Our Trip to Illinois

This past January we were invited to go to Illinois with some of our sweet friends. Being that we live here in Texas and rarely get to see snow, we thought it would be a great adventure AND we could cash in some time with our timeshare. If you are interested, get a timeshare that allows you to travel the WHOLE planet earth, not just one spot every year. Since our children are small, we just stick to the good ol' U.S. of A (for now). Since we are not locked down with a calendar we homeschooled on the road. One of the many reasons why I ♥ homeschooling my 3 pack, FREEDOM to choose where, when and how!

Prior to going, we planned our vacation around the Chicago area. Simply because we wanted the children to visit 2 of the many museums in the city. My country kids and hubby also needed to experience a real, live city.

And to eat PIZZA. I have been told many times we chose the wrong place... However the pizza was fabulous.

We also went snow tubing and traumatized the 6 year old.

The Field Museum was first up on the trip. The kids got to see a real mummy and lots of Egyptian artifacts.

And like any smarty pants homeschoolers, they walked like Egyptians on out of the exhibit.

Sue was next, she is the oldest T-Rex ever found. So we took in a little paleontology as well. Then proceeded to get lost in the world of animals (literally). Because at the Field Museum they have a real taxidermy world of animals. I'm not talking about a sampling of species, we are talking the whole-wide-world of every type of species known to man. Its HUGE, because we were looking for these guys....

A guess, anyone. These are the Tsavo lions from Africa. Rephrase that: they are the man-eating lions from Tsavo, Africa. And they were on my hubby's bucket list. WHY? Who knows he saw the movie and then had to meet the lions. I would have preferred Val Klimer, pre-crazy when he made "The Ghost in the Darkness" myself. But here they are stuffed and everything!

The Museum of Science and Industry was the other museum we chose. They had a wing/floor/section on weather, which included this 40 foot tornado. My guys loved making this thing go. Yes, the majority of exhibits the kids get to run...

Then we learned about fire and combustion.

And then electricity

The museum has this 3,000 sq. foot model train station. This is how the middle child enjoyed his lunch. He would still be there if we didn't pry his little hands from the rail.

Thank goodness a cow, oh how we miss the country...

The submarine was pretty cool, it is the only German U-boat captured by the U.S. Navy during World War II
Unfortunately with both museums we only saw a small fraction of the exhibits, just do to their shear size. So we can't wait to get back there and check out the rest.

Somewhere in our travels we got to sneak in a hiking trip to Starved Rock State Park to see the bald eagles and the frozen waterfalls. See the eagle in the tree, right there in the middle, that's right get the magnifying glasses out. He really is there, maybe one day I will figure out how to put the better cropped shots in. The point is we got to see many flying around and though we aren't great a capturing those type of pictures, my kids got a great adventure to the top of the rock to see them. And Andy got a back ache from carrying Katie up the mountain.

Then we saw this guy...He is huge, magnificent and truly a work of God. Gorgeous!

The is how we traveled up and down the canyons and mountains. Andy in front with Katie, usually the boys are in the middle and I bring up the rear. This was our check system to keep everyone accounted for and out of the canyon bottom.

Here is the last morning of our travels, bedhead and everything ready to do it all over again.
Let's recap what we learned on this trip: weather, geography, paleontology, anthropology, biology, math, history world & cultural, physics, geology, orienteering plus much, much more....beats the heck out of sitting in a class all day.