4th of July - Wisconsin trip

To celebrate the 4th of July, our only plans were to go to the Oakley rodeo, which we did:




Silly me, I had forgotten that I got a long weekend due to the 4th of July. Suddenly, on Monday or Tuesday before, it hit me - maybe we could fly out to visit Brad's family! They have a big gathering at the lake cabin.....which could be fun.....and due to my sister's wedding in Alaska in August, we weren't going to get our annual trip....

Long story short, Brad's dad works for Delta, so Brad can fly pretty easily, and I can use a buddy pass when there are any available. (There aren't a lot of buddy passes given out, so we don't use them very often.)

Last minute, clearly. We get to the airport on Thursday morning for the 6am flight, and suddenly there's only one seat leave. Brad shoves me down the jetway, and I proceed to Minneapolis. Three full flights later, I'm sitting at the Mall of America, and Brad's finally getting on a plane. Phew! We both made it.

On the drive to Wisconsin, we saw this car....wow. That's all I can say.


It's extreme all right...


It was a good weekend. Brad's parents were there, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. Lots of delicious food (I gained 2 lbs, not of muscle I assure you).

Played a bean bag game.


The boys.


Rode the pontoon and fished.






Plenty of drinking. Pretty much my only weekends of drinking every summer are those at the cabin.






Loons:


I tried to get on the floatie, but kept failing. Brad found it hysterical and kept taking pictures.

Ok, I'm partly on.


Now, to try to roll over.


Aftermath: Um, I'm not on the floatie?


Again:




And again, this time got on my belly...






Hah. The whole boat was dying with laughter...and I was happy to provide the entertainment.

Brad decided to cannonball me.


On a brief serious note, I got some rough news partway through the trip. The short version is that my mom called on the 4th of July to tell me my dad was in the hospital. He'd been helicpotered out of the lodge (in Alaska) and had to have emergency surgery. It was a bit dicey there when my mom called me. He was in the hospital for about a week, on an IV then clear liquids then finally food, and lost almost 30 pounds. He's fine now and is even back fishing (though can't lift anything for a while), and got his staples out a couple days ago.

I knew he would be ok, but still had a bit of a hard time with it, and ended up living on the couch for a day being a worrier and drinking a bottle of wine. For those of you that know how often and how much I drink (not often and not much, maybe a glass every month), for me to drink the equivalent of 4 1/2 glasses of wine over a 6-8 hour period is a TON. This is me afterward, kinda funny - I was smiling under the pillow:


But back to a lighter subject, it all came to an end much too quickly, and before we knew it we were back at the airport, hoping to get on a flight in time for work Monday. Luckily, we got on the first flight we tried, and home we went. Fun times, and a great de-stressor.