Vacation: Days 4 and 5 - Milwaukee

Monday was a long day in the car. The trip from Peoria to Milwaukee was the longest car ride of our trip. It's usually about 4 1/2 hours... when you're not traveling with a 3 year old and 1 year old. For us, it ended up taking almost 8 hours. Can you tell that Ben was a big fan of staying in the car so long?

But that was including a detour so that we could stop at...

How could we go to Wisconsin without taking a tour of the Jelly Belly Factory? They offer a 30 minute tour on a train, showing us exactly how Jelly Bellys are made. The tour really was a buch of videos, but it was fun to ride the train, and we did learn about what goes into making a Jelly Belly (it takes more than a week to make them!). After the tour, the kids got to check out the train's engine and we all got a sample pack of the tastey treat!

After the tour we got to taste any flavor of Jelly Belly we wanted. Andrew even tasted booger and pencil shavings jelly beans. Ew!

We were staying at Andrew's Aunt Pam's house in Brookfield, a nice suburb of Milwaukee. The neighborhood looked like something out of a movie. It was so pretty.

The next morning we headed over to Wauwatosa to visit Andrew's Grandma Maple, who lives in an assisted living home there. This was her first time meeting her great-grandchildren, and she was so excited. Grandma gave each of the boys a stuffed monkey from her collection that she's had for years (Joshua has slept with his every night since.) We spent the morning with her showing us around the facility, and she got us a private table for lunch. The kids did so well hanging out in a retirement home for the whole morning. We hadn't been sure what to expect from them, but they really came through for us.

Since they did so well at Great-Grandma's we made sure that the boys got to do something fun that afternoon. We took them to the Betty Brinn Children's Museum in Downtown Milwaukee. It was a cute little museum, and the boys had a ball. It was exactly what they needed... to be able to touch EVERYTHING! Ben's favorite part was conducting an orchestra. When the song was over he would stomp his feet, clap his hands and scream "YAY!!!"

We also got to spend a lot of time with Aunt Pam and Uncle Steve, which was great because we never get to see them. Pam got to come to our wedding, but we didn't get to spend much time with her, so it was wonderful to have the chance to really get to know them, and what awesome people they are. It was so nice of them to open up their home to us for 2 nights. Pam even found some toys in their basement to occupy the boys.

We had a great time in Milwaukee. On to Madison!