Nathaniel Day 27 - Lunch and Lighthouses

Abby is obsessed with trains. We have found a few restaurants in the area that have trains that bring out the food. She loves them. Usually she doesn't actually eat anything, but she loves going. I found a new one somewhat close to us at the Kenosha Metra station so I thought we would check it out. It was not the best that we have been to. Abby did not like the mac and cheese that she ordered, but drank all of the milkshake that I let her get. She did very much enjoy the trains though.


It was supposed to be a nice, warm day so I thought that while we were there we would also do something that I like and go visit the lighthouses in downtown Kenosha. I haven't been to Kenosha that much and had never been to the lighthouses. It was also the first week that the lighthouse museum was open for the season.

We ate lunch and visited the little museum at the lighthouse on the shore and then decided to go play at the beach and then walk down the pier to the little lighthouse at the end. It was a little cold by the beach but both girls loved it. Felicity crawled all over and tried to eat all the sand. Abby collected all the little things that she could on the beach and used them to decorate a sand castle that she made. We all had a lot of fun and were pretty worn out by the time we left.

On the way home we stopped at Nathaniel's grave to see if the tree above his grave was flowering. We knew it is a cherry tree, but had never seen it in bloom. I'm glad I decided to extend our trip to stop. It was so pretty. If I had waited I might have missed it again this year.

Nathaniel Day 22 - Continuing Christmas Traditions

You can read about the idea behind Nathaniel Day and the activities of previous months by clicking on the Nathaniel Day Activities tab at the top of the page.

Last year for December's Nathaniel Day we decorated his magnolia tree in the backyard. We decided do that again this year. I think it will be a new tradition for December 6th each year. I took the girls out shopping for ornaments a few days before. Abby chose one for herself and one to be for Felicity. We invited family to join us to help decorate and asked them to bring an ornament for the tree. 

After the tree decorating everyone else left and we got ready to go the the Chicago Botanic Garden for their holiday train exhibit. Abby loved all the trains. There was even a Thomas train and snow falling every once in a while! I think Felicity enjoyed it too. There was so much to look at.

At first Abby ran through the exhibit in about 10 minutes and then wanted to go outside to see the lights. It wasn't dark yet and we had paid to go to the train exhibit so we convinced her to stay and look a little longer. I also wanted to see the cool landmarks and Chicago buildings and hadn't had much of a chance since I had been focused on making sure I knew where Abby was as she darted from train to train.

We ended up staying until the exhibit closed. Then we headed outside to see the lights in the garden before heading home for some dinner.