GREEN DAY a.k.a. IRISH FEST

Becky, Katie and I trekked down to Milwaukee this past weekend to go to one of their ethnic festivals--Irish Fest--and had so much fun! It took us two hours to get there, but it was SO WORTH THE DRIVE!! We found parking right off Interstate 794 for $5:00 (across the street they wanted $20.00!). Then we walked a couple of of blocks and were bombarded with the cool entrance:

Once we got through the gate we were greeted by these two lovely people:

What a cute couple, right?

Then, us Gehrmann Girls shot to the food booths (it was a long ride, remember?):

My food is in the foreground. I decided to go healthy so I could indulge later in the evening. I chose the grilled salmon, plain baked potato and steamed veggies (me good). Katie had the Sheppard's Pie and Becky had the Irish Stew over a baked potato. We had a chuckle over the featured "Irish Nachos" (don't worry, we weren't that gullible).

We wondered through the market, viewed a wonderful Titanic display, browsed the culture tent and of course had to do our share of:

Leprechaun searching! (Unfortunately we didn't find any.)

Of course we just had to, had to:

Stroll through the children's area. See how Katie was able to embrace her inner child whereby Becky opted for model pose?

And eat dessert:

HUGE carrot cupcakes and Irish Coffee (no Whiskey BUT Irish Cream flavoring) YUMMY!

Then it was off to see THE BANDS. Did you know that the Bluegrass genre of music came from IRELAND? Well we didn't know that. We saw the most incredible band:

They were called Punch Brothers. One of their songs was actually included on the soundtrack for The Hunger Games. The were really GOOD!

But the best part of the evening was the two weird guys who sat down next to us while we were watching Punch Brothers. Both men had dred locks, beards, long wool coats and looked downright sketchy. I told Katie to scootch down to to the right a bit (away from the weirdos). She picked up her purse and said "well, it's getting kinda late." I took her hint and said "we should probably get going." Then as Becky and Katie were walking past the weirdos one pulled out a bouquet of wrapped Dum Dums. He told them "want to dry a lollipop, they have LOTS of acid on them!" Well as you can probably figure, Mommy-Mode stepped into gear. I shouted "NO!" and pushed the girls forward and away from the two Druggies. Then we started laughing and wondering if the whole thing was a hoax, some Theater Majors dressed up and playing the part of quintessential Bob Marley Listening Hippies. Or were they FOR REAL? Scary, huh?

We did one final bathroom stop and then Becky insisted we buy Kettlecorn for the long way home (good job, Becky!

All and all it was an evening of laughs and good food and good company!