Ending the summer in the best way ever!

This sums up how we both felt about our mini end of summer vacation.

Tizita and Courtney just left after five wonderful days with us. Paul was in California playing frisbee golf, so the girls decided to hang out with us. As you know from the last post, we spent Wednesday at Little America and when we got home, we got the call about John's job which he started bright and early on Thursday.

While John was at work Courtney, Tiz and I took Marge out to Walmart to get some pictures printed. As you know, Courtney doesn't shop at Walmart so this was quite the treat for Tiz, (not so much for Courtney, I guess) After a quick stop at Joanne's for some scrapbooking supplies we headed over to watch Mallory play tennis. It brought back many memories for me since I was the runner up city champion back in the day. I may have to devote a whole post to this very topic one day soon. After the tennis match which Mal won, by the way, we enjoyed Schuett's partly because we were hungry and partly to celebrate John's job. It was a good day for sure.

On Friday, Courtney, Tiz and I took a bike ride to Lincoln Park. We played hard and had fun. We headed to Kwik Trip after that to buy snacks and then over to Timothy Johnson Park. Courtney and I were very proud of ourselves for making it up all the hills that we encountered on our ride. We spent the afternoon scrapbooking and playing. Courtney made us pizza for supper and then she and I had a few bottles of wine and did some chatting late into the night.

On Saturday, we headed to Grant Park in South Milwaukee for an Ethiopian picnic. We all had such a nice time. What a treat to see the melting pot of children (Ethiopians, Asians, Koreans, and blonde biological) running around playing just the way it should be in our world. Tiz had a fine time and even John and I were able to visit with other parents and even another grandma.

After our picnic lunch we stopped off at the beach in Grant Park. Tiz claimed it was the most beautiful beach ever. While it is a beautiful beach, I would not say it is the best one ever.

It was very windy at the lake as you can tell by my hair. An almost perfect day and you guessed it, it got even better!

My hair stylist told me about a place called Stonefield Pizza in New Berlin and I decided Saturday was the great day to add that to our list of to-do's for the day. We were a bit skeptical. Courtney feared it might be like Chuck E. Cheese and she didn't want that, but we were pleasantly surprised with what we found waiting for us. This is the train table which was our first stop.

Then it was on to the water table area. This Discovery area for the younger kids is actually like a small museum.

Then it was on to the climbing area. Just look how high Tiz is. It took her a long time to figure out how to get herself up there and it was a lot of work for her, but she finally made it to the slide and after the first time she had to do it over and over again.

This is a cute little kid restaurant where the kids pretend to cook and serve pizzas to their customers. Tiz spend quite a bit of time here waiting on Courtney, John, and I.

The next stop was the game room which reminded me so much of Dave and Buster's. Tiz had so much fun playing all the games and winning the tickets.

It was such fun to drive this car. I was working the gas and she was steering. Man, we were all over the place!

Well, you know I can never pass up the chance to play skee ball. As you see, I am in top form.

And we ended with a wild and crazy motorcycle ride.

After that it was time for the buffet which included ten kinds of pizzas, hot dog bar, kids bar with chicken nuggets and mac and cheese, salads of all sorts, fruits, fish, potatoes, stir fry, wraps, spaghetti, and desserts. It really was very yummy and we all agreed it was a very fun place and we will return again.

On Sunday it was church and a breakfast pot luck followed by a short bike ride and more scrapbooking.

So, as you can tell, it was the perfect way to end summer!

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