has anyone noticed some strange flights around eastern minnesota or west central wisconsin?

for months now, my wife has been mentioning a strange light appearing on the southwestern horizon, toward minneapolis saint paul, appearing to be coming directly towards our home, and then dissapearing at some point. One night about a month ago she pointed it out to me and I observed what appeared to be a very bright(meteor-like) object. I thought it to bright to be an airplane, however, on another night, at about the same time, the bright light appeared again and this time I had the binoculars handy and decided it was an airplane. This was confirmed on yet another night when the light did not disapear, but instead became apparent to be part of a larger "flight" of aircraft of various kinds. The first one i could confirm was a low flying and rather slow large aircraft that looked like me to be a large passenger craft, lit up with what appeared to be stadium lights. After this I paid more attention and found that the large, brightly lit craft appeared to have what I would only assume to be a contingent of fighter escorts, which I could not confirm as these smaller, faster craft never flew close enough for me to view them as clearly as the stream of large low flying craft. The larger craft were flying on what appeared to be exactly the same line of flight as one another, with a fairly good space between each craft(many miles each). Just wondering what was up with this, and if anyone else had noticed. Just one more comment, the night that I got the good look at the large craft was a very cloudy night, on the clear nights the planes all just seem to dissapear at some point.