9 Hours Later

It took us 9 hours to drive to Illinois on Tuesday afternoon/evening and when the boys got up on Wednesday morning, they were READY TO GO!  It's exciting to be at Grandpa and Grandma Schrag's house.  There's always lots to see and do.

First things first, help grandma in the kitchen.

 They helped Sue mix up Sourdough bread.

 And then Ben and I took the boys to the Children's Museum.  As soon as we told the boys we'd be traveling to Illinois, they asked to go to the Children's Museum.  So, we put it at the top of the priority list.

 I think we spent about an hour in the farm section.  The museum has a wonderful set up of combine, grain cart, auger, bins, feeding troughs and grain elevator all connected by tubes. The grain are the little green balls you see below.  Air flows through the tubes, so when you put a green ball in, the air whisks it away to the next place grain goes.

 The boys fed the cows, made the grain go up the auger, gathered more grain in their buckets, 

 then they'd run their full buckets to the cows, 

 and run their empty buckets back to the grain auger.  

 They spent time picking corn on the combine and then they were finally ready to move on.

 We spent quality time in the painting area.  I could tell they were a year older than the last time we'd been to  the museum.  They both painted their names, rainbows and shapes instead of randomly brushing paint on and spending most of the time washing it off.

 At the pretend stage, Noah got involved by operating the curtain and lights.  He wasn't interested in putting on a costume and acting in the show the other kids were putting together.  

 Levi wasn't interested in the big stage, but did have a good time with the hand puppets.

We had a great time and thanks to the Amtrak train just outside the museum, we were able to lure our kids out so we could go eat lunch.  Without that train, I'm not sure when we would have got them to quit making pretend pizzas.