Cantigny Park on Memorial Day

What a better way to celebrate Memorial Day than to go to Cantigny - a 500 acre park that houses two museums: the Robert R. McCormick Museum and Cantigny First Division Museum.

Before going to the museum, we climbed a few of the 11 tanks dating from World War 1 through Desert Storm.

Then we took a quick tour of the First Division Museum - a museum that presents the history of the 1st Infantry Division from its pre-Revolutionary day to details about its role in wars since then through Desert Storm.

For a free museum (you only have to pay $5 per car to enter the park), it's absolutely phenomenal. You walk through scenes that make you feel like you are on Omaha beach or walking through the jungles of Vietnam.

After our tour, we drove back home and Steve cooked some BBQ ribs. We've had non-stop rain around here, and the back yards are starting to flood. Our neighbor's yard was so bad that day that it was like a mini lake. The kids didn't mind, though. They put on their swimsuits and splashed through the water while we looked on, took pictures, and reveled in their laughter.

Hawthorne Museum @ Morton College

My grandmother, now deceased grandfather and uncle all have their pictures hanging in the new Hawthorne Museum at Morton College. How cool is that!  I love museums, but to come into this one, even though it's small (just two rooms) and see my grandparents and uncle's pictures up on the wall was really cool . And it was something really special for my kids to see, too.

The museum is dedicated to the now defunct Western Electric Hawthorne Works facility located in Cicero, Illinois.  It became the manufacturing arm of the Bell Telephone Company.  The facility was really a little city of itself and boasted a hospital, fire brigade, laundry, greenhouse, a brass band, running track, tennis courts, gymnasium, an annual beauty pageant and a staff of trained nurses who made house calls. In 1975 there were 45,000 workers at the plant.

My grandmother has told many stories about working in the plant, making telephone parts. She'd tell how hot the workers would get, how many would faint because there was no air conditiong. My grandma would always say how great her boss was because if the workers complained of being faint he would send them to lay down at a cot for a while and take salt pills.

Jared just loved playing switchboard operator. He stayed at this switchboard for at least twenty minutes without getting up.

Alexa called me over to show me one of the first electric dishwashers. I think it was built in 1918. We were pretty impressed. Of course, that might be because we don't even own a dishwasher now!

The museum even has a sculpture my grandfather made using rails off a railroad track. He won first prize in entering it in an art contest at the plant.

Jared liked checking out the old-fashioned telephone booth. Both kids hid in the booth for awhile and had fun popping their heads up through the glass.

Days of Knights and Damsels

We've been having an awesome time doing several projects from the book Days of Knights and Damsels.  Both kids have had an on-going interest in castles and knights, and Jared recently loved the graphic novel about King Arthur that my mom bought him, so I ordered this book about a month ago for us to look through. We've made several of the craft ideas in the past two weeks.

Here's our attempt at making Robin Hood caps, which we found are really called bycockets. I really misjudged the amount of felt to use, so the poor hats really just perched on top of their heads, but they enjoyed watching me hand sew them (a first for me!). It brought up a great discussion about how sewing was so important until very recently - how most people didn't just throw away a pair of socks because they had a hole in them.

This was probably our most fun project in the past few weeks. As you can see, I couldn't resist making my own castle,too! The book called it "A Castle in Your Pocket."

Ok. This one definitely didn't turn out great at all. It was probably just me not following directions correctly, but these princess hats were way too small for our heads. Also, the kids were in a mood to throw glitter all over the floor and smear glue all over the table rather than decorate their hats, so I was the only one to finish the project since I was still really into it.

These cloaks didn't really turn out like they should have either, but I think it was because the paper bags were too small. This was actually the first project Alexa said she wanted to do when the book first arrived in the mail, but I didn't have paper bags at that time.

She was so excited at first to do this project, but within a minute of having the cloak on, both she and Jared wanted it off, and they've been laying on the counter ever since. Ah, well. You just never know for how long kids will be interested in something.

After we get back from the Smoky Mountains, I'm sure we'll be perusing the book for more ideas. It has several medieval games and recipes that look fun. Look for a part 2 to this post in the future.