tasty buca

diana and i getting ready for the feast that awaited us!
on the ceiling of the restaurant they had bottles and bottles of wine lining it, covered in fake ivy and christmas lights- what a mood!
here are the three things we ordered, which came to about 12 pounds of food! we left there with three huge containers of leftovers, and aching bellies...

sprecher brewer 2

the sign out front of the brewery.
the lounging area we got to hang out in after the tour and have all the soda we could drink.
they even gave us these cool etched glasses as souvenirs after the tour!

sprecher brewer 1

out front of the place they had a cool statue of a griffin, the mascot of the sprecher brand.
on the tour the guide showed us the different stages of the brewery and let us take a look at the ingredients they use to mix up a batch.
we got to see the bottling machine and everything. unfortunately it was not bottling anything that day, so diana and i didnt get to reenact any scenes from 'laverne and shirley'.
cases of beer and soda bottled and ready to go out!

harley burgers

for our last dinner in milwaukee we walked over to the restaurant attached to the harley museum. it was pretty cool and the food was really good! the decorations in the place were obviously inspired by motorcycles, and it even had some decorations made out of motorcycle parts!
it was a pretty cool place filled with fun stuff to look at. and by that i dont mean the old guy sitting across from us, but the motorcycle stuff.
levi got some strange burger concoction that actually had bacon inside the meat patty! i opted for the huge piece of fish and chips.

hello harley 4

outside of the museum they had a working harley that you could hop on and let the engine run. miranda jumped on the hog and gave it a try!

diana, levi, and i sat back and laughed as miranda tried to shift gears as she wrote the motorcycle.
earlier in the weekend we went to visit one of the local harley dealers and took a look around. they had a ton of different models and bikes to choose from!
out in front of the harley dealer there was a huge 15 foot tall motorcycle statue- pretty cool!

hello harley 3

they had a bunch of different logos and designs of different harley stuff. i thought this one was especially awesome! i kind of dig the crazy pig one too.
they had a room with a bunch of motorcycles from different eras that you could sit on. diana picked her favorite- she was loving it! i thought we might leave with a new motorcycle! she makes for a pretty cool biker babe, huh?
i picked my favorite too. i dont think its quite as masculine as some of the other options, i guess...
when we first entered the museum they had this awesome real live bald eagle just chillin out!
awesome! they had one of my favorite things there: a penny cruncher! i now get to add a harley davidson museum crunched penny to my collection! hurray!

hello harley 2

one of the many display rooms in the harley museum, this one showcasing the models from the sixties and seventies.
they had a small kids section where you could make a stencil of some harley icons and motorcycles. miranda dove right in and had a blast!
i gave it a try as well, making a rubbing of a motorcycle with warm colors. how very artistic, huh? well, i do have a degree in art...
diana hopped on this motorcycle for kids, even has the harley attitude and everything!
this is a pretty goofy looking bike. it was built by one of those motorcycle guys that used to have a show on the discovery channel or something.

hello harley 1

some of the earliest motorcycles were lined up and on display at the museum. they were pretty cool to see.
they had an exhibit about the racing motorcycles of the teens and twenties, here they were displayed on a wooden raceway as they would have been in competition.
i just thought this one looked cool.
this is a huge display of all the different styles of logos they have had over the years on their gas tanks.

they had a cutout of a daredevil on a harley that you could put your face in. so i did.

scenes from milwaukee

walking around the historic third ward of milwaukee was pretty cool and we got to see some great places around the town.
one of the walkways from building to building- this one stretches out across the river!
a look at downtown milwaukee.
there was this amazing mix up of highways and overpasses, at times there were four overpasses all passing over each other! we even got to drive on the highest one- this roadway we were on was at least 150 feet in the air!

third ward

at the food market there was a flower shop, and in a moment or romance, i bought a little bunch of small roses so i could put one in the lapel of diana's new jacket. she was quite pleased by the gesture!
we walked down the riverwalk on the way back to the car and got to see some really great little places there.
all of us enjoying the cool boardwalk they had right by the river!

blue ribbon mansion

The outside of the place was just beautiful! it actually looked pretty small from the outside, but that was certainly not true once you get inside!
the main dining hall was fully restored with dinnerware and everything! the electric chandelier was even authentic for the time it was built- this place had electric in 1890, way before anyone else in the town cold afford it in their houses. i guess it pays to be a beer baron...
one of the paintings on the wall in the upstairs parlor. i love how it portrays a young child downing a pint of beer! my, how things have changed...
the intricate wood working was all hand carved on location in the house, and it was all over the place! it must have taken forever to build.
in one of the rooms they have this amazingly intricate doll house on display. after we were done with the walking tour, diana and miranda wanted to go back up to check out the doll house again! i went with them, and i've got to say, it was actually really impressive.

hotel milwaukee

we checked in and got a room on the fourth floor, which had a pretty nice view of not much at all.
our room was really nice. the hotel we stayed in was actually only about two years old so everything was nice a new. we stopped at a grocery store just down the road in order to stock up on snacks and soda for the weekend!

birthday buckaroo 3

aves just having a great ol' time with everyone together!
because we werent allowed to have the cake in the restaurant (but the kids spent so much time making it for mom that we couldnt let it go to waste), we had it hidden under the table so no one would see it... our little spelunkers tweets and bubba dug it out after the meal was done so we could at least enjoy it for a minute!

earlier in the week diana and i had purchased beauty and the beast on blu ray (i guess we are still kids too...), it came with an extra dvd of the movie and a special cd of 8 disney princess songs. since we had the blu ray, we didnt need the dvd (and the fact that i already have the two disc dvd), we decided to give both of them to the girls! they were pretty excited about the whole thing and were looking forward to listening to the cd on the drive home (sorry tim and jill...)

birthday buckaroo 2

mom wanted a new bracelet for her birthday, which she was very excited to receive, and aves and tweets thought was pretty cool too!
aves holds on to one of mom's gifts for her, we dont want to loose it or anything, right?
tim and the kids had spent the morning baking a cake to give to mom at the restaurant (which we kind of got in trouble for bringing in... oops), but the girls really wanted to decorate it too!
tweets got a mouthful of the tasty cake before we had to hide it again under the table!