the Ice Age Trail after work. Each year we like to hike up to a big lookout tower near Sheboygan called Parnell Tower, which is roughly an hour from our house. So I left work earlier than usual today to go pick up D and head north before the rush hour traffic ensued.


We left home just before 4:30 and started our hour-long hike just before 5:30. I carried D in the backpack carrier on the way up, R carried her on the way down, and she squealed with delight as she touched many trees along the way. There was even a puppy at the tower with his owners when we got up there. She was thrilled!

You’ll have to forgive the blurriness of the actions shots, because they’re, well, action shots. And taken on a phone camera. Ahem.

By the time we got back to the car, dark was settling in and we were starving, so we decided to hit up KFC on the way home. I can’t remember the last time I ate this since I’m not really a fan of fried chicken, but R got it in his head on the way there and I was so hungry I would’ve agreed to eat just about anything by then. I gave D her dish of Cheerios and a bottle of milk when we got in the car, and she was lulled to sleep by the highway rhythm within half an hour. We tuned into the start of the Brewers game, and what a dismal one it was, with Gallardo giving up 4 runs in the first inning. Eesh. Too bad it never got much better for the Crew tonight.

This next picture is beyond terrible, as it was taken on my iPhone like all the others and zoomed in as far as possible to aim at something in our orbit, but I couldn’t not take a shot of the amazingly gorgeous harvest moon we saw on the drive home. It was huge, orange, and simply beautiful, shining brightly down on the hills and fields of the countryside. It was very Halloween-y as it peered out between leafless tree branches, and it was even surrounded by a light haze of clouds. I half expected to see the silhouette of a witch on her broomstick flying past it.

The coolest part of all, though, was the shooting star I saw on the way home. I couldn’t believe it! I haven’t seen one in ages, and it wasn’t even totally dark outside. In fact, no other stars were out yet, but this was definitely a shooting one. So I made a wish, wished again on the first real star I saw in the night sky, and hoped they both come true.

We pulled into the driveway at 7:40, and I was hoping I could just get D inside, changed, and quickly back to sleep with the aid of another bottle of milk. I was planning on giving her some green beans and mashed potatoes from KFC, but she’d been asleep so long at that point and it was past her bedtime anyway, I just preferred she go to bed as quickly as possible. Too bad my nice smooth bedtime transition didn’t turn out to be so nice and smooth. D became inconsolable as I was changing her and only took a few drinks of her bottle. She screamed harder when I tried to put her down, so I just cradled her in my arms in the glider next to her crib and patted her back while rocking. This seemed to work, and she snuggled in so hard while slowly calming down. After a few minutes she clamored up onto my shoulder in a big bear hug and fell asleep. Poor little girl. I was afraid she’d wake up at some point in the night since she had so little to eat for dinner, and I was right. Not 5 minutes after I left her room she awoke crying. R went in there and got her back to sleep with some more rocking and a little bit of milk, and fortunately we didn’t hear a squeak after that.

Now here it is, 9:20, and I need to get in the shower before uploading all the photos for this post. I’m a total greaseball after getting all sweaty carrying my 25 lb. baby rucksack on the first half of our hike. These Week in My Life posts are keeping me up past my bedtime, but I think it will certainly be worth it in the end. Stay tuned for Thursday’s antics. You know the best part about Thursday, don’t you? It’s 1 day closer to Friday, wahoo!

 

Posted on

Week in My Life – Day 1: Monday

I’m excited to be joining a pretty rad-sounding week-long series over at Adventuroo – Week in My Life. My mission? Document a week of my life pictorially, with as many or as few supporting words as I’d like. Sounds pretty cool, eh? And since this blog is all about “Life as I know it…”, well that seems just fitting, wouldn’t you say?

Now I’m definitely not a pro at this like Melissa is, so I’m going to try to capture just a portion of each day of the week this week, as opposed to all day every day. My time at home after work each day is what I really want to remember here, so that’s where I’ll focus my Week in My Life efforts this time around. Plus I’m not so sure my workplace would appreciate me running around snapping pictures of me and everyone else at their desks for all those hours anyway.

Here we go…

Tonight we were fortunate enough to have tickets to Game 2 of the NLCS at Miller Park, so I left work at 4:00 to go pick up D and head home to get her fed, changed, and have some supper before heading to the stadium. We were so excited to see if the Brewers could pull off another win against the Cardinals to take a 2-0 series lead!

I forgot to take a shot of the clock when I left my desk, so the car radio will have to suffice. And please excuse the less-than-professional quality of my pictures tonight – they were all taken on my iPhone.

D actually came willingly and excitedly to me today at daycare, which was great. Touchdown!

We got home just after 4:30, and I fed her right away while R ran to the store to get fixins for our subs for dinner. While D was eating I also unloaded the dishwasher from the previous night’s load. Multi-tasking. Key.

She loved drinking her water out of a different cup with dinner, then happily watched Daddy make sandwiches.

That happiness soon turned to squirminess, however, and it was time to get D out of the chair and cleaned up. We finally got everyone fed and ready to go, and headed to the ball park around 5:45.

The Good Year blimp hovered over the stadium all game tonight, which was pretty cool to see.

Once inside we took up post in our usual standing room only spot behind section 118 and cheered on the good guys. Go Brewers! Or touchdown! as D likes to call it.

This vantage point was great and all, provided a nice view of the field and had plenty of room for us and the stroller, but since this was our 2nd game in as many nights we were ready to actually sit in our seats and give the legs a rest. So up to the nosebleed section we climbed. Fortunately Guest Services was outstanding and let us “check” our stroller into their room so we didn’t have to mess with trying to cram it into the jam-packed row of seats in our section. Bonus points, Brewers.

While sitting up there, also, I was reminded of our wedding while watching the Jumbo-tron. R’s cousin plays for the Brewers and did that year, too, and the day after our wedding they surprised us with a huge congratulatory sign for us and our wedding party up on the big screen during the game. Too bad I was climbing the stairs when they showed it and missed it completely. Ah well, it’s the thought that counts, and that was an incredible gesture.

After an inning or 2 the close quarters and vertigo-inducing grade of the rows made us a little antsy, so we decided to give up resting our feet and headed back down a few levels. We had to make a pit-stop on the way to change D into her 2nd pair of jammies, since she peed through her original outfit while sitting on R’s lap up there. Oops. Our good friends A & S were also at the game, so we hung out behind their section for a bit to chat and commiserate over how poorly our team was doing. Ugh. Della loved S’s Brewers beads, though.

Finally after 7 and 1/2 innings we decided to head home. The Brewers were down 9-2 at that point, and went on to lose 12-3 unfortunately, so we didn’t miss anything by skipping out ahead of the crowd. We were all so tired and D really needed to get to bed. She fell asleep in the car on the way home so this was my last shot for the day.

She did do another gagging coughing spell on the way home in her sleep and got a little puke on herself, but it turned out to be mainly on the car seat straps and not her, so fortunately we didn’t have to change her into yet another set of pjs once inside a little before 10:30. Gheesh.

Now here I am, up waaay past my bedtime, putting together my 1st day of Week in My Life for you. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned – 6 more to go!

 **sorry, i don’t know why my pics are all screwed up and jammed to the left. they look centered when i’m editing the post, promise. i’ll try to make sure they look better for tomorrow.

 

Posted on

Super fan recap

Are you kidding me with our sports this weekend?? How amazing was that! In case you were in a cave, under a rock, or in a remote part of the world with neither signal nor connection, let me give you the low-down of this historic weekend in Sconnie-land…

Saturday

1:07 pm:  The Brewers hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks in game 1 of the NLDS. Tidbit – this was the first time in history that the Brewers opened up a playoff series at home. Pretty cool. And we were at Miller Park, witnessing every pitch. It was awesome!! I must admit, though, the crowd was extremely underwhelming in their enthusiasm level. Remember how I said the playoff games we attended in 2008 were electrifying? The ones this weekend were more on the level of a shock you get in dry air when you walk on carpet with socks on then touch something metal. In other words, snooze-a-riffic. I have no idea why, seeing as this is the PLAYOFFS, but I digress. The Brewers won 4-1, everyone left the stadium in a great mood, and we still had another game to watch. It was Badgers time!

7:00 pm:  Kickoff at Camp Randall, where the Badgers hosted the Nebraska Cornhuskers. (seriously? cornhuskers? nice mascot) I was uber jealous of everyone at the game in Madison, but we had our fun earlier watching the Brewers win so settled in with some pizza for football-viewing at home. I went into this one feeling like we’d probably win, but it’d be a really close game. Um, wrong. We blew them away! Badgers won 48-17, and I was just happy to see that Camp Randall didn’t collapse during that rendition of Jump Around. We are now 5-0, thankyouverymuch.

Sunday

12:00 pm:  The Chicago Bears hosted the Carolina Panthers and beat them 34-29. Devin Hester set an NFL record with his 11th punt return for a touchdown, Matt Forte ran for a career-high 205 yards, and I’d just like to say Cam Newton, Shmam Newton. Oh, wait, what? You’re Packers fans? Ok fine – they hosted the Denver Broncos at 3:00 pm and crushed them too, 49-23.

4:07 pm:  Game 2 of the NLDS at Miller Park. The Brewers continued their domination with a 5-run 6th inning and beat the D-backs 9-4. We were lucky enough to be at this game too, with D in tow this time, and witnessed more history being made. Ryan Braun hit his first postseason home run ever, and the Brewers became the only team with a 2-0 postseason series lead right now. Can you say BEAST MODE??

Talk about exciting! It was definitely a great weekend to be a Badger!! Now let’s keep it up. The Brewers continue their series Tuesday night out in Arizona, and the Badgers have this coming Saturday off before hosting Indiana at Camp Randall for Homecoming weekend in 2 weeks. As the sports writers are saying, this weekend was one for the ages. We saw 4 nationally televised games, a potential Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback in action in Russell Wilson, a potential NL MVP in action (that’d be Brauny), and yes, for you Packers fans, a potential NFL MVP in action as well in Rodgers. 237,101 fans attended 1 of the 4 games this weekend, with some lucky ones making it to 2 or more. It really was tremendous. Go Wisconsin!

 

Posted on

All jumbly

Unfortunately I don’t have a nice coherent, witty, intriguing, clever, or even very informative post for you today, so for that I apologize. I’ve been really busy this week wading through more social media waters and trying to better find my place in this bloggy-blog world, and it seems all my great ideas for posts have escaped me. All these awesome thoughts I have keep getting all jumbled up in my head and I can’t seem to get a good paragraph started with them. Even the notes I’ve jotted down for topics seem dull and mundane, so I’m skipping them until I can dress things up a little better for you.

BUT!

This is going to be a very exciting weekend in a total non-blogging way. Have y’all checked out our home sports teams lately?? Dudes! The Badgers play Nebraska at Camp Randall tomorrow night in Nebraska’s first Big Ten game ever. They’re currently ranked #8 and we’re ranked #7. And we’re going!!!! Oooohh yeah, I can’t wait to jump around in that stadium.** I seriously think the place might fall down. I’ve heard estimates that Madison is expecting close to 20,000 Nebraska fans without tickets! Not to mention however many of them will actually be attending the game. Oh man, I’m getting excitement butterflies just thinking about it. Go Badgers!

Awesome tee from Wiscondiego

 

And…

The Brewers are in the playoffs! Woo hoo!!! The last time they made it was in 2008, and those were 2 of the most fun and electrifying sporting events I have ever attended. You could literally feel the excitement crawling through the crowd, and the stadium was alive with energy. Unfortunately we’ll have to catch this weekend’s baseball games on TV instead of being there live and in person, but that’s ok. I’m sure the vibes will easily reach into our living room as we cheer them on against the Diamondbacks.** Go Brewers!

The Packers are doing well too, but they beat my Bears last weekend so I don’t really care about them right now.

Oh, and tomorrow’s also the first day of October. Not exactly an earth-shattering announcement, but something of note nonetheless.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Hopefully I’ll be able to get my shit back together and have some engaging content for you next week. Until then…

 

**edit:  so when i wrote this, i thought we were going to madison for the badgers game, but there were about 4 last-minute changes of plans. we’re now going to both brewers games this weekend instead. wowzers!

 

Posted on

Super Logo

So R created this mash-up of WI sports teams’ logos, and has called it the Wisconsin Super Logo. He made himself a shirt bearing it, and we can’t go anywhere without at least a handful of people commenting on how awesome it is.

And I must admit, it is pretty sweet. Although I would change the G in the middle to the C for the Chicago Bears, but I’ll let that slide.

He posted it on Facebook a few weeks ago, and now it seems to be spreading like wildfire. Yesterday one of the big sports analysts in the area even tweeted about it.

Poor R feels like everyone’s stealing it from him now, so I wanted to at least give him credit for it here. Like I said, he was the original creator, and you can even go to his site if you’d like to order one (or more): www.wisuperfan.com

Here it is in all its glory:

Super Logo!