Chicago Trip -- Downtown

We went to downtown Chicago on Wednesday and again on Friday. Some of our pictures from Wednesday are on my 365 photo blog here. Matt's class ended by noon, so we had lunch at the hotel and then planned to spend the rest of the day downtown. It was so much fun -- the most we've ever gotten to see and do downtown any of the times we've been to Chicago (which have all been us tagging along with Matt when he's had to do work-related things there).




We started at Lincoln Park. Matt and Riley went to the Wilson skatepark there; and Maya, Seth, and I went to the beach on Lake Michigan.

A cloudy but beautiful day



Playing in the water before the lifeguard told us no one could get in the water due to elevated e. coli levels from all the flooding. Fortunately, none of us got sick.



Seth digging and sculpting in the sand




One of Maya's sand drawings: a penguin and her egg




Maya and the friends she met at the beach. They played all afternoon.



Once we found a place to park, we walked all over downtown. We found a local place to eat some really good Chicago-style pizza.

Maya anxiously waiting for some pizza


Enjoying the pizza -- deep, deep dish, tons of cheese, with the sauce on top



I had wanted to go to some of the art museums, but it never worked out with all the other things we wanted to do. We ended up instead getting to experience some of the amazing art and architecture that can be found throughout downtown, much of it art that could be touched, climbed on, played with, even splashed by!

It has been said that art is a tryst, for in the joy of it maker and beholder meet.

--Kojiro Tomita

We didn't go up to the sky deck of the very tall Hancock Observatory, but the view from the street is pretty awesome, too.



This is called Monument with Standing Beast by Jean DuBuffet. There are lots of little places to run in, through, and out as well as lots of places to climb.


This is an untitled Pablo Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza. I had never noticed this, but the Wikipedia article says there is a shot of it and mention of it in The Blues Brothers movie during the chase scene.





Besides the Picasso, here are some other views from Daley Plaza.




Across the street, we found Miro's Chicago


Because the kids like the their story so much, we went a few blocks over to see The Flight of Daedalus and Icarus painting.



This caught our attention as we walked along some buildings, maybe on La Salle St??? I can't remember where exactly.



Finally, we spent time in Millennium Park.

Enjoying some sculptures by Mark di Suvero.

Swinging on Shang


Rust Angel



Maya and Seth and I splashed around in Crown Fountain. There were so many people running and playing and splashing and laughing here day and night. It was one of my favorite places. The giant block towers have moving video images of faces. Water comes out all the time and occasionally "spits" from the mouths of the faces on both towers.

Chicago Trip -- McDonald's Museum

On Thursday, we toured the McDonald's museum in Des Plaines, IL. It's a replica of Ray Kroc's first McDonald's restaurant. This trip was mainly for Maya, who *loves* McDonalds. It was intresting to see how different the prices were then than now and to hear about what is served in McDonald's restaurants in other parts of the world, such as lamb in India and rice in China. When we got back to the hotel later, Matt reminded us about the poutine dish he tried at the McDonalds on our trip to Niagara Falls, Canada a couple years ago.

In true fast-food style, it took only a few minutes to see the whole place.

Chicago Trip: Long Grove Confectionery Factory Tour

We're in Itasca, IL, a suburb of Chicago, for the week while Matt does some work-related training. Today we toured the Long Grove Confectionery factory in Buffalo Grove, IL. We had the opportunity to hold a cacao pod and bean and learn about how it is grown and harvested. We saw videos of the family's history in the town and toured the factory to see the process from mixing and making the candies through packaging and shipping. This company does much of its work by hand, and it was especially interesting to learn about the custom work of the company artists and sculptors and see some of their amazing pieces. After smelling and seeing all that delicious chocolate for an hour, we shopped in the outlet store for treats and are now enjoying some blissful post-chocolate relaxing in our hotel room.

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Some pictures:

Statue of Liberty and Native American chocolate sculptures. These are solid chocolate and weigh 1000+ pounds. The detail was just beautiful, and the swirling chocolate looked like wood grain.

The giant chocolate pizza and a chocolate dress that was actually worn in a fashion show (and yes, they said the dresses did start to melt a bit while being worn).

While I'm on a YouTube video posting kick...

...we love this funny one by our unschooling friends, Jacob and Hannah:

Riley skating the bowl at the Florence Skatepark

"Why have children just to get rid of them? I'm opposed to the whole nonsense."

I just saw this on the Four Little Birds unschooling blog. All those years of watching Addams Family when I was a kid, and I never even realized they were unschoolers!!!! I love this! (If you're going to watch it, it is about 9 minutes long)

Happy Memorial Day

Matt and Riley skated today in Newport, KY's Memorial Day parade to support their friend Andrew's very cool skateshop, Galaxie.

Here are a few pictures:




Maya and Seth checking out their candy


All the kids enjoying a post-parade visit from the lady with the "bubble bike"



Riley hanging out at the skateshop after the parade


Maya and Seth at the skateshop

Connections

Riley and I have been reading Dr. Seuss: Young Author and Artist in the Childhood of Famous Americans series. One of the themes from the story that we've talked about quite a bit is the treatment of German Americans during the WWI era. The book tells how names of various German things were changed: frankfurters became hotdogs and sauerkraut was called "liberty cabbage" (which spurred a whole other conversation about "freedom fries" in our more recent history!).

This morning, when Riley and I were at Findlay Market in Cincinnati to pick up our eggs from Thistlehair Farm, we stumbled upon this historic marker detailing some of the consequences of the "Anti-German Hysteria" in Cincinnati during that time period.

Riley took these pictures.

Right next to the sign is Krause's German food market, so we decided to browse through there. We bought some bratwurst and some "German wieners" -- despite the fact that Ri can't say "wieners" without giggling.

Animals

Riley is doing a 3-part series of workshops with the cat trainers at the Cincinnati Zoo. He had his second one this week on Monday morning. They learned about clicker training, which is what they use with the cats and other animals at the zoo. It's also something we've read about for working with Pablo, though we hadn't used an actual clicker. We like the ideas of positive reinforcement, luring and shaping behaviors we want, and ignoring those we don't. The kids have been even more committed to this than I have (even when they're the ones getting nipped!) -- as I've wanted to resort to harsher methods in my more stressed out moments with our active, nipping little puppy. Thankfully, Riley and Maya have kept me true to my own ideals in those moments! Just as with all aspects of people/home/animal care here, I consider myself the one responsible for the puppy care, and the kids have no assigned puppy duties; yet they have been so amazingly helpful with every aspect of taking care of Pablo-- staying attentive for when he's at the back door wanting to go out to "potty," redirecting him to his toys when he's using furniture or shoes or people as chew toys, and with other basic puppy training.

After the zoo class, the kids and Pablo and I took a trip to the pet shop for a clicker; and I later picked up a couple of clicker training books and a book about Labs that has lots of pretty pictures, breed information, and some drawings of dog anatomy. At Pablo's vet appointment yesterday they got to talk with the vet assistant about their questions and concerns about people having dogs' tails snipped (they were surprised when they saw in the book that their are bones in the tail).

Here is Riley drawing a picture while waiting for the zoo workshop to start.



Maya and Seth at the zoo playground



A squirrel that Maya spent a long time watching



Maya and Seth outside the fox's den


At home:

Riley and Pablo clicker training


Maya holding an earthworm before moving him from the sunny, dry spot where she found him to a shadier, muddier area


Seth and Pablo enjoying the water




These aren't animal-related, but here are a couple more pictures from home this week:

Riley playing guitar


Maya checking out a rocks-and-minerals field guide

Here are a few pictures from home lately. There are a few more on our new Project 365 photo blog. I added a link to it along the side of this blog site in the "Other Interests and Activities" section. Here is a site that explains Project 365.

We bought some used games (Scrabble/Scrabble Jr, My Little Pony Memory game, Math Bingo) and Lego's earlier this week and have been having a blast with them all. Since April is National Poetry Month as well as Shakespeare's likely birth month, we're celebrating with a variety of poetry books from the library and animated Shakespeare videos from Netflix. The overwhelming favorite poet so far has been Ogden Nash. Maya and I, inspired by one of the poems in Ogden Nash's Zoo, looked at pictures on the internet and read about the lamprey as well as the legends about the death of King Henry I of England, rumored to have died from eating a "surfeit of lampreys." Nash's poem says it was King John of England who was killed by the surfeit of lampreys, though the closest similar rumor, among other rumors, we found about him said he died from eating a "surfeit of peaches." Maybe we're missing something??? Anyway, there have been several lampreys in Maya's pretend playing lately as well as one in her story here. We are not, however, interested in exploring them deeply enough to try Lamprey Pie!!! Interesting connection with words here, though -- one of the other books we happened to bring home from the library in the same trip is called "As: A Surfeit of Similes."

Here are some of the kids' Lego creations:

Seth working on a truck


Maya's house with a window box, and her girl and lion riding on a cart


Riley's house


It has been so nice to have warm enough days to enjoy the backyard and the trampoline


Here I am with Maya starting a yoga video


And here is Maya still sticking with it in spite of Pablo


Maya