VeganMom...stumbling through life

Mark took his last Friday off for a while, and we went to some new museums in Kenosha. The public museum was quite nice—on the small side, but the displays were very well done. We saw the bones of the wooly mammoth that was recently discovered in Kenosha, right near the museum. On the second floor, one of their temporary displays was of several carved ivory pieces from China. They were absolutely stunning, with the most intricate detail. I was able to enjoy looking at the artistry of it by telling myself that I’m sure they just found the ivory lying around after the elephants died naturally. It could have happened that way, and since I have no knowledge on how the Chinese got their ivory hundreds of years ago, I will just go with this theory.

We then went to the dinosaur museum, which had some very nice displays of dinosaur skeletons. As many of these displays as we have seen, we still learn new things with each one. Luciana enjoyed herself at both places, and fell asleep in the back seat of the car on the way home, while playing.

As soon as we got back in town, she went over and got Hunter, and the two played until bedtime. She is still sleeping all night, every night in her own bed. We are so proud of her and happy!

Saturday, Dej went with a friend to Milwaukee, to see her boyfriend and his band play at a concert. She said they did very well and she had a lot of fun at the concert. They didn’t get back in town until around 2 am, and with losing the hour of sleep, she was pretty tired all day Sunday.

We had our date night Saturday, so L. stayed overnight with Grandma & Grandpa. Mark had made top secret plans again, so I had no idea what we were doing. We went to Madison and had dinner at an East African restaurant, Buraka, that we have been meaning to try. It’s on State Street, right near one of our favorites, Chau Tura. Since we know we love that restaurant and it’s so close, we have a tendency to return to our favorite, never quite making it to the others that we intend to try. We finally made it to Buraka, though, and had excellent, I mean absolutely delectable food! The ambience was nice too. We will definitely be returning!

From there we went to a brass concert, part of the UW Faculty Concert series. We’ve gone to quite a few of the faculty concerts in the past and enjoyed them all. Well, one was a bit odd, but it was certainly a unique experience. Anyway, this was a low brass concert, and they performed several strings pieces, which was very interesting. For one of the numbers, they were accompanied by a four-hand piano (two players on one piano). I enjoyed watching them play, and as always, when I see a piano performance, it reminds me that I should play more often and really makes me want to play. Then I come home, play, and get pissed off that I am not as good as I used to be.

Sunday started early with a lot of work, as we had M’s parents and brother Dan coming for a visit. As always, there was a lot of housework and chores to be done. Sunday is usually our chore day, and we had to have everything compressed so it was done before they got here. We all went to the insect display at Rotary Gardens. We were once again reminded of the amazing beauty in nature. These insects, butterflies, moths, etc. were astounding in both their form and function. We came back and had a nice chili dinner that M’s dad made.