Music & Milwaukee

remember me saying that we went to milwaukee? yeah, i know that seems like ages ago now, but i am finally ready to write a bit about it. lucky you :)

I didn't take many pictures on the first day in milwaukee. Matt and all male members of the "we're here for the wedding" team went to the brewers game. it sounded like they had a great time (though rumor has it that the stadium gets quite warm when the roof closes). however, i forgot to send my camera along, so if you want to see a picture of miller park, you'll have to do it by clicking here. looks awesome, right? i made Matt promise that we would go back on a day when girls can watch baseball, too ;)

I went with Laura (bride-to-be) and some of DJ's (groom-to-be) family to a cute little seafood joint on the river. truth be told, i kind of fell in love with DJ's grandmother. she was absolutely adorable and we talked a lot about the midwest and her dairy cows. she has a sharp wit about her that definitely contributed to the fun of the evening.

the next day was the day of the wedding. it was a small and intimate group and both an excellent day and an excellent venue. i got quite a few pictures of the ceremony, but I'm actually not going to post a lot of them because it feels a little bit invasive to me to post a play-by-play of someone else's wedding. but you can get an idea of how cute it was from this pic - on the river, beautiful day, happy people - kind of what you'd hope for, i think.

and then my camera battery died, so i won't be posting a lot of reception pictures, either. sorry, friends, i'm still new to this "having the camera" responsibility. i didn't anticipate it coming with other responsibilities like "carry extra batteries."

over the course of the next couple of days, we did some seeing-of-the-city activities. a lot of them involved having food and drinks on the river, because it was gorgeous weather and none of us currently live in places where we can do such things.

the rest of the time we spent at summerfest, which was a ridiculously cheap $15 to get in -AND which matt and i only paid for once because we randomly ended up with these spectacular free passes. what luck! what did we DO at summerfest, you ask? i'm glad you're curious, because I actually have that part of the trip well documented :)

well, we listened to music, of course. my favorite show was probably thievery corporation, although we saw some pretty great local bands at the indie stage (more on that in a later post).  they didn't have the same person singing for the first six songs. seriously - six songs! they just kept rotating singers in and out. and it was fun to be in the crowd because nobody could listen to the music standing still. it was infectious with dance, as you can see here:

but it actually wasn't all music for us. true to form, matt and i each participated in a summerfest competition. i had to "show a talent" on one of the summerfest stages. there weren't a lot of props to choose from, but i made good with the hula hoop, a skill anyone might have bet that i'd lost years ago. as it turns out - that's wrong. i was awesome (or at least good enough to get a cheer and then the same gift that everyone else got :)

matt, on the other hand, participated in a golf challenge. he and his friends Zack (L) and DJ (R) tried their hands to win a car. the deal was that for $6 (or something like that), you got 3 balls and your choice of old, crappy club. if you got a hole in one on the island about 140 feet away (you can see it in the picture under matt's right elbow if you really look), you win. matt actually had a shot that was dead on, but just fell a bit short. i have a feeling there would have been more of this on our second summerfest day had there not been so much wind. alas. . .

wind didn't stop me from finally getting my henna tattoo, however (don't worry mom, it's not permanent. . . in fact, it's already gone :/) aside from having to be pretty patient and pretty still while the ink dried on my finger, i really liked it. look for more of these in the future.

and that was pretty much it, really. (well, we also saw the man vs. food guy if you're into that show). we were exhausted when we got back from having all of the work that is typically involved with traveling, but really it was a culmination of lots of little things that were infinitely enjoyable. i told liz kiel (a native of one of the milwaukee suburbs) that this was a vastly underappreciated summer vacay destination. not surprisingly, she agreed.