Our Fun-Filled Weekend!

This past weekend we took advantage of all sorts of things to do around Milwaukee. We ran all over the place on Saturday! First stop was Toys 'r Us, where they were celebrating Geoffrey the Giraffe's 2nd birthday. There were giveaways and parades every 1/2 hour (it was a really pathetic parade...) and best of all, a buy 2 get 1 free sale on Playskool toys! And Scarlet needs more toys. So we were able to pick up a Gloworm, which she adores, one of those Press 'n Spin Tumble Tops that babies love, and a Fill 'n Spill Hippo, which we're saving for Christmas since it's more for the crawling stages.

While we were there we saw the old school Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys and decided those were a must have for us. Because we want to play with them, regardless of whether or not Scarlet likes them! We also sat Scarlet in one of the Disney Princess chairs. She generally loves to practice sitting up, almost as much as she likes to practice standing up, but she wasn't having any of that sitting down business right then! I also did some cleaning up on Hasbro games with the Hasbro Family Game Night coupons that were recently released. Not all of these games were purchased at

Toys 'r Us, since K-Mart had the best deals, but after all was said and done, I got $257 worth of games for $38. A ton of our Christmas shopping is done now, including for friends! The rest of it will be done at Walt Disney World! After all, it's our favorite place, and Disney merchandise is our favorite. Since we don't need anything, why not just buy fun stuff this Christmas for all of us? After getting our picture taken with Geoffrey the Giraffe, it was time to head to the Milwaukee Art Museum for National Museum Day!

The Milwaukee Art Museum is in a gorgeous building right on the lakefront right in downtown Milwaukee. It's where they filmed part of Transformers 3 (you know, his girlfriend works in the museum and he goes there to see her and he meets her boss and everything is very white with lots of windows?). They also hold American Idol auditions here when they come to Milwaukee. This is a view of the museum across the skyway to the entrance. The roof of the building actually opens up and creates wings at certain times of the day (as long as it isn't too windy). I'll have to get a picture of that sometime (or you can Google it if you want to see it now). Anyway. It was National Museum Day sponsored by the Smithsonian, so participating museums all across the country were free to visit.

So we headed over and walked through the museum. I had been to the museum recently with my mom and Mike on Labor Day weekend, but it's a great museum so I was more than happy to visit it again. It actually has one of the paintings that I wrote a paper on while I was studying art history at BYU--Wayne Thiebaud's "Refrigerator Pie." It was fun to see it in person. It look just as unappetizing in person as it did when I wrote about how unappetizing it looked based on

the pictures in my books. We spent a couple hours there, wandering around. We particularly like the modern art part of the museum. Aside from ancient Greek and Roman art, Modern has always been my (and Jeremy's) favorite artistic period. Jeremy loved this bronze sculpture and snapped a photo of it. It was also one of Mike's favorites when we visited. And bronze sculpture has always been a favorite of mine, and is still one of my favorite mediums to work in (except I don't have the facilities to cast bronze now that I'm not at BYU anymore...sad), so this is one of my favorites at the Milwaukee museum, too.

The view from the Art Museum windows

Sitting in the Art Museum

After the museum, we headed to Wal-Mart. Arguably the best part of the day... :/ We had to go there because Scarlet needs a new bassinet. She's outgrowing her Moses Basket, and we want to get her up off the floor when she sleeps in our room since the weather

is getting colder. We tried a co-sleeper, but our bed is only a queen, so we need to get a bassinet so she doesn't feel so alone on the ground. She's a terrible sleeper. She naps maybe once per day and absolutely refuses to fall asleep at a respectable time. Really, I'd be happy with any bedtime prior to midnight right now. They were all sold out of the travel bassinet that we want though (since we're coming to Utah for Thanksgiving and then going to Walt Disney World for Christmas, a travel one would be handy), so I'll just order it online. After that, we went home and tried our hand at copycat KFC fried chicken. It was delicious!! If you want the recipe, just let me know in the comments and I'll post it here on the blog. Turned out perfectly. Great crispy breading, wonderful flavor. Mmmm. Definitely a great copycat recipe.

Scarlet at three months, on September 24, 2011

Scarlet turned 3 months old last Wednesday (on the 21st)! She's now 22.5" long and weighs about 10 lbs, 2.5 ounces. She's gained pretty much four pounds since she was born! She's our perfect little Lettie. :)