Lincoln Park Zoo

It's only been two weeks of school, and the kids have already had two holidays--Labor Day and Rosh Hashanah.  While we're not Jewish, we were grateful for the holiday and hope our Jewish friends had a very Happy New Year!  I decided to take the kids down to the zoo for the day since the weather was perfect and it just seemed like a great thing to do.

We had such a fun time together!  It had been a while (a little more than 2 years) since the last time we came and Brandon said over and over, "I want to come back everyday!".  Caleb couldn't get enough of all the animals, and Kelsie had a great time naming each an every animal that we saw.  She had to write the names on her hand so she wouldn't forget.  Isaac had no clue what was going on and was probably wondering why he couldn't just stay home and sleep in his nice warm bed.  Kelsie made sure to get a picture of me too, since there aren't too many of me on here.

Caleb loved this crocodile.  He looked at it over and over.  He (the croc) sat so still and according to Kelsie, "freaked her out".  I like his teeth.  It almost looks like he's smiling...I wonder what he's thinking!

This gecko was pretty cool too.  He was just chillin out on the glass.  He didn't seem to mind all the little fingers tapping at him on the other side.

 My favorite animals were the gorillas.  We must have caught them during their resting time, because this is what they were all doing:

 The funny thing was that they were awake and just stared at us.  I wonder if they were as curious about us as we were of them!  We even found a "human" species in the gorilla house...

On our way to the giraffe's, Caleb fell and skinned up his knees pretty bad.  After a bit of crying a some TLC, he decided those giraffe's were worth seeing.  We loved how they were sticking out their long tongues.

Next up, the polar bear!  He was swimming around and they all loved watching him through the glass.  He was huge!

 Isaac was a trooper throughout the day.  He came home and took a loooong nap.  Funny how exhausted little babies get! 

We really had so much fun at the zoo!  We love Chicago and all the fun things that we can do while we're here!

Indiana Dunes

Back in July, when we visited Mount Rushmore (which I still haven't blogged about, don't judge), we promised the park ranger who swore our kids in as junior rangers that we would check out the national park closest to our home.  We had to do a little research (a.k.a. ask the ranger) to find out which one it was and how close.  That's where we found the Indiana Dunes--not to be confused with Indiana Jones.  We decided it would make a great end of summer celebration and headed down there on Labor Day. 

West Beach was our first destination where we hiked the Succession Trail.  It didn't take long for us to realize that walking around in tennis shoes wasn't the easiest way to get around.  It was a lot easier walking around the sand in bare feet.  We had such a fun time hiking up and down the dunes and seeing the landscape.  I loved climbing up the big stair cases to the top and seeing the beautiful view of Lake Michigan.  We could even see the Chicago skyline in the distant (look really close in the top right corner).  

Even little Isaac had a good time.  There's nothing like being strapped to Dad enjoying the great outdoors, even if his hat makes his ears stick out.  

We climbed to the top of some very steep dunes (my calves still won't let me forget) and the kids discovered the thrill of jumping (or flipping) down the dunes. 

But I couldn't let the kids have all the fun! 

Our hike ended at the beach where the kids found the best skipping rocks I think they've ever found.  This was Brandon's face every time he successfully skipped a rock (nice bed-head, huh?):

Picking out just the right rock is not to be taken lightly though.

After spending some time on the beach, we decided to drive around to see what else there was to see.  It was a pretty popular place to be though (it was Labor Day, remember?) so finding a parking space became an issue for us.  We struck out a couple of times before we finally found some spaces at the less popular bogs.  Isaac needed to eat at this point and Caleb had fallen asleep, so Wally and the older kids went out to explore.  I figured it was a successful exploration when Brandon came back looking like this:

Boys + Sticks = Rifles?

We had a really great time exploring the Indiana Dunes and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in going.  We love finding new things to do as a family and I'm so glad the dunes were close!  We still made it back in time to have a barbeque with some friends at the end of the day.  All in all, it was a really great Labor Day.