Summer in Wisconsin!

We spent three weeks in August in Wisconsin, two up at the Dells and one in Madison. Summer in the midwest is great, we spent tons of time outside enjoying the beautiful weather, visiting nearby lakes, waterparks, doing all the kids activities, and spending quality time with our Pleva family.

 Devils Lake State Park

These two, so different, but so much fun together!

 The traditional Dells mining for gems

 Some spotted cow and brats on the terrace

 Future student at University of Wisconsin...

 ...Actually, future Professor!

 Wisconsin wine tasting!

 And scotch tasting

 And bourbon tasting!

 After Richie arrived we took a short ride on a train 

 And did some putt putt!

 There was a lot of story time with Grandpa Pleva

 And a visit to Mirror Lake

 We put together and destroyed 4 puzzles (we gave up on a 5th impossible puzzle)

 Gramma Pleva visited for a few days

 Hmmm...troublemakers???

 Every year Piper gets thrown in jail, and every year, she escapes!

We were in Wisconsin during the eclipse, yet we were far north of the path of totality. Paul did a lot of lobbying to get us to agree to drive all the way to the middle of Missouri to see the eclipse. It worked, we drove down to Iowa to pick up Grandpa Pleva, then continued on into the storm clouds. A total of 16 hours of driving over two days for a minute of eclipse...it was actually pretty damn cool.

 Of course there were no eclipse glasses left anywhere in the US so we had to work with what we had, we made a pinhole camera in a box and then discovered that we could use binoculars as a lens to see the eclipse. 

 It was cloudy and stormy, which actually turned out to be great, we could look at the eclipse directly and I could take pictures of it with my camera and not fear frying the sensor. 

Piper was not so sure of this whole experience, she got a little freaked out when it got dark so quickly. 

 Back in Madison, spending time with our Kailey girl! 

 Grandpa and Gramma Pleva are moving to their retirement home in Blue Mounds, WI, which is just a mile or so from Cave of the Mounds. We took the girls spelunking! Piper tried to catch stalagmite drops on her tongue.

 To wrap up our WI visit we went to New Glarus Breweries, the home of Spotted Cow! Yum!

What a great three weeks in Wisconsin with family! We don't get to see family very often, but I'm glad that when we do we get to spend quality time with everyone!