Final stretch + the weekend

Hi. 🙂

Things have not slowed down but we’re in the home stretch now of my in-laws’ visit. For me, we’re down to 1 day! They don’t fly back to Mexico until early Sunday morning, but I leave tomorrow bright and early for Nova Scotia!!! (!!!!!!!!!!!). By the time I get home late Monday night, they’ll be gone.

They’re actually heading to Chicago though on Friday with my BIL + his gf to spend a couple days tootling around the downtown sights before their Sunday flight, so they’ll only be at our house a few more days.

We had a fun-filled, busy weekend, which is how it should be I suppose when we have out of town guests! Everything has been going really well, though. Weather has been gorgeous and we’ve been able to spend a lot of time as a big family group + also show my father-in-law a good time, I think. I do continue to feel like I’m personally in a whirlwind state (not my favorite state), work continues to be crazy and most “normal life activities” definitely feel on pause, but I’m holding on and trying to just leeeean in! 🤪

I posted about our first days with them here.

Here’s what the last several days since then looked like:

Saturday

On Saturday morning Asher had a swim meet, just a small local one hosted by his team. I had to volunteer, then, since our team hosted but FORTUNATELY, when I went to sign up for a shift, all that were left were the “on call/ float” positions. (So no assigned job, but if someone didn’t show up or there was an unexpected need, they’d call on me to step in.)

I had to arrive early at 7:30, but upon check-in they had no current needs. So I just left my cell number and they said they’d contact me if needed. Great! I headed up to the empty bleachers (having arrived before basically everyone else), saved seats for our crew and settled in to read a book! Haha. After many years of literally running these meets as the Volunteer Coordinator on the Meet Committee, I now felt almost shameful just sitting there…. but not that shameful. 😉

The meet didn’t start until 9:30, so Ivan and his parents showed up then. Asher swam solidly just okay, but he has only been swimming a few times a week right now and it’s early in the season. High school season starts up in November, so currently with club he’s mostly just trying to stay in shape and slowly gear back up.

It was still fun for Ivan’s parents to finally get to attend a swim meet and watch him swim!

After the meet ended around ~12:30, we went home for lunch to eat up some leftovers. His mom also cooked up a queso fundido with chorizo, served with corn tortillas and salsa.

We then had a bit of down time where I did a few things around the house, ran to the UPS store to mail a return, and then actually squeezed in a brief 30 minute home workout- my first actual workout in a while!!

I also took Charlie for a long-ish walk since we had evening plans away all night and needed to wear him out.

By early evening, we all headed to the far opposite side of town to Ivan’s cousin’s house. On the way, we took a little detour to show his dad our two previous residences, the townhouse we lived in when the boys were born and the larger duplex we rented for a few years before we bought our current house.

In general it has been really fun to show his dad all of our “regular life stuff”, like the boys’ schools, the places we go often, etc! 🙂

I had thought there was going to be more of a ‘party’ at Ivan’s cousin’s, but it turned out that it was just us + Asher (Ethan was working), Ivan’s parents, and his cousin + his wife (their son was off at Homecoming). I was totally fine with this- it was nice and lowkey and we just sat around the table and chatted for a long time. They placed a huge takeout order of various chicken wings, carrots, celery and varieties of fries/tater tots/ potato wedges for dinner, which was tasty and easy.

I didn’t take any pictures, but we stayed until maybe 10/10:30 or so, arriving home by 11. All in all, it was a long day with that early swim meet start for me (left home at 7:10 a.m.), but a good day.

Sunday

On Sunday the main plan was to go to Milwaukee, though the details were up in the air.

A long time ago on a previous visit we had taken Ivan’s mom to this pizza place called Organ Piper Pizza, which isn’t far from where I grew up. (In fact, we went there fairly regularly when I was a kid. So it’s also a nostalgic place for me.) It’s kind of an “old school” pizza place, like a step back in time. Its claim to fame is the nightly live pipe organ music! Anyway, his dad had seen the pictures and always said he’d like to go there someday when he came. So, Ivan wanted to make that happen.

We also wanted to definitely meet up with my parents. Ivan’s mom has seen my parents many times, but Ivan’s dad had never met my parents!

Everyone was a little slow moving Sunday morning, though, which was a-okay with me. While some people slept in, I enjoyed a bit of quiet time on the deck. It was a BEAUTIFUL morning- warm but just that touch of fall crisp in the air. I drank tea and read for a while and sat with Charlie. Moments like these sort of keep me afloat when I’m in an extra busy or highly social season.

Eventually we pieced together a plan, ate some huevos a la mexicana with pinto beans and corn tortillas, showered, and headed out.

The drive between Madison and Milwaukee is really very pretty, in an understated way. It’s mostly all just farm land and corn fields, peppered with some cows and red barns here and there. I always think on a sunny day that it’s a pretty classic Wisconsin scene. 🙂

We arrived at my parents’ house by early afternoon. After some introductions, my parents showed them around the house and we had a few snacks and drinks. It’s a little tricky here because my parents do not speak Spanish, and Ivan’s parents do not speak any English. 😅

Smiles are universal though, so that works. 🙂 Ivan and I did a lot of translating and it was all very nice!

We took some group photos, since as I said, this was our first time all together.

*I was really bummed though that Ethan couldn’t come- he had to work!! We totally failed to have him ask off for this weekend…. just somehow slipped through the cracks. Unfortunately, this visit was rather short notice and Ethan’s availability has to be submitted a couple weeks in advance. With soccer season, Ethan has barely been working, so he had signed up for some shifts on this rare “free” weekend, which turned out to be… poor timing…. argh.

Such a nice picture of them together! 💞

Next, we all squeezed in our van and drove to downtown Milwaukee. We didn’t have a ton of time, but mostly just wanted to show my FIL around a little. We drove past the Brewers stadium, which he wanted to see, through Marquette University (where my sister went to school and Ethan may tour), and then down to the lakefront along Lake Michigan.

Weather was still beautiful!! We took a leisurely stroll around Veteran’s Park near the waterfront. (Funny story- when they flew into Chicago (also along Lake Michigan), my father-in-law was convinced that they were over the ocean! Hahaha. My MIL kept saying, no, I mean it, it’s a lake! He didn’t realize how BIG Lake Michigan is. We finally pulled up a map and pointed out that Lake Michigan is literally as long as the entire state of Wisconsin.)

Ivan’s brother and his girlfriend actually drove all the way down and met up with us at this point, too.

After our walk, we drove ~5 minutes or so and parked by the Milwaukee Riverfront. We were a bit short on time, but just did a short loop along the river so they could look around some. It’s a pretty area!

We mostly just lingered and watched the bridges raise a few times for some passing boats.

We found a fun photo op spot on the way back to the cars – Milwaukee!!!

We then drove about 20 minutes or so back to the restaurant. They’re only open from 4-8:30 on Sundays and it was already almost 6.

It was cutely decorated for Halloween, complete with a skeleton friend in the entry way.

Fortunately it was only moderately busy. We waited a few minutes for a more
prime table behind the organ. The music was already playing when we arrived. The organists here are amazing- he plays everything by ear and people put requests in a jar for him. (Of course he has his standard pieces, but he seems to have a huge repertoire!) I can’t help but feel like this may be a dying art? I mean, do people still learn the pipe organ these days? 🤔

The Halloween display by the organ was cool. 🙂 Sometimes he plays Phantom of the Opera, but he didn’t on Sunday. We should have requested that… it would have fit the Halloween vibe.

We were there almost until they closed at 8:30. Then we still had to swing by and drop my parents off before Asher drove us all the way home.

Walked in the door at 10:02 p.m., nice and rested for the new work week! 😄

Just kidding. It was a really fun day, though! I was so happy my parents finally got to meet Ivan’s dad and also that we had such a great weather day.

Monday

Monday morning came fast and I was busy working all day. Asher had a random no school day, but went golfing with a friend for much of it.

Last night Ivan made his homemade nachos and “everyone” (Ivan’s cousin + family, his sister, his brother and our nephew + his gf) all came over. We ate down around the bar in the basement and put Monday Night Football on (no Packers game, but still fun to watch).

It was a bit chaotic as my sister-in-law has a newborn + 2 other young kids who still seem to get into everything…plus then we have to watch that Charlie doesn’t eat the Nerf bullets they were shooting around or other toys, etc. Whew! They’re cute but I am too old for little kids now. 🤣

The littles left though after a bit to get to bed, so those of us remaining lingered around the bar for a long time, which was really nice.

On the downside, I did NOT have time to run to Target and/or finish getting packed for Nova Scotia, as I had kind of hoped for…. Oh well. I anticipated this and mostly pre-packed already last week! I still have final details to add today, but the hard part (deciding what to bring) is mostly done.

(I had a dream last week that we were all in Chicago at O’Hare headed to Ireland for Christmas, and I was commenting to Ivan how proud I was that I had packed so far in advance….when I realized that I never put our passports in my bag!!! OMG. And of course, Chicago is 2+ hours from our house. What a NIGHTMARE that would be!!! I woke up in a panic- thank goodness that was not real!!)

So, there’s a long-winded recap of what we’ve all been up to. At this time tomorrow I should (hopefully, God willing!) be most of the way to Newark! Where… I hopefully will not experience a flight delay, given the government shutdown. 😩😩 (Heard this morning that Newark had significant delays yesterday… fingers crossed….😬) Thankfully I fly out of our little local airport, which is GOLD, because my flight leaves at 6:15. Oof.

If you had told me 5 years ago that in October 2025 I would be boarding an airplane to fly to another country to hang out with 2 amazing friends that I met through blogging, I would have given you a serious side eye and been like, Um, yeah. Sure. Right.😅

Life is sure a crazy ride!! I guess that’s a big part of the fun of it all, isn’t it. 🙂

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful (very grateful!!) that I do not have any meetings scheduled today! I am so relieved to have an open day to just calmly work and wrap up loose ends.