Category: WIThanksgiving2018

A Fun Weekend

October 9, 2018
RainwaterWIThanksgiving2018

It was the girls final day in Wisconsin. They had an afternoon flight from Madison to Toronto/Ottawa via Chicago. We went into Mount Horeb and visited the Driftless Historium, it is a museum of the Mount Horeb area.


We walked around town.


Only in Mount Horeb would you see a horse tied up outside a coffeeshop.


The girls with one of the trolls. Mount Horeb is the Troll Capital of the World.


Angela still had one more item on her Wisconsin farm bucket list. She got to try the zero-turn lawn mower.

I dropped them off at the Madison airport. They had an adventure getting home with delays due to thunderstorms in Chicago, Gillian had a tight connection, but in the end everyone made it back safely. It was nice to have them all here for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving in Wisconsin

October 8, 2018
RainwaterWIThanksgiving2018

Susan and I cooked a turkey with the fixing’s for Mark and Sue. The girls got to try out the 22 rifle. Gillian tried it when she was here in July, so she was an old hand at it.


Mark showing the girls how it’s done.


Claudia lining up her shot with some help from behind.


Angela taking her turn.


Next up was driving the tractor. Claudia giving it a try under Tukka’s watch.


Angela was determined to drive everything.


Claudia on the quad.


Angela and Claudia having a blast.


We made a 24 lb turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, broccoli, corn that was par boiled back in the summer, and squash from the garden. It was delicious.


The girls with Sue, Mark and Bob (a colleague).

EPIC Tour

October 7, 2018
RainwaterWIThanksgiving2018

On the Sunday, it was raining for most of the day, so we went and toured the EPIC campuses. EPIC is an electronic health records software company based in Verona, WI not far from Mount Horeb. The campuses are located on 950 acres.


They have bikes around the campus for employees to get around.


The architects who designed DisneyLand were hired to design the EPIC campus. Along one hallway were mirrors.


All of the buildings are connected so you don’t have to go outside. The tours are self guided, so if you go outside you can’t get back in, you would have to go back to the front entrance.


This was on the way to the wizardry campus, it was very Harry Potter like.


All of the elevators had some type of theme as well.


Taking a break in one of the lounges.


This was the wizardry campus.


The girls crammed into the phone booth.


Another elevator.


They do a lot of training there and have many large training rooms, each one is themed as well.


There was a Star Wars themed area. Employees can don some gear and work out their differences using the light sabres.


Here is the conference room in the Star Wars area.


There are random things in the hallways.


An elevator going down.


It was a pretty cool place to tour, we only got through two of the campuses, we’ll have to go back and do the others.

Weekend in Wisconsin

October 6, 2018
RainwaterWIThanksgiving2018

I was able to fly the girls down to Wisconsin for Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Susan, Angela, and Claudia came from Toronto and Gillian flew in from Ottawa. The plan was for them to meet up in Chicago and then fly up to Madison. Gillian texted me early in the morning to say the flight from Chicago to Madison had been delayed already, when I got on-line and checked I had a feeling that flight would be cancelled. So I called Susan and told her I was driving down to Chicago to pick them up. I picked them up and we made it back to Madison around the same time their flight was supposed to land.


Claudia’s selfie from the plane.


We walked around the Capitol and then down State Street. Some random couple offered to take a picture of us down by the Memorial Union. Afterwards we walked down frat row, it was a football game day and the frat houses were crazy.


One of the frat houses on Langdon Street.


Claudia ready to go for a ride in the ’65 Valiant.