Money money money money:)

Trips planned:) We received our Go Chicago cards in the mail and have a list of good restaurants to visit! We are staying at a B and B to save some money and they serve breakfast daily so we will save money there as well:)  Plan is to go to Six flags Great American on Thursday then to the B and B that night and to spend the next 4 days in Chicago 3 days with our Go Chicago card and the last doing free stuff in town and visiting friends:) All very exciting. Pet sitter has me nervous but we have a back up plan with a friend in town just in case. Patrick bought his hockey skates for next season... wow it is an expensive sport! I was totaling up the cost of supplies if you had to buy all your gear... its insane! He is excited though!! Once the Chicago trip is over so is his summer so he's really looking to enjoy himself before another year of school and hockey. He also has his Europe trip coming up this year right after thanksgiving so he has a lot to look forward too! I forgot to mention that he is selling raffle tickets (profits go to the trip) for 10$ a piece or 3 for 25$ there are a whole bunch of prices including 1000$ 750$, 500$ 250$ cash, and free weekend trip to Vegas... if your interested let him or I know:)

that's all for now love and hugs 

J

Oats!

I have to speak of our obsession with oats lately:) Here are two of our new favorite recipes and please make note that they make large servings so we are currently still eating these two things...:) The recipes are from my new favorite website tasty kitchen which you an find the link for on this page under "website" how convenient!

First: Basis granola

• 4 cups Old Fashioned Oats
• ½ cups Chopped Pecans
• ¾ cups Slivered Almonds
• ¾ cups Brown Sugar
• ¼ cups Water
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
• ½ teaspoons Table Salt

• 1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line two large sheet pans with parchment paper.

  2. Combine oats and nuts in a large bowl.

  3. In a small, microwavable bowl, combine sugar, water, vanilla, and salt. Microwave on high 2-3 minutes, or until sugar is dissolved and the mixture resembles maple syrup.

  4. Pour syrup over oats and stir until oats and nuts are coated.

  5. Divide mixture among the two pans and spread into a thin, even layer.

  6. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until golden and a bit crispy.

  (You can stir the mixture occasionally so that it browns more evenly and the nuts don’t burn. I also rotate my pans between oven racks a few times during the baking process.)

  7. Let cool completely before storing in airtight containers or resealable bags.

  Second: Baked Oatmeal (serve warm with fresh cold fruit)

  • 6 cups Oatmeal (quick Or Rolled Oats)
  • 2 cups Brown Sugar
  • 1 cup Oil
  • 4 whole Eggs, Lightly Beaten
  • 2 cups Milk
  • 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
  • 2 teaspoons Salt
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients together and pour into a greased 9X13-inch baking pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve warm with milk….or not.
  • 
    
  Now  I justify the not so good ingredients in the second recipe  because per serving size this is  not bad for you... yes if I gobbled up the entire 9 by 13 I would be in trouble but if you only have a 3 by 3 piece its not that bad for you:) tasty yummy too! I will be trying more granolas due to our current obsession with oats:) enjoy

Go Chicago....

I bought our Go Chicago Cards:) Now Patrick is in charge of the Hotel (eeeekkkk) I just pray we have a roof over our head when we get there. In all fairness he is pretty good at finding places to stay he did find our home here in WI with no help for me. We have to buy our passes to the Harry potter exhibit separately and we want to book our sailboat tour (included in the Go Chicago card) before we go. We have spoken with our pet sitter and she's all in for the trip:) We also have Red Sox tickets for Friday night(Patrick gave them to me as a gift last Valentines day). We can get our transportation passes when we arrive and we are holding off on six flags tickets until we have a better idea as to what the weather will be like. One big set back with the hotels is that car parking fee... can you believe it? Hotels don't come with parking you have to pay extra as a guest of the hotel to park your car!! INSANE So may times we have thought we had a good hotel that was affordable to be blown away by parking cost even hostel for 2 people and parking can be 80+. No needless to say we are still working on this.. one option is something like The loop Chicago hotel but I guess its a hotel in a "up and coming area" the reviews don't speak well about the neighborhood at night... and the parking is fee but not watched or gated. Frustrating...oh well that's the update for now! Hope all is well back home. Hear your weather is much better than ours has been!! JEALOUS but I hear your all enjoying it and you deserve it after all that rain you had so soak up the sun and think of us working all weekend...

love an hugs from WI

jen

Harley Davidson

We ended up going to Milwaukee to the Harley Davidson Museum yesterday! The weather didn't get any better and we decided not to take the chance of drive 2 hours to a water park to have thunder and lightening storms all day. We left EARLY in the morning and headed to Milwaukee our first stop was of course Dunkin Donuts for coffee!! YAY every time we hit the city we stop for a coffee there because that is the closest DD around:( 2 hours away! The we went to the museum and left there around 2pm. We then located a AMAZING Irish restaurant where we had corned beef hash with poached eggs, and Eggs Benedict with crab cakes...yum yum way better then we expected and the prices were even more amazing! Everything made from scratch! We left there and hit up Whole foods because that doesn't exist near us either followed but the humane society and back home around  7 pm. Our pet sitter took care of Peanut and gave us a great report saying he was a doll and caused no problems at all! Anyway we still want to go to Noah's Ark in the Wisconsin Dells this summer so cross you fingers for us! Here are some great pics! For more pics look on my facebook account there are 3 albums with like 50-60 pics in each album!

Why sleep when you can be awake!

Well apparently sleeping past 0400 am is not a possibility. At least I got a good 5 hours! Yesterday Patrick went to our friend Marc Howe bike race, I unfortunately couldn't go because I was sick. I was better by dinner though so we made plans for the pet sitter to come over today and to go to either Noah's Ark, a water park, or if its raining the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee. Of course it says that thunderstorms are going to roll through so we most likely will be heading to Milwaukee.  Patrick will enjoy this though so that's good! 

Still planning the Chicago trip... I think we have decided to get the go Chicago card, it will most likely save us quite a few bucks! Patrick really wants to stay in Chicago so I gave him the responsibility of looking for hotels in Chicago. I also found out we can get a 3 day unlimited use tee/bus pass for 14$ so we will do that as well. I hope the weather is nice for the trip...a lot of the activities are inside but still rain is never fun so cross your fingers for us. 

Patrick and Peanut just woke up... aka Peanut woke up Patrick to get out of bed to see me so I have 2 grumpy guys on my hands! LOL  I should try to get them back to bed. I will post pics later of whatever we do today:)

Love and Hugs

J

hanging in A-town:)

It's been a while since my last post due to a horrible schedule of night working:( but that is behind Patrick and I now (thank god!) am on days for at least the next MONTH!! (YAY) Work has been better than it was a few weeks ago which is nice I needed some time to regroup! Pat has been working at the pot as well and all seems fine there. 

The Jeep has not had another one of its incidents which does not surprise me...my father is looking into calling the company and trying to get a new computer thingy put in the car. I told him if that doesn't work I don't think I can keep it which sucks because I LOVE IT IN THE WINTER, but if it malfunctioned like this in the winter out here I'm not sure the outcomes would be as good. So it is a work in progress.

Peanuts Puppy sitter has come over 3 times to spend some time with the Nut and become acquainted he seems to really like her. Yesterday he proceeded to nip at her hand for 2 hours on and off so I pray she comes back again( He was playing , tail wagging and all but still)! Her first long period of time with him will be our Chicago trip in Sept!!! I could not be more excited so far the we know we want to go to Shedd aquarium, the red sox/white sox game, there is a museum with a harry potter exhibit and a prenatal exhibit( Museum of science and history) so we want to go there.  Obviously we want to hit the popular landmarks like the the sears tower, ,  navy pier, Hershey store, OPRAH!!, bean etc and there were two restaurants featured on "triple d, Diner drive-in and Dives" that we would love to visit!! One is Smoque http://www.smoquebbq.com/ the other is  a burger joint called Kumas corner http://www.kumascorner.com/html/about.html  hopefully they are as good as they appeared! So now that we have some activities on our list of things to do we need a HOTEL! This trip is a small fortune(donations appreciated...lol) so we have been on the look out for affordable places to sleep! We have been looking a little outside of Chicago too but as Pat said... "if your going to Chicago do you really want to be miles outside of the city?" I dunno we found a place running a grand opening special that would total 210 with breakfast for the 3 nights but its almost 30 miles from the city? Hmmm There also is the GO Chicago pass that we are looking into to see if the 100 would be worth it feel free to google it and give your opinions! Well thats all for now! Pats cooking!!! YAY byebye

Love and hugs from WI

J

Dear Jeep laredo 2006 man

Dear Jeep man Dan, 

Yesterday I brought my car into you with the following severe problem...Around three months ago I was driving on College Ave in Appleton with my car seems to shut itself off in the middle of the road with no warning. By " shut itself off" I mean that the the gages on the dash all slowly went down to zero and the electronic displays such as temperature, direction the vehicle in going, mileage etc all disappeared, more importantly the accelerator stopped working and i was forced to put on my warning lights and try to get off the road without getting hit! Once off the road i placed the car in park and attempted to turn it  on again...the car did turn on without further problems and  appeared to have nothing wrong with it( no lights on dashboard indication a problem etc). I drove the car for 3 months or so without the problem happening again and honestly didn't think too much about it. Suddenly last Thursday the 30th of July I was  driving on the HIGHWAY 41 home from green bay at 65-70 miles a hour in the second lane when the car did the exact same thing!!! MUCH SCARIER since i was going at  a higher speed in the middle of the highway which is surrounded by construction! LUCKILY i was able to get into a kind of breakdown lane in between construction barrels turn the car off and restart it again without dying! I happened to be on the phone with my lovely father at the time who demanded i bring the car into you JEEP man DAN! I dropped the car off yesterday morning and explained the problem to you...you kept asking me if it stalled or shut off (like i know I already told you what it did now you tell me if that is stalling or shutting off!) and asked for similarities between the two situations... which there were none considering one was at 30 miles an hour on a back road at the beginning of a trip and  and the other way highway speeds at the very end of a trip !  The only similarity is me being the driver and the car been a jeep 06 Laredo!! I left the car with you  and agreed to pay the 100$ so that you could hook the car up to a machine that would locate the problem. Last night I called to see what you had found out and what did you tell me...NOTHING. Apparently the machine couldn't detect any codes from my car stating there had been a problem. You told me you even drove the car a great distance (20 miles) and nothing happened ( there's a shocker since the two incidences were 3 months apart to begin with!). You suggested we leave it overnight so you could drive it more today (friday)  and we agreed but stated we needed to pic it up by 3pm at the latest.  We went to pic the car up today and you once again said you couldn't find anything wrong with the car but if i could leave it you were going to call the hotline to see if they could suggest anything...HELLO I TOLD YOU I NEEDED IT BY 3pm... so i had to take the car pay the 100 and i got no answers as to what is going on. I have done a little internet research since then and have found these sites...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/10/jeep_stalls.html

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/05/jeep_recall.html

but neither talk specifically about the 2006 jeep grand cherokee laredo... so i have filed a report with the NHTSA. They will be looking into it and calling me back.

Meanwhile I am driving a car that could stop working again at any moment and i have been lucky twice already. and Jeep man dan doesn't even seem to believe the problem exists  but he " wants me to keep him informed if the problem persists" yeah no problem dan as long as i continue being lucky i will...arrggggg 

J

Happy Birthday to you!!

Dear Mr Brenner, 

  We would like to wish you the happiest of happy birthdays on this your day of birth and would love to  sing...Happy Birthday to you... Happy birthday to you... happy birthday Mr Brenner... Happy Birthday to you. Hope you having a lovely homemade ice cream cake and enjoying the day!

Much love from WI

Pat Jen and Peanut!

Car...pet sitter...work..life:)

First off CAR- The other day as I was driving home from work on the 2 lane HIGHWAY covered with construction barrels my car decided to act up... it has done this once before while on College ave in Appleton probably 3 months ago.  So what happens is that the gas petal doesn't work... the gages on the dashboard all drop don to zero and all the electronic displays on the dashboard (outside temp, mileage etc) disappear. It scared the hell out of me and I have to try to safely get to the side of the road shut the car off an turn it back on in order to get the car working again! My daddy is calling Jeep in town to talk to them about it because he says it should be under warranty and I refuse to fight with JOE again... horrible horrible experience the last time my car was acting up! Okay, moving on to pet sitter...we have found a pet sitter we both really like, she is 18 years old, lives in town, works at pet smart, and is in school to be a vet tech. We met her parents and have explained that we would need some day sitting an some weekend possible week sitting and she has agreed to both with the understanding that Peanut is a devil dog at times and we would be relying of her not to bail on us when we are out of town if he is naughty.WISH US LUCK! Plan is to have her come over twice for a few hours while I am home to get him use to her then start with day trips and work our way up to Chicago weekend! SO EXCITING!!! Besides that we have really just been working... The Bellin Maternity floor has been INSANE and the melting pot has some big shots coming by to do some pre quality control stuff...so Patrick has been busy as well. Hockey starts in like a month...I'm nervous start thinking about Patrick and send good luck his way :) That's all for now! Love and Hugs from WI!!   By the way who is coming to visit this fall??? Let's start planning some trips to WI:) 

J

EAA:)

Well... since the last post we have been working and going to the EAA air shows:) Friday it was just Patrick and I that attended and then today we took Peanut along for the fun! Basically the EAA is one of the largest air shows/airplane events in the world people come from everywhere(china, england, iceland, alaska, netherlands, greece, italy, greenland, russia, BOSTON, and a ton of other places...including little islands I didn't even know existed!) for the week long activities and lots of celebrities are involved! We will have lots of great pics once we can get the camera to upload correctly! This is the second year we have seen some of the show last year we stumbled upon it while going to the outlets and this year we planned on attending. Every time we go and see the crazy stunts and see how close all the little plans get to the crowd below I think of my dad and how much he would enjoy seeing the show first hand! For those of you  who don't know he had his pilot license for a long time and really enjoyed flying! He has thought a lot about taking flying up again but has misplaced his flight book! I think he would really enjoy the EAA! Maybe next year we can plan for him to attend who knows:) For those interested in looking into what  I am talking about here is the link: http://www.airventure.org/  enjoy:) Pics to come ...

love and hugs from WI

J