Milwaukee: Monday, June 5th

Since this may be the last time for a while that we could take a little vacation, Doni and I decided to take a trip to somewhere both of us had never been, but wasn't too far away. After a little research, we decided on Milwaukee. Since Doni's family lives at about a halfway point, we were also able to leave our dogs at her father's house while we were gone. I doubt Sparky and Sassy even missed us because they love his large, fenced-in yard.

We left for Milwaukee from Chesterton, IN with about a three hour drive. If it weren't for Chicago traffic we could have probably been there in less than two hours. I'm convinced Chicago has instituted a new law where any road that has more than two lanes is required to constantly have massive construction projects taking place.

Our first stop after dropping our things off at the hotel was Miller Brewing Company. This may be surprising to those of you that know that neither Doni or I drink. However, our love for the TV shows where they show you how things are made (see How It's Made) overrides our lack of interest in brewski. It was interesting, but we didn't get to see as much as we had hoped. They did share some interesting facts with us about their factory though.

This single brewing facility:

• produces 500,000 cases of beer DAILY

• has a warehouse (the size of 5 football fields where they stack the cases 20 ft deep) which they completely fill and empty........... DAILY

We were also taken into the underground, hand-dug tunnels where the beer would be kept packed in ice and sawdust to keep it cool. Lastly, we were offered 3 glasses of our choice of beers to sample...... I had Coke, Doni had Sprite, and, all I'm going to say is, ...... Ava got a little tipsy.

After the 1/4-1/2 mile walk back to our car (which Doni and I figured was to allow some time to sober up) we went to a mall downtown. It's a lot like Circle Centre, but is a lot bigger. Weirdly, their mall was only open until 7 pm. Do people not shop in Milwaukee outside of normal business hours? I can only assume so.

On the bright side, we were able to get back to our hotel long before the pool closed. Since Ava was showing no signs of giving in to her normal sleep schedule, we took her for her first swimming experience (outside the womb). The water could have been a little warmer, but once she got used to it she seemed somewhat content. We did find out something about Ava that was new to me though: Ava floats! No, we didn't throw her in the deep end and see her pop back out of the water like a buoy. I did place my hand under her head and let the rest of her body bob to the surface. I guess a possible explanation could be that she had lots of gas. She farts often enough.....

More on the rest of the trip later.

Ok, we just maxed out the cute-o-meter

Ok, we just maxed out the cute-o-meter, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

When Doni put this outfit on Ava, I thought "She looks like such a big girl!" It's amazing how fast she's growing. Just look at some of her pictures from the hospital and see for yourself. It's already been 6 1/2 weeks! Still, its kind of hard to remember what our lives were like before she was here. She has become such an integral part of our family that without her in the picture it just doesn't seem right.

Today we took her to her first movie, which thankfully she slept through. By the time the movie started the theater had filled up to where probably 95% of the seats were taken. I had been hoping that there wouldn't be that many people there so we could just hide out with Ava in the corner. We were in the corner, but by no means were we isolated from the other movie-goers. Ava slept through the first couple hours of the movie and only started waking up (getting hungry) with 1/2 hour of the movie left. I took her down close to the entrance of the theater in case she decided to get vocal. She continued sleeping while drinking most of her bottle so I could watch the end of the movie. How nice of her.

By the way, there are lots of new photos on the Flickr.com website.