be-a-greeny: madison ~ day 1

well, after our wonderful, crazy, fun week of vacation, we had a little break. back to work for me and back to our regular schedule for the girls for a couple weeks before school started. we still had one more adventure before that though....our long awaited weekend in madison!!!

last year, my brother and i ran the madison mini-marathon. it was my first half marathon, and matt's second. (he was also training for the chicago marathon at the time too! go matt!!) we only stayed one night, but we absolutely loved it!! it's such a gorgeous place! our hotel was literally steps away from the start line and a couple blocks from the finish line! so in march of this year, we made our plans to return for the 2012 madison mini-marathon! this time with the rest of the crew!!

we made the plans and signed up for the race in early march. well, we all know what happened in mid-march....nick and i found out we were expecting! so, needless to say, i didn't end up running! luckily they let me defer my registration until 2013! guess we gotta go back next year! darn the luck! lol!

so we decided we would still go....matt still ran and the girls wanted to run too! and there's plenty to do up there! so we stayed 2 nights and made a whole weekend of it!! we couldn't get rooms in the same hotel as last year, but we still got an awesome place! just blocks from all the race activity!!

we made it up there before matt, so we just hung out in the room for a bit. nick tried to nap.....the girls didn't think he should though! haha!!

yay!! uncle matt is here!! the weather was gorgeous the whole weekend!! when matt arrived, we took a walk over to union south to get our packets and check out the expo!! it's such a gorgeous campus!! and of course we had to stop and check some stuff out on the way.....and take some pics too!!

this was some crazy circle thing that the girls literally could have played at for hours!

i have no idea what building this is, but charlie liked the bench and had me take a pic! it actually turned out pretty cute!!

the girls just loooooove their uncle matt!! and i know he feels the same about them!!

this was apparently charlie's favorite tree!! i have no idea why, but that's what she told me! so she just had to have a picture with it! what a goof ball!

we finally made it to union south! they have these sweet tables and chairs all over the place in several different colors!

and they also have some super big chairs.....

while the girls were playing on the giant chair, they met a friend. i can't remember her name, but we'll call her 'katie'. anywho....she kept saying "my name's katie and i'm kind of a daredevil!" so of course that was the phrase of the night with the girls! "my name is haylie/charlie, and i'm kind of a daredevil!" lol!

after checking out the expo and having some dinner, we decided to check out the inside of the union. we found a rock wall, but that was already shut down so we couldn't do that. but we also found a bowling alley!! nick and i were just spectators, but the girls and matt had a blast!