Adventures with a 5 year old...

So this weekend, we "borrowed" my little cousin (who I call my niece and she calls me her aunt, thats just how our family works), I may question whether terrible twos extends to five year olds, while it was definitely an adventure here are the highs and the lows:

Most Entertaining things

1) Visiting the apple orchard where we went on a hay ride, picked out a pumpkin and went through this great corn maze with a treasure hunt for kids

2) It seems like with a five year old there is always something to do, it is sooo go go which can be nice when it isn't your norm

3) She went to sleep at like 7:30pm

Not so Entertaining things

1) 7:30 am Wake up

2) the if I'm good will you buy me this x 100

3) Her absolute terror of our not so frightening Basset Hound 

OOOOoooooh the Obama Excitement

So as the worst new lawyer ever, and I don't mean that in the I suck at my job kinda way (I may very well I just don't really know) more the has worked less than 2 months and has had to take time off for her husbands surgery and her mouth surgery I feel generally guilty that I don't work enough, but NOT guilty enough to resist asking if I could go to the Obama rally, it was two blocks away and a straight shot view from my office, who could sit by and watch history in the making from 10 stories up, not this girl.  I was really pretty impressed with La Crosse, a turn out of 15,000 or somewhere near there is really pretty great for a town of like 55,000!! In the grand scheme of things I even had a pretty good place in the massive crowd.  I think it was a great speech generally and one that was worth listening to regardless of your political background, he is just so charismatic, or maybe he just seems that way because we have had 8 years of horrible public speaking by Bush, not really sure.  Needless to say it was worth standing there in the chilly line almost two hours before it started to hear him speak for 40 min, this is by far the first election I have cared to hear someone speak or had the opportunity, I even went out today and put our sign in our yard, J is wondering if it will inspire anyone else on our street to put out signs.  I was a bit bummed I didn't get any pictures, for whatever reason I though cameras were a no no so I went sans mine.  We had this guy who was right behind us who sketched pictures of the crowd the whole time we were there, he was a pretty good artist. I really enjoyed seeing the diversity in the crowd, children, adults, people of all ages and backgrounds, coming together with hope for change, it definitely made you want to act, so I said I would try to keep this blog from getting too political so I will just leave it at no matter your party, just please remember to take the time Nov. 4 to vote! I won't even try and tell you who to vote for, well unless you drive by my house =)

Fall is in the Air

Well it is now time for Oktoberfest to end, which really signals the start of Fall.  It was a bit crazy this year in that we normally aren't very organized we just kinda show up at the parade to sit with whatever friends took the time to reserve spots and pretty much just enjoy the work they put into it, well not this year, this year we took the bull by the horns and organized our own parade spot. Some of you may think Im crazy like what is this person talking about but let me put it into perspective this is like a 6 mile parade which thousands of people attend.  The parade is on Saturday and by Friday morning at 8am people have already put out their chairs, blankets, couches etc. some are even camped out, why camped out you say?, because they know that because of problems in years past you actually aren't allowed to leave things on the curbside unattended before midnight, therefore at 4pm that day the City came through and took all those naughty peoples things and threw them away.  So fast forwards to 11:30 pm when we show up to stake out our spot, realize all the good ones are taken, but then by miracle some really nice guys explain to us that at 12 they plan to move up and over a bit and that we can have this L shaped spot that gives us about 5 feet of prime curbage, gotta have the curbage for the kiddies as that is where the candy gets thrown, so thanks to them we got pretty lucky. So we had to run back get more sheets since our tarp wasn't big enough and stuff to hold it all down over night, came back and set it out and sat there til 12:30am to make sure it wasn't going anywhere, then back home to be asleep around 1, so we could get up at 6 to head back and make sure our stuff was ok (the parade is at 10).  Then at about 6:45 I get a text saying our shirts were in but at the southside so we had to fight traffic and no parking to get to it, while in the area we headed over to festival to get some snacks and ingredients for bloody marys, we were back and at our site by 8:30 where we hung out til the rest of the gang arrived.  It was a long rough parade though the weather was beautiful, it was full of kiddies that were too tired, fighting over candy (who throws one piece for like 7 kids) and the fact that it was like 80 something, by the time it was all over with (at like 2) I was totally beat and starving, we tried to head to this awesome drive in but due to the parade traffic was miserable so after like 20 min of no moving we headed to Holmen to go to their drive in, got all the way there and found out it had closed the Sunday before, total bummer at this point we are sooo starved we just head to McDonalds.  While it was definitely a ton of fun it was super exhausting, next year we already have a list of things we need to do differently like bigger tarp, 4 wheel cooler not 2 wheel, remember to buy vodka the night before, just bring a bag of candy and randomly throw in front of kids.  Anyway I will post some pics later and while I know I made it sound miserable if any of you are ever anywhere near La Crosse during Oktoberfest I do highly recommend you go!!