Life as a Yowler

Yesterday morning Brandon did his store training. After, we all drove to Eau Clair. We decided to go to another museum since all outdoor things were out. It’s been very cold and windy, so we have been looking for indoor things to do.

We went to Chippewa Valley Museum.We have a little movie about Paul Bunyan that the kids love. They were so excited to see the statues of him and his blue ox, Babe, on the drive in to the museum.

There was a section of the museum about farmers. It honestly reminded me a lot of my grandpa and grandma Gascho. There was a home to look at with lots of canning materials and shelves of canned goods.

The old phone was a huge hit. The kids kept making phone calls. That’s Joah in the background heading into the hen house. I told him Grandpa Lyle used to gather eggs every single day and he never once complained, as my grandma used to tell me when I was getting a bad attitude.

Gardening was a huge part of my childhood. I used to despise weeding and used to rush through, doing a terrible job. I can’t say I was a gifted gardener, but it did teach me several life lessons. It requires a lot of patience and hard work, which I don’t always have.

The little red barn at the shop(full of grandpa’s goats) still has the old school water pump. My kids loved playing with this water pump, like the one at the goat barn.

My kids favorite section of the farm setup in the museum, was the dairy farm. Isla kept yelling “moo!”

Our favorite was the little baby calf. The kids bathed it, brushed it, fed it a bottle, and hugged it over and over. For those of you curious, no these are not real cows. 🤣 They just look very realistic.

Brielle kept milking, filling the bucket, then giving it to the cow to drink. 🤣

 We saw a little school house. Teacher, Joah, took over and taught/bossed his siblings.

We attended a church service on a church pew.There were a couple dance instructors there for a special event. The kids learned a couple moves from them.

There’s was a section of the museum dedicated to Native Americans. This was the boys’ favorite.

They did all kinds of fishing. We stayed for about an hour at the fish pond. They were playing and imagining they were hunters.

I can’t forget about Isla, the amazing little butter churner.

When we were done, we went and got ice cream in the old fashion ice cream parlor. It’s a good thing we did because we didn’t end up eating dinner until 8pm. The ice cream held everyone over.

Someone had mentioned to Brandon that you can take a tour of the Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. We decided to give it a try. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the tour, but I snapped a couple before and after. Our kids were the only kids in our tour group. At one very silent portion of the tour Brielle asked “daddy, why do we have to wear these safety goggles?” Before Brandon could answer Joah pipes up “because Brielle, you never know. A bottle of beer could open and beer could shoot straight in your eyeball.” Everyone died laughing.

The tour was more for Brandon and I, but the kids still enjoyed it. It was very interesting to see the process of brewing beer. Our group was very silent, like I said before. The tour guide kept asking if anyone had any questions and Joah is the only one who broke the silence. He wondered several things including “how many bottles of beer can you people bottle in one year?” In case anyone is wondering they can bottle over 400 bottles in only 1 minute.