Happy Holidays!

A great holiday season is about to wrap up here. Monnie and I made it to many great parties this Christmas season.

Leading it off was the Halberg Christmas, on Saturday 12/23 , with my grandparents in Ripon - it was great to see my grandparents along with my Uncle Dan and Uncle Roger and family. Claire and Sheila made it back to WI in time for the even too!

That night we hosted Carissa and Niki who were in town for the holiday. We finally got to check out Sardine and it lived up to expectations.

The next morning 12/24 it my parents hosted a Christmas brunch featuring some early present opening and delicious food. Monnie and I got the "DVD upconvertor" that we've been wanting ever since getting our new TV (as well as the chord for the thing which somehow costs almost as much as the unit itself!). We also took home some really fun Pez dispensors - mine featured the cast of "Orange County Choppers" (and it looks like they returned the favor).

Next up was Milwaukee to celebrate with Monnie's family. Monnie's brothers joined us at their parents house for Christmas Eve for some low key fun. The next morning after mass we were all back in the living room to see what Santa had brought us. I'm not going to list everything out here but Santa was very good to me this year. Some magazine subs, a Rollie Fingers autographed pennant (!), new snow pants, gift cards, and a new Sudoku travel game were among the highlights.

After all that Christmas fun it was back to work for a few days before heading up to Green Bay 12/29 to see cousin Timmy and the Michigan Tech Huskies were in town to take on the Phoenix of UWGB. It was a hotly contested game but late in the second half GB was able to pull ahead for the victory. Tim played a great game though - leading the team in scoring, rebounding, and assists as well as making several key defense plays including a rejection that landed in the first row of the fans! This also gave us a chance to see a lot of the Fitzgerald relatives that we hadn't seen over Christmastime: John, Kate, my parents, Sheila, grandma, Martha and JR, and loads of kids made for a great group!

From there it was straight to the UP for our annual New Years trip at Powerdorn Mountain. This year we had a much smaller group (Nate and Ericka, Geer, Jon Palmer, Monnie, and I) which was a welcome change from the last few years. Having a bigger group is tons of fun but sometimes it's nice to scale it back a bit. Our first day the conditions were nice - they had a few inches of snow the night before and the hill was in surprisingly good shape given the complete lack of snow and mild weather that we've had this year. The next day was a bit rainy but that didn't ruin the fun - we just took in a bit more football that normal. Great times and I'm already looking forward to next year.

After the 4.5 hour trip we went to pick up Howie from his vacation destination: Burlington, WI. Howie spent his New Years at the home of Myra and Darryl - some other WAAGR members. He had an AWESOME time there with 7 other dogs that either belong to, are being fostered by, or were just visiting their place in the country. Howie got some much needed socialization and exposure to some other dogs and got a very good report as a well behaved puppy. He sure is tired today though!

Today we went over to my parents for lunch to see my brother who has made it into town. Mike had to work (in Maine) over Christmas and wasn't able to make it back until now. Great to see him and we'll still have one final Christmas event when we get together later this week for dinner and to exchange gifts.

Wow! I knew we had been really busy over the holidays but now that I've written it all down - that's a lot of fun and travel! Some fun coming up soon but we're also looking forward to a little downtime here to catch up!

StL

Another baseball trip in the books. This time Geer and I were joined by Jen (a historic first female appearance for our trips) and Hobber to check out St Louis new park. Hobber just moved down to StLouis a month or so ago for work so we had a great excuse to head down for a couple games - a night on the town - and a visit to check out his new pad.

We really liked St Louis new version of Busch stadium - giving it much higher reviews than the stadiums we saw on our earlier trip this year. They did a great job of keeping some of the theme of the old stadium while really updating it. I am a big fan of several decks stacked (vs. a couple very deep decks). The look is nice and (I think) it makes for some better seats with fewer people missing out on every fly ball because they're staring up at the seats above them.



The fans in St Louis were very into the games. Of course, that could be because they needed to win to clinch a playoff berth (which they did in both games we saw). A few observations on St Louis fans that I think are truly unique to this stadium:

1. We saw no other Brewers fans. I think at the Friday night game we literally saw one other Brewers fan. Saturday we saw a few more but still: way under what you would expect to see just about anywhere else.

2. An incredibly high percentage of St Louis fans were wearing Cardinals gear - or at least red. In other words: there weren't a lot of people that just decided to head to the game in the clothes that they had worn to work that day.

3. For a crowd that is SO into baseball (and they are)... they really chose strange times to do the wave. Basically, they sat there and intently watched each pitch intently. Then, when a really big moment came: they ignored the game and started the wave. It was truly strange. I'm pretty anti-wave, but totally understand that most people find baseball really boring and the wave helpsm so... go for it. but it just doesn't make sense to only do it when the game is at it's highest point.

Cincinnati and DC

This is a pretty late report but better late than never, right?

In the most recent installment of baseball trips, (Tom) Geer and I took a 3 day jaunt to see the new stadium in Cincinnati + the new team in Washington DC (formerly the Montreal Expos).

The trip got off to a rocky start when a pretty nice day in Cincy turned gloomy. A pretty good downpour delayed the game for a couple hours but eventually they did get it started.



Maybe it would have been better as a rainout though as the Brewers blew yet another late lead and went down to the Reds.

The stadium was less than impressive. Tom and I had seen Cincy's old stadium years ago and it was an old hunk of cement. The new stadium is... a new hunk of cement. Not a terrible place to see a game by any means - and the ticket prices were awesome - but for a brand new stadium... it was lacking.

We were then off for a drive through the night to pick up an afternoon game in the nations capital. We arrived in time to take a 2 hour walking tour of the National Malls highlights before heading over to RFK stadium to see the Nationals take on the Cubs. This one had a better result than the night before as the Nationals took the Cubs down.



This stadium was also lacking but it has an excuse... it's a football field. Construction will start soon on a baseball stadium that should put this one to shame.

and there are a few more photos out here - including their version of the brat race (featuring former presidents)...

Anyway, another great trip. Next up: St Louis for the final series of the year against the Crew!

Flintstone's Style

We headed down to Racine last weekend for Chris and Lisa's (Huebner) wedding. After the ceremony we had a couple of hours to kill before the reception so Geer, Bridget, Monnie, and I headed over to Applebees for an appetizer and drinks - basically to waste as much time as possible. We stayed a while and when we got back to the car and turned the key... nothing. Battery is only 2 years old... nothing was left on... I guess it just decided that it was too darn hot.

Well, we hooked it up to Geer's car for a jump - no luck. Let it charge longer - no luck. Noticed that there was a Sears on the far end of the mall we were next to with an auto center, so we headed over there for some advice. Basically the advice was: charge it longer. So, we went back and tried again... nothing! The eventual solution was Geer and I pushing the car to the far end of the mall (beats paying for a tow) in our shirts and ties.

We were later voted "best smelling" at the reception.