Hikes & Bikes

July has been a month of hiking a biking. We started off in the beginning of the month with a trip to Mattheissen State Park.  We were headed for Starved Rock, a nearby State Park, but Steve wanted to stop at Mattheissen first. He'd remembered going there with his family as a teen and wanted to see if they still had the same stepping stones across the creek.

We wound of staying there the rest of the afternoon. I'm glad because I think it was more beautiful than Starved Rock. Maybe it was just the section we were in, but I loved the cliffs, the narrow gorges and creeks.

Both kids still ride with training wheels ( I think that's partly our fault for not taking them off and letting them practice more), but they can sure make their bikes fly! It's the first year that it's actually been fun to go bike riding. We can go for longer trips, and both kids do great keeping up.

We took a three mile bike loop ride around the Brookfield Zoo, stopping every once in a while to swing on branches and throw sticks in the water. We also took another longer bike ride in the woods near the Grau Mill in the Fullersburg Woods. Halfway through we stopped at the nature center for some play before riding to the creek and throwing branches in the water.

After the long, hot, sticky afternoon, we came back home to roast some hot, sticky Smores over the fire pit!

Another weekend in July we drove to my sister's house. My mom and I took Alexa and my sister's son for a bike ride around the block and then down to her pond. I'm so glad that even though it's almost the middle of August as I write this, the kids arn't about to go school in a few weeks. We don't have to think of this as the end of summer, but can look forward to at least two more months of great weather to go out and explore more wonderful nature areas near our home. I love our unschooled life!

Father's Day

My dad loves fishing. Besides baseball, fishing was the only other thing he really liked to do when we were little, even though he didn't get to do it that often. My sister's husband loves to fish, too; he has his own gear and everything. Steve, on the other hand, is kinda iffy about fishing; he'll try it if everyone else is doing it. I think his dad is the same way, too.

So, to give it a try, we went to the Lake View Nature Center in Oakbrook for Father's Day. We met everyone after church and a quick lunch as Tom's. My dad and Joe caught some small fish, but no luck for the kids. I guess you can tell who the real fishermen were!

The center usually has paddle boats you can rent for $3 per half hour, but they weren't renting that day. So, we hung out in the nature center for awhile....

....and then took a walk around the pond, a run down the hill and ended up at the playground.

Before saying goodbye to Steve's parents, we gave his dad our gift to him - some lights for his backyard and a new grill top.

After leaving the nature center we went to my mom's house for a chili dinner and dessert.

I am so thankful for my wonderful husband. I've never met another man who spends as much time with his children as Steve does. We're very blessed to have him.

When Daddy's Gone

We hate it when Steve has to travel out of town on business. I'm really, really thankful he hasn't been gone that much so far this year; the kids and I really feel his absence. I usually try to plan a lot of extra fun things to do on those days so the time goes by quickly.

That also usually involves inviting other people to spend the days with us. So, when Steve left for three days the end of May, we decided to go to the Little Red School House and nature center with my mom. The first time I was supposed to go to the School House was in third grade. My teacher at the time decided I was writing my cursive G's incorrectly (in fact I was writing them correctly) and said I would have to stay back while the rest of the class went on the field trip. And this was at a Christian school, too.  A great way to show God's love, huh?

Well, at least the first visit to the school house was with my children who will never know what it's like to be punished for something as insane as that. They'll also never know what a "field trip" is. Travelling to fun places is just a part of our lives.

The nature center is pretty new; I think it just opened last year. We saw lots of small animals like birds, snakes, frogs, and insects. They also have a little play area for young kids.

Jared really enjoyed building a beaver dam with sticks. Next to the nature center the school house sits in the same place where the original building too, which was a one room school house in the mid 1800's. Inside there's a model of what the school house looked like at that time. A group of school kids were there that day;  I was so sad to see them walking around with worksheets to fill out. Instead of taking there time exploring the room and gravitating towards the sections they found interesting, they tore frantically around the room trying to fill in the "correct" answers to the questions on the sheet. Sad, sad, sad.

With so many kids tearing around the room, the Jared and Alexa understandably didn't want to go inside the school house; instead we walked down by the lake and the kids had much more fun digging in the puddles and building their own dams.

We ate lunch at my mom's house; then she watched the kids while I went grocery shopping, and then we all met at our house for dinner and a movie.

The next day we met my mom and my sister's son at one of our favorite children's museums, the DuPage Children's Museum, for some more fun. We hung out at the gift store for a few minutes, trying out hats....

....and then went upstairs for some fun with shapes...

... and more shapes....

...and looking at slides under the microscope. 

After we dropped off Owen at his house, we drove back to my mom's for pizza and watched Daddy Day Care. Then it was off for home to see Steve. Yea!!!!

Cades Cove - Smoky Mountain Vacation

It was a little trek from where our cabin was in Gatlinberg to Cades Cove in the Smoky Mountains, but we really wanted to see this beautiful area of the mountains. It took us 45 minutes to reach the Cove, and we were there for about two hours.

Early pioneers cleared the valley floor and built many farms. It was also a well known Cherokee Indian hunting ground. It's the largest, open-air museum in the Smoky Mountians, and has origional pioneer homesteads, barns, businesses and farmland.

This deer was actually the only animal we saw, besides the wild turkeys running in front of our house.

Along the side of the road, visitors to the area can see many original churches from the 1800's.

The open fields made it an awesome place for pictures - now if only I had a better camera!

We peeked inside a blacksmith's house...

....several barns and a house..

...as well as peeking inside a still-working windmill.

But the most fun we had was walking along the stream to the dam where Steve and the kids waded in the creek and threw stones. The mill area was pretty crowded with tourists, but no one walked all the way down the stream, so we had a very peaceful 45 minutes to ourselves.