Getting married four months after getting engaged sometimes means that you have to make sacrifices. One sacrifice was having our reception at a poorly-lit, dated hall ran by a hateful religious right-wing conservative with a giant 'Choose Life' sign in the yard. Another was having a 24 hour honeymoon before I had to be at a work event I was registered for before we were even engaged.
As I sobbed after realizing that our options were 1.) Holding our reception in an ugly hall managed by the man who stood outside of Planned Parenthood on a daily basis and screamed profanities and threats at me, or 2.) Not having a reception because our church was too small and every other venue in a 30 mile radius was already booked, Ryan gently reminded me that the important detail was not where we were, it was that we were together.
That same lesson came into play a few months later when life, as it tends to do, got in the way and forced us to cancel our honeymoon trip to Mexico. After some more sobbing and endless searching for other places we could go on our limited budget and even more limited vacation schedule, we settled on Milwaukee. That's basically the same as Mexico, right?
I'm not going to lie, I wasn't exactly excited about spending 48 hours in Wisconsin as a trade off for a week in the old country. In fact, I pouted and moped and even refused to talk about the trip for several months. And then the week before we embarked on our adventure to the 'Badger State', I made a conscious decision to end the pity party I had been throwing myself for the past six months. I had this moment of total clarity where I took inventory of the blessings in my life and decided that a weekend away with my favorie person in the whole world was not quite the death sentence I had been making it out to be. Was it going to be the beaches of Mexico? No. And the longer that I compared Milwaukee to Mexico, the more I was going to have a bad attitude about being there.
I've found few things in life to be more humbling than when I stop and actually count my blessings. Was I
really complaining about going on vacation with the love of my life? We have jobs that allow us time away, the money to go, and most importantly, someone to go with. What a terribly sad little life I lead, huh?
Attitude in check and bags packed, we stopped for some snacks and some gas and then headed out:
My very favorite part of any vacation is that I make it a point to eat really good food without giving a thought to calories. So our first stop was
Cempazuchi Comida Brava. And what I've recently learned is that I'm apparently so excited about that really good food, that I always forget to snap a picture. You can learn more about this fabulous authentic Mexican restaurant by clicking on their name above and going to their website, or you can watch their appearance on 'Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives'
here. Ryan had the duck tacos that are featured in this clip and agrees with Guy's review. And if you know us, you know we saved room for dessert! Our next stop was
Leon's Frozen Custard, where Ryan claims to have found the best banana milkshake in the history of the world.
Tummies full and the hotel room not quite ready, we headed to the lake front to get a view of Lake Michigan. Turns out Milwaukee actually has a beach! And since it was 65* and very windy, we had the whole thing almost to ourselves. We spent several minutes taking in the scenery and enjoying our time together in the park before the obligatory photo op:
I was even talked into putting my feet into the water. As you can probably tell, I'm not exactly a natural. One never knows when they will need their purse...
Shortly after these photos were taken, I looked to my right and noticed a giant fish carcas about 30 feet from my feet had washed up on the beach. And that was when I was totally over Lake Michigan and jogged back to the car screaming.
Tired of nature and settled into our hotel room, we headed out to explore the River Walk. No photos of this, either, but we highly recommend it if you are ever in town.
Next up was dinner. We had reservations at another place in town, but while on our walk we noticed a place right across the street from our hotel that looked a little more like our style, so on a whim we decided to cancel our reservations and try out the place within walking distance,
Carson's. Oh. My. Gosh! Short of asking me to marry him, this very well may have been the best idea Ryan ever had!
We got dressed up, walked across the street, and had what we both agree was the best meal of our entire lives. There was the most succulently sweet cornbread, potatoes au gratin that came ENTIRELY covered with bubbly brown cheese, I had a crabcake that was made with giant lump crab meat, Ryan had an angus steak that he said was hands down the best he's ever had, and we also shared a twice baked potato. When you can say that a delicious twice baked potato was the worst thing you had, you had a pretty good meal in our book! The only downfall of the evening is that while we were dining, a pretty big thunderstorm had moved in and in between the cracks of lightning and rolls of thunder, the streets were covered in rain. My very thoughtful husband offered to run back to the hotel and get the car so I could make it back to the room without getting soaked, but I told him I could make it. Hands clasped together and my 4" red high heels in hand, we sprinted the half block to our hotel in the rain. And while I'm unfortunately NOT one of those lucky women who look super hot when their hair is wet, it was still oddly one of the highlights of the trip for me. Here's a shot of us before we cleaned our plates and ran through the streets of Milwaukee barefoot:
Once back to the hotel, we started talking about what a great day we had and how excited we were for the next day because we had really great seats to the Brewers v. Cardinals game. It was at that moment that we realized the Cardinals jersey that we had bought for Ryan specifically for this game didn't make it to Milwaukee with us. And that was the moment that I went into a tailspin and ended up crying for 10 minutes while my infinitely wise and kind husband chuckled at me and kept saying, 'Honey, it's a shirt! This is not worth having a meltdown over.' He finally calmed me down with the promise that first thing the next morning, we would call every sporting goods store in the greater Milwaukee area in the hopes of finding replacement Cardinals attire.
(where their signature breakfast dish comes with a PBR), we made our slew of calls and found two stores who had some piece of Cardinals attire in stock. We spent the morning shopping before finally finding a Cardinals t-shirt that satisfied my need to make things right. Next, we stopped for lunch at
, a place that had been featured on 'Best Thing I Ever Ate'. Not really the type of place that caters to vegetarians, I left the chili eating to Ryan while I enjoyed a sub sandwhich and chocolate chip cookie. Based on his going back for seconds, I think it's safe to say that he was impressed.
All of that eating and shopping left us with just enough time to change into our baseball gear and head to the park to watch batting practice:
We got an up close and personal look at practice, took a quick lap around the stadium to check everything out, grabbed some food (I wasn't kidding about that whole 'eat well and don't count calories' thing), and took our seats for what ended up being a great game. Our team won in 10 innings, and we even made it on tv! Despite looking mind-numbingly bored, I was actually having a great time when 85 mph foul balls weren't flying at my face.
